House Of Commons
Wednesday 26 February 1997
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
Prayers
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
Nato
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. McLoughlin.]
9.34 am
I welcome this opportunity to debate the expansion of NATO. Like others of my generation, I remember how the United States air force went home after the second world war had ended. I remember the Berlin blockade, how the Berlin airlift was initiated and how the US air force—God bless them—returned to the United Kingdom bases. I also remember how the north Atlantic treaty came into being, and I remember vividly Churchill's iron curtain speech.
I remember all those things because I was a young service man at the time. I look back on almost 50 years of successful NATO activity. I remember such things because my generation paid expensively for the mistakes that had been made in the 1920s and 1930s. "This innocent" is how I was described in The Sunday Times by a fellow named Simon Sebag-Montefiore, who must be important with a name like that. If I am an innocent, many of my generation are also innocents, and we care deeply about the mistakes that were made in the 1920s and 1930s, especially the 1930s. I cannot forget that NATO was the commitment made largely by the US Government to send hundreds of thousands of US service men to Europe. That is what gave NATO its deterrent capability and made the alliance meaningful. That credibility enhanced the security of all the member states. The Washington treaty declared that an armed attack on the territory of any member state would be regarded as an attack on all: to wage war on one was to declare war on all—article 5 left no doubt about that commitment. In the beginning, only the United States was a nuclear power. Britain and France were also to become nuclear powers. Throughout its life, Britain's strategic nuclear deterrent capability, carried first by aircraft and later by submarines, has been committed to NATO. The same has been true of our theatre nuclear weapons. Thus, the British—but not the French—nuclear capability was committed to the defence of the territory of our NATO allies in Europe: the British nuclear umbrella offered protection to our NATO allies throughout Europe. Anyone who has studied the structures of NATO will recognise that NATO operates in two fields—the political field, where the French have remained, and the military field, which the French left. I shall deal first with the military field, as I believe that NATO's success has been due mainly to its military credibility, which has been recognised by friends and foes alike. That credibility was brought about in part by the massive US presence in Europe. Without that presence, NATO would have been seen as a political alliance without teeth. The presence of the US forces has been critical. The command and control structure has worked. Without it, NATO would not have been an effective military force. Without a heavy lift capability provided by the United States, NATO would have been unable to deploy its military assets successfully, where required. The United States' contribution to command and control—and, to a smaller but still important extent, that of Britain—is an important factor. The co-operation paid off first in the Gulf, where military operations were largely built upon NATO command and control activities, and later in Bosnia. Put simply, the United States has provided the military leaders, and Britain has provided the deputies. We must examine carefully anything that may threaten NATO military command and control or the US commitment to Europe. That is why I called for the debate this morning. I am concerned about the expansion of NATO. Like everyone else, I wish to enjoy any dividend that may follow the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact military threat. You will notice, Madam Speaker, that I do not talk about the peace dividend. I believe that we have enjoyed the peace secured by a powerful and a credible NATO: peace over the years is the real dividend. The House should address the risks involved in NATO expansion. I accept that all change involves an element of risk, but we must assess the level of risk and decide whether it is acceptable. If it is not, we must think again. There are five basic criteria for NATO membership: an established democracy, respect for human rights, a market-based economy, armed forces under full civilian control, and good relations with neighbouring states. I understand that 10 countries—Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia—have submitted discussion papers on membership. We must ask: against whom is the bigger NATO directed? I believe that it is directed against no one, but those pushing for its expansion claim that it is necessary for the security of Europe. I cannot be the only one who believes that opening up trade opportunities is the most effective way of making the "Partnership for Peace" work. That is the real way to peace: it cannot be achieved through military alliances. A free trade area throughout Europe, including free trade with the former Warsaw pact countries, would do more to maintain peace than signing any military agreements. That is why it is important to recognise that NATO is in two parts: political and military. I am concerned that the political wing of NATO—which is a defence alliance—is confusing what should be urgent free trade discussions. That is putting at risk this most successful military alliance. Does anyone seriously believe that a defence alliance around the perimeter of Russia, from the Balkans to Moldova and the Ukraine, will not have an impact in Moscow? I judge that it could create an atmosphere from which extreme politicians might emerge as the next leaders of Russia. I accept that Russia poses no threat at present, but I remind the House that no one had heard of Hitler in 1930. By 1940—in 10 short years—he had created the largest military machine seen at that time and occupied most of Europe. Who can say what the next 10 years may bring. History tells us that the actions of today sow the seeds of the harvest that we shall reap in the next 10 to 15 years. I also remind the House that Britain entered the second world war because we had a treaty with Poland. NATO expansion would recreate such treaties. We should discuss the prospects of a free trade area covering the north Atlantic and embracing the United States, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the former Warsaw pact countries. That is the road to peace. I oppose using NATO for a purpose for which it was not intended. NATO is a defence alliance, and I want it to remain intact. I also want the American presence in Germany to continue, as its removal would put NATO's military credibility at great risk.I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, especially as I will not be able to stay for the whole debate because I must attend a meeting of the Defence Committee. I apologise to the House. I share my hon. Friend's concerns. Does he accept that there is a strong, and perhaps unstoppable, movement towards expanding NATO that has started in the United States—it may be fuelled by expatriate communities—and is supported by the countries of eastern and central Europe? Perhaps Russian fears could be assuaged by placing more emphasis on "Partnership for Peace" which, with the trade links that my hon. Friend has urged, is a way of keeping in touch with central and eastern European countries without expanding NATO.
My hon. Friend, whose experience and interest in this area spans many years, expresses the views of many. "Partnership for Peace" is not the same as a defence alliance, but it is a meaningful and positive way forward. I am concerned that forces within the United States—some of whom have never understood properly why it was necessary to maintain a huge American presence in Europe—are motivated by hopes of reducing military expenditure. That is always a problem during times of peace when there is no obvious threat. They want to see the so-called peace dividend, although I have never supported that idea.
I think that we are now entering a period similar to the 1930s: if we get it wrong, our grandchildren will have to put it right. All of my life, I have been determined that the mistakes made by my father's and my grandfather's generations would not be repeated while I was in public life. That is why I am in public life and, if I am an innocent, so be it, but my innocence is the result of military experience, where I learnt to my cost and that of many colleagues what happens when one is ill prepared and has the wrong weapons systems. We should discuss the prospects of a free trade area covering the north Atlantic and embracing the United States, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and the former Warsaw pact countries. That makes sense for us now, because the expected growth of the Pacific rim countries, and future competition from that part of the world, will hit us hard. It makes sense for the old industrial nations of the west and the former Soviet Union to get together to decide how to address those challenges. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that the British should argue, whatever our friends in the United States say, that the matter be discussed in greater depth. We believe that NATO should remain as it is, with command and control and the US presence in Europe intact. The US heavy lift capability should remain intact and be committed unreservedly. Without that capability, we cannot deploy our military assets. We should have meaningful discussions about collaboration, but we should also give deep and serious consideration to the risks and the practicalities of allowing former Warsaw pact countries to be members of a defence alliance. We know that their equipment will not fit in initially, and it will be many years before it is compatible. Does anyone seriously believe that those countries could provide meaningful contributions with their armed forces? We must think it through carefully and fully. Problems may well result from bilateral negotiations that have taken place between Russia and the former Warsaw pact countries, and possibly with some members of NATO since the Berlin wall has come down. All of that has to be considered carefully before we sign up to bringing people into a defence alliance that has worked and which must continue if we are to continue to enjoy the real peace that comes from having the ability to deter. I remind the House that, if we accept former Warsaw pact countries as members of a defence alliance that makes an attack on one an attack on all, we are back to where we were in 1939.9.50 am
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) on securing this very important debate, which should have taken place a long time ago. It is ironic that, rather than the Government initiating a free-standing debate on the enlargement of NATO at least two years ago, it has been left to a Back Bencher to secure a debate on a Wednesday morning.
From the number of articles that have appeared recently in various newspapers, it is clear that there is growing speculation and, in some cases, concern about the enlargement of NATO. When I visited NATO headquarters last year, during the all-party annual visit to NATO, which I always find very revealing—in fact, I get more answers from NATO than I do on the Floor of the House of Commons—it seemed as though enlargement was being accepted as a fait accompli. I am opposed to the enlargement of NATO, for many of the reasons that the hon. Member for North Tayside mentioned. I do not agree entirely with his analysis, but I agree with the main thrust of his argument. I shall put some of the arguments against enlargement. I suggest that it is likely to antagonise Russia and jeopardise peaceful co-operation with the west, as is becoming clear. NATO's raison d'etre has always been the creation of a security alliance in opposition to Russia. Consequently, not only Russia's political elite, but the population at large, perceive expansion as a threat and are overwhelmingly opposed to it. As many of us who have monitored Russian elections and have been there know, there has been a significant rise in anti-democratic, anti-western forces and nationalist sentiments, which may be encouraged by NATO expansion, creating a Russia and a President with whom the west may not be able to negotiate. It is doubtful whether current efforts and proposals for co-operation will be sufficient to reassure those elements. I maintain that expansion will remilitarise the Russian-western relationship. That relationship has, since 1989, been based on arms transparency. A change may encourage the development of an alternative Russian-centred security alliance to the east, thus creating again two blocs and a cold war Europe. Likewise, efforts to improve controls on nuclear weapons and the conventional forces in Europe agreement could be undermined as Russia becomes increasingly paranoid and unco-operative. Since the end of the cold war, many of us have been concerned about the former Soviet Union and what will happen to the people who worked in its nuclear installations and secret cities. Their skills, possibly, may no longer be used in their own countries, but they may be required by countries that we would not like to develop a nuclear capability. NATO is currently stronger than Russia militarily by three to one, but that will increase to four to one after expansion. There is no current security threat to central and eastern Europe, so why destabilise the existing relationships that appear to work? I maintain that expansion will weaken NATO, because it already takes a considerable time to mobilise and reach agreement among 16 members. It will be much harder with 19-plus members. Likewise, the new members will be weaker in their capacity and may prove to be a burden. Expansion will prove costly to NATO, and carry dubious benefits. According to The Times, NATO expansion will cost $35 billion over the next 12 years. Figures from the US congressional office estimate the cost to be between $61 billion and $125 billion. The UK's current share of the NATO budget is 10 per cent., so expansion will have considerable cost implications for the United Kingdom.The hon. Lady quoted a figure of $35 billion, but the assumption is that military bases financed by NATO will not be placed in some of the countries that join. The $125 billion figure takes into account the serious problems of interoperability and the higher costs of trying to fuse all the different armies together. The cost, as has been pretty well agreed, will be at the lower end, and nuclear weapons and military bases will not be positioned in the new member countries. It is the lower end that we have to consider—$35 billion to $40 billion over 10 years.
The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but the cost will be much greater than he suggests. The problem is that the House has never debated the cost of expansion. It is essential that we fully understand the implications. He says that the cost may be at the lower end, but I think that it will be closer to the higher end. None of us knows. That is why we should have a proper debate in the House.
I think that expansion will prove costly to new members, because they lack the financial resources, have limited skilled personnel and have poorer communications and logistical structures. One recent estimate suggested that military spending in those countries would increase by 60 to 80 per cent., placing a further strain on the budgets of countries that need the money for economic and social reforms. Ironically, expansion may undermine plans for economic reform and jeopardise the domestic stability that it is attempting to encourage. Expansion would also increase the insecurity of states that are excluded. Ukraine in particular has expressed fears that it may be placed in a compromising position and face pressure from Russia to join an eastern security alliance. Ironically, expansion would not cover the main countries that need a security cloak, such as the Baltics, whereas those that do not need it are most likely to be included. NATO expansion is merely an excuse for not proceeding at a speedier rate with European Union expansion. Some Conservative Members may have views on that. Unfortunately, what the region needs most is the economic and social benefits of EU membership, not the potential burden of a western security alliance. There was an interesting letter in the Financial Times a few days ago from James Eberle, former director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He had just returned from Moscow and wrote:He went on to say:"as a former Nato commander, I feel it is abundantly clear that, unless there is a substantial breakdown of the political and social order in central and eastern Europe, the principal threats to European security will not be in the military field. It is thus also clear where our priorities should lie."
People with considerable experience in international affairs have very real concerns. The timetable and the process of enlargement have largely been set by the United States domestic agenda to deliver President Clinton's 1999 promise. That has been the driving force behind this undue haste. There has not been a rational consideration of the pros and cons. There are other ways in which NATO could develop as an alliance. A recent edition of the Washington-based "Defense Monitor" suggested:"The initial Nato enlargement decision in January 1994 was made without proper preparation; and there is still no unifying vision among member countries as to its strategic purpose. There has been no public debate. Ratification of the entry of each new member will be required in due course by allied parliaments, and this will be a difficult process … it will not be easy to reach an agreement that will give Russia the status and participation that she is seeking, yet which does not surrender Nato's freedom of action to a Russian veto."
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe is another possibility. It is a natural security organisation that includes Russia and central and eastern Europe. Why not devote funds to boosting that arrangement instead of the present proposals? Many analysts believe that the greatest threat to western security is the north-south divide. I have put that argument in the House many times in the past. Growing inequality, environmental disasters, mass disempowerment and poverty force the south to take ever more desperate measures to compel the west and the north of the world to notice. Economic inequalities will probably lead to increases in terrorism and sub-state terror, with which NATO is not equipped to deal. Expansion of NATO will exacerbate the differences between the north and the south of the world. It will turn Europe into a fortress that views the rest of the world as a high-risk area, and attempts to cut itself off. NATO may not be well equipped or correctly focused to deal with those issues. Expansion will encourage instability, because of the increased availability of military hardware, when we should be moving towards demilitarisation."The US should end its military domination of Europe and should exercise wise political leadership to facilitate Russia's inclusion among the states joining a transformed and renamed European military alliance."
10.3 am
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) on his choice of subject for this important debate. I compliment him on his excellent introductory speech, which set out many of the crucial issues. I should like to reassure him that he has many sterling qualities; honesty and bravery are two or them, but innocence does not spring to mind. Many of his hon. Friends know him better than the odd journalist in the odd diary column.
NATO has kept the peace. NATO is an outstanding alliance. It is NATO that has stood up for democracy. It is NATO that stands up for the self-determination of peoples. It is NATO that has kept the peace in which we in western Europe have been privileged to live since 1945. I want the alliance to maintain its strength. I want it to remain true to those central principles. I want it to have another 50 years of spectacular success to match the past 50 years, which we have enjoyed or read about. I hope that the Minister will answer five crucial questions, which the Governments of the west must answer before embarking on the expansion of the NATO alliance. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside and the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) referred to the first question at some length: what will the Russian reaction be to our proposed expansion? Russia is militarily weak compared with NATO and the United States. Militarily, we could expand the borders of NATO a long way east, and we could achieve that without any untoward Russian reaction. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside and the hon. Member for Cynon Valley said, we must ask whether the expansion of NATO is worth it, or whether it would so sour relations with Russia that it would undermine our aim for that country, which is the establishment of a stable, peace-loving democracy committed to free enterprise and the mixed economy that it is now developing. The best prize of all for the west to win is the creation of conditions in which the Russian peoples become ever prouder and more confident of their democracy, and through that become ever keener on peaceful relations and prosperous trade and commerce with the west. The second question that we should ask is whether the applicant countries have stable frontiers. There has been much diplomatic work recently to resolve actual or potential tensions and conflicts between many of the countries that would like to join NATO. Before pressing ahead with any applicant's membership, we must satisfy ourselves that it has stable frontiers with its neighbours, and that there is unlikely to be a resumption of the conflicts and tensions that disfigured our continent in the 1920s and 1930s, of which my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside made such eloquent mention in his opening remarks. I welcome the progress being made to settle the problem of the Sudetenland. I welcome the progress being made between Hungary and Romania on the presence of the Hungarian peoples beyond the borders of their country. I welcome the progress being made on Romania's borders further east, and I welcome the progress being made on the Polish border and the future of the Baltic republics. The big tensions in those areas before the second world war were snuffed out by the communist iron grip that took over in the post-war period. We need to ensure that those old tensions and conflicts have been resolved peacefully before we take on responsibility for those countries in our alliance. The third question that we should ask is: what contribution will the new members make to our alliance? We will extend to them a most important security guarantee. I do not believe that countries can be half-members of the NATO alliance. If countries join, we are responsible for their frontiers and for the tensions and conflicts in which they may be involved. We must take care of them, just as we expect them to be responsive to our requirements. We must ask what military contribution they will make, given that they will extend the borders of NATO a considerable distance east, and that they will thereby add to the problems that the security guarantee presents. Were the world to change and were hostile powers to emerge to the east or south, we would be required to stand by that security guarantee. The fourth question that we must ask arises from the previous question: can we defend each and every one of those applicant nations if we bring them into our alliance? That requires a clear military as well as a political assessment of any potential conflict or threat. It is no good saying, "Today we are fortunate, because the countries bordering us are democratic and peace-loving; or, if they are not democratic, they are peace-loving; or, if they are neither democratic nor peace-loving, they do not have the military strength or capability to do us harm." I trust that all that is true, but we must ask ourselves what the position would look like in 20 or 30 years' time if things changed dramatically—if some of those countries developed more hostile intentions, if they rearmed in a way that could be more threatening, if they gained the capability to move troops, weapons or even nuclear explosives over long distances. Might we then need ever stronger defences to meet the guarantees, and provide the security that each of those countries wants? The fifth question that we should ask is: what have we in mind for NATO's ultimate borders? The United States Secretary of State is talking in terms of inviting three of the countries that are currently geographically closest to NATO. I think that Russia will want to know whether we have it in mind to go right up to the Russian border, or to fall short of it. We should consider whether we intend to extend NATO membership ever more widely, so that we do reach the Russian border, or whether we think that consolidating our borders somewhere in central or eastern Europe is the right approach. I do not believe that the "salami" approach is a good one; I think that we need a strategic vision of how big NATO will eventually be, and that we should be prepared to speak now, whether or not we are going to invite all those countries in the first instance. I am not entirely happy with the idea of a half-price NATO for the new members. I am not sure that a country can be a strong member of an alliance such as NATO if it does not deploy all the weapons that it might need, or that it has in reserve, throughout the NATO area. I am not sure that there should be parts of that area, particularly those on a country's eastern frontier, where it does not exercise its troops, or occasionally practise against the evil day when it might need to use them. We have to say that, if a country belongs to NATO, it must belong fully. It must protect the confidences and secrets of the club, and show us that it can do so. We, in turn, must be prepared to conduct joint exercises, and to put in place any weaponry that might be needed to back up the full guarantee that we shall be offering by way of security protection. The United States Secretary of State recently made an important statement through the columns of The Economist, and I welcome much of what she said. I particularly welcome her statement that NATO is the means by which the United States is involved in the security of western Europe, and will remain so. American support is crucial to the freedom of western Europe, and I strongly welcome it. The Secretary of State also said, however, that an enlarged NATO would mean a bigger European contribution to the European end of that defence, and I do not think that is right. Looking at the balance of risks and contributions from the applicants for membership, I think that, if anything, their immediate entry into the alliance would weaken rather than strengthen it. That is the issue that we must consider before rushing pell-mell into NATO expansion. The alliance is still most important to our security, and we must defend and protect that. We must keep the United States engaged in western European defence, but Britain must be the voice at the table that says that every new member brings risks and responsibilities as well as a contribution. It must insist that there is a balance between those risks and responsibilities and that contribution. In that way, we could proceed to some enlargement of NATO; but we could also guarantee that NATO remains the pillar of our defences, and remains strong enough to do the job.10.13 am
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) on bringing this matter to the House's attention. The Government should have done so. I have repeatedly asked the Leader of the House during business questions for a full-scale debate devoted exclusively to the issue of NATO's expansion, and I hope that—rather late in the day—he will accede to my request, because many hon. Members would like to speak about such an important matter.
I agree with some of what has been said this morning about the importance of trade and commerce. I hope that a number of applicants for NATO membership will also become members of the European Union: not only would that make sense in terms of trade and commerce and the cementing of those countries' market economies, but the countries joining the European Union—whether we like it or not—will as a consequence enjoy some security guarantees. Although there is no security element in the European Union's treaties, it is inconceivable that external aggression on one member state would not be deemed aggression on the whole European Union. Such aggression could not be tolerated. All that will come in time. Meanwhile, we have the immediate lining up of countries that wish to be considered for NATO membership. Today, hon. Members have made the mistake of talking in general terms, as if all the states involved were equal in terms of size, geographical location, the contributions that they can make to NATO and the development of their democracies. Some states would, I think, be disqualified on the last count, because democracy has not developed and flourished in those states. I feel that we have an obligation to look at each application on its merits, and I want to concentrate on the countries that should logically be the first to join NATO—those whose case for membership is the most powerful and compelling, not only in their interests but in ours. I am thinking particularly of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. It is a matter of fact that those countries will be given membership first, and I welcome that. I do not accept that their membership will impose additional costs or burdens on the United Kingdom taxpayer which should disqualify them. I shall return to that point shortly. I am shocked and horrified that the House of Commons should contain Members of Parliament who ignore the moral obligation that we owe to the people of the central European states, particularly Poland. The hon. Member for North Tayside referred to Winston Churchill's speech at Fulton, Missouri, 51 years ago. He said that he remembered it. I remember the words: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across Europe behind which we must refer to it as the Soviet sphere." Churchill implied that, for the next half century, we would say to the people of central and eastern Europe, "Look over the wall. See how wonderful things are in the west: look at the wonderful market economy. Is it not a tantalising prospect?" Those who believed our propaganda must have thought that the sun always shone and the rain never fell in the west. What happened? Communism collapsed, the wall came down, the barbed wire was wound up, and the former communist countries developed democracies. Now they are saying, "Please may we join?" and we reply, "Not so fast; hang on a moment." That came through in some of the remarks of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). However, when he listed his criteria for membership—criteria with which, to a large extent, I did not disagree—he spoke of the principle of national self-determination, and of free peoples. Well, the people of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are free peoples, and they want to join a free association of democratic states. We will need pretty powerful and persuasive arguments to say that they should not join—bearing it in mind that Turkey, which I do not consider to be a democratic state, is also an existing member. The membership of those countries would guarantee their democracies, although they are already robust and flourishing and, indeed, we can learn from some of their modern parliamentary institutions. We must recognise that they have a powerful case. Poland is a nation of nearly 40 million people, and has a large land mass. It has a thriving market economy and a robust democracy. Given that it is a former Warsaw pact country, it has some pretty sophisticated armed forces, which collaborated with the British Army in training last summer. It has much to contribute in defence and military terms. We must consider the question of interoperability. Enormous strides are being made in bringing Poland into line with the NATO technology and communications systems, for instance. That can and will be achieved in a relatively short time. Those arguments about interoperability were never raised when Spain joined. They are trotted out now to disguise the other objection, the overriding one, with which I disagree but nevertheless view as a legitimate point: what will be the impact on Russia if we expand NATO? I return to Winston Churchill's speech in Fulton, Missouri, when he said that we must refer to the region behind the iron curtain as the Soviet sphere. Have we fought the cold war for half a century to see the defeat of the Soviet Union, only to concede a Russian sphere of influence and right of veto over free democratic peoples? I have not, and that is why I view it as a moral issue. We should recognise that these people are entitled to come in and to enjoy collective security. The security guarantees are important. I do not wish to devalue the guarantees under article 5 of the NATO treaty. If we took in all the applicant countries at this stage, it would devalue NATO. I am not advocating that. I am saying that we should consider their entry on their individual merits. We can extend security guarantees to Poland. Even if the House cannot be persuaded about the moral issue of admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, there are overriding selfish reasons why we should do so. Demonstrably, if there ever was a day when we were threatened from the east—although, to be candid, logically it is not likely; we just have to look at the map of Europe to see that—it makes sense to move the borders of our interests eastward. I listened to the hon. Member for North Tayside and his recollection of history. I think that his argument was that it was because of a treaty that we had to go to war in 1939. Of course, that is a matter of fact, but is he saying that it would have been better if we had not had that treaty and that, without it, we would not have had to go to war with Hitler? The problem is that it was his predecessors on the Conservative Benches who brought a new word to the English language—appeasement. He is saying today that we should appease the threat of potential aggression.For the sake of the record, I served with Polish service men. I have a high regard for the Poles. During the second world war, the Polish armoured division was based in my constituency and many of the service men in that division who returned still live there. May I remind the hon. Gentleman that it is never difficult to sign treaties? What is difficult in life is to honour what we sign. It is important that we recognise the dangers, the risks, the hazards and the commitment. If another act of aggression takes place, his children and grandchildren will have to go to war, not the hon. Gentleman. That is what happened in 1930. That is the only point that I was making.
The problem was that we did not tackle aggression. We did not have sufficient treaties in place. We allowed Hitler to move on and to take slices of Europe until such stage as we had to say, "Thus far, no further." I agree with the hon. Gentleman that treaties should not be entered into lightly or frivolously and we should not make commitments that we cannot fulfil, but I return to the thrust of my remarks on Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic and Slovenia, with its geographical position on the Adriatic. It makes military and defence sense for us to have them in NATO.
In his criteria, the right hon. Member for Wokingham mentioned the need for sensitivity with regard to borders. In relation to the states to which I have referred, that is old hat. Poland, for instance, is one of the countries in Europe that has the fewest minorities. It has fewer minority problems than the United Kingdom, if we regard the problems of Northern Ireland as a minority situation. It is a matter of fact that Poland's borders are agreed with the Federal Republic of Germany. There is, frankly, no problem there. Notice that I do not say that Romania should be in the first wave—because it is deficient in terms of democracy, the market economy and so on—but Hungary has reached new agreements and accords with Romania, which are welcome. The Czech Republic identifies in terms of trade with the Federal Republic of Germany, looking westwards, and Slovenia has recently reached agreements and accommodation with its larger Italian neighbour, so great strides have been made. Those new treaties, new agreements and new arrangements make some of the problems that we have had and still have in western Europe look much worse. For instance, Spain has problems with the Basques and the Catalans and we have problems in Northern Ireland. In contrast, there are no problems now in those other states, and that should be acknowledged. I hope therefore that Her Majesty's Government and the next Labour Government will robustly pursue the principle of expanding NATO, ensuring that the democracy criteria for membership are adhered to. That is very important. The countries to which I referred can contribute to collective security and enhance NATO. We should not find bogus reasons or appease anyone, because that is not in the interests of ourselves, the countries of central Europe to which I referred, or Russia. It is important that we are sensitive to Russia's involvement, but it would not be in Russia's interest if we gave it the right of veto over the development and fulfilment of free democratic peoples, who were subjugated for so long in central Europe.10.25 am
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) on obtaining the debate, which has brought forward some thoughtful and useful contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. I invite the House to consider yet another proposition.
Western policy is now predicated on the assumption that there has been discontinuity in Russian long-term strategy, and on a naive willingness to believe that, with the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1991, everything changed. In fact, nothing changed, other than the west's incredible abandonment of reasoned analysis and caution. In the autumn of 1989, the Soviets launched their treaty offensive, as a result of which bilateral treaties were made between Russia and, first of all, Finland in October 1989; Canada; Czechoslovakia; France in February 1992, replacing a treaty signed by President Gorbachev in October 1990; Germany; and Greece in July 1991. Incidentally, the Greek treaty was accompanied by three parallel intergovernmental agreements, one of which coverswhich probably explains the Greeks' refusal to allow NATO access to Greek airfields at the outset of the Bosnian campaign, notwithstanding the fact that Greece is a full member of NATO. There were bilateral treaties also with Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain, Norway in March 1992 and ourselves in June 1992. I wish to make three points in relation to these bilateral treaties. First, the dates of the bilateral treaties demonstrate that there was no discontinuity of Soviet foreign policy following the resignation of Gorbachev and the supposed ending of the cold war. Secondly, the text of the treaties follows a similar pattern, which is hardly surprising given that they were all drafted in Moscow. Thirdly, they complete the entrapment of the countries involved in what can be described only as a collective. It may surprise the House to know, for example, that article 3 of the treaty between the UK and the Russian Federation states:"the prevention of dangerous military activity",
the contracting parties—"They—
Time prevents me from attempting to explain the relevance of other treaties such as the Franco-German treaty of 1963, but, from what I have already said, it should be apparent that the Russians have created a veritable spider's web of treaty obligations, which, taken together with the proposed enlargement of NATO, effectively prevents individual nations, in deference to or by dint of the collective thus established, from acting in their own national interest. By definition, a collective can act only in its own interests, not in the interests of its component parts—a fact that is amply demonstrated by the difficulties and frustrations that are experienced as a result of our membership of that other collective, the European Union. In making up its mind on this crucial issue, the House will want to consider to what extent the protagonists of NATO enlargement have understood, or misunderstood, the dialectic. Has there perhaps been a failure to recognise that the ending of confrontation that was the cold war—the thesis—has given way to the antithesis of apparent peace out of which the synthesis, that is, the collectivisation of western security, is now emerging, and that the synthesis represents everything that the Russians have striven for—the neutralisation of NATO, which is the most successful defence alliance of all time? In a similar debate on 8 June 1995, I warned the House about the dangers of collectives. That warning is contained in column 367 of the Official Report of that date. I warn the House again and conclude by citing in support of my argument Sergei Rogov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of the United States and Canada. He writes of"affirm that relations between them will be governed in particular by their commitments under the documents of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, including the Helsinki Final Act, the Charter of Paris for a new Europe and the Helsinki Document of 1992."
Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will say whether he entirely rejects the words of Mikhail Gorbachev, as reported by Sir William Stephenson, who was formerly Sir Winston Churchill's personal representative and director of British security co-ordination in the western hemisphere. Addressing the Politburo in November 1987, Gorbachev said:"advancing from confrontation to demilitarisation and on to collective security … to create a Euro Atlantic security area or, in other words, the comprehensive collective security system which has long been discussed in our country as the highest goal of our foreign and defence policy."
"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about glasnost and perestroika and democracy in the coming years. These are intended primarily for outward consumption.
There will be no significant internal change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep".
10.32 am
My hon. Friends are right to say that it is essential to discuss this important matter before the events that are likely to take place in a few months. We should heed the warnings of George Kennan of the United States, whose experience goes back to the last war and who perhaps understands the issues better than anyone.
In 1995 I was privileged to visit the Vladimir region of Russia. I saw prostitutes on the streets with babies, and workers sitting in factories not because they were on strike but because they had not been paid. I also met police officers who had not been paid for several months. The leader of the communist group on Vladimir regional council said to me, "Mr. Brazier, you panicked in the west 10 years ago because of one piffling explosion in a nuclear power station. Imagine what could happen to this country with 40,000 nuclear weapons." The Russian people feel insecure. They have been invaded four times this century—by Japan, Germany and Poland, and then again by Germany. To the south they face the threat of Islamic fundamentalism and the Chinese are on their border. They are also concerned and confused about Russia itself. In the words of one of my hosts, "How can it be right that we are now asked to produce a passport to visit Aunt Nellie in the Ukraine?" Kiev was once a Russian capital. Indeed, the Cossacks come from there and today the Crimea is the home of the Black sea fleet. People persist in the politically correct notion that democracy is a buttress against war, but it is wholly untrue. After his military coup, Napoleon was endorsed by the largest popular vote ever given to a French leader and he plunged Europe into war. The German conquest of Belgium in the first world war was overwhelmingly endorsed by the German Parliament and all of Germany's local governments. Hitler came to power through the precarious and unhappy democracy of the Weimar republic. Three conditions need to be fulfilled to buttress peace. The first is prosperity and, above all, prosperity based on trade between the NATO powers. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) spoke about that. Secondly, there must be constitutional depth and stability, which is precisely what is missing from a country whose President had to order tanks to fire on his own Parliament within the past two and a half years. Thirdly, there must be armed strength in those countries which are stable and are currently members of NATO. Time is short, so I shall not repeat the cogent arguments made by other hon. Members, but I should like to stress three final points. First, if we are not willing to go to war for the extra countries, we should not admit them. Secondly, if we are willing to do that, it means drawing a line to exclude those countries most likely to be the victims of a dictator, if one were to arise in Russia or eastern Europe. Thirdly, we must always remember Teddy Roosevelt's dictum:Alas, we are in danger of doing the reverse. Despite the Minister's close interest and the constructive meetings by the Secretary of State for Defence just before Christmas, the expansion of NATO is seen by the Russians as us shouting at them while at the same time throughout NATO, and especially among our European partners, we are steadily involved in whittling away the stick. The priority and the balance are wrong. We must think again—and the American whose words we should heed is George Kennan, not Madeleine Albright."Speak softly and carry a big stick."
10.36 am
I shall continue where the. hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) left off by saying that if he is correct, it may be a shame that Madeleine Albright is the Secretary of State in President Clinton's Government because that is the Government with whom we have to deal and not nonagenarian commentators in the wings.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) on this timely debate. The comments about the need for a more protracted debate were well made and I hope that the Minister will confirm that the matter must return to the House. Certainly, an enlargement of NATO would need the assent of the House and that of legislatures throughout NATO. Before I rose to speak, my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid) said to me that in view of the alliances that have been forged this morning in the House, it might be possible for any kind of alliance to come into being in Europe. Hon. Members agree that over the 50 years since the last war, NATO has been the cornerstone of our defence system. Labour certainly sees NATO in that role. We support, with qualifications, the enlargement of NATO by the inclusion of some other countries. I concede that many of the fears that have been expressed in the debate are real, but they can be dealt with and they simplify the reality of our life in Europe. None of us can predict the future of Russia or its internal security, but it is a historical fact that more people have died in Europe over the past five years than in the 45 years that preceded them. We must treat seriously the importance of providing a security framework which considers not just the possibility of conflict on the classical post-war scale, but the kind of conflict that broke out in the former Yugoslavia and which has cost not only those who were directly involved but the world so dearly. Within that framework, it is almost extraordinary to say that we would cede a veto to Russia because of Russian fears of NATO enlargement. Such a veto would prevent us creating the future security architecture of which enlargement is a part. I endorse the words of the Defence Select Committee, which said in its report:Those comments are central to this debate. We must insist that NATO's future is,"We are determined to ensure that NATO is, if not enhanced, at least not weakened by enlargement: and that it remains manageable, decisive and coherent, with a minimum level of interoperability."
That is a primary point. Labour believes that we should also ensure that the enlargement process takes account of Russia's very real fears. Enlargement will be pointless if it is not conducted with the necessary sensitivity and in a manner that breaks down barriers and the sources of division. We should insist that enlargement does not create new barriers. As hon. Members on both sides the House have said, we should create not only a more widely embracing framework to promote peace and stability, but one which includes a clear role for Russia, not simply as a peripheral bolt-on extra but as a central player. We must ensure that Russia is included in the wider European security framework. I should like to express a few observations on the wider security framework. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have correctly mentioned the need for economic engagement, but such engagement of itself will not be sufficient. All the heady talk of half a dozen years ago about the ability to reconstruct former eastern bloc economies, particularly Russia's, was not matched by an equivalent effort. We should return to that theme and recognise the need in Russia for a relatively successful level of economic progress to underpin its future. We should also examine opening our markets and the roles of the International Monetary Fund and of the European bank for reconstruction and development. Those factors are central to the process. As I have said, we must consider Russia's very real fears. In 1995 Russia began to talk about a "cold peace", having clearly heard warning bells in relation to expanding NATO in the wrong way. I also do not think that we can take it for granted that the opinion of the Russian Government will automatically be the same as that of the Russian people. We should take that factor into account and be realistic in ensuring that we do not begin a destabilisation process. Russia obviously regarded the collapse of the Warsaw pact as the collapse of its own defence system. It regarded the dismantling of its air defence system in a similar manner and feels particularly vulnerable to attack from the west. It saw how the conventional forces in Europe treaty of 1990 became hopelessly outdated as the balance of power shifted. With the possibility of NATO expansion, the former allies of the then Soviet Union became firmly locked into the NATO system and Russia saw a massive change in the balance of power."if not enhanced, at least not weakened by enlargement".
Will the hon. Gentleman explain why he thinks that a threat to Hungary should be taken seriously and that we should offer it the protection of a security guarantee, whereas a threat to Lithuania should not be similarly treated?
The tone of my comments in this debate has been to emphasise that NATO enlargement is a component of the European peace structure, but that it is no longer the only or even the central part of that structure. We should realise that Russia would have very different reactions to the inclusion in NATO of Hungary, for example, and of the Baltic states. The forthcoming Helsinki summit between Presidents Yeltsin and Clinton will be of paramount importance in ensuring a proper dialogue so that NATO forces can allay Russia's fears.
I endorse the article by Madeleine Albright in The Economist, which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). She said:She made it clear, and we endorse the view, that NATO's position must be to include Russia in the closest possible dialogue. It is not a matter of NATO versus Russia, as that is an outmoded part of the European framework. Such a framework was relevant in the cold war era, but it is not relevant in the current era. Russian participation must be central—not as a bolt-on extra, but as an essential player—in the NATO-Russian council and in NATO's overall planning structure. NATO should make permanent Russia's role within NATO headquarters. I believe that that is inevitable. We should also ensure that the charter—although we may quibble over its exact legal status—establishes clear principles by which consultation and participation will occur between NATO and the Russians. Although I do not think that we can give any permanent guarantee, in practice the idea of nuclear deployments on the territories of potential new NATO states is unrealistic. After next year, the only land-based nuclear weapons will be those of the French and will be on French soil. I do not think that it is realistic to talk about siting nuclear weapons in Hungary, Poland, Slovenia or the Czech Republic. It is also unlikely that NATO troops will be permanently stationed in those states, although it must be said that NATO troops have recently been through—among other places—Hungary, when they were on their way to Bosnia. British troops have also engaged in exercises in Poland with Polish troops. Therefore, the mere presence of NATO troops need not concern the Russians. We should go beyond the agenda of NATO enlargement and examine the agenda of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. At the December 1996 Lisbon summit, the Russians made clear the importance with which they regard the OSCE as a part of the overall security apparatus. We should also consider a proper arms control agenda. I welcome Madeleine Albright's comments in The Economist on that aspect. We should first examine carefully the need to renegotiate the conventional forces in Europe treaty and consider lower levels of troop involvement across Europe. We must also realise that we can both achieve lower troop levels and provide mechanisms whereby long-term stability and transparency become part of the troop deployment issue. A challenge for the British Government is to examine the role of nuclear weapons and the possibility of a third round of strategic arms reduction talks. The alternative would be to play on the concern expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House that Russia's fears could lead to a very different climate in Moscow and throughout Russia. For instance, the Russians could both refuse to ratify the current CFE treaty—in its current terms, that is quite likely—and begin a non-ratification process over START 2. The process could go into reverse. None of those consequences is necessary if enlargement is handled well by NATO and by the Russians. If NATO is considering—realistically, I think that it is—including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, those inclusions of themselves will not pose a threat to Russia. We cannot allow a Russian veto over that type of NATO expansion, but we must ensure that we take proper account of Russia's legitimate fears. NATO enlargement would then be simply one part of a process to enhance overall security across Europe. Russia's role and position could be greatly enhanced if the Russians were to engage in the dialogue in which we wish to engage them."Russia would have no veto. But its voice would be sought and heard."
10.49 am
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) on bringing up this extremely important subject. It is clearly time that the House debated the expansion of NATO and I am pleased to have an opportunity to make some short comments on the subject.
Before dealing with the specific points raised by hon. Members on both sides, I should like to make some general comments on enlargement. Why should we enlarge? With the greatest respect, my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside put the question the wrong way round. I see no way in which we could not enlarge NATO. I do not believe that it would be right for us in the west to deny the countries of central Europe the right to join an organisation which, had they not been under the boot of Soviet oppression for so many years, they would unquestionably have joined at the outset. We cannot deny them a guarantee for their security that they desire and desperately need. They have all been subjected to the traumas of war, as my hon. Friend so admirably said, and they are fearful of being so condemned again. NATO can offer a valuable cover for them; it is the best assurance for peace in that region, as it has been in ours since its foundation 50 years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside rightly stressed that the importance of NATO is not only military, but political. It offers an opportunity to the countries of central Europe to expand their security, stability and prosperity. We can already see signs of the benefits of the proposed NATO enlargement. Great efforts are being made in all 12 aspirant countries to establish democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They are also trying to deal with the border disputes that many of them have had in the past. There have been great successes on that: Hungary and Romania have dealt with their dispute; Romania and Ukraine are in the process of sorting out theirs; and in many other instances, some of which have been mentioned today, the difficulties are being resolved. The pressure of the potential expansion of NATO has been effective in ensuring that efforts are made to resolve disputes. Efforts are also being made to bring the armed forces of those 12 countries under full democratic control with transparency in defence planning. I do not believe that that would be the case were it not for the prospect of joining NATO as a result. In the short time available, I will deal with some of the specific points that have been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside said that he did not think that military alliances or treaties were the way to establish peace. He preferred trade. I agree that the establishment of free trade internationally is a guarantor of peace and one way in which we can try to get rid of poverty and the rivalry between countries that is so often the cause of excessive nationalism, leading to war. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) rightly said, trade is not adequate, any more than democracy is, in itself, adequate. Military strength and the military alliances necessary to create that strength are a vital third pillar for the establishment of lasting peace. I understand entirely the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside about what happened in Poland and our having to go to war in 1939, but it is wrong to draw the conclusion that he appears to draw that we should not have had a treaty with Poland in 1939. That would not have resulted in peace. The apparent weakness of the allies and the fact that Hitler did not believe that we would go to war over Poland caused the war, not the treaty, in which we made a guarantee that we ultimately honoured. The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) mentioned several points—some of which I have already covered—and focused particularly on cost. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Sir G. Johnson Smith) that the cost is more likely to be in the $35 billion bracket than the $125 billion bracket. However, that is in the hands of NATO and it has not yet resolved how to go ahead. We shall have to watch the cost of expansion closely. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) asked five questions, which I shall try to deal with briefly. What will the Russian reaction be? Mr. Primakov's many talks with my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and with Mr. Solana and others lead me to believe that Russia will accept a limited and reasoned expansion of NATO in the first wave. Although there will be some rhetoric against it, I do not believe that there is genuine hostility to that reality, which I think that Russia accepts. However, there is genuine and understandable fear among the Russian people, who have been brought up on years of Stalinist propaganda to believe that NATO is an aggressive potential enemy. We must move with great care to ensure that those fears are assuaged and that the Russian people understand that NATO is no threat to Russia and is never intended to be so. My right hon. Friend asked whether the applicant countries had stable frontiers. I agree that that is a primary criterion on which we shall have to decide whether any aspirant country is allowed to join. I have said that one of the advantages that we have reaped so far is that many countries are desperately trying to solve their frontier disputes so that they can join. My right hon. Friend also asked what contribution the new members will make. That is another very important point. We make it clear to all the countries that wish to join that this is not a one-way street. There is no free guarantee given by existing NATO members. The new countries will be asked and expected to play a full role in NATO operations, and particularly peace-keeping operations. We expect them to increase defence expenditure when necessary, to bring their armed forces up to the level of NATO armed forces and to ensure interoperability. We are making great progress on all those fronts. The many joint exercises, such as Ulan Eagle with Poland last year, show how we are moving forward on that. The value of potential NATO membership is already becoming evident. Can we defend the applicant countries? I agree with my right hon. Friend that that is a vital criterion. We must ensure that that is a realistic and feasible guarantee for every country that we allow to join NATO. We must not give a guarantee that we cannot honour. Nothing would weaken NATO more. We shall have to examine that closely. I disagree with my right hon. Friend's comment that we should have an ultimate aim of a specific number of new NATO members. We must have a specific long-term aim to establish freedom and peace throughout Europe. That aim has never been crystallised in the past. NATO has expanded three times and I believe that it will expand again on a number of occasions. NATO is evolving continually—it is not a static finality—and we should recognise that fact in the way in which we take the matter ahead. Many other points have been raised, and I am sorry that I do not have time to answer them all. We must expand NATO, taking great care not to antagonise Russia or to make it unnecessarily fearful. We must have a partnership with Russia and with the Ukraine reflecting their different, but equally important, concerns about their position after the first step of NATO expansion. Those processes should go ahead in parallel, and all the NATO countries are working hard on that. We must develop other security alliances which overlap NATO. It important not to go back to a cast iron dividing line between east and west, with NATO on one side and hostile or fearful countries on the other. We must consider the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the "Partnership for Peace" programme, the status of the Western European Union and the council of Baltic sea states, all of which can play a valuable role in ensuring that NATO is not seen as the only security guarantee, with Russia and her allies outside it and some countries that we cannot allow in standing between the two blocs. That must not happen again. The only way to ensure that it does not is by enhancing and building up other security arrangements so that the dividing line is blurred until it disappears. The American proposal that we should form an Atlantic partnership council for "Partnership for Peace" members would be a useful step forward. We must bring in Russia and the Ukraine and make sure that the Baltic states do not feel insecure. We must expand NATO cautiously, as the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) said, and make sure that there is no final status whereby some countries are left out. That is extremely important.Order. We must now move to the next debate.
Care Of The Elderly (Scotland)
11 am
I raise a subject of serious concern to us all. Our elderly citizens deserve our abiding support. In their day, they helped to produce the wealth of our nation, and they and members of their families fought and defeated Nazism. They now deserve to be treated with respect, so that they may live out their years in dignity and comfort.
My concern is shared by many hon. Members. Some of us believe that pensions should be linked to earnings, but our leaders inform me that that might involve higher taxes, and we should never underestimate the self-interest and greed of the middle classes. We, for our part, must continue to campaign on behalf of elderly people. The Opposition have a good record in that respect, and many Conservative Members also fight similar campaigns. Recently, the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) introduced a debate in which she spoke powerfully about the need for a more compassionate and effective cold weather payment scheme. In advocating a better scheme, she was joined by a number of my hon. Friends. The commitment to a belief that our elderly citizens deserve a more comfortable and decent life is shared by numerous voluntary and professional associations in Scotland, including Age Concern Scotland, one of many organisations that brief us on what needs to be done, especially for frail and vulnerable elderly people. I am sure that all hon. Members will echo my sentiments when I say that the Inverclyde elderly forum runs a formidable campaign, ably led by the remarkable Nell McFadyen and its secretary, Donald MacDonald. We can be sure that, if they have issues to bring to our attention, and criticisms of this place and its failure to concern itself with elderly people, they will not miss us and hit the wall. The campaign must continue, because many of our elderly people live in poverty. Some of them live in private homes that are a disgrace. I wish to focus my speech, which will not be too lengthy, as many of my hon. Friends are anxious to speak, on the residential and nursing home care of elderly people. As I said a moment ago, in some respects it is a lamentable and disgraceful affair. Again, our concerns are shared by numerous professional and voluntary associations. I have no doubt that many of them have submitted evidence to the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, which, under the able chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey), is conducting a study into community care. I look forward to debating the findings of his report, and, perhaps more importantly, its recommendations at a meeting, or perhaps a couple of meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee. I hope that those recommendations will lead to legislative change. Yesterday, when we were considering the legislation on the Department of Social Security compensation recovery unit, I received a briefing from Jim Eadie of the Royal College of Nursing, saying, inter alia:The Royal College of Nursing argues for the provision of"Elderly people who have paid national insurance all their lives are now having to pay for long term nursing care which they thought the NHS would fund, causing distress and anxiety to elderly people and their families."
There is much to be said for that. The briefing continues:"nursing and social care under one roof regulated by a single system".
It stresses the need to"Instead of receiving care either in a residential care home or a nursing home, care homes to meet individual social and nursing care needs under one roof should be encouraged."
A similar view was expressed in "The Dementia Manifesto for the 1997 General Election" produced by Alzheimer Scotland Action on Dementia. That excellent manifesto also argues for the unification of registration and inspection. Under the heading "Legislation to unify registration and inspection arrangements for residential homes and nursing homes", it states:"overhaul the existing regulatory system so that new types of homes are registered and inspected by an independent nationally trained inspectorate made up of people with health and social care skills."
That is an important consideration. The Minister and his officials have a poor, if not disgraceful, record in the regulation, management and inspection of homes. In respect of the provision of residential and nursing homes, it is my view that the Scottish Office is being subjected to sustained lobbying by the private sector, which has sought to secure its position at the expense of local authority provision before the general election. I believe that the Minister and his officials are susceptible or receptive to lobbying and proposals for the complete privatisation of such provision. I remind the House that the Public Accounts Commission is almost ready to commence a comprehensive study into the commissioning of such services; among other issues, it will examine the relative costs of provision. I understand that the report is due in the autumn. Any action that the Government take to swell the private sector and hence diminish local authority provision before the report is published would be politically motivated. Some private sector nursing and residential homes are well managed. The residents are treated rightly and properly by trained staff who have good terms and conditions of employment. Other private homes, however, are entirely different, and the profit motive in all its nakedness reigns supreme. I was pleased that one such home in Port Glasgow was closed down. The Minister is aware of the case. It was an utter disgrace, and I was angry and ashamed to be part of a nation that subjected 18 of its elderly citizens to the behaviour of the owner of that home, who acted as general practitioner to the residents. I shall return to that point. The Minister knows that I have been pursuing it for a long time. I believe that he, his officials and his colleagues could be indicted on a political charge. I remind the House of the appalling scandal at the Glasgow home, Glenglova. At a fatal accident inquiry into the death of an elderly resident, the sheriff was scathingly critical of regulations governing the ownership and management of such homes. As a direct result of that scandal and others throughout the land, the Minister set up a working group on residential care homes registration procedures. He knows that I kept a very close watch on that working group's report. The report was published in the early summer of last year. In a letter to me dated 24 July 1996, the Minister said:"The abolition of the distinction between residential and nursing homes would enable more flexible care to be delivered without subjecting the person with dementia to distressing moves."
"Following on your interest in the progress of the Working Group, I am pleased to be able to tell you that … the Report has been received.
The House should note what the Minister said. I took that letter at face value, yet I am afraid that what the Government then proposed has just not happened. A month before I received the letter, I asked the Secretary of StateAs you will see from the enclosed copy of the Report, a large number of recommendations have been made. The Government have a duty to ensure that people in residential care are properly looked after and that high standards of care prevail and we therefore propose that work be put in hand now to take forward a substantial number of these recommendations straight away."
He replied:"what plans he has to modify the regulations governing the ownership and management of privately owned nursing and residential homes for elderly people."
He went on to say, in a fairly lengthy answer:"I can happily assure the hon. Gentleman that the report should be available to Ministers in three weeks' time, and I will come forward with our final recommendations for action with all possible speed."
Three weeks ago, I asked the Minister an identically worded question. As it is identically worded, I do not need to repeat it. Seven months on, the answer that the Minister gave was:"We will come forward with recommendations as soon as possible."—[Official Report, 5 June 1996; Vol. 278, c. 606.]
The Minister should be arraigned on the charge of neglect of the interests and needs of many vulnerable and frail people. In the summer of last year, he promised speedy action, yet three weeks ago, he talked in terms of consultation. Meanwhile, some of our elderly people—not all—in private nursing and residential homes are being neglected. I hate the thought of another Glenglova on the Minister's hands in the near future. There is to be no legislation between now and the election that would bar a professional from ownership and management of a home where he or she provides professional services to residents. No general practitioner should own, manage or be involved in the ownership or management of private homes. I would argue that the same holds for an accountant or a lawyer. Can the Minister confirm that, following that terrible scandal in Glasgow, the two services are separate, and professionals are not involved in the running of some homes of ours in Scotland? It is full ahead on the expansion of the private sector and the reduction of local authority care. However, on the need rigorously to regulate the ownership and management of private nursing and residential homes, the Minister and his officials move at the proverbial snail's pace, which is a disgrace, and reflects very badly on the Minister. I would argue that, in this regard, his conduct is unbecoming of his office. In the seven to eight months to which I have referred, and in the period from the fatal accident inquiry until today, action could have been taken to ensure, by way of rigorous inspection and tough regulation of ownership, management and staffing of homes, that elderly people enjoyed a decent, dignified existence. I look forward to the day when we have a more caring and sensitive Administration, who will treat the elderly as they manifestly deserve. The Government have let them down badly. I sincerely hope that the Glenglova scandal is unique, but we all know of lesser scandals that are continuing each day of every week. Our elderly people deserve more, not only from the Government but from all representatives in this place."The Scottish Office is currently consulting publicly on the standards and practice in nursing homes and is considering the recommendations made by the working group on registration procedures in residential care homes."—[Official Report, 5 February 1997; Vol. 289, c. 621.]
11.15 am
I suppose the term "elderly" means people who are in receipt of the old-age pension. As I qualify for that, I must declare an interest.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on securing the debate, and I agree that the elderly, particularly those who are for some reason not as fit as they would like, should be well looked after. They deserve, to use his words, to live in dignity and comfort. I would not wish it to be imagined in this debate that people, certainly the vast majority of people of my age group and older in North Tayside, are not living in dignity and comfort. I mean the vast majority. There is no question whatever but that people of my generation and older are enjoying a quality of life of which our grandfathers and fathers could only dream. That does not mean that there are not some with problems and difficulties. There will always be some such people, and there are those with special health problems who require, quite properly, special health care. No one would dispute that. I want to strike a sensible balance. It is nonsense, for instance, for people who claim to speak on behalf of pensioners to imagine that they are speaking on my behalf, when they never consult me about what they want to say. I believe that 90 per cent. and more of pensioners retiring retire with incomes from pensions linked to their former employment, just as we shall when we retire from this place. That is important, because it makes an enormous difference to the quality of life of the vast majority.Where does the hon. Gentleman get his evidence that 90 per cent. of pensioners have earnings-linked occupational pensions to support themselves in their life styles? That is certainly not my experience from contact with pensioners in Dunfermline, west Fife and elsewhere in Scotland.
I am sorry: I shall repeat what I said. I said that 90 per cent. and more of those retiring now are retiring with such pensions. I am talking about people of my age group and younger, rather than people whom I think the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow was probably addressing, who must be at least 75 years old or older to fit into the category to which he was referring.
We have a duty and a responsibility to address such people—there is no question about that—but it is nonsense to suggest that they are the vast majority; they are not.I did not say that.
I am not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman said that; I am responding to the intervention by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire), and choosing my words carefully.
We should recognise that voluntary bodies have an important part to play. Long may they continue to play it. I commend those who regularly look after the elderly through many and varied voluntary bodies in every constituency. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow concentrated his remarks largely on residential and nursing homes. I make no apology for the fact that I was partly responsible for initiating the inquiry into nursing care provision in Tayside. I wanted that done, because I knew that the nursing and residential homes provided by the local authorities were much more expensive than the private ones. I visited every home in my constituency—I can speak with authority only about North Tayside—and in my judgment those in the private sector are superb. However, if the situation had arisen in my constituency that arose in that of the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow, I should have done exactly as he did, and drawn attention to it. It is unacceptable for anyone to run a home as he described, and no one would defend it. The local authorities have a responsibility to monitor the situation, and to ensure that the private sector provides facilities of the right quality that meet the statutory requirements. If there has been a failure, it may be that the local authorities did not discharge their responsibilities as positively and accurately as they could. We may want to tighten the regulations, and I would support any efforts to ensure that general practitioners did not own and run homes whose residents were their patients. The point about accountants was a good one. No one should operate on the inside, both making and monitoring the rules. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow and I know that the GP plays an important part in monitoring and balancing what is being provided to his or her patients. On value for money, we should remember that taxpayers' money is involved. It is not our job in the House to have preconceived views on the only way in which provision can be supplied. Local authorities can and should provide good quality of service where possible, but where that quality can be provided for £200 per person per week less by the private sector, as it is in Tayside, it is crazy to waste taxpayers' money. We can help many more people with the same amount of money. Surely that is the point: are we concerned with caring for old people or with making narrow political points? I agree with the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow that it is our duty to ensure that taxpayers' money, where it is used, is used to the best value. The military often have splendid arrangements for looking after old people. I again declare an interest, as I am involved with provision in connection with the Royal Air Force, through the benevolent fund. The Army and the Navy have similar arrangements. I have been able to get help and assistance for the very category of individuals to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention: those who served in Her Majesty's forces—or His Majesty's forces, as they were in the second world war. No one with an ex-service background will ever be debarred from help. There are always avenues to be explored. A great deal of money is available through military benevolent funds, and the tragic tales about ex-service people often come about simply because no one has gone to the trouble of making sure that the military knew the situation. Substantial help is available to anyone who has served in Her or His Majesty's forces. No individual lives on the state pension alone. If any individuals in any constituency have only the state pension and no other source of income, they are missing out on all the other benefits to which they are quite properly entitled. I deliberately say "entitled", because I am astonished when people suggest that one should live on the state pension alone; we all know that rent can be paid through housing benefit, and that there are allowances for council tax, heating and other expenses. We should recognise that it is part of our job as Members of Parliament to see to it that individuals in our constituencies get everything to which they are quite properly entitled, but not to suggest that the vast majority are suffering, when the opposite is the truth. Anyone who comes to the Probus club—especially the Christmas dinner, as lunch is known there—at Forfar, or other pensioners' clubs in my constituency, will see that the quality of life in Tayside is high. Yes, there are some people with problems and some matters need to be addressed, but we should not get it out of proportion. If we concentrate on dealing with the case that the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow mentioned, and any others that may exist—there are none that I know of in North Tayside, because if there were, I would be doing something about it—we can then focus our efforts on securing the best value for taxpayers' money, to the benefit of all our people.rose—
I am about to sit down; I believe that I have been on my feet for 13 minutes.
The local authorities should become enablers and monitors rather than providers.11.28 am
The debate is not about service veterans, but I must say that many people in my constituency who served in the forces get no help from the organisations described by the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker).
Tell me their names.
Some ex-service men are too proud to go to such organisations and say that they served in the war. Some people who left the services in 1945 are now suffering from dementia. I know someone in that situation. How can his wife apply to the British Royal Legion, or other service organisations, when she does not get more than four hours' sleep at a time, because the man she married and has spent a lifetime with is now like a child and will not go to bed at night? The situation is not as clear cut as the hon. Member for North Tayside tries to suggest.
I declare an interest, because my father-in-law suffers from dementia. He lives in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe). On my wife's birth certificate, his profession is given as bombardier in the Royal Artillery. At one stage, we thought that he was entitled to claim for deafness, because he worked with the great guns in the desert during the war. The poor soul could not even remember his Army number to make a claim. When someone needs day-to-day provision, applying for charity is not the simple option. I have a high regard for the military, and their work at Erskine hospital is excellent, but that is achieved through the voluntary work of men and women who have never served in the forces. As usual, the hon. Member for North Tayside is talking utter nonsense when he says that everything is fine. The dedication of some men and women to the care of the elderly is amazing. We hear bad news from our communities easily, but we never hear the good news about the dedication that people display to the care of the elderly. A dementia group in my constituency provides respite for those who care for the elderly. Every day, it provides lovely meals at a club in the multi-storey flats. On Saturday, in the workers' free time, it held a sale of work to raise money to take the people it cares for to Scarborough during the summer. It is good that such kindness is displayed in our communities, but we are failing as a society if friends and neighbours have to raise funds at sales of work for the men and women who fought against fascism for our right to free speech. The way in which local authorities are attacked in the House is a disgrace. It is easy for us to say that they have gone over their budgets and are not spending their money properly, but the local authorities are in the front line of providing care for the elderly. The homes for the elderly in Glasgow are second to none, and could be filled three times over. The waiting list is enormous, because of the standard of care that is provided. Our local authorities have built up a home help service that provides the elderly with meals and help with housework. The home helps also provide companionship for the lonely. The hon. Member for North Tayside said that most elderly people have second pensions, but it would not matter if they had three pensions if they are lonely. It is a disgrace that we allow such loneliness to continue. The only people who ever go into some pensioners' homes are the home helps. It is a disgrace that we attack local authority budgets for such vital services. Every home help I speak to says the same about the terrible pressures on them. Sometimes they have time only to go to the post office for their patients, and to collect some messages. They have little time for conversation, but some home helps, in their own time, go back to their patients' homes at night to provide the companionship that should be provided at the taxpayers' expense. We do not need lectures from the hon. Member for North Tayside about remembering that taxpayers' money is being spent. The elderly made provision for us when we were children by paying taxes. They paid into the community, and it is time they got something out. Some 10 years ago, the railway workshops in my constituency were closed. We have high unemployment in the area, and the men in their 50s who lost their jobs did not work again. The railway industry is well known for providing a pension, but the pensions that those men receive at 65 will not be as good as the pension that I and other hon. Members will receive. The Springburn elderly forum in my constituency meets to discuss the issues that it will raise with me and with councillors. The hon. Member for North Tayside said that he had not been consulted, but my local elderly forum does not consult every pensioner. I as Member of Parliament do not consult every pensioner before I speak, but every pensioner knows that they are entitled to consult me. Pensioners ask me, "Michael, what is the point in getting a rent rebate when our houses are freezing?" The Barlornock and Barmulloch estates were built in 1945 and 1947 for the ex-service men the hon. Member for North Tayside mentioned. Those young men and women brought their families up in those houses, which contain four or five apartments. No two-apartment houses have been built to allow those people, who are now elderly, to stay in the communities they love. They are stuck in big houses that they cannot afford to heat, and there is no point in giving them rent rebates. Every elderly person should have a properly heated home. We keep hearing attacks on local authorities. My local authority has introduced combined heat and rent programmes, in which elderly people in certain houses pay rent which includes payment for heating. They no longer have to worry about the gas or electricity bill, but the Government are cutting the funds to expand that programme. We are all guilty of saying that we want to do more for pensioners, but we cut funds for the very organisations that help pensioners. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) has raised this issue. The care of the elderly should be a non-party political issue. Each and every one of us should unite to try to ensure that we provide our elderly with the dignity that my hon. Friend described.11.39 am
I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on obtaining this debate, because he does a service to the elderly in Scotland by insisting on the matter being debated in the Chamber. I, too, have had the briefing from the Royal College of Nursing, and I shall refer briefly to some of its points. No one could regard the RCN as a radical organisation; it is certainly not one given to hyperbole and exaggeration. It is concerned about three aspects of what is happening in the care of the elderly.
First, the RCN points to a serious shortfall of resources for community care in Scotland, which damages care for older people. Secondly, it is concerned about the funding system for long-term care, which undermines a central part of the welfare state. Thirdly, it is worried about the need to provide nursing and social care under one roof and regulated by a single system. Those points should be kept in mind. I see that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) is here. I understand that the RCN gave evidence to the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs inquiry into community care, which drew attention to the many models of good practice in Scotland that can highlight how we can bridge the gap between health care and social care for the benefit of the patient. I understand that many of those initiatives are entered into a database of good practice that has been set up by the Nuffield Centre for Community Studies. It would benefit us all to consider such examples. In my constituency, the Perth night care service helps people with dementia, and their carers. The project involves collaboration between social workers and community psychiatric nurses. It aims to offer help and respite to carers to prevent the breakdown of support networks—which are needed if a family member has dementia—and thereby contribute to establishing a package of care flexible enough to suit the people suffering from dementia and their carers. I echo some of the points made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin). Like him, I speak with family experience. It is all very well to talk about the care of the elderly when it involves the able elderly, but if it involves elderly people with serious problems such as dementia, doors close. That is the experience of us all. I must tell the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) that, regrettably, that includes his wonderful military doors.rose—
I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman spoke for a long time, and I want to finish my speech quickly.
The difficulty that results when an elderly relative is diagnosed as suffering from dementia is a concern for anyone who has seen it at close quarters in their family. There are problems in getting the care necessary at the different stages of dementia. The tragedy of dementia is that it is progressive. At the beginning of the disease, people may be able to cope at home, but gradually it becomes impossible. The hon. Member for North Tayside was right to say that many people who retire now may have extra pensions. However, those people will not always be 65. In our day, people live considerably longer. The older they get, the more they are faced with such long-term problems. It is precisely those long-term problems that pose the biggest difficulty for care of the elderly. Quite apart from anything else—I do not mean this pejoratively, because my father was in this position—they are the most difficult people to deal with if one tries to keep them at home, which is what most people try to do for as long as possible. Our society and politicians have not yet thought about the implications of the increasing number of people suffering from dementia, and other problems, and the enormous stress that that is starting to cause for families, especially daughters. It generally turns out to be daughters who end up caring in the long term, once the healthy spouse has died. We need to think carefully about the matter. In our family, we found that the situation had become so severe that my father could be admitted to a national health service bed because he could not get into any of the residential homes which then provided places for dementia sufferers. They would provide places for dementia sufferers only in the early stages of the disease. It was not until he got an NHS place that he got any real care. There was an enormous gap in provision, and that gap continues. Bed blocking is part of the same problem. There is a mismatch between the health service and social care. In my area, some 50 people are assessed as needing residential or nursing home care but are kept in hospital because there are no places for them. That means that the NHS is put under more strain. We are getting into a vicious circle, because we have not yet grasped the nettle of care of the elderly. The situation is unacceptable, but the difficulty is that only so much funding is available. It is only when places come up that someone can be moved, because there is not the flexibility to allow expansion of the places available. Community care should be a priority. We all know that there is much anxiety about the impact of local government reorganisation and reduced funding for the new unitary councils on the future of the voluntary sector. Regardless of what Conservative Members say, that is having a real effect on services. When I listen to Conservative Members, I sometimes feel that I am listening to ambassadors from a parallel universe, because I do not recognise much of what they are talking about. I wonder whether we are discussing the different care of the elderly in Scotland and care of the elderly on the plant Zog. For all that they say relates to reality, we may as well be. I am concerned about that. Much has been made of private sector involvement, and monitoring. I have often heard the hon. Member for North Tayside talking about the report into the community care on Tayside. It is true that it said that private homes could provide a cheaper service than local authorities, but it did not emphasise that that would be at the cost of the pay and conditions of the people who work in the service. That is the difficulty. Ultimately, that means trying to provide care—On the cheap.
Indeed; I am indebted to the hon. Gentleman.
Local authority pay is one of the major factors in attracting and retaining staff with appropriate skills. They are paid approximately £5.20 per hour. In the private sector, it is unlikely to be more than £3 per hour, and in many places considerably less. In the private sector, staff often receive little training and have little prospect of advancement, but they are expected to carry out the most intimate and personal tasks for frail and vulnerable home residents. That represents savings perhaps, but only at the cost of employees' pay and conditions, and at the probable cost of the single-room standard, which is immensely important to elderly people. Their privacy is immensely important, and that cannot be guaranteed in the private sector. There is great concern about monitoring standards. I understand that nursing agencies are subject to statutory regulation, but that does not necessarily extend to other types of employment agency dealing with unqualified staff. That adds another element of risk in the places that have become homes for the elderly. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow cited an especially worrying example of what can go wrong, and such cases will continue to arise unless regulation is addressed with great seriousness. The private sector is expanding rapidly, but in many cases that comes at the price of lower quality. In many areas, our local authorities have provided excellent care; however, they are effectively being told that they can no longer provide that excellent care themselves, but must go out to the private sector, regardless of whether the care is as good. Local authorities are being penalised for trying to maintain high standards, and as a result our elderly people may also be penalised.11.50 am
I shall speak as briefly as possible, because I know that some of my hon. Friends are anxious to make a contribution to this debate.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on obtaining the debate. I pay tribute to his constant campaign on behalf of the elderly for high standards and quality in community care. I share his and other hon. Members' belief that the care of the elderly, and the way in which society in general and the Government in particular approach that care, is a yardstick by which we should all be judged. Given the way in which they have dealt with the elderly in our community, the Government should hang their heads in shame. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) and applaud her excellent points about the provision of residential care. She referred to the social work services inspectorate report entitled "Community Care Services For Older People in Angus, Dundee City and Perth & Kinross". I agree with her remarks about pay rates: a recent survey by the Association for Residential Care found that some of its members said that even a minimum wage of £2.50 an hour would result in a substantial rise in their costs. That gives an indication of pay levels in some private homes. If we value our elderly people, we should show our appreciation of those who care for them on our behalf. I shall concentrate on two specific issues: choice and information. My first point is about housing: community care is built on choice, and many, if not all, of us would choose to live in our own homes for as long as possible. However, all too often the Government's actions have meant that choice is restricted to going into either a nursing home or a residential home. The Government's actions on housing have made it difficult for many people to continue to live in the community. Let me give the example of one of my constituents. An elderly lady who had been living in the community was admitted to my local hospital for acute care. She wanted to be discharged to the community; her family supported that, as did the hospital, but it was agreed that she needed level accommodation. She was happy to give up her three-bedroomed council house to a family that desperately needed it and to move into sheltered accommodation. The problem, of course, was that no sheltered accommodation was available, because of Government policy on the provision of public housing by local authorities, Scottish Homes and housing associations. I had intended to quote appalling statistics on the gross lack of sheltered and very sheltered housing in Scotland, but that would take up valuable time. My second point relates to the crucial importance of information to enable people to remain in the community. The hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) commented on how no one should be allowed to exist—and it would be mere existence—on a basic state pension, but the Government have done little to encourage elderly people to claim the benefits to which they are entitled. It is reckoned that there is £14.10 a week in unclaimed income support for every pensioner in this country, and that between 12 and 15 per cent. of pensioners who are entitled to housing benefit fail to claim it. To make matters worse, housing benefit forms have increased in length, from four pages in 1988 to 16 pages today, and the single short claim form for attendance allowance has been replaced by two different forms of 12 and 24 pages respectively. Even the Clerks of the House might feel that that amount of paperwork was excessive. Many Opposition Members were deeply disappointed by the Government's failure to extend the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act 1996 to people over 65 and so assist them in independent living. I pay tribute to Scotland's 700,000 carers, of whom 600,000 care for elderly people. Of those carers, 28 per cent. are themselves elderly—for example, in my constituency, I met a 70-year-old lady who cared for her 81-year-old disabled sister and her sister's blind husband. Mention was made of the issues of dementia and general practitioners. The Government have ensured that GPs are increasingly overworked through having to provide GP care and cover to nursing homes that house hundreds of people who would previously have been in hospital. I applaud the remarks of the hon. Member for North Tayside about the importance of early diagnosis, especially of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.It was the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) who said that.
I apologise to the hon. Lady for that mistake.
Yesterday, I was pleased to learn of the announcement of United Kingdom licence approval for the drug Aricept, which is the first ever drug treatment for the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. However, it is not a cure, and its effective use depends on early diagnosis by GPs. Given that GPs are already overworked, that will be extremely difficult. I agree with the remarks about registration and inspection. I was shocked to discover that Tayside health board does not make nursing home inspection reports available even to local authorities, let alone to the families and individuals who are facing one of the most difficult decisions of their lives. When does the Minister intend to ensure that inspection reports on residential homes and nursing homes are freely available and accessible to members of the community? Which of us would take a major decision—one that will affect our lives and our finances—without being able to pick up detailed reports and information documents on the subject, take them home, look them over and discuss them with our families? I shall end my speech there, so as to allow my hon. Friends to make their contributions; but I would add that I look forward to being part of a Government who are truly committed to community care, and to decent and dignified care for the elderly people of our country.11.59 am
I shall be brief, because I know that my colleagues wish to speak. I join those who have congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on securing this important debate. It has raised many issues, and we would have liked more time, but we are doing our best to make our point.
The Select Committee on Scottish Affairs is studying community care in Scotland, a great deal of which is devoted to the elderly. All our evidence is now in, and will be published. I hope that we have time to finish the report, but if not, I hope that the new Government will pick up the evidence and produce the report. It is important for our elderly and for the disabled. I will cut my remarks because of a lack of time, but I want to put on record what has been said in "Kaleidoscope of Care", a publication from Her Majesty's Stationery Office. In just a few words, it gets to the heart of what is important about care for the elderly. It says:That publication is well worth reading and considering. I do not have time to go into detail or to mention all the figures, but I want to give hon. Members an understanding of the extent of the problem. It is a general problem, but I will give the figures for the whole of Ayrshire. In Ayrshire, 6,332 people are receiving home help. Drastic cuts in the provision of home help are likely to occur at the next budget of all the councils in that area. That will leave many people without that essential help. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) said, some people see nobody from week to week, or even year to year, and their only contact with the outside world is their home help. It is an essential part of their life. Ayrshire has a larger share of people in nursing homes than other areas, because many people wish to come to our nursing homes. Many large buildings have been turned into nursing homes. There are 2,174 people in nursing homes, and 1,017 in residential homes. The total of those receiving community care services in Ayrshire is about 24,000. I cannot give an exact figure, because some people are listed twice if they are receiving different types of care. That is a large part of our population. When one considers the extent of that care and the many people it helps, one can see that any cuts in expenditure would be sad. I understand that I walk a tightrope between what I can discuss here and what has been heard in evidence to the Select Committee. Much of the evidence received by the Select Committee is private and cannot be mentioned now. However, the report will be worth reading by those interested in this matter. On the day on which the Minister of State, Scottish Office, the right hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), was giving evidence to the Select Committee I was handed a letter from Maggie McLeod of Edinburgh Voluntary Sector Community Care Alliance. The letter said:"Officially, what most would consider admirable policies are in place. The aim is to support carers, encourage independence, foster co-ordination, and emphasise comprehensive but responsive assessment. But if these aims were really being achieved, would it be so difficult to achieve home help? Would the supply of occupational therapists be at its current low level? Would the systems for discharging the elderly patients from hospital be as haphazard as they now appear to be? Would so many old people continue to have what, by the standards of most in our population, are very low incomes and poor housing? Much good work is done in the community care of old people, but it is patchy. Unless resources for community care are considerably increased, the patchiness will remain and reforms will merely benefit one group of old people at the expense of another. We have seen that effective community care for elderly people is possible. Is there the political will to provide it?"
all people, not just the elderly—"Edinburgh city social work department has stopped assessing people for care services"—
That list includes those who might need admission to residential homes. The letter said that, currently,"and has a waiting list of 1,372 people."
I wonder whether the Minister took that up in his constituency, or whether he has any further information. The fact that 1,372 people in Edinburgh are on a waiting list for an assessment, which may take between 12 and 16 weeks before they receive the care they need, is something that any civilised society should find unacceptable. Edinburgh city council would say that that has happened because of cuts in its budget. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that. I would have liked to say much more, but time does not allow me. It is only fair that I should sit down and allow others to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker."admissions to residential homes have been frozen."
12.5 pm
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) gets some answers from the Minister this morning. I shall be brief, so as to allow the Minister to respond.
On residential care, we have heard about the disgraceful incident at Glenglova. I believe that there should be national minimum standards for residential care to ensure healthy eating, suitable heating and opportunities for entertainment beyond a television parked in the corner of the lounge. I agree with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) that decent pay for the employees is important in the standard of care. I want to take an unusual step and congratulate the Prime Minister on helping to warm up a pensioner in Maryhill. She telephoned me to say that she woke up in her cold house and opened her morning mail, only to find a letter inviting her to contribute £20 to the Tory party election fund. She was so indignant that she warmed up immediately. She pointed out that £20 is equivalent to the Christmas bonus for two years. I agree with the pensioners charter that that whole issue should be looked at once again. Transport for the elderly has not had an airing yet. Local authority provision for bus passes varies widely across the country. We should aim to achieve minimum standards for the transport of the elderly at low prices. If people are to keep in touch with the community and enjoy life to the end of their days, transport is important. There are clear signs that an overwhelming majority of the population feel that it is wrong that elderly people should be cold in the winter. They are prepared to pay to ensure that our elderly are not cold. They do not mind paying the taxes. The hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) talked about taxpayers' money, but I have never met a taxpayer who objected to old people being warm in the winter, and who was not prepared to pay a fair share.12.8 pm
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) on securing this rare debate on Scottish health and community care on the Floor of the House. It is the first such debate during the eight months that I have been on the Front Bench and for many months before that.
Our thoughts this morning as we discuss this subject are with the elderly people in Leith who are ill with E. coli. I am sure that all hon. Members want to send them and their relatives their best wishes this morning. The latest shocking outbreak highlights the urgent need for an all-out war against E. coli in Scotland. First, research must be supported and prioritised. Secondly, the recommendations of Professor Pennington must be implemented in full, including the recommendations on butchers' shops. Perhaps the Minister could assure us this morning that the full report will be completed soon, and that there will be a debate on it on the Floor of the House in March. One of the lessons from Lanarkshire was that information must be made available at the earliest possible moment. I have been asking questions about that last night and this morning, and shall continue to seek more detailed information about possible delays on Monday and Tuesday in Leith. The conflict between commercial considerations and the interests of consumers was evident in Lanarkshire and elsewhere, and makes even stronger the incontrovertible case for an independent food standards agency, as advocated by the Labour party. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow raised many important issues. He referred to payment for nursing home and residential care. We believe that that issue is so important that it will be referred to a royal commission when Labour comes into government. Nothing less will do. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow and the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) raised the possibility of bringing nursing and social care under one roof, regulated by one system. That is supported in the dementia manifesto. The suggestion must be given serious consideration, as it seems a helpful way forward. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow and the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) homed in on the Tayside report into the provision of residential care in the council and private sectors. The Government are trying to make the running on the matter, and suggest that local authorities could save money if they spent more in the private sector. I welcome the fact that the Accounts Commission is studying the matter. Judgment should be reserved until that report is available. At present we can consider two factors—first, that quality is the key aspect, and secondly, that staff wages and conditions must be taken into account, as they appear to be the most significant factor in the cost variation. We should remember that the Tayside report makes it clear that there could not be a quick transfer to the private sector, even if it was desirable. We must also bear in mind the fact that, if all provision was in the private sector, the private sector could hold a council to ransom. The rates charged might be much higher in that situation. There has been significant growth in the private nursing home sector, and it has been unplanned and unregulated. There are no common standards across Scotland, and there is no common registration and inspection framework. The problem was recognised by the Scottish Office as far back as January 1994, in response to a sheriff's verdict in the Highland region. The sheriff stated that there was no common standard that he could apply when giving a verdict on a particular nursing home. In January 1994, the Scottish Office set up a working group to consider criticisms of the Nursing Homes Registration (Scotland) Act 1938, and to consider how the problems might be overcome by the issue of a national standards document, accompanied by client-specific guidelines. It is hard to believe that, after more than three years, we have no conclusions from that working party. We still do not have a regulatory framework that is applied consistently throughout Scotland and seeks to provide quality and protect the vulnerable. Perhaps even more shockingly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) pointed out, the reports that are compiled regularly on nursing homes are not available to the public or to local authorities. The Government like to run on the health versus local government issue, and keep telling us that they are prioritising health rather than local government. The debate reminds us that the distinction is unrealistic, because local government is crucially involved in the delivery of health via community care. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West alluded to housing, which is also crucial to the delivery of health. The distinction between local government and health is phoney and worthless. Social work is crucially involved in community care. This year £42 million was taken out of the grant-aided assessment figures for social work by the Scottish Office. Next year £55 million-worth of new burdens in community care must be met by councils across Scotland, at a time when their cash grant from the Government is being reduced. That has resulted in the current problems in community care. There is the dead person's shoes policy, whereby people cannot get places in nursing homes unless someone in the nursing home dies. There are further problems, such as the delays in community care assessment and the decline in home help. Bed blocking has arisen because of the pressure on social work and community care budgets. That problem is exacerbated by the decline of almost 3,000 in the number of acute hospital beds in Scotland this decade, the lack of step-down beds even partially to fill the vacuum, and the cut of almost 2,000 this decade in the number of long-stay beds available. Furthermore, there are no clear eligibility criteria for those beds. We shall address the problem as a matter of early priority. We are not opposed to all bed closures. The theory of community care is that certain beds should be closed, with the transfer of resources into the community. That is welcome in respect of people with learning disabilities and of many psychiatric beds, although there are problems with the number of acute psychiatric beds. However, the transfer of resources should be made more transparent. There should be a standard method of recording resource transfers to make them transparent and traceable. The scale of the bed closures, combined with the bed blocking problems, has led to the many health stories this winter about pressure on acute hospital beds. Ten days ago, we were told that all hospitals in Lanarkshire were having difficulties in coping with medical admissions. Throughout January, there was a red alert in Lothian, where only emergency cases were admitted to hospital, yet throughout that month it was openly stated in Lothian that 100 beds were blocked because it was impossible to find a place in nursing homes for those people. Bed blocking affects not only people who want to get into hospital and people who should be in another, more appropriate place; it also affects waiting lists, because surgical beds must be used to provide extra medical beds. That is one reason why the most recent health statistics, which came out in December, show that waiting lists in Scotland were at record levels, at more than 82,000. The Government message on waiting lists is quite the contrary, but that is just one of the many phoney claims that they make about the health service. It is as empty as their claim to be cutting bureaucracy in the health service. I am glad that the Secretary of State and the Minister for Health have been a little more coy about making that claim since the health statistics were published in December. The annual health statistics made it clear that bureaucracy in trusts soared last year by more than £13 million, or more than 5 per cent. Perhaps even the Government are now a little shy of claiming that they are cutting the costs of and the waste in NHS bureaucracy caused by their internal market. We want a full debate on the health service to discuss bureaucracy and the Government's plans to increase privatisation and commercialisation in the health service in Scotland. We had a new angle on that at the Scottish Grand Committee last Monday, when the Health Minister admitted that the Government would not rule out plans to privatise clinical services under private finance initiative arrangements. We press the Government for a debate on the Scottish health service before the general election. We do not seem to be able to secure such debates under the present system of government. This is the first debate on Scottish health on the Floor of the House that I can remember. If we had a Scottish Parliament, we would ensure that Scottish health received the attention that it deserves. Let us have a health debate at least in the Scottish Grand Committee before the general election, so that we can return to the important issues that have been raised this morning, and discuss the waste of bureaucracy and the threat posed by further privatisation and commercialisation. I ask the Minister to confirm this morning that the Government will grant that debate. If the Prime Minister wishes to appear before the Scottish Grand Committee, he may lead that debate. If the Government do not allow time for that debate before the general election, everyone will conclude, correctly, that they have nothing to boast about and everything to hide.12.20 pm
There have been several health debates, and we will welcome others whenever the opportunities arise.
This morning the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) referred to the three cases of E. coli 0157 in Edinburgh. I extend my sympathies to the patients and families concerned, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman's three constituents make a speedy and full recovery. The hon. Gentleman has had the benefit of a briefing from the local consultant in public health medicine and the deputy chief medical officer at the Scottish Office, so he should be familiar with the up-to-date facts. I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that the latest cases have been taken seriously by Lothian Health and by the city of Edinburgh council environmental health department. Urgent investigations are in hand to identify the source. As a precautionary measure, a butcher in Leith, from whose premises all three patients bought cold meat, has agreed to close his shop. Anyone who had bought cold meat products from the shop since 10 February was advised through a press release last night to dispose of them. A helpline has been established to give advice to anyone who is worried about the situation. The hon. Gentleman asked whether there had been delays in informing the public. The first case was confirmed on 20 February, the second on 24 February and the third yesterday, and action was taken to investigate each case as it occurred. It was possible to identify a likely common source only after all three cases were studied, which is what occurred. As soon as the possible source was identified, immediate steps were taken to inform the public in the way that I have outlined. The hon. Gentleman asked about the implementation of the interim Pennington report. I assure him that the comprehensive action announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretry of State to the House on 15 January is well in hand. Although the debate is not about E. coli, I shall mention some of the on-going action. First, a consultation paper on selective licensing of premises handling raw and cooked meat products was issued. Secondly, a committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Cairns Smith is reviewing the existing Scottish Office guidance on the investigation and control of outbreaks of food-borne disease in Scotland. Thirdly, the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food is reviewing its guidance on cross-contamination. We are also taking urgent action to improve our arrangements for surveillance, data collection and analysis. I appreciate the other points that the hon. Gentleman made, and there will be a further statement to the House as soon as the Pennington inquiry reports its final recommendations.
As this is a particularly Scottish problem and Professor Pennington is one of the world's leading experts in this area, will the issue be researched properly, so that we may get to the root of the problem?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Professor Pennington recommended further work in two areas: knowledge of the prevalence in livestock of the type of E. coli that caused the central Scotland outbreak, and more accurate laboratory methods of typing E. coli strains. We are pressing ahead urgently with turning those recommendations into research projects, in consultation with the relevant research bodies, including the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food. United Kingdom health departments have also initiated a programme of research, costing more than £2 million.
I must respond to the points raised in this significant debate. We have heard some good speeches. An additional £15 million was allocated to health boards on 9 December 1996 to alleviate the problem of bed blocking, and I believe that it helped considerably. The findings of the acute services planning assumptions review showed that beds were being blocked principally because of delays in care assessment processes and budgetary pressures on social care. I have the figures for local authorities in Scotland. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) referred to the position in Edinburgh. Edinburgh's community care provision has increased by 9 per cent. this year, which is above the national average of 8.5 per cent. Substantially more resources have been allocated to community care in 1997–98. Research shows that most elderly people wish to remain in their own homes where practicable. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) asked about national standards. A working group is in the process of developing national standards for nursing homes, and guidance on standards in residential care is being prepared and will be issued for consultation very soon. I am glad that the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs is studying the matter, and we shall respond to its report as soon as we receive it. I assure the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) that our aim is to provide a safe, seamless service to the user, involving care and support from a multi-disciplinary team, multi-agency working and the private and voluntary sectors, in order to meet the needs of constituents. We believe that the mental illness specific grant, which includes dementia and head injury cases, is important. Some £18 million has been allocated in that area in support of 370 projects. We believe that it is important to develop respite care, and we have increased funding to £5.1 million. We are assisting organisations such as Alzheimer's Scotland and other voluntary organisations with a grant of almost £300,000. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) raised the issue of choice of accommodation. We encourage local authorities to improve choice by increasing the number of providers. Following consultation with local authorities, we shall issue directions on information that we hope will enable them to make the best decisions. The hon. Lady mentioned the publication of inspection reports. That is currently a matter for health boards, but there is no bar to such publication. I shall reflect upon the hon. Lady's comments. I would prefer that the maximum amount of information be made readily available, but I shall consider that point further. The hon. Lady said that the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act 1996 does not extend to those aged over 65. It was considered that authorities should not be overburdened in the development of direct payment schemes in the first instance. However, we have undertaken to review the matter during the first year of operation. People who are already receiving direct payments will continue to do so after their 65th birthdays. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), who initiated the debate, raised some extremely important matters arising out of Glenglova. Ministers have responded positively by setting up a working group comprising representatives from local authorities and the voluntary and private sectors, as well as user representatives. It has made many recommendations, but I make it clear that many of them—notably, preventing a general practitioner from being a home owner as well as a resident's GP; a single registration system of residential and nursing homes; and improving the registration system—require legislation. They also raise some complex issues. I give the hon. Gentleman an undertaking that we shall make a statement next month about our intentions regarding many of the working group's recommendations and related matters. We have in hand draft guidance to authorities covering the many topics noted in the group's report, which will go out to consultation next month. The hon. Gentleman also referred to consultation on core standards. That matter is separate from consideration of the issues arising from Glenglova. The Government have issued model guidelines for the registration and inspection of nursing homes for the elderly, for people with dementia and for those with learning disabilities. All health boards are expected to comply with the national guidance. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) raised the issue of carers and respite services, and I acknowledge the debt of gratitude that we owe them. The sums made available have increased to £5.1 million for this year. The hon. Member for Leith mentioned charging. I can tell the House that we intend, in the near future, to issue for consultation the draft Community Care (Residential Charges) Bill, which will enable those who require residential care immediately, or who may require such care in the future, to protect more of their capital above the current disregard limit of £10,000. We intend the Government to act in partnership with those who wish to protect their assets, and we are committed to the principle of cascading wealth within the family. The Scottish Office issued guidance to authorities on 16 January about discretionary charging—Order. We must move to the next topic.
Ice Fall (Aircraft)
12.30 pm
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me this opportunity to raise an important issue concerning the responsibilities of the Department of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority.
It is part of the historic traditions of the House that a Member of Parliament can raise on the Floor of the House an injustice that has befallen one of his constituents. This is just such a case. On 15 June 1993, at 9 o'clock in the morning, my constituent, Mr. Constantinos Kashieris, was in his garden in Isleworth when a block of ice the size of a sack of potatoes fell from an aircraft. He subsequently suffered a serious injury. His general practitioner, Dr. Kaikini, of 19 Harvard road, Isleworth, reported that when Mr. KashierisThe ice shattered. Dr. Kaikini continued:"was in the back garden of his house and was about to enter the house through the back door … a huge piece of ice fell off a passing aircraft and crashed on to the spot he was standing moments before."
All shoulder movements were limited thereafter. Mr. Kashieris"The shock made him jerk violently and fall against the back door, injuring his right shoulder."
As a result of persistent pain in the shoulder and limitation of movement, he was referred to"was given a course of NSAID and was … referred for Physiotherapy."
resulting in a fracture."Mr. G. E. T. Raine, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the West Middlesex University Hospital, on the 30th of November 1993. X-ray of the right shoulder taken on 23.11.93 was reported as showing a translucent line running along the upper surface of the glenoid fossa,"
Because of his complaint, he was seen again in the surgery on 27 March 1995 and 24 April 1995. Now nearly in his 80s, Mr. Kashieris has been battling with the CAA and British Airways for more than three and a half years to get compensation and recognition of his injury. What has been the reaction of the CAA, which should have been more assiduous in pursuing this case? In a letter dated 15 September 1993, the CAA told him:"Mr. Kashieris was seen by Mr. Raine on 24.12.93 confirming the limitation of the range of movements of the right shoulder. He was offered M.U.A. of the shoulder. He was reviewed again but the movements of the shoulder did not show any improvement."
"I am pleased to advise you that our investigation is now complete.
Examination of the relevant Air Traffic Services movements record identified a number of aircraft in the vicinity of Isleworth at the reported time of the event. It has now been established that one of those aircraft had a defect which could have resulted in the build-up and subsequent shedding of ice in flight. The operator has now taken appropriate action to prevent a recurrence.
Much to my surprise, I then received a letter from British Airways on 27 February 1995, referring to Mr. Kashieris's case, saying:The aircraft in question was a Boeing 747, registration G-AWNA, which was operating British Airways flight no. BAW218 into London Heathrow Airport on the morning of 15 June 1993. Therefore, any further correspondence regarding this event should be addressed to British Airways".
I find that very unsatisfactory. In effect, Mr. Kashieris has been told that he is not entitled to compensation because he did not note the aircraft's registration number as it passed over. That is mind boggling. Aircraft do not have their registration numbers on their undercarriage or the underside of their wings—only on their side and tail. Was Mr. Kashieris expected to carry a pair of binoculars while suffering from the shock of a large block of ice that fell near him, injuring his shoulder, to look at the aircraft's tail fin to try to get the registration number? The CAA says that it cannot identify the offending aircraft. Of course it can. At Heathrow airport, the landing and take-off times of each aircraft, its route and guide path, are logged. National air traffic control services have a recording system to determine—the gap between each aircraft is one to one and a half minutes—which aircraft is coming or going, on which route and at what time. Additionally, because of the need for environmental protection, noise monitoring systems and microphones are placed all over the airport and its surroundings to monitor at precise times the aircraft that are flying overhead. All those aids should have been used to identify which aircraft was responsible for the block of ice. As well as having his arm broken, my constituent has suffered from poor nerves, stress and sleepless nights since the incident. I repeat that he is an elderly gentleman nearly in his 80s. His case has been going on for the past three and a half years. The time taken to-ing and fro-ing between solicitors afterwards—all to no avail—has not helped either. The CAA initially said that it was able to identify some 30 aircraft and that it was a British Airways flight. British Airways has denied that. The CAA should be able to identify exactly which aircraft was to blame, because the exact time of the incident was recorded by the Metropolitan police from the call that was made to report it. They have an official logged entry, recording the time the areoplane flew over Mr. Kashieris's garden in Isleworth. Just how many areoplanes could have been responsible? Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of the CAA to find out which one. My constituent has been told that he would have to identify the aircraft before trying to claim compensation, but that is akin to telling the victim of a hit-and-run accident that the police cannot do anything to help unless the victim gives them the registration number of the car. If one is to apply commonsense logic or common law logic to this matter, to ask Mr. Kashieris to give the registration number of the aircraft, which is what the CAA is telling him—that is impossible for him to do—is absurd. As things stand, Mr. Kashieris has been denied justice, and the same thing could happen again. How is anyone to identify an aeroplane when they have just been knocked to the ground by something that has fallen from it? I must put on record the letter that I received from Sir Malcolm Field, chairman of the CAA, dated 4 December 1996, which is what prompted me to ask for this Adjournment debate. I was incensed by it, and by the fact that Mr. Kashieris had been battling on his own with some help from me for the past three and a half years. The letter says:"It seems that the information given in the Civil Aviation Authority's letter of 15 September 1993 is incorrect in that the CAA were referring to a fault found on one of our aircraft which arrived at Heathrow on 15 July 1993. A technical log is completed following every flight and it seems from the logs of aircraft operated by BA and in the vicinity of Isleworth at the relevant time on 15 June 1993, there is no record of any reported fault which could have caused a large block of ice to fall."
"Dear Mr. Deva,
Thank you for your letter of 15 November 1996 concerning your constituent, Mr. Kashieris.
Mr. Kashieris had got fed up and had tried to take the CAA to court. Sir Malcolm Field says:The Civil Aviation Authority believes that it has done everything reasonably possible to assist your constituent in this matter and accordingly does not propose to take any further action."
The CAA had more than three years to find out who was responsible for this accident, to enable Mr. Kashieris to obtain compensation. It did nothing except give the wrong date, the wrong time and the wrong flight when it accused British Airways of being responsible. That is not good enough. I have also received letters from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport regarding this matter. I would argue vigorously that the Civil Aviation Authority exists not only to promote the aviation industry, but to protect the people who live around airports and who suffer injuries because of aircraft. I speak as an aeronautical engineer: I am not anti-aircraft. I am one of the few people in the House who understands the constraints and difficulties of running an airport or an airline, but I recognise that people have suffered as a consequence of living near a huge airport such as Heathrow. It brings benefits to the locality, but it also brings disbenefits. The CAA should strike a balance between the promotion of the aviation industry and its attendant benefits, such as jobs, and its responsibility to safeguard the local community and to protect it against the disbenefits of pollution, noise and ice falls. In one of his letters, my right hon. Friend said that 20 such incidents have been recorded, one or two of which have resulted in injuries being sustained. As a Member of Parliament for a constituency in which many people have to put up with overflying aircraft, I appeal to the Minister and to the House to ensure that the CAA either is empowered to do more in this regard or, if it has the power to make inquiries, does so efficiently and carries out its remit according to legislation."Since your constituent has commenced proceedings against the Authority in relation to this matter, I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to comment in any more detail."
12.42 pm
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Deva) for raising this important issue. We are sorry to hear of the distressing incident that affected his constituent, Mr. Kashieris, and his difficulties in seeking compensation. My hon. Friend has been zealous on behalf of his constituent, and I congratulate him on that. He is right to suggest that when public bodies, be they Government or other agencies, deal with members of the public who have problems, or with Members of Parliament, a degree of sympathy and courtesy is in order. I am sure that those who need to do so will have heard the message that my hon. Friend has put on the record.
My hon. Friend said that Mr. Kashieris has instituted legal proceedings against the Civil Aviation Authority, so he will understand that I cannot go into the details of the case. Nevertheless, I can address the general points that he has raised, and attempt to explain the cause of the phenomenon of ice falling from aircraft, the frequency of such events and the risks that such occurrences pose to third parties on the ground. I shall also refer to the investigation of ice falls to try to identify the aircraft responsible, and will set out the steps being taken to reduce the number of such incidents. My hon. Friend referred to a figure, which I must update, because it has risen a little. In the past 10 years, the average number of ice falls has increased from 21 a year between 1986 and 1989 to 25 a year until 1996—that was probably the figure to which he referred—when there were 33. We do not know whether that is due to increased public awareness of the need to report ice falls or to a genuine increase in the number of incidents. However, aircraft movements since 1980 have risen steadily from about 2 million a year to more than 3.5 million, and the underlying rate of ice falls has been fairly steady in the past six years. Apart from the problems experienced by my hon. Friend's constituent, my Department is aware of only one incident in which an ice fall resulted in injury. On that occasion, the damage was second-hand, in that the householder was struck by debris falling from the roof of her house after it had been hit by ice, and she suffered bruising as a result. I should like to assure my hon. Friend and his constituents, who have a great number of aircraft passing over their homes, that the risks posed to third parties from ice falls, although real, are very remote. Ice falls occur when ice that has built up on the outside of aircraft breaks free and falls to the ground. The main cause of ice build-up is faulty water systems on board large public transport aircraft. Leaking fluid from such systems gradually seeps out and freezes in the very low temperatures encountered at the normal cruising altitudes of large aircraft. When an aircraft so affected descends through the freezing level on its approach to land, any ice that may have built up during the flight begins to thaw, and consequently breaks free and falls to the ground. Ice build-ups can also be caused by water in the atmosphere coming into contact with aircraft in certain meteorological conditions. Such build-ups can become detached, either by the activation of the aircraft's de-icing systems or as the aircraft descends or passes through a layer of warmer air. The latest figures on ice falls were published by the Civil Aviation Authority in December 1996. They show that two thirds of reported ice falls involve the type of ice associated with aircraft lavatory installations, otherwise known as "blue ice", and that the remaining incidents involve other water system leaks or atmospheric water. Owing to their potentially hazardous nature, ice falls are reportable occurrences under the Air Navigation Order, so they must be reported to the CAA when they occur. The problem is that people inside the aircraft—the crew or maintenance personnel—are seldom aware of an ice fall. Most reports of ice fall incidents come from members of the public who either have witnessed the result of an ice fall or, like my hon. Friend's constituent, have been affected by it. Until last year, the CAA investigated all reports of ice falls when a specific time and location were given. Those investigations have, however, had a fairly low success rate, owing in part to inaccuracies in the information given regarding the time of the event, and, in part, to the difficulties of identifying aircraft water and waste system defects. Although the CAA is satisfied that when leaks are identified on UK-registered aircraft they are recorded in the aircraft technical log, it is clear that a proportion of possible defects are not identified. There are several reasons for that. Some faults cannot be identified on aircraft while they are on the ground, because the aircraft are not pressurised. In other instances, the servicing agencies employed to empty water and waste systems do not have enough technical expertise to identify evidence of leakage or ice accretion. Because of those difficulties, and despite the considerable time and effort spent on attempting to trace the aircraft responsible for ice falls, the success rate has been only about 8 per cent. In an attempt to improve the investigation process, and in recognition of what my hon. Friend rightly described as the potentially very serious nature of ice fall incidents, investigation of such events is now carried out by my Department's air accidents investigation branch. My hon. Friend will appreciate, however, that no investigation can be undertaken unless an accurate time for the ice fall is known. Even then, successful identification of aircraft responsible for ice falls depends on a number of factors, such as the amount and nature of air traffic at the time of the occurrence. The task of identifying responsible aircraft is not made easier by the fact that ice falls occur at times when many aeroplanes are waiting in holding patterns to land at the larger airports. As my hon. Friend pointed out, it is difficult to identify aircraft—and that is certainly true when the person concerned is lying on the ground, having been knocked over. As my hon. Friend said, that person cannot be expected to have a pair of binoculars to hand, enabling him to identify the number on the aeroplane. Even if he gets the time spot on, as may well have happened in this instance, it is not always simple to identify an aircraft that may have been in the vicinity at that time. As with any other accident, if those affected by ice fall can identify a party responsible for the accident, compensation may be sought through the civil courts. Under section 76 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, claimants do not have to prove negligence by the airline concerned; insurance can, and for the most part does, provide cover for damage to property. The CAA is responsible for the safety regulation of aircraft registered in the United Kingdom. Before aircraft can be entered on the UK register, the CAA must be satisfied that they meet the appropriate standards for design and construction. For new aircraft, those standards are set by the European joint aviation authorities. Responsibility for the safety regulation of foreign-registered aircraft rests with their own state of registry, but they must comply with the internationally agreed minimum standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Where problems with ice fall are likely to have safety implications for aircraft themselves—problems such as a leak in a forward lavatory on certain types of aircraft, which could result in the shedding of ice into an engine—the CAA has issued mandatory airworthiness directives on maintenance and inspections. The CAA also recommends that investigations of water and waste system leaks should be included in routine inspections. Aircraft constructors and operators are well aware of the potential implications of ice falls, and that is taken into account in the design of water and lavatory systems. For example, there is now a tendency to use vacuum systems on new types of aircraft, as service experience has shown them to be more reliable than the recirculation systems more commonly used in the past. With respect to aircraft currently in service, CAA airworthiness directives have been issued for a number of aircraft types, requiring mandatory leak checks to be carried out regularly by operators, and, where necessary, appropriate remedial action to be taken. The CAA has advised all UK air operators certificate holders of the importance of taking preventive maintenance measures to minimise the likelihood of ice falls. Other steps being taken include the fitting of manufacturers' modification kits to improve resistance to water leaks at servicing points, routine visual inspections by airline engineers for evidence of ice accretion after an aircraft has landed, unannounced inspections by CAA surveyors checking airworthiness standards—including inspections for ice accretion and water leakage—the recording of occurrences by the CAA, and investigation of serious events by the air accidents investigation branch. We recognise that ice falls have the potential to cause death or serious injury to third parties on the ground, but there are no reports of that in the United Kingdom, and the risk to people on the ground, although real, is very remote. Nevertheless, I well understand my hon. Friend's concern on behalf of his constituent, who appears to have been one of those "very remote" examples. He will be reassured by the fact that my hon. Friend has raised the matter here today, and that it is taken seriously by the Government, the Department of Transport and the CAA. We will certainly ensure that the record of today's proceedings is drawn to the CAA' s attention. The issue has been raised in the past with the Select Committee on Transport, and is kept under review. The best reassurance that I can give my hon. Friend and his constituents is that the aviation industry is taking practical steps to combat the problem, and to prevent such incidents from happening at all. When they do happen, ways must be found of identifying who is responsible—that does not necessarily mean "culpable"; it means that someone somewhere is in charge of an aeroplane that has deposited the ice. I repeat that those aboard the aircraft concerned may be the last to know about such incidents. We should not jump to the conclusion that the captain and cabin crew should be aware that something has happened, and report it; that is not a practical solution. Whenever possible, however, people should be able to identify the aircraft that is likely to have caused the problem, so that it can be pursued—not literally pursued through the air, of course. The CAA believes that current operating procedures, combined with good maintenance practice, will be sufficient to control the hazard posed by ice falls. I join my hon. Friend in hoping that that is the case, and in expressing sympathy to his constituent.Hedgerow Protection
12.59 pm
The House will probably agree that, through the generations, the English landscape has brought pleasure and inspiration to many thousands of people. Our literature and our art have benefited from it and the quality of life of many millions of people has been enhanced. The hedgerow is an important part of that landscape and, given the confusion that exists and has existed for some time, it is reasonable that the House should consider the matter carefully.
I first became interested in hedgerows long ago, but in the early years of my parliamentary service, I took a particular interest in the protection of species. I then began to realise that it was no good protecting species if the habitat was destroyed. For almost 10 years, I served as chairman of a committee concerned with the natural environment in Europe and I played a part in setting up the Berne convention, which most civilised countries in Europe have signed and begun to implement, and which the Government ratified quickly and implemented through the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. During the deliberations on that Act, my hon. Friends the Members for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) and for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and I sought hard to persuade the Government to ensure that hedgerow protection was included in the measure, but they declined. Just before then, I had made one attempt to secure hedgerow protection, by urging the Government to extend tree preservation orders, for what they are worth, to cover important and significant hedgerows. The Government declined. [Interruption.] I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow has just returned. I mentioned him a moment ago. After the 1981 Act, I secured and prepared a Bill with the assistance of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to protect some hedgerows—those that we felt were significant. It had all-party support; frequently, such initiatives have not been of a partisan nature. Only the Government have been obstructive. That Bill would have provided a sensible framework for protection, but it was rebuffed by the Government. It would have protected the skeleton of hedgerows that we needed to safeguard—all hedgerows by highways, footpaths and bridleways, and hedgerows that were boundaries of farm and of parish—but the Government said that the problem had ended, that the destruction of hedgerows had virtually ceased and that there was no need for legislation. Destruction went ahead. Thousands and thousands of miles of hedgerow have gone since then. At about that time, Mr. Colin Seymour was conducting research in west Yorkshire and I did some in south Yorkshire. I then realised, as did he and other people, that the pre-1840 Inclosure Acts were significant and important and had been foolishly disregarded. If one assumes that the average area in each of the 4,000 parishes was 1,500 acres, that means that there were almost certainly 45 miles or so of hedgerow in those inclosed fields, formed from the commons. The invariable requirement in those Acts was that the fields formed from the common land and given to local landowners—fields taken from the people—were to be surrounded by thorn fences or hedgerows, and protected from then on and for ever. Obviously, changes have been required, but Parliament allowed those Acts to be neglected. When I first raised the matter in the House, a junior Minister with responsibility for agriculture said that those old Acts no longer applied, but they do, because only that which Parliament says can be taken away can be taken from that which Parliament gives. Some time later, I asked the Minister to declare locus standi or to issue a statement to clarify the matter, because people should not be left in confusion. I said to one of the Ministers responsible for agriculture at the time—Earl Ferrers, who is now a Minister in the Department of the Environment—"I suspect that, in the 20 or 30 years until now—from the time of the Agriculture Act 1947, I think—it is highly likely that taxpayers' money has been given to people to grub out inclosure hedgerow, which the law says should be protected." The Minister was quick on his feet and replied, "Yes, but it is not our fault. It is the applicant's fault. The applicant for such a grant should be satisfied that he is entitled to remove the hedge." I suspect that many of them received grant when they were not entitled to it. One should be a little more careful with public money. The laudable scheme to give people grant to replant hedgerows may have been used to remove them, when they had been protected by the House—the protection was given a long time ago, but it is still valid. I hoped that the Government would see sense and come to an arrangement with the conservation bodies and hon. Members on both sides of the House who were concerned about the matter. I was on the council of the RSPB when its centenary celebrations began at King's Cross station. British Rail had named a railway engine "The Avocet", the emblem of the society. The society inappropriately invited the then Prime Minister to be the guest speaker, and what a splendid speech she made. She called in clear and specific terms for us to recognise that we were the custodians of our natural heritage and that hedgerows should be protected as a matter of importance. I was delighted because I was presenting my Bill again, amended to suit the wishes of the Country Landowners Association and the National Farmers Union, that very afternoon. I did not go off to the junket tea that followed the session at King's Cross station, but came to the House to present the Bill, with the words of the Prime Minister echoing in my ears. Conservative and Labour Members alike gave support. I am delighted to see the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith), who has been stalwart in defence of the proposal. The Bill came up for Second Reading, and guess what happened? On the instructions of the Prime Minister, the Whips were instructed to block the Bill. Hon. Members may imagine that there was some acrimonious correspondence, and comments were made in Committee afterwards. Therefore, hedgerow protection continued to be ignored. Destruction continued apace, with the Government's encouragement, and some ruthless landowners let their side down badly, but the Government recognised that their position was not particularly popular, so in 1992 they presented in their manifesto, as the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment will confirm, a clear pledge to introduce hedgerow protection. Nothing happened. Then the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) was drawn in the ballot. Although he did not secure all-party support and did not try, he presented a Bill. Unfortunately, some Conservative Members who are not here today savaged the Bill in Committee. The Bill was defended by my colleagues and me. It came back to the House and it was talked out by Conservative Members. I was accused of making a bad-tempered speech, and I did, because I did not like the way in which a few people were apparently defending their rights and privileges against the interests of the majority of this generation and past generations, and those to come, who should continue to have the uplifting of spirit that the hedgerow in Britain provides as part of our essential landscape. In 1987, I tried again and presented a Bill, again with the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House. The Government were going to take a neutral position, but the Bill was blocked on two occasions by individual Conservative Members, one of whom—a Welsh Member and former Minister whose constituency I have forgotten—when challenged by conservationists in his constituency, said that my Bill would have stopped people trimming their garden hedges, which was completely untrue. I retaliated in Committee shortly afterwards, by objecting to his presence on the ground that he was illiterate. Some years before those events, I invited conservation bodies to mount an inclosure hedgerow case, because the last relevant one was in the 1920s. It was Pratt v. Garrett and it confirmed our position. The national bodies did not embark on a test case, but Yorkshire wildlife trust, of which I am patron, assisted by Mr. Seymour, or the other way round, started an action to safeguard a clearly protected inclosure hedgerow in Flamborough. In July, the judge declared locus standi. Some time before that, the Government refused to make a declaration, which would have saved much money and bother. As I was sure that we would win the case, I asked the Government to consider the position if the judgment on the Flamborough hedge confirmed our view and whether draft regulations, which were being prepared, would take proper account of a favourable judgment. Unfortunately, they did not. The judgment was delivered in December. The Minister is a barrister and must have respect for that judgment, which was a masterly piece of historical appraisal. It was superb in law and should be highly regarded. That distinguished judgment confirmed that 4,000 Inclosure Acts relating to 4,000 parishes invariably required that the common land be inclosed in fields and be perpetually surrounded by hedgerows, which should be properly maintained. Instead of properly respecting that judgment, the Government said that every case would have to be fought separately. Does the Minister want 4,000 Flamboroughs before the courts? Unless the Government are reasonable, I shall encourage every county trust and every local naturalists group and conservation group to carry out some homework in their libraries. That is already happening because of the Government's inertia. Let us have 10,000 Flamborough judgments. The legal system does not want that and there is no need for it. The commonsense approach that I urged in 1982 should have been applied before and ought to be applied now.The hon. Gentleman is aware of my support for his general thesis. Is he aware that, although we have not reached the end of the second month of the year, in Warwickshire 3,500 m of hedgerows have been stripped away in a very short time, some of them in Sherbourne in my constituency? Warwickshire wildlife trust, an admirable body which works hard, thinks that some farmers and landowners are deliberately trying to pre-empt Government moves in the right direction.
I think that that is the case. The Government made their promise in 1992 and have not done anything about it other than to offer the recent proposals. As a result, much of what the hon. Gentleman mentions has been going on. I am glad that he referred to his county trust. I hope that it is checking to see whether any of the hedgerows that he mentions are inclosure hedgerows. If they are, legal action of the type that I mentioned could be taken.
The Government thought long and hard and it took them years to produce draft regulations. I am worried about them because, for example, they give local authorities 28 days to decide whether a hedgerow is worth having. It seems to have escaped the Government's notice that local authorities do not have much fat. By and large, they are leaner and more efficient than the Department of the Environment, but their officers are not able to drop everything and spend up to 28 days checking hedgerows. What on earth are those officers to do when there is snow on the ground? How can they carry out an ecological assessment and check the plant species in a hedgerow when they cannot see them? Has it escaped the notice of the Department of the Environment that many plants die down in winter and cannot be counted? As I said, council officers are supposed to carry out an ecological assessment, to see whether a hedgerow and the number of species in it are sufficient to meet the requirements, but there are other silly requirements. Tree species in hedgerows have to be pure bred. The Minister knows south Yorkshire and has made some unsuccessful political forays into it in his time. In that area, the hedgerow oaks tend to be hybrids of pendulate and sessile oaks. Although they are hybrid, they are natural to our area. Unfortunately, I cannot find any pure-bred oaks in my constituency. I walk the footpaths regularly and I think that the oaks there are hybrid. Sycamore cannot be included, but that species has been growing in Britain for many years. I think that chestnuts are also excluded. Some imported plants can be counted, but not native brooms or currants. It is absurd that we have waited so long for regulations, which are defective and which place local authorities in an impossible position. I pay tribute to my local authority. I understand that it met Yorkshire wildlife trust a few days ago, when it recognised the law and appreciated that it has a responsibility to comply with it. I hope that local authorities in Yorkshire and elsewhere will draw up lists of inclosure hedgerows within their metropolitan or county boroughs. Such action would be useful and responsible, and it would assist and provide guidance for future generations. Although I am not a conservation scientist, I urge the Minister to have detailed conversations with the learned and expert conservation bodies, to ensure that some of the farcical measures in the draft regulations are put right. The Government have days—it should be hours—until the election, to act sensibly and at least seek to fulfil their 1992 promise. In the five years since then, hedgerow destruction has proceeded apace, and perhaps illegal action, to which the Government have turned a blind eye, has been taken. We do not want any more blind eyes: far too much damage has been caused to the British landscape over the past 40 or 50 years, and the Government bear a heavy responsibility for much of it. I hope that in their last few days they will act in a way that will allow us to breathe at least a slow sigh of relief.1.16 pm
I welcome the opportunity to respond to this debate, on an important subject. I appreciate the long-standing interest and experience of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) in the subject.
I am grateful for the chance to outline the stage that the Government have reached on the regulations to protect important hedgerows. I shall deal first with inclosure hedgerows and the case involving Mr. Colin Seymour. The hon. Gentleman spoke about the recent court case over an inclosure hedgerow in Flamborough, which sparked some public interest and involved Mr. Seymour as a plaintiff. I understand that the Flamborough hedgerow was widely acknowledged to be of little value as a wildlife habitat and in poor condition. His Honour Judge Cracknell, to whom the hon. Gentleman paid generous and accurate tribute and who is a distinguished judge, described the hedgerow as "a singularly undistinguished hedge". Nevertheless, Mr. Seymour obtained the judgment that he sought, that Flamborough parish council remains bound by the terms of the Flamborough Inclosure Act 1765 and the subsequent award to maintain the hedge for ever. There was a great deal of speculation at the time that the judgment confirmed that all inclosure hedgerows are protected. That is far from the case, according to a reading of the judgment. A number of factors must be taken into account. First, because the parish council withdrew from contesting the case, the judge heard only one side of the argument. Secondly, in the case, there was no disagreement between the plaintiffs and the parish council that the hedgerow was the subject of the Inclosure Act, nor was there argument over its location and ownership. More significantly, although the judge made it clear that the obligation that was created by the Flamborough Inclosure Act 1765 and the subsequent award still existed, it is worth quoting from the closing words of his judgment:"Can I, before granting this relief, express one word of caution. As I indicated, there are over 4,000 such Acts and each one may be expressed in subtly or seriously different ways. Whether a provision is binding as I find this one to be, has to be judged in each individual case. It would be wrong therefore to read too much into this case in terms of its significance for roadside hedgerows generally or for the ability of individuals or organisations to claim the support of the Courts for a particular hedgerow."
I have examined many inclosure measures, and, although I accept that there could be individual variations, every single one that I have seen and every single one that I know about—over the years, many have been drawn to my attention—specifically and clearly contained the Flamborough conditions, which I mentioned. I would not dream of suggesting that every one of the 4,000 measures contains the conditions, but every one that I know of does.
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's experience in those matters. However, the judgment demonstrates that obligations arising under Inclosure Acts and awards may still be enforceable and that, in appropriate circumstances, the court may find that a local resident has sufficient interest to challenge the failure of an owner to carry them out.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to hedgerow regulations. The Government's policy on hedgerow protection is based on the results of a survey of hedgerow changes in England and Wales between 1990 and 1993, which the Department of the Environment published in July 1994. The survey showed some welcome trends. The rate of hedgerow removal, for example, more than halved, to approximately 3,600 km per year, compared with 9,500 km per year between 1984 and 1990, which was the period covered by a previous survey. Furthermore, the rate of gain from new planting increased to 4,400 km per year, so that gains now more than balance losses from removal. The Government therefore wish to focus protection on the most important hedgerows, for which no new planting is a substitute, and which remain vulnerable to removal. One example is an ancient parish boundary hedge. The Government therefore took powers, under section 97 of the Environment Act 1995, to introduce regulations for the protection of important hedgerows. The views of both environmental and conservation bodies and of those who would be subject to the regulations were considered, and research was commissioned to develop and field test a set of evaluation criteria that could be used in the scheme. Draft regulations were consequently published—on 21 October 1996—for consultation, with a closing date for responses of 2 December 1996. In announcing the publication, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment said that he considered that the proposals struck the right balance between providing effective environmental benefits and minimising the impact on farmers. The proposal was for a notification system, under which landowners would be required to notify the local planning authority of their intention to remove a hedgerow. It would then be for the authority, using the set of evaluation criteria, either to give or to refuse consent to the removal. There were provisions for a right of appeal for the applicant against an authority's decision and for criminal offences relating to hedgerow removal in contravention of the regulations. A fundamental component of the protection scheme is the set of criteria that authorities are to use in identifying hedgerows of significant historic, wildlife or landscape value. For the scheme to operate in as transparent a manner as possible, and to limit objections to any decisions made, it is important that the criteria be applicable on a national basis and not rely on local discretion. A degree of detail is necessary if those who will be affected by the regulations are to have confidence in them. Concerns have been expressed over the percentage of hedgerows likely to be identified as important under the system. We have said that the figure is likely to be about 20 per cent., although I must acknowledge that that estimate is based on a limited field study. Therefore, a more realistic figure will become apparent only once the scheme has been established. Many of the bodies representing environmental and conservation interests have said that a higher percentage of hedgerows should be protected, or even that protection should be extended to all hedgerows. Conversely, bodies representing landowning interests have suggested that the percentage should be lower. It would be wrong to put a percentage on the number of hedgerows that we should like to be protected. The number will become apparent only once the scheme is in operation. We are far more concerned to ensure that the removal of important hedgerows is controlled. More than 500 responses were received to the consultation, representing a wide range of views and raising a number of issues, which the Government have had to consider carefully. Differences of view were inevitable over the proposals, although we have been encouraged by the fact that most respondents supported the framework of the proposed notification system. There are detailed matters to be considered, and we must take them into account when making any necessary amendments to the draft regulations. We are also mindful of the fact that the primary aim—to protect important hedgerows—should not be compromised. The effort to define the terms of protection for hedgerows, in a manner that is sufficiently precise to provide certainty for both landowners and local authorities, has proved significantly more difficult than expected. In the very near future, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State hopes to make an announcement of our proposed way forward. Meanwhile, today's debate has made a positive contribution.What is the difficulty with the definitions in the 1981 Act? My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) and I were involved in that 100-hour Committee stage.
The responses that we received in the consultation period identified some important questions on detail in the regulations. It is necessary to examine the criteria very carefully, because a great deal rests on their detail. However, I am sure that, in its way, today's debate is an important contribution.
I started my speech by mentioning the landscape. I should like to make a point that is concerned less with the landscape than with general ecology.
The Minister will be aware that a vast number of bird species—such as the song-thrush and, this week, the bullfinch—have been recorded as suffering enormous decline. Many of them are hedgerow species. The Government say that their measure might be relevant to only 17.5 per cent. of our hedgerows. If we are to concern ourselves with only 17.5 per cent. of our hedgerows, arresting the decline in species that were once common in England will not work, and there will be a continued decline and perhaps a disappearance of many species that our grandparents regarded as common, but which our children and grandchildren will never see.The hon. Gentleman certainly makes his point on the wildlife conservation value of hedgerows. In framing the draft regulations, we believe that we have borne that value in mind.
Will my hon. Friend bear in mind the point that I made about those who are trying to pre-empt the scheme? I very much welcome the scheme. Will he do something about those who wish to pre-empt it?
My hon. Friend again makes an important point. However, I think that he will agree that, on such an issue, it is important to get the details right. We have made it clear that, through the regulations, we aim to protect important hedgerows.
I tabled a question on songbirds to the Department of the Environment. Consequently, after limited publicity, I received letters from across the country. There is great public concern about the disappearance of familiar songbirds. Other than a lack of food—especially a lack of food before winter—and differences in stubble treatment, the vast increase in sparrowhawks seems to be a factor in their disappearance. Hedgerows give some protection against sparrowhawks.
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We are certainly concerned about the songbird population and are dealing with its decline in a number of ways. He will know that, on a wider plane, our biodiversity action programme embraces some songbird species. He will also know of the work that we are conducting through the pesticides forum, to give one example, to address that issue, which may affect songbirds.
We have had some well-informed contributions today, which have moved forward the debate on this important subject.Pensions (Mr Reg Vincent)
1.29 pm
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me the opportunity to raise this important debate about my constituent, Mr. Reg Vincent. The purpose of my debate is twofold: first, to consider his old-age pension contributions and secondly to look at the value of his former Rhodesian—now Zimbabwean—police pension.
To put everything into perspective, it is important to consider Mr. Vincent's history. I should like to run quickly through his war service and the years that he spent in the British South Africa police in Rhodesia. In 1940, as a young man of 18, Reg Vincent volunteered for the Royal Air Force. He was accepted into the RAF on 11 June, when France was in the process of falling and Britain was standing alone. They were desperate, bleak times, but, like many other determined, patriotic young men and women, Reg wanted to fight for King and country. That is why he volunteered. He did his basic training and, in November 1941, he was posted to South Africa to help train the South African and Rhodesian pilots and ground crews. He set sail from Liverpool, wearing a red poppy, on 11 November 1941. In due course, Mr. Vincent was posted to 27 Air School at Bloemfontein, where he served for a number of years. On 20 December 1944, he was involved in an unfortunate and tragic accident. Along with other ground staff, he was working on an aircraft that had been on some trestles. Mr. Vincent and his colleagues had carried out that routine procedure hundreds of times. On that occasion, due to the negligence of the senior corporal in attendance, a trestle was removed prematurely and Reg was crushed under the aircraft frame. Due to the negligence of a mechanic, the tail oleo leg had not been topped up with hydraulic oil, which meant that when the aircraft crashed down on Reg Vincent, the damage and injuries were worse than they would otherwise have been. He suffered bad fractures to his first and second lumbar vertebrae, resulting in him being hospitalised for eight months. For five months, he was encased in a full-length plaster of Paris cast an inch thick. Imagine that in the hot, humid South African climate. Mr. Vincent has borne the legacy of that terrible injury for the rest of his life. He returned to the United Kingdom after the war, much later than he would otherwise have done. His demobilisation was delayed until 6 September 1946. His great ambition after the war was to join the Kent police. He had set his heart on that, but unfortunately he failed his medical, which was a devastating blow. Reg then saw some advertisements that were in police stations and other public places to join the British South Africa police in Rhodesia. The Government wanted a large number of service men to seek posts in colonies to take pressure off jobs and housing in the United Kingdom. He applied and had three days in which to agree to take up the post. In those three days, he had to sort out his life and all his personal arrangements before setting sail for Africa once again. Mr. Vincent arrived just before Christmas 1946. After his training, he was posted to Bulawayo. He then entered a period of tough policing in the former colony of Rhodesia. During that time, he had a number of traumatic experiences, which the Minister knows about. I shall not go through them in detail, save to mention that he shared a room for a while with a sergeant who was charged with a jewellery theft. That sergeant was convicted, but he committed suicide, as did the inspector in charge of the case. We should consider the impact of that on a young police officer who had gone abroad to serve the Crown. At about the same time, his engagement to his fiancée, who was waiting in England to come out to marry him, was called off. He then married a local girl in Rhodesia. Unfortunately, that marriage broke down—although I am pleased to say that he is now happily married again—and he then went through a difficult time in his personal life, the relevance of which will become clear. We should bear it in mind that this was no ordinary policing assignment. It was a difficult, remote posting where the responsibilities and demands of policing were different from those in other parts of what was then the British empire. In due course, Mr. Vincent was transferred to Umtali, where he served until 1967. He had a distinguished career in the British South Africa police in Rhodesia and was awarded a number of medals, in addition to those that he won during the war. The unilateral declaration of independence was made on 11 November 1965. We must consider the position of officers such as Mr. Vincent and other servants of the Crown at that time. The British Government—and, indeed, the world—were stunned by that unilateral declaration of independence. The Governor of Rhodesia remained the lawful Government of the colony and issued a directive calling on the judiciary, the armed services, the police and other public services to carry on with their duties, maintaining law and order and the normal functioning of Government services. The then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, said in the House:He repeated that several times, as did Lord Pearce, in the judicial committee of the Privy Council. Before the granting of independence to Zimbabwe in 1980, when Her Majesty's Government re-established the lawful colonial status, the public services had operated under a tacitly accepted compromise in which they retained their loyalty to the Crown and worked under the directive of the Governor, which was never rescinded, but were paid by the illegal regime of Ian Smith. Reg Vincent, like many others, decided to obey the suggestions and instructions of the then Prime Minister to stay in Rhodesia and to maintain law and order. If they had not done so, there would have been a complete breakdown and lawlessness in that country, and the ultimately smooth transition to independence for the relatively successful country now called Zimbabwe would not have been possible. Reg Vincent left the police in August 1967. After a period as a deputy sheriff, he returned permanently to the United Kingdom in 1982. Rather than coming straight back to the UK, he decided to stay in the country that he loved and tried to help the police in the exercise of their duties. Let us consider Mr. Vincent's pension contributions. He is now aged 75 and receives 71 per cent. of his old-age pension. He missed the years 1948 to 1968. He first contacted the Department of Social Security overseas branch in October 1974, when he first realised that he should have paid national insurance contributions in the intervening years. The Minister will be aware that matters relating to the number of contributions an individual makes are decided by the Secretary of State, through a senior officer in the office for the determination of contributions. Reg Vincent had a great deal of correspondence with me and with the Members representing constituencies where he previously lived. He wrote to his Member of Parliament in Wallasey, now Baroness Chalker, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies). To cut a long story short, the Secretary of State took the decision on 26 September 1994. There was a formal determination under section 17 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 and the statement of grounds of the decision was published on 19 April 1995. The decision was devastating for Reg Vincent. It found that there had been ignorance and error which was attributable to Mr. Vincent's failure to exercise due care and diligence. In June 1995, Reg Vincent, a representative of the citizens advice bureau and I met the then Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who is now Secretary of State for Wales. In fact, it was his last day at the DSS, although my right hon. Friend did not know that and nor did we, but we examined the case in great detail and had a valuable and constructive discussion. The case was then taken over by my hon. Friend the Minister and we had a meeting about nine months ago. On 3 May, he wrote me a letter stating:"I believe that the Governor has made this statement in Rhodesia—that it is the duty of public servants to carry on with their jobs, to help to maintain law and order".—[Official Report, 11 November 1965; Vol. 720, c. 362.]
It took me some time to work out what that meant. Anyone reading it objectively would probably have the same difficulty. The letter concludes:"In his submission of 8 March 1996 Mr. Vincent has indicated that he was prevented from exercising due care and diligence because of his ignorance of the National Insurance scheme and the communications problems which existed in Rhodesia at the time he entered the country. However, reasons as to why he could not exercise due care and diligence are irrelevant as the question to be considered was whether due care and diligence was exercised or not."
I do not accept that. The Minister states that Mr. Vincent has a right of appeal to the High Court. How can such an individual appeal to the High Court when he is not eligible for legal aid and he is aged 75? The trauma, stress and huge expense are prohibitive, so it is not a practical solution. We have to consider whether Mr. Vincent exercised due care and diligence. The DSS informs me that when the compulsory national insurance scheme was introduced in 1948, there was a huge amount of publicity. All the colonial administrations were told, there were broadcasts and people in public service in those countries were told exactly what the requirements were for participating in the new scheme of compulsory national insurance. Reg Vincent has assured me that he did not hear the news. He was posted in Bulawayo and then went on to Umtali. He had difficulties in his personal life at the time and was shouldering his responsibilities as a police officer, upholding law and order in remote locations. We are talking not about a police officer in Australia, New Zealand or Canada where communications were better and there was ready availability of news from the United Kingdom, but about someone serving in remote locations in Africa. Reg Vincent has assured me that he did not receive any information whatever during the period up to UDI. The Minister has accepted that, during the period of UDI, Mr. Vincent would not have heard what was going on in the United Kingdom because there was a news blackout. He asked about the previous period and asserted that Mr. Vincent should have heard about the scheme had he exercised due care and diligence. I have discussed the matter at great length with Mr. Vincent. He is a man of great honour and integrity. Had he known, he would have taken the relevant steps. He did not know and, as a police officer serving in very difficult locations, he was never given the opportunity to find out. UDI was declared in 1965 and there was a communications embargo. Radio stations were jammed and there was absolutely no way that he could have received the relevant information that would have prompted him to take the necessary steps to make up his contributions. My constituent has served his country with bravery and courage. During the war, he suffered an appalling injury, the legacy of which he carries to this day and has plagued him all his life. He wanted to join the Kent police. Had he done so, he now would be a relatively well-off retired man with a good police pension. However, he did not. He went to serve the Crown in Rhodesia. He might well have been excused for believing that, as members of the armed forces had their contributions paid, so did the police force who also wore the Crown on their service dress hats and helmets. Incidentally, had Mr. Vincent decided to ignore the Prime Minister's advice to stay in Rhodesia after the declaration of UDI, he would have joined a number of fellow police officers and returned to the UK, and in turn obviously paid his contributions. We have to consider the circumstances surrounding the case. That is why I am asking my hon. Friend the Minister to review the decision. There is a compelling case for him to send it back to the Office for the Determination of Contribution Questions. I am asking him to show common sense and compassion on a matter within the remit of his Department. Mr.Vincent also receives a former Rhodesian, and now Zimbabwean, police pension, worth 1,750 Zimbabwe dollars per month. It was worth a reasonable amount in 1980 when the Zimbabwe dollar was worth 80p. Mr. Vincent was getting about £16,800 a year, which is a reasonable pension. Since then, the Zimbabwe dollar has fallen dramatically. It is now worth precisely 4p. So his Zimbabwean pension, instead of being worth £16,800 per year, is worth £1,152. That is a loss of £15,648 a year. The loss of his Zimbabwean police pension since 1980 because of the fall in the exchange rate, in addition to what he has lost by not receiving a full pension here, comes to a staggering sum amounting to more than £17,000 a year. In total, Mr. Vincent has lost some £250,000. I am keen that my hon. Friend the Minister should consider as a matter of urgency the Government's attitude towards Reg Vincent and the other Zimbabwean pensioners who are resident in the UK. I understand that the figure that we are talking about is approximately 1,800 people, including widows. It is very strange that, when the constitution of independent Zimbabwe was enacted in 1979–80, the Government did not require a public officers agreement, which had been an essential requirement for the granting of independence to other colonies and which invariably contained a guarantee of the sterling value of pensions. I cannot blame myself for that; I was not a Member of Parliament at the time. Nor was my hon. Friend the Minister. The matter should have been considered at the time, looked at during the Lancaster house negotiations and addressed in the drafting of the constitution of the new Zimbabwe. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to take up the matter with his colleagues in the Foreign Office—I shall certainly be doing the same. Although from a strictly legal point of view, Her Majesty's Government may have no liability to Zimbabwean pensioners, there is an extremely strong moral case. Under the provisions of the Overseas Pensions Act 1973, the Government took over payment of pensions of overseas pensioners in India and virtually every other former colony. It would have been perfectly legally possible for the Government to enter into an arrangement with the Zimbabwean Government under that Act. Such an arrangement would not cost a great deal of money—probably about £3 million. As we are paying a very large amount of aid to Zimbabwe—we paid about £30 million a year over the past four years, considerably more before then and probably more in the future—I urge the Minister to consider the strong moral case for rectifying the grievance of this proud and honourable man. I have never raised an individual constituent's case in an Adjournment debate before. It is quite rare for that to happen. I would not do so unless I felt very strongly about Mr. Vincent and believed that he was an honourable, honest man. There is a chance to correct the problem. Mr. Vincent is a proud 75-year-old; he is asking not for handouts but simply for justice."Mr. Vincent did not take any positive action to find out by enquiry the conditions of entitlement to pension. He therefore failed to exercise due care and diligence".
1.51 pm
My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) has raised the issue of Mr. Reg Vincent with me personally, in correspondence and at a meeting, and with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales when he was Minister of State in the Department of Social Security. I congratulate my hon. Friend on his success in obtaining this debate to raise the issue once again. No one could have pursued a constituency case more vigorously. I join him in paying tribute to all those who served so bravely in the second world war. Nobody should ever underestimate what they gave to this country.
It is worth considering first how a person establishes a claim for a contributory pension such as a retirement pension. There are two aspects to it: first, the need to satisfy the statutory conditions appropriate to the benefit, which in the case of Mr. Vincent does not raise any issues, and secondly, the establishment of contribution conditions—that a person has paid sufficient national insurance contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk set out much of the procedure. Questions of contributions are reserved for determination by the Secretary of State for Social Security. His power to make such determinations is contained in section 17 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992. Such decisions are made on his behalf by the Office for the Determination of Contribution Questions, which acts under the principles set out in the well-known case of Carltona. The Secretary of State delegates the responsibility to senior officers in the way in which my hon. Friend described. Such determinations by the Secretary of State are binding on the independent adjudicating authorities, and the right of appeal to the High Court lies by way of case stated on a point of law. In a suitable case, judicial review may be sought. Mr. Vincent was abroad when the present national insurance scheme started in 1948. He did not return to live permanently in England until 1982, although he visited the United Kingdom in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. While abroad, he was not required to pay national insurance contributions, but was entitled to pay voluntary contributions for a retirement pension. No inquiries were made of the Department until October 1974. There are strict time limits for voluntary contributions. Mr. Vincent was advised that he was entitled to pay arrears of contributions from December 1968, which he paid. He continued to pay contributions until he reached pension age in March 1987. On his 65th birthday, he was awarded a retirement pension at the reduced rate of 69 per cent. An adjudication officer decided that he was not entitled to a full retirement pension because of the deficiency in his contributions, which was at that time thought to have been between July 1948 and December 1968. Mr. Vincent challenged that, and on 23 March 1994, asked the Secretary of State to make a formal determination under section 17 of the 1992 Act. He asked whether he might pay contributions for any weeks in the period from July 1948 to 1 December 1968, and whether he satisfied the contribution conditions for a basic retirement pension. Before a decision is given, there is a full investigation. The applicant is advised of the facts that the Secretary of State is minded to take into account, and the legislation is set out. The Secretary of State has discretion to extend time limits for the payment of voluntary contributions, but only when the failure to pay by the due date is because of ignorance or error on the part of the insured person and the ignorance or error is not due to any failure on the part of the person to exercise "due care and diligence". Although the wording appears in the 1979 contribution regulations, it replicates wording that has been used since 1967. Mr. Vincent wrote to the Department in October 1974, but final action was not taken in adjudicating his case until March 1975. The later date was used to calculate the date from which he could pay the arrears. That was wrong; it was an error because the date of application is the relevant date. He was therefore invited to pay contributions for an extra 12 months, which he did and which increased his entitlement to 71 per cent. of the standard rate. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk has said, in September 1994, the question raised by Mr. Vincent was determined: he could pay, and had paid, contributions between 4 December 1967 to 1 December 1968. A person who is aggrieved by a decision made by the Secretary of State may ask for a statement of grounds, and Mr. Vincent did so. The decision made by the Secretary of State can be reviewed if new facts are brought to his attention or he is satisfied that the decision was given in ignorance of the facts. Mr. Vincent applied for a review and provided additional information, but there were no facts relevant to the issue of due diligence. He did not provide any further grounds to allow the decision to be reviewed. My hon. Friend made the point about the amount of publicity about the new scheme. When the national insurance scheme was implemented in 1948, very great efforts were made to ensure that individuals who lived abroad were aware of it. A leaflet was published and sent to all the consulates, the BBC was involved through its overseas service in publicising a statement of the then Minister calling attention to the benefits of the scheme and inviting people to write to the Ministry for information, and advertisements were placed in all the major newspapers that were circulated abroad. It has of course been accepted that some people abroad remained in ignorance of the scheme. Mr. Vincent has said that he was unaware of it, and that is accepted. Mr. Vincent believed that he was prevented from exercising due care and diligence because of the nature of his employment and his family circumstances, but the view taken by the Secretary of State was that due care and diligence had not been exercised between 1948 and 1974. It is the responsibility of the individual to maintain his records. Although the Department tries to make information very widely available, it is not under an obligation to make an individual aware of the legislation. There is no evidence to suggest that Mr. Vincent made any attempt to approach either the then Ministry or the Department, either in person while he was visiting this country or by letter to seek advice before 1974, although he had ample opportunity to do so. Legal remedies were available to Mr. Vincent which were not exercised. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk may feel that the circumstances are very unfortunate—some tragedy has tinged Mr. Vincent's life—but I do not have the discretion to override, interfere with, or circumvent a valid determination of the case. Mr. Vincent has not suggested that the Secretary of State has exercised his discretion unreasonably or in bad faith, and there is no new—Order.
It being Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapse, without Question put. Sitting suspended, pursuant to Standing Order No. 10 (Wednesday sittings), till half-past Two o'clock.
Oral Answers To Questions
Education And Employment
Job Insecurity
1.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what recent assessment she has made of the impact on employees of job insecurity. [16052]
12.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on the extent of job insecurity in Britain. [16064]
A healthy and efficient labour market minimises job insecurity. In the United Kingdom, over the past four years, nearly 900,000 jobs have been created and unemployment has fallen by more than 1 million.
I thank the Secretary of State for her Department's courtesy in advising me that my question was linked with Question 12. I was startled to receive that information in a letter from the parliamentary business section signed by one John Major. I knew that there was job insecurity among Tory Members, but I had not realised that it had reached such crisis levels.
Has the Secretary of State seen the International Survey Research survey that shows that, whereas 10 years ago three quarters of people in work felt that their jobs were secure, the figure is now less than half, at 43 per cent.? Has she further seen the evidence in the British Medical Journal showing—as anyone with common sense could have guessed—that people whose jobs are threatened by privatisation or reorganisation are more likely to report symptoms of ill health than those in secure jobs? Can I say to the Secretary of State—[HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."]—and to the many hon. Members behind her, who will not be with us for much longer, that problems of job insecurity are among the key reasons why people in Britain have no feel-good factor?A number of people rejoice in the name John Major, including an official in my Department; all of them have great cause to feel perfectly secure in their jobs.
I am aware of the survey that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but the majority of employees in this country have been in the same job for five years or more, and the average is eight years. The biggest cause of job insecurity is unemployment. Opposition Members do themselves no credit, and the unemployed no service, by ignoring what the rest of Europe knows: that because of British enterprise and the economic policies pursued by the Government we have in the past four years created more jobs here than France, Italy, Spain and Germany have, put together.Surely the Secretary of State knows that, since 1992, in the west midlands, there has been a 50 per cent. increase in the number of people in temporary jobs. Is she aware that the figures show that people coming off the dole today stand a 50 per cent. or greater chance of being on it again within 12 months? Does she agree that, against that background, only a fool would describe job insecurity as a state of mind or a myth, that people are sick and tired of the Government's complacency on job insecurity, and that that is the message that will be given by the people of Wirral, South tomorrow?
I am disappointed by the hon. Gentleman's question. He might have been gracious enough to refer to the fact that unemployment in his constituency has fallen by 17 per cent. in a year, thanks to the Government's policies. He should admit that the policies that he and his party espouse—the national minimum wage and the European social model of employment—would threaten this country with levels of unemployment like those in Germany, at 4.3 million, and in France, at 3.1 million.
Is it not the case that studies have shown that claims that job insecurity is considerable and increasing are false? Is it not the case that Britain has the lowest proportion of people in temporary work of any country in Europe? Is it not a betrayal of the success of industry, commerce and the Employment Service to claim that the statistics are fudged? The facts show that they are not, and that this country is doing better than any country in Europe.
Yes. The facts show that, among the major European economies, the United Kingdom has the lowest proportion of its employees in temporary work. It is sad that Opposition Members cannot welcome the fact that the United Kingdom has a higher proportion of people in work, and a lower proportion out of work, than any other major country in Europe. That is good news.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that unemployment in my constituency has recently fallen yet again, and now stands at just over 1,350—a 50 per cent. reduction since 1992? Is she also aware that every reliable survey in the east midlands demonstrates that business confidence has never been better, that order books are getting longer and thicker, and that what my constituents fear most is people such as the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott)—who was insufferably cocky a few moments ago—forming a Government?
I thank my hon. and learned Friend for the success story from his constituency. I agree that it is time for Opposition Members to congratulate British business and British workers on the fact that unemployment fell again this month, in all regions, for men and women.
Does the Secretary of State agree that we must all accept that the rapid changes in industry and commerce mean that we can no longer expect the lifelong employment that past generations enjoyed? Does she also agree that those entering employment, especially those leaving schools and universities, should be advised to expect three, four or more career changes during their working lives, and that the best way to avoid job insecurity is to gain qualifications and continue to upgrade personal skills?
All major economies are facing rapid changes in their labour market. Young people are well aware of that, and they understand the necessity of leaving school, college and university equipped and trained to cope with those changes. True job security can be created only by fostering the conditions that encourage and allow employers to create jobs. We have attracted a third of all European inward investment because the Government's successful economic policies have been designed to do just that.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that recent reports show that, despite perceptions to the contrary, the average length of time that people spend in jobs is similar to what it was a decade ago? Does she agree that the biggest danger to job security would be the implementation of the minimum wage and the social chapter, which would destroy jobs?
Yes. The majority of employees have been in the same job for five years or more, and the average length of time spent in a job is eight years. The policies espoused by the Opposition—the minimum wage and the European social model—would strike at the heart of the job security that we have.
In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott), the Secretary of State said that the greatest cause of job insecurity was unemployment. Can she confirm that some 10.25 million people—one in four of the population of working age—have experienced at least one spell of unemployment since the general election? Is she aware that some 14,000 of those were registered through Bebington jobcentre, which covers the constituency of Wirral, South? In the light of those figures, does she agree that that provides 14,000 extra reasons why the voters of Wirral, South will tomorrow reject the Conservative party and ensure job insecurity for Tory Members?
Well, well, here is one I prepared earlier. Eight million people change jobs every year. I am delighted that the people of Wirral, South have enjoyed the same drop in unemployment and increase in jobs as people in every other part of the country.
Assisted Places Scheme
2.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on her plans to expand the assisted places scheme. [16053]
This morning, I announced further assisted place allocations to more than 200 independent schools, details of which have been placed in the Library. The 10,900 entry places that we are providing from this September will help double the opportunities for children through this excellent scheme.
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Will she confirm that excellent independent schools such as Arnold school have achieved consistently good results? I thank her for the announcement that 25 extra assisted places have been made available at that school. Will she confirm that there will be an opportunity—for which I have lobbied her and her colleagues—for assisted places at Elmslie school, another excellent independent school? Is not it sad that the Labour party, which once believed in increasing opportunities for less well-off families, now believes only in providing opportunities for its own children? Is not it a case of, "We're all right Harriet, Jack and Tony, kick away the ladder?"
Hypocrite!
Order.
The hon. Gentleman is a hypocrite.
Order. I just heard the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) twice call the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Hawkins) a hypocrite. I ask him to withdraw that remark.
If that is unparliamentary language, I withdraw it unreservedly.
My hon. Friend is right. Labour believes in choice for itself but not for other parents. I am pleased to be able to tell him that Elmslie girls school is among the schools that are today being informed that their bids were successful. From September 1997, it will able to offer 20 assisted places, including five places to children aged eight to 11 and four to sixth formers.
Will the Minister confirm that to maintain an assisted place costs about twice as much as an equivalent place in the maintained sector, and that there is a huge deadweight cost in the scheme because it subsidises people who would otherwise pay for their children's private education? Will she further confirm that, by the Government's own standards, the scheme does not appeal to working-class children despite the protestations of Conservative Members? Will she conclude, as we have, that a far better and more cost-effective way to use Government expenditure would be to improve quality at key stage 1 rather than subsidising the few in independent schools?
The hon. Gentleman must be hallucinating if he thinks that I will agree with one word of that. More than 42 per cent. of assisted pupils come from families whose income is below the threshold for a free place, and more than 80 per cent. are from families that earn less than the national average household income. Independent schools are a vital part of the school system. Rather than peddling the old line of abolishing assisted places, which are good value for money, the hon. Gentleman should tell us what is his party's attitude to independent schools. Is it true, as he wrote in the magazine Prep School, that the Labour party will abolish charitable status for independent schools?
Grant-Maintained Schools (Cheshire)
3.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many schools have so far applied for grant-maintained status in Cheshire; and if she will make a statement. [16054]
Eleven schools in Cheshire have applied for grant-maintained status. Eight of those applications have been approved and the schools concerned are operating as grant-maintained schools.
I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. The Macclesfield constituency boasts excellent primary and secondary schools, including five grant-maintained schools: Pott Shrigley Church of England school, Mottram St. Andrew junior school, Kettleshulme St. James junior school, Henbury county high school and Fallibroome county high school. In the House today I lunched with four pupils from Fallibroome county high school who have won a national competition. These are excellent schools, with super governors, wonderful staff and a history of success. Am I correct in assuming from what I hear from Opposition Members that they will abolish grant-maintained status and push the schools back under the responsibility of the county? That would be disastrous—the schools would lose their status, despite being highly popular schools with a super record of success.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is well known for championing grant-maintained schools and small village schools in particular—in fact, several of the grant-maintained schools in his constituency are highly successful small village schools. I hope that he will tell the story loud and clear to the thousands of parents whose children attend those excellent schools that they are safe only under a Conservative Government and that Labour would abolish the schools' status, causing disruption, chaos and grief to governors, head teachers, teachers, parents and—most of all—pupils.
Will the Minister confirm that, of the 491 schools in Cheshire, only one has held a ballot in the past year and that parents voted no? Is that an overwhelming endorsement of going grant maintained from the people of Cheshire?
The Government's grant-maintained policy is working in Cheshire. There are a number of GM schools spread across Cheshire which give parents an added element of choice and diversity. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make it clear to the electorate in his constituency that he will abolish grant-maintained schools in Cheshire. Parents should know, head teachers should know and governors should know. Chaos will result from the Opposition's policy.
Local Education Authority Administration Costs
4.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what is the average proportion of local education authority budgets which is spent on central administration and services. [16055]
For 1996–97, English LEAs collectively were planning to retain 9.5 per cent. of the potential schools budget for central administration and other services.
Is my hon. Friend aware that Sheffield keeps a largish chunk of its funding for central services? I see in the Chamber two former leaders of Sheffield city council. Is not the situation in Sheffield one of the worst in the country? Head teachers are sick and tired of Sheffield keeping back funding for their schools. Two years ago—I am aware that, in Labour politics, two years is a long time—the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) said that 90 per cent. of the funding should go to schools. Is it not time that Sheffield started practising what the hon. Gentleman preaches?
My hon. Friend puts his question well. I can confirm that, in the current year, Sheffield lies 114th out of 119 local education authorities, having delegated 87.4 per cent. of its budget. Only five authorities are worse. However, I have good news for my hon. Friend: one of the early pieces of legislation in our fifth term in government will be an education Bill to enact last summer's White Paper, whereby we shall require authorities to delegate 95 per cent. of their budget. That will be good news for head teachers in my hon. Friend's constituency because, on this year's figures, it would mean another £11 million going into schools.
Is the Minister aware that, in Wolverhampton—my local authority—we are delegating 93 per cent. of the budget to schools and retaining 7 per cent. for central administration but, after several years of cuts, we find that, once again, this year, the Minister has slashed our standard spending assessment, and now we find that our revenue support grant settlement is the worst of the 36 metropolitan districts in England?
I can confirm that Wolverhampton delegates a significant percentage of its budget to schools—slightly below the 93 per cent. mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. On the substance of the question as it developed, I remind the hon. Gentleman that, for the forthcoming year, SSAs—education support—increased nationally by 3.6 per cent. on average. That average will be affected across every local education authority in accordance with any increase or reduction in the number of pupils. The question that parents and teachers in Wolverhampton must be asking is how, year after year, Wolverhampton is proposing cuts in services while we, at the centre, are proposing further increases in support.
I was dismayed by the implications of the exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Sir I. Patnick) and the Minister. It seems that substantial funds are being diverted from the classroom and the teacher to the bureaucrats in council offices. That must be to the substantial disadvantage of the children of Sheffield. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is now time to re-examine the role-of-local education authorities? We should undertake a root-and-branch examination of their powers and responsibilities. It is time that we looked hard to see what they do and the costs that are incurred.
I can confirm that, in the current year, the range of budget delegated, on precisely the same definition, ranges from 85.1 to 96.1 per cent. Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber can see what a significant difference it would make if all authorities delegated at the average of about 90 per cent.
My hon. Friend will remember our White Paper in which we set out two or three essential tasks for local education authorities, particularly lending support to schools that may be failing or which are seriously weak. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important that, year by year, local authorities look to see what more they can delegate to schools rather than waiting for legislation to force them to do so.When local education authorities delegate funds to individual schools, does the Minister believe that any part of that money should be used to support the Conservative party? Is the Minister aware that, at the beginning of this month, the Huntingdon Conservative constituency association wrote letters to all the schools in the Prime Minister's constituency urging them to contribute to the Conservative party's fighting fund? What advice would the Minister give those schools on how to respond to the letter?
Positively.
I am not sure that I can improve on the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton). Leaving aside the fact that the schools in question must benefit from the nature of the right hon. Member who represents them, I suppose the response that many of them might make is the same as I make when I get unsolicited mail from the Liberal Democrats.
School Discipline
5.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what measures she is taking to enforce discipline in schools. [16057]
The current Education Bill, now in another place, includes a package of measures to strengthen schools' ability to take action in the face of poor behaviour and discipline, to help ensure there is proper support for schools in dealing with pupils with behavioural problems, and to promote effective provision for such pupils out of school where necessary.
Bearing it in mind that good classroom discipline and structured teaching are essential to a successful education, can my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government's welcome new approach to teacher training will give every new teacher rigorous instruction in classroom skills and handling techniques? Will he take this opportunity to accentuate the positive and pay tribute to those teachers who are now achieving good disciplinary standards in the classroom?
Throughout his many distinguished years of service in Parliament, my hon. Friend has a long and distinguished history of fighting to bring this matter to the attention of the Government and the House. As usual, he has accentuated two important points. First, the annual Office for Standards in Education inspection of schools and Her Majesty's chief inspector's report always emphasise that the vast majority of our schools and classrooms are orderly and disciplined places in which pupils learn and education is effectively carried out. Secondly, the Teacher Training Agency's current proposals on improving initial teacher training, which are out for consultation, emphasise the need to ensure that all newly qualified teachers have a firm grasp of classroom management techniques and the role that good discipline plays in good education.
Is it not important to get the relationship right in schools? I was pleased to hear the Minister congratulate the majority of teachers on being competent and having good discipline in their classes. Perhaps a better example would be set if the Government could show a little more discipline in the way in which they organise themselves.
The hon. Gentleman makes a typically ungracious contribution to the day's proceedings. I will join him in the first part of his comments and welcome the fact that there is common ground in acknowledging all that is good in education—there is much that is good. I will leave the latter part of his rather sad comments unresponded to.
My right hon. Friend will remember that, in the inspector's report on The Ridings school, one of the comments was that, in classrooms where children were engaged in what was being taught, there were no disciplinary problems. That is clearly the beginning of discipline. Does my right hon. Friend agree that schools that make imaginative use of children in the enforcement of discipline throughout the school are making extraordinary strides towards achieving it?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Our recent experience demonstrates clearly that when a school develops a discipline policy, and when it involves the teachers, parents and staff to give them all a sense of ownership of that policy, unsurprisingly the discipline record is vastly better than it is in schools that do not follow those practices. We in the Department are disseminating those good practices and urging all schools to follow them, when they consider it appropriate to do so in their own circumstances.
Does the Minister agree that adequate provision for pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties is essential? Has not that been a Cinderella service in the past? Does he also agree that the too inflexible imposition of the national curriculum can create difficulties for schools that deal with children with such needs, and that primacy must be given to the therapeutic element of their education? Will the Department agree to continue discussions with the National Association for Therapeutic Education, which has considerable experience and knowledge of the matter?
I hope that the Department will always engage in dialogue with bodies of the kind the hon. Gentleman mentions, and that it will be a mutual learning process. That is an important part of what the Department does and will continue to do. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that we should expect any less of young people with emotional or behavioural difficulties or any other learning difficulty, or that we should expect them the less to meet the needs of the curriculum. I believe that there are other effective ways of dealing with the issue. We have the aspirations and objectives of the curriculum in place. What we must do and are doing—not least through the special educational needs code of practice, for example—is to identify the needs of each pupil and ensure that we provide pupils with the support that they need in order to meet the requirements of the curriculum. That, I think, is the right way round.
Grant-Maintained Schools (Bournemouth)
6.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many schools in Bournemouth are grant maintained. [16058]
One primary school, four secondary schools and one special school.
Can my hon. Friend confirm that the increased flexibility in funding, free of local authority controls, has enabled the six grant-maintained schools in Bournemouth, as elsewhere, to become even better schools? Is she aware that the Lib-Lab-controlled Bournemouth council, shortly to become a local education authority, is committed by resolution to the elimination of those grant-maintained schools? Can she confirm that grant-maintained schools in Bournemouth and throughout the country will remain safe only under a Conservative Government?
All the Bournemouth schools that conducted ballots to go grant maintained have returned yes votes, and my hon. Friend is correct to describe them as excellent schools. We heard earlier that there would be no choice under new Labour. There would be no choice under the Liberal Democrats either. Both new Labour and the Liberal Democrats would grab those schools back into local education authority control. They obviously consider the boards of governors, the head teachers and the teachers at those schools incapable of coping with the self-determining status that we have given them, and they wish to take decisions for those schools. No, grant-maintained schools are certainly not safe under the Liberal Democrats.
I know that Hampshire plays at Bournemouth but, for the sake of confusion, I added together the number of schools in Dorset and Hampshire that have held ballots. I found that only three out of almost 1,000 schools had held ballots, and one of those had said no.
Order. That was a very good try, but we are dealing with Bournemouth. Only two Members of Parliament represent Bournemouth constituencies: we have heard from one, and the other is not present.
Class Sizes
7.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will estimate the number of (a) eight-year-olds, (b) nine-year-olds and (c) 10-year-olds being taught in classes of more than 30 pupils. [16059]
8.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on class sizes in primary schools. [16060]
Figures are not collected by age group, but evidence shows that the quality of teaching, rather than the size of the class, is the key factor in determining pupils' achievements.
Is the Secretary of State aware that on Monday councillors in Oldham had to slash the schools budget for the coming year by some £600,000? Is she aware that the parents whom I represent are tired of hearing the Government claim that they are giving more money to education, when schools budgets are being cut and class sizes are rising? Will she give a commitment to press for additional funding to ensure that local education authorities can reduce class sizes below 30 for all primary school children? If not, why not?
All local education authorities have had an increase this year which should allow them to prioritise and to reduce class sizes if they see fit.
Does the Secretary of State accept that the Government have grossly underfunded primary education, which has led to an increase in class sizes? Is she aware that the Labour-run local education authority in Rochdale is allocating less in its first year of administration than the Liberal Democrats allocated in their first year? Does she agree that only the Liberal Democrats are committed to funding primary education properly in order to pay for a reduction in class sizes?
It is indeed the case that the average class size in Rochdale is higher than that in many other parts of the country and I am sure that the hon. Lady will take the matter up vigorously with the Rochdale local education authority which, as she says, is Labour controlled.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the surest way to reduce class sizes is to encourage local education authorities to spend less money on central administration and central services and to pass more funding to individual schools? For example, is she aware that Kirklees council in my area passes only £103 million to individual schools out of a total schools budget of £140 million? Will my right hon. Friend join me in urging Kirklees to do much better, because local head teachers know how best to spend school budgets?
It is certainly important for local education authorities to make what goes on in the classrooms a priority, which should be reflected accordingly in their funding arrangements.
Is not the main thrust of the question oddly directed? If there are to be greater resources in primary education, should they not be concentrated on classes for five, six and seven-year-olds? If we look after those age groups properly, children of eight, nine and 10, given good teaching and proper classroom assistance, will reap the benefits.
Some interesting facts surround these matters. Her Majesty's chief inspector says that smaller class sizes are of benefit in the early years. He also says that the selection and application of teaching methods and forms of class organisation have a greater impact on learning than class size. An interesting example is provided by the Kingston LEA, which has the largest primary classes and the best GCSE results.
Will the Secretary of State confirm that there can be no greater example of diverting resources from lowering class sizes for five, six and seven-year-olds, targeting literacy or ensuring that teachers are able to instil the basics than diverting further resources into the assisted places scheme and away from the classrooms into which our children go to learn the basics? Instead, the Government are prepared to divert that money to the interests of a few and away from the interests of the many.
The hon. Gentleman's prejudices are showing. He talks about the diverting of resources, but the Sheffield LEA, with which he once had a great deal to do, is doing a marvellous job of diverting resources from schools in Sheffield to administration and bureaucracy in the town hall. Will he come clean and admit that his so-called plans to use money diverted from the assisted places scheme to reduce the sizes of early primary years classes have been condemned as unworkable by his advisers, the National Foundation for Educational Research, and the Institute of Public Finance, which has shown that the so-called savings would not amount to the sum that he claims and would yield one extra teacher for every nine schools? How would he divide up that teacher?
Marriage And Christian Values
9.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what representations she has received regarding amendments to the Education Bill relating to marriage and Christian values. [16061]
We have received one such representation, in the form of a letter from my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who replied yesterday.
Will my right. hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench accept that there was widespread support on the Conservative Benches for the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), and that there is rising concern among Christians, of both the Anglican and Roman Catholic faiths, about the position of Dr. Tate and the direction of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority? Does he further accept that we look to our right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench actively to promote and support Christian values and the model of marriage in our education policy?
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has undertaken to await SCAA's establishing beyond doubt the views of the key religious denominations in this matter to ensure that SCAA and my right hon. Friend know exactly the Churches' views when determining this very important matter. My hon. Friend may also wish to know that my right hon. Friend will shortly meet Mr. Guy Hordern, among others, to discuss these matters.
Does the Minister recall the Prime Minister meeting people from the ethnic communities in London earlier this month and claiming that he and his party supported and embraced the multicultural and multi-faith aspects of our society? How does that square with what the Minister just told the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Hargreaves) about ignoring the other religions and concentrating solely on the Christian religion?
That is simply not the case. The main point at issue is the explicit role of marriage in the education curriculum and in the teaching of our young people. I am not aware—I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not implying this—that any of the main faiths, Christian or otherwise, do not give the same central core respect to marriage.
Although my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend must necessarily be reactive in responding to the SCAA national forum initiative on values in education, the Government as a whole can be thoroughly positive and proactive in supporting and promoting, not least in schools, the Christian ideal of marriage, as was vividly demonstrated by the Lord Chancellor's significant speech on 11 February during national marriage week.
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend. I remind the House that, in that excellent speech, our right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor said:
That, surely, is a typically elegant and succinct expression of the view that Conservative Members share. My right hon. Friend expressed some reservations about the role of the forum that is advising SCAA on this. In my view, the forum that really matters in the end is the House of Commons."The first thing we can all do is to promote a positive and realistic image of marriage among the public in general and especially among young people who may be contemplating marriage."
Unemployment (Cumbria)
10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what proposals she has for new training and enterprise measures to deal with the problems of unemployment in Cumbria. [16062]
Unemployed people in Cumbria will have access to all the Government's new national programmes, especially national traineeships for young people and pre-vocational training for adults.
May I enter a plea to the Minister that in his reply he does not merely parrot off totally spurious fiddled figures on unemployment in west Cumbria, because my constituents simply do not believe him? Has he seen the Labour party's significant policy document called "Opportunities to Earn: Labour's proposals to tackle long term unemployment"? That document includes a raft of employment and training policies, many of which will be funded by Labour's windfall tax, which will raise billions of pounds from the former public utilities and privatised companies. It offers the first opportunity in years for many people in west Cumbria to secure employment and training.
The hon. Gentleman suggested that I had used figures in my answer, but I did not refer to any figures. I recognise that unemployment in his constituency is higher than the national average, and higher than either he or I would wish it to be. To suggest, as he does, that we could dispense with unemployment through the windfall tax is to perpetrate an immense con trick on the people in his constituency and in the rest of the country. Labour proposes to get rid of unemployment with a one-off measure from a one-off tax. Besides the cost of the windfall tax to his constituents through their pension funds and shares, we all know that that proposal could not possibly work.
Has my hon. Friend made any assessment of the job losses that would result from the lack of investment by the utilities if Labour were to implement the windfall tax? How many people in Cumbria would become unemployed because of the windfall tax before Labour even started to create the make-work schemes and spurious training schemes outlined in that stupid Labour party document?
As my hon. Friend knows, it is impossible to calculate how many people would be put out of work, because the Labour party is not prepared to say how much it would seek to raise from the windfall tax, how it would be levied and who precisely would pay it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it would cause a reduction in employment levels, for the simple reason that, contrary to what Labour says, there is no pot of money waiting to be taxed. If the utilities were forced to pay the tax, they would have to put up prices, cut dividends or, most likely, as my hon. Friend suggests, cut jobs.
Temporary Employment
11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment she has made of the implications of the increase in the number of temporary employees since spring 1992 for Government employment policy. [16063]
The proportion of temporary employees in the United Kingdom has risen from between 5.5 per cent. and 6.5 per cent. in 1992 to between 7 per cent. and 8 per cent., compared with a European Union average of 11.5 per cent. We shall continue with the policies that allow jobs of all kinds to be created.
Why cannot we have a full-time Government who create full-time employment—as is proposed in the document to which my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) referred—rather than this pathetic, part-time, temporary Government, who provide only temporary, part-time work of an insecure nature? Should not the Government have some sympathy with people who are in insecure positions, as at the worst they have only nine weeks to go before they are out on their ears? We can start then to implement our policy.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his typically optimistic and happy contribution. What he did not tell the House is that if this country sought to emulate the countries on the continental mainland that he and his Front-Bench colleagues seem to admire so much—countries which have statutory minimum wages, have adopted the social chapter and do all the other things that the rather silly document to which he referred would doubtless urge us to do—one of the results might well be that we would end up with the sort of youth unemployment, and overall unemployment, that those continental countries have.
The substance of the hon. Gentleman's question concerned those in temporary employment. In this country, about 6.8 per cent. of the work force are in temporary employment, compared with 10.3 per cent. in Germany, 12.2 per cent. in France and 35 per cent. in Spain. Those are the figures that people should ponder when comparing the document cited by the hon. Gentleman with our excellent track record.Are not even temporary jobs better than no jobs? My right hon. Friend mentioned what might happen if we adopted the social chapter. If we did that, we would not have even temporary jobs, because the cost of taking people on would be prohibitive for employers. Surely even the Labour party does not want that.
I might go even further than my hon. Friend, although of course I agree with him. Most people in temporary work choose to be in temporary work because, for various reasons, it suits them better. All the surveys show that only a minority of temporary workers would prefer permanent jobs. As ever, Opposition Members want to force people into a straitjacket and make them accept the kind of work that the Opposition think that they should do. We, on the other hand, respect choice. People should be able to choose whether to work part time or full time, and choose between temporary and more permanent work.
The Minister is insulting the people of this country when he says that the majority choose temporary work. His own figures disprove that. Is he defending the increase of more than a third in the number of temporary workers in Britain since the last general election? Those workers are joining the many millions experiencing the job insecurity that is stalking the whole nation. Will the Minister brush up on the subject? After all, we currently have an insecure Government plagued by temporary Ministers.
We have now had the same soundbite recycled at least four times. I should have thought that Opposition Members would at least have the ingenuity to produce different soundbites rather than rely on regurgitating the same one over and over again. However, if regurgitation is to be the order of the day, I will simply repeat to the hon. Gentleman what I said a few moments ago to the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), who seemed to expect us to believe that what he had said was a revelation. As I said in my reply to him, the proportion of temporary employees in this country has indeed risen from about 5.5 or 6.5 per cent. to a massive and stunning 7 or 8 per cent. of the work force, but what has the hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) to say about the figures for countries on the continental mainland, which Opposition Members seek to emulate at every possible opportunity? In those countries, between 10 and 34 per cent. of the population are on temporary contracts. That is the threat that the Opposition would pose if we were ever to adopt their policies.
Employment (European Union)
13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when she next expects to meet her European Union counterparts to discuss the prospects for employment in Europe. [16065]
At the informal meeting of the European Union Social Affairs Council in March, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will again emphasise that prospects for employment in Europe will be best served by the development of efficient, flexible and competitive labour markets.
Is it not instructive to compare the unemployment level here—1.8 million and falling—with that in Germany, which is 4.5 million and rising? Does my hon. Friend agree that if unemployment here increased by 500,000 in a single month—as Germany's did in January—the Opposition would be in uproar, Opposition Members on the Front Bench below the Gangway would be on their feet and the sitting would have to be suspended? Is it not extraordinary that the same Labour party supports the social chapter, the national minimum wage and all the burdens on business that have needlessly brought the misery of unemployment to many more millions in Europe—approaching 20 million at the last count?
I suspect that my hon. Friend's estimation of what might have happened if we had had those figures in this country is entirely right. I am constantly amazed that after 18 years in opposition the Labour party has not yet taken on board the fact that, however well meaning a measure may be to protect jobs or to improve people's working conditions, its effects are counter-productive. As the Labour party found in the 1970s with its Rent Acts, when we increase protection, we destroy opportunity. That is the lesson that we have learnt and which is now, sadly, being learnt throughout the rest of Europe. We are not prepared to go back to that.
The Minister will be aware that the Secretary of State's attention has been drawn to a table in the Red Book which shows that the Government project that there will be a substantial increase in cyclical social security expenditure between now and 2001. Bearing it in mind that the table shows that the Government project a substantial increase in expenditure on unemployment between now and 2001, will the Minister explain why the Government have proclaimed that they are not in the business of increasing unemployment?
That man can think on his feet.
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) says that the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) can think on his feet, but the hon. Gentleman will have to think again because the conclusions that he has drawn from the Red Book are totally wrong. The Government intend to continue with the policies that have seen unemployment fall dramatically since 1992 and we anticipate unemployment continuing the downward trend that it has followed for so long.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the real problem is that the Opposition think that Governments can create jobs? Is it not also the point that in Europe they still have the vestige of the leftovers of the idea that Governments can somehow create jobs? Producing the Labour policy document this afternoon has more to say about Labour Members wanting permanent employment on the Government Front Bench and has nothing to do with creating permanent jobs outside.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is a message that we cannot emphasise too much. Jobs are created by successful businesses which produce goods or services that other people want to buy at a price that they can afford. Governments can create the conditions for business to prosper like that, but no Government can create the jobs that the Labour party seems to believe that they can. The Government will go on creating the conditions for business to create jobs.
Has the Minister read today's report from the Employment Policy Institute? Does he appreciate that it states that there is no evidence that the social chapter would cost jobs, and that Tory claims are overblown, inaccurate and unresearched? Is not the real issue that withdrawal from Europe, the agenda of so many Conservative Back Benchers and quite a few members of the Cabinet, would cost 3.5 million jobs?
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that withdrawal from Europe is not part of the Government's approach to Europe, but on the social chapter, the people whom I prefer to listen to are the businesses that have to live with the burdens of the policies that this country could be faced with if we committed ourselves to the social chapter. I would far rather listen to German businesses that are disinvesting in Germany and coming to this country or elsewhere to escape those burdens, and to British businesses—as indeed I and other colleagues did yesterday—that are located throughout Europe and that say that they cannot expand because of the burdens of the policies caused by a social chapter approach to life. I would much rather listen to those people than to some spurious report that is clearly at odds with all the experience of businesses throughout Europe.
Will my hon. Friend give some reassurance to constituents in my part of Lancashire, and particularly to students and to people who work in the tourism industry, that the Government have no intention whatever of introducing a minimum wage, as such a device would cause havoc in the tourism industry, increase local unemployment, decrease wealth creation in the tourism industry and prevent students at local universities from taking jobs to help the economy and to help themselves through university?
I can assure my hon. Friend that the Government have no intention whatever of introducing a minimum wage, for precisely the reasons that he describes, but also because of the implications that it would have for wage escalation. If a minimum wage at anything like the level described by the Labour party or its paymasters were introduced, everybody would seek to maintain differentials, at least to some degree. That is where huge wage and price inflation would come from, and so would unemployment: at least a million jobs would be lost.
Nursery Vouchers
14.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when she estimates that every four-year-old with a voucher will have access to a pre-school place. [16066]
I am confident that, over time, existing and new providers in the maintained, private and voluntary sectors will bring forward the places that parents want in exchange for nursery education vouchers.
When will the Secretary of State honour the Prime Minister's pledge to the Tory party conference in 1994 when he said that he would give a cast iron guarantee that all four-year-olds would get pre-school places? Is the Minister aware that the pilot schemes show that when the voucher system is used, the shortfall in the maintained sector will not be made up for four-year-olds?
The hon. Gentleman did not complete the quotation. The Prime Minister spoke about ensuring that all four-year-olds will have a nursery place, and we have made a start during this Parliament. It is a question not of theory, but of what is happening. If the hon. Gentleman looks at what is happening under phase 1, he will see that extra places have been created not just in the local education authority sector but in the voluntary sector. [Interruption.] There is a net increase in the voluntary sector in Norfolk alone of more than 300 places. [Interruption.] The Opposition do not like the answer. Not only is there an increased number of places, but more than 1,000 four-year-olds in Norfolk are enjoying longer sessions—five sessions a week instead of three as a result of vouchers. There is a choice. The Government have given parents of all four-year-olds a greater opportunity for nursery education through vouchers. Labour would take that away from them.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the expansion of pre-school education, which we want to see, would be most likely to take place if, building on the encouraging experience of the pilot authorities, there continue to be a constructive partnership between the maintained and the voluntary sectors in providing additional places?
Not only is my hon. Friend right in emphasising partnership, but the voucher makes that partnership more profitable for all providers. In particular, I urge any local authority or school which feels that by pressuring parents, especially those of young four-year-olds, to take those children to reception classes earlier than would otherwise be in their interests is somehow doing them a favour, to think again and work in partnership as my hon. Friend has said.
Would not the Minister make a distinction between a pre-school place and a pre-school place in a nursery school? What have the Government done since the Prime Minister's announcement about three years ago to increase the number of places and expenditure for the training of qualified nursery teachers? What figures does the Minister have on that?
The first part of the hon. Gentleman's question is about an area that he knows well. There is a range of provision which, separately, the Audit Commission and Her Majesty's chief inspector have praised over the full range, showing that each type of provider can offer good-quality pre-school provision. As for the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, it is of course a responsibility of local education authorities, and has been for some time, to ensure that teachers are given continuous training, whether in the nursery or the post-five sector. One of the other advantages of the voucher is that significant extra sums are being realised to enable more similar training to take place in the voluntary sector than has been possible in the past.
Selective Secondary Schools (Kent)
15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans she has to visit schools in the county of Kent in order to discuss the future of selective secondary provision. [16067]
My right hon. Friend has no immediate plans, but I shall be making one of my regular school visits tomorrow, when I will visit three schools in Kent, including Chatham boys' grammar school.
When my hon. Friend the Minister is visiting schools in Kent, will he take the opportunity to remind them that Kent's selective system is guaranteed only so long as there is a Conservative Government, or a Conservative-controlled county council based at Maidstone? The current Labour-controlled county council would close our grammar schools tomorrow because, in its orthodoxy, it owes more to Joe Stalin than to the cosmetic changes patched on to the Labour party in recent years.
Of all the somersaults on education policy that we have had visited upon us by the Labour party in recent years, none is less credible than its statement that grammar schools are somehow safe in its hands. Throughout the years that I have been a Member of Parliament, and before, leaders of Labour-controlled councils and chairmen of education across the country have assured us that grammar schools will go if and when there is a Labour Government. Labour's current position is almost as if a crocodile came up to you, Madam Speaker, and said that it was now a vegetarian. You might believe that there is a faint theoretical possibility that it is telling the truth, but you would not shake its hand, and you would not turn your back on it.
On that note, we come to the end of Question Time. Thank you.
Business Of The House
3.30 pm
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I know that you, Madam Speaker, are against parliamentary sleight of hand in any form in which it might appear. There is a widespread rumour that, at 9.30 on Friday morning, the Government will slip in what is commonly called the conspiracy Bill, which is a very controversial measure—[Interruption.] Well, it is a matter of freedoms, and of rather essential liberties. Whatever view one takes on the Bill, it is a matter of some consequence that it should be put in—I think, Madam Speaker, that you are taking some advice. You may be able to cast some light on the matter.
I do not deal in rumours. However, if I remember correctly, Friday's business will be not Government business but a private Members' day. Nevertheless, I shall keep my eyes and ears open.
Bill Presented
Dartford-Thurrock Crossing (Amendment)
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay presented a Bill to amend the Dartford-Thurrock Crossing Act 1988 in respect of the tolls levied on vehicles using the crossing: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon 28 February, and to be printed [Bill 119].
National Lottery (Regionalisation)
3.32 pm
I beg to move,
The national lottery is the largest single lottery in the world, attracting 13 million regular players and producing average weekly ticket sales of nearly £70 million. According to the latest figures from the national lottery's web site, since the lottery was launched in November 1994, ticket sales have totalled over £8 billion, and more than £3 billion has been awarded to almost 19,000 successful applicants. The national lottery has already made a substantial impact on Britain's public life. Notwithstanding legitimate concerns about gambling, it clearly has the potential to make a long-lasting contribution to improving the quality of our lives through the substantial sums it raises for good causes. It has virtually doubled public spending on sport, art, heritage and culture. Charities in the voluntary sector have also benefited—although, for well-publicised reasons, the impact on them has been more mixed. It is essential that all that money raised for good causes is redistributed fairly. However, clear evidence shows that our regions are losing, and there is widespread concern that the different distributing bodies are too centralised, are poorly co-ordinated and have little sense of strategic purpose. The Bill is designed to address those failings. I am pleased that it has secured cross-party support, and support from hon. Members from almost all the English regions. Lottery income is the people's money. People in the west midlands feel badly short-changed by some of the decisions of the distributing bodies, particularly the Millennium Commission, the national heritage memorial fund and the Arts Council. Losing to Greenwich for the right to stage the millennium festival still rankles with many in the west midlands, as does losing to Wembley for the new national football stadium. Recently, to add insult to injury, the bid of Birmingham Botanical Gardens and Glasshouses to create a millennium plantatarium has been turned down, and a highly imaginative animal conservation and regeneration project from Dudley zoo development trust has been rejected. The strong feeling in the west midlands is that we have a lottery with a corrupt croupier. That feeling is backed by hard facts. In the recent third round allocation of millennium funding, according to the commission's figures, the west midlands has £14.2 million and Greater London has £88 million-worth of projects proceeding for detailed analysis. In the reserve list, Greater London has £72 million and the west midlands only £1.9 million. The situation with the national heritage memorial fund is similarly unfair. The lottery's figures show that, up to the end of last year, the west midlands had received £1.50 per head—the lowest figure for any region, and a paltry sum compared with London's £21.70 per head. Every region has lost out to the capital, with 45 per cent. of heritage money going to London institutions or projects. The same is true of Arts Council funding. Figures to December 1996 show that the east midlands has received just £3.20 per head and Merseyside £3.70, compared with £46.90 for London. This is not a moan or a whine. It is not about the politics of envy—it is about fairness. Every region contributes to the national lottery, and every region should expect to benefit from it. Last week, the London Evening Standard pontificated:That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide that equitable regard shall be had to the interests and needs of the regions of England in so far as the distribution of monies, decision taking, administration and other matters affecting the National Lottery are concerned.
Excuse me! Far too much money? Dubious projects? I do not want to be churlish, but we in the west midlands are being robbed. We want our fair share of lottery cash, and we are capable of deciding for ourselves what is a good or a bad project. We do not want matters to be decided for us by some bunch of London-based, London-biased, over-privileged, arrogant so-called experts with a myopic metropolitan mentality that does not extend beyond 0171 country. Nor do we need smug, supercilious editorials applauding a system that is so clearly rigged in favour of London. The Bill will focus on four areas. First, I want greater fairness in the distribution of lottery proceeds. I do not think that many people object to the principle of funding projects of genuine national significance separately, but the current regional disparities are too wide. I would favour a system that top-sliced budgets for national projects but then had specific regional allocations for each distributing body, based on a formula related to needs and population, as is the case with the National Lottery Charities Board. The Government issue formal policy and financial directions to the distributing bodies through the Secretary of State under section 26 of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. The directions encourage distributing bodies to"The greatest peril facing the lottery today is the danger that, in the name of 'fairness', far too much of its money is being given to dubious regional projects."
That does not go far enough. Over the past two years, those directions do not seem to have been followed. The Bill would therefore amend the Act to provide for regionalisation of the distribution of lottery proceeds. Secondly, the lottery's decision-making structures need to be reviewed, because they are too centralised. The distributing bodies are not permitted to delegate decision making on applications—some clearly do not even want to. Some boards appoint local assessors as their local eyes and ears and receive advice from their own regional bodies. However, centralised boards cannot hope to have a proper understanding of the wider context within which those seeking funds operate. They are simply not close enough to the ground. The Bill would not just permit delegated decision making; it would require it, by providing that decisions should be taken at a regional level. It would also consider the scope for integrated decision making through regional lottery partnership boards with business and local authority representation and ring-fenced allocations for each worthy cause. Thirdly, while I accept entirely the merits and implications of a bid-driven system, I believe that the current way in which money is allocated is insufficiently strategic. Each distributing body has its own strategy of sorts, but there is little linkage between them, and little obvious connection with the strategies of other organisations. To maximise the impact of lottery money, a strong argument can be made for linking it to the totality of resources available for regeneration in a region, including the single regeneration budget, European funds, private finance, training and enterprise council funds, and local authority resources. The Bill would require the regionalised lottery bodies to take account of area and regional economic development strategies when making decisions on awards, thereby ensuring that money is allocated within a coherent framework. Fourthly, the final matter that the Bill will address is what happens when the Millennium Commission is wound up. There is a compelling case for new regionalised commission structures, specifically focused on funding regional economic development measures and initiatives. They could support a wide range of projects, and the commissions would be required to work closely with the other distributing bodies to avoid duplication. The national lottery has been a major success story in raising money for good causes. The way in which the money has been distributed, however, has created widespread concern. There is a growing feeling that the regions are losing to London and the south-east. If there is no change in the way in which the lottery operates, it runs the risk of losing the confidence of the British public, which is so vital to its future success. Greater fairness in the regional distribution of lottery cash should be a priority, and I therefore seek leave to bring in my Bill."achieve a reasonable spread of expenditure across the regions."
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Ian Pearson, Mr. Richard Alexander, Mr. David Clelland, Mr. Jim Cunningham, Mr. Harold Elletson, Mr. Nick Harvey, Mr. John Heppell, Sir Robert Hicks, Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe, Mr. Matthew Taylor, Mr. Paddy Tipping and Mr. Nicholas Winterton.
National Lottery (Regionalisation)
Mr. Ian Pearson accordingly presented a Bill to provide that equitable regard shall be had to the interests and needs of the regions of England in so far as the distribution of monies, decision taking, administration and other matters affecting the National Lottery are concerned: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28 February, and to be printed [Bill 120].
Points Of Order
3.42 pm
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. No doubt you will be fully aware of the statement by the Minister of State for the Armed Forces about events in the Gulf, how individuals suffering from Gulf war syndrome may have been affected, and how information may well have been withheld from him when he came to the House to make that statement.
As the House's only proper avenue has always been through Ministers who hold responsibility, and as there is a possibility that an individual may have deliberately withheld information from such a Minister, will you guide me and the House as to whether it would be possible for individuals in that Department, if they subsequently were proved to have deliberately withheld information, to be called to the Bar of the House to explain why they deliberately withheld information from the House—which would be an abuse of the House, as our only way of obtaining information is through the Minister? If they have done so, surely they have abused the privileges of the House.To adopt such a procedure, the matter would first have to be accepted by the House, then go to the Privileges Committee and come back before we could take such action.
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. We know that you are ever vigilant, and that there is no time when your ears and eyes are not fully open, but I may not have explained that the Bill to which I referred earlier is technically a private Member's Bill, in the name of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson). It is of such importance, however, that, had it been implemented in the past, Nelson Mandela, for example, would not have been able to come to Britain—to say nothing of such people as Karl Marx and others. In such circumstances, could you possibly offer guidance on what techniques are available for slipping in private Members' Bills at the very last moment, on highly important and controversial subjects, on a Friday morning?
Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I was one of those present the other Friday when, fortunately, myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) forced a vote on the Third Reading of the Jurisdiction (Conspiracy and Incitement) Bill. The supporters of the so-called private Member's Bill, which is a Government Bill that has been taken off the shelf and handed over to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson), were defeated on a technicality because they got only 26 votes. The result of such a defeat is that any private Member's Bill, from wherever it comes, must go to the back of the queue. It was not given a Third Reading.
I would find it astonishing if what is technically a private Member's Bill that had lost its place in the queue suddenly found itself at the head of the queue, to the disadvantage of other private Members' Bills that are due to be debated on Friday. That would not only break many precedents, but would be very shabby practice on the part of a Government who were trying to protect what in practice is their own Bill, even though, in theory, its promoter is one of the Tory Back Benchers. I hope, Madam Speaker, that you will look very closely at this issue, and ensure that the Bill in question takes its proper place in the queue and other Bills remain undisturbed.Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is absolutely right. It is my understanding of the procedures of the House that private Members' Bills have to take a strict order. If the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), has heard by rumour that something is about to happen, would it be appropriate and of great help to you and the House if he said where he heard that rumour? Rumour—we know what it is; you know what it is. Can you help us?
As I said in my answer to the original point of order, I cannot deal in rumour. If hon. Members would only tell me where the rumour came from, I could probably investigate rather more.
The Jurisdiction (Conspiracy and Incitement) Bill to which the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) referred—he did not make it clear in his point of order to which Bill he was referring, and I was therefore not too sure about it—is of course, as he says, a private Member's Bill. I was in the Chair a week last Friday when the debate on it began, and I watched very carefully what happened to the Bill. It is among the remaining orders, it has been debated in the House, all procedures are being correctly followed, and it will be before us on Friday. I assure the House that no precedent is being broken. The Bill is being dealt with normally. If Members want to deal with the Bill as they think fit, they should be here on Friday to do so. I remember distinctly that there were only two hon. Members in the House who were opposed to the Bill when I was in the Chair a couple of Fridays ago.European Communities (Economic Information)
3.47 pm
I beg to move,
The motion seeks parliamentary approval of the Government's assessment of Britain's economic and budgetary position in order to allow treaty obligations to be fulfilled in relation to the excessive deficits procedure and the broad economic guidelines. The assessment is contained in the "Financial Statement and Budget Report"—the Red Book—parts of which are relayed to the European Commission. The "Financial Statement and Budget Report" describes the Government's tax and spending plans and explains how they are related to their economic and political objectives. The front cover of the Red Book states that it forms the basis of submissions to the European Commission for the purposes of multilateral surveillance of economic policies. In sending the information, the Government are continuing to co-operate with the long-standing practice of sharing information on economic matters with our partners in the Community. Most of that information is already in the public domain. Approval today would allow the Government to participate in this year's surveillance exercises in the same way as in previous years. There is no question whatever of information submitted being used to make policy recommendations with any binding effect on the United Kingdom. Surveillance by the Commission is nothing new. Formal surveillance at Community level has been in place for more than 20 years, and we have also signed up to the independent examination of our economic performance by international bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund and G7. Participating in such surveillance exercises has enabled independent international bodies to proclaim the United Kingdom's economic record to a wide audience, helping to promote the Government's economic policies. For example, the Commission's recently published annual economic report noted that unemployment in the United Kingdom is much lower than the European Union average, and that our strong performance can be attributed directly to the Government's deregulatory labour market measures. The Commission also noted that the UK recovery has been of a longer duration than that of the rest of the EU, and that it has been sustainable, with inflationary pressures subdued. The Commission cited the Government's policies as the cause of that favourable outturn, in particular applauding the UK's macro-economic policy framework and supply-side reforms. The Commission noted that the Government's prudent monetary policies are expected to keep inflation within its desired range, and that the Government should reach their target of 2½ per cent. for underlying inflation. I should add that those are all the very words used by the Commission. The House may also note that inflation has been below 4 per cent. for more than four years, the longest time for more than half a century; that public finances are under tight control, allowing tax to be cut in the past two Budgets, with Government borrowing on a clear downward trend; and that interest rates remain at historically low levels. However, the debate is primarily about transmitting information to the European Commission to comply with our treaty obligations, and I hope that the House will support the motion.That this House takes note with approval of the Government's assessment as set out in the Financial Statement and Budget Report 1997–98 for the purposes of section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993.
3.50 pm
What does all this mean, and does it matter, especially if the Government are hostile in any event to a single currency?
Last week, the Foreign Secretary appeared to tell us on the "Today" programme that he was hostile to a single currency. Then we heard from one of our national newspapers that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) had contacted Conservative party central office to ask whether he could call that a significant change of policy, and got official blessing. At about 11 am, the Chancellor said that the Foreign Secretary had made a slip of the tongue, and that there was no change of policy. By lunchtime, the Foreign Secretary had said that it was not a slip of the tongue; therefore, presumably it was a change of policy. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister had issued a statement saying that there had been no change of policy. Nobody seemed to know what the policy was. The Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary were clearly at odds. The Prime Minister tried to settle that adult Punch and Judy show by organising a meeting between the two that evening. I understand that the two combatants met at about 10.30 pm and issued a press release at about 2 am the following morning, saying that the Government were hostile only to a fudged single currency. They may say that, but does anyone seriously believe it? The following day, the former Chancellor, Lord Howe, said on the "Today" programme:The Daily Mail leader simply said, "What a pantomime". It was indeed a bizarre performance. The Government are confused and at times confusing; they are at odds over Europe, and it appears that certain Ministers are positioning themselves not for the general election but for the leadership election that is to follow. Confusion over Europe has been replicated on economic policy. This is, after all, the Government who sent Britain spinning ignominiously out of the exchange rate mechanism, and the Prime Minister is the former Chancellor who recommended that we joined the ERM at an exchange rate that became unsustainable. That is history."Yesterday's spat didn't do any good for the Conservative Party or the country … many people will feel reluctant to give continuing support to that Government."
As the hon. Gentleman has touched on the moment when we left the exchange rate mechanism, will he clarify on the record exactly what his colleagues' position was at that time? Did they want us to stay in the ERM or to leave; to hike interest rates or to lower them? It is important to get that on the record.
As I have just said, that is history. Our view was that, if we were going to enter the ERM, we should do so at a sustainable level, for the right reasons and at the right time. The then Chancellor, who is now the Prime Minister, decided to enter for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time and at the wrong exchange level. He decided to enter because, as everybody knows, he had managed to convince the then Prime Minister, who was on her uppers, to accept entry.
That was the political reasoning behind the economic judgment. The decision was made not in Britain's economic interest, but through concern about the future of the Conservative party. That is how economic policy and European policy have been approached in the past decade.rose—
rose—
I know that many hon. Members want to speak, so I will give way once more to the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd).
Does the hon. Gentleman not recall that the entire leadership of the Labour party at that time, including the late lamented John Smith, passionately believed in membership of the exchange rate mechanism? At the time of the difficulties caused by the rate, the Labour party passionately espoused our continued membership, and argued that interest rates would go up if we left. That time should be remembered in that context. Members of the Labour party are the greatest arguers now for entry into a form of ERM that would be set in concrete—monetary union.
The hon. Gentleman should remember that the leadership of his party said that sustaining membership of the ERM at the rate in question was the basis of its whole economic strategy, and it failed. The economic strategy on which the Tories went to the country in 1992 failed a few months later. It failed in many ways. Yesterday, the Library published an interesting and amusing snapshot analysis that showed that Britain would not hit the criteria for monetary union. It suggested that only Luxembourg and Ireland are on course for a single currency. Some single currency.
The Government have made great claims for their economic performance in their attempts to meet the Maastricht criteria. The reality is different. On inflation, last year we were 11th out of 15 in Europe: we were in the bottom half, and below the European average. On gross domestic product per person, we were ninth in Europe. On growth, between 1979 and 1995, we were 13th in Europe. On industrial production, in the same period, we were 12th out of 14 countries. On investment, we were at the bottom. Indeed, for the first 14 years of Tory government, we were at the bottom of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's league of 25 countries. On interest rates, we were 11th. On unemployment, we were eighth out of 11. The Prime Minister promised to make Britain the enterprise centre of Europe. Like his promises on tax, that promise has been broken. A recent report by economists Ray Barrell and Nigel Pain shows that foreign investment in France, between 1991 and 1995—the period that the Government like to look at—was $19 billion, or £12 billion, compared with Britain's $17 billion. At the same time, British firms invested $25.4 billion in Europe and abroad, making Britain a net outward investor. France, with the social chapter and an increased minimum wage, was more attractive than Tory Britain to many foreign investors. The divisions in the Conservative party mean that it is incapable of advancing Britain's national economic interest. The Tories have failed on the economy, and have failed to get the best deal in Europe. The civil war in the Tory party means that it has put at risk the 3.5 million jobs and the huge investment that depend on our membership of Europe. The re-election of the Conservatives would bring an influx of more Euro-sceptic Members to continue the civil war over Europe, and the victim would be British interests in Europe. Some Tories have gone dangerously far. For many of today's Euro-sceptics, being pro-British seems to mean being anti-European. They seem to think that, if someone is pro-European, he is un-British. Their rhetoric continually assails EU institutions as some sort of doomed failure. How can we make Britain successful in Europe when the Conservative Government continually undermine our involvement? Euro-sceptics in the Conservative party seem to be of two sorts: those who plain do not like Europeans and want Britain to be detached and isolated; and those who regard the European Union as a free trade area, want no further integration, and want Britain to move from being a close participant to being a loose associate. Both aspirations are unrealistic. In the modern world, nations are more interdependent than independent. Trade between nations is increasing at double the rate of growth among nations. The idea that Europe's future lies in a loose free trade area was the illusion of the 1950s. We had to admit that it did not work, and we traded in membership of the European Free Trade Association for membership of the Common Market.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I shall not, because many hon. Members wish to speak. I have already given way twice. It would be better if hon. Members sought to catch the Chair's eye in due course.
We traded in EFTA membership for the Common Market because EFTA alone was not working. Today, the European single market goes beyond a free trade area. It includes policies for social cohesion that make it acceptable. It has a co-ordinated external policy that gives us clout in world trade negotiations. It gives us a common competition policy and standards of safety that benefit working people. Moving from full participant to loose associate would deter inward investment, prejudice our position in financial services and harm the City of London. Many in the Conservative party are seeking to repeat Labour's mistakes of 1983. Then it was suggested by the Confederation of British Industry that Labour's policy of disengagement would put 2.5 million jobs at risk. That was when 44 per cent. of our exports went to our European neighbours. Our trade and jobs links to the EU have increased: more than half our trade and 3.5 million jobs would be put at risk by the policy of a Euro-sceptic Conservative Government. I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer shares our view that the Euro-sceptics in the Conservative party are job destroyers, who would put at risk British business relationships with Europe. Continued EU membership is essential for open access to Europe's markets. Leaving would horrify our business community and create new obstacles to European markets. It would cause job losses and shrinkage of inward investment. Being pro-British does not require us to be anti-European, but it can require us to lead in Europe for Britain. The prosperity of Britain depends on the skill of its Government in making a success of our membership. We export more goods to Germany than to the United States or Japan; more to Holland than to all the new economies of the far east. Britain's membership of the largest, most prosperous market in the world gives us powerful leverage in trade negotiations with the rest of the world that we would not possess in isolation. We can get more out of the European Union by co-operation than by confrontation. We cannot be a success in Europe if we reduce Britain to the margin of the debate and become hecklers from the sidelines. That is why the bosses of Unilever and Toyota are so concerned about the lurch to anti-Europeanism in the Tory party. Niall FitzGerald of Unilever said that continuing the current negative approach to Europe would lead toIn the modern high-tech, fast-moving global economy, the Conservative world is still rooted, in many ways, in the model of independent nations that belongs to the last century rather than the next. In their hearts, many Conservatives know that; certainly the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows it. I thought that the Prime Minister knew it. Before the Euro-sceptics put an armlock on him, he began this Parliament by saying that it was wrong for Britain to stand on the outskirts of Europe as an island tossing bricks into it. Today, he is finishing the Parliament trying to prove that he is better at tossing bricks than the hon. Members for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) or for Stafford (Mr. Cash). Our relations with our European neighbours are in crisis because there is a crisis of leadership in the British Government. The Prime Minister and Cabinet repeatedly give priority to pandering to the prejudices of their party rather than to serving the interests of British business or the British people. That is why both the people and business are realising that they would rather trust the judgment of a Labour Government, based on a hard-headed assessment of economic reality, than risk being taken by the Conservatives down a path dominated by hysteria and prejudice. So concerned are they that they see the internal civil war in the Conservative party becoming much worse if the Government are re-elected to a fifth term. Increasingly, and despite the Chancellor, the Tory party is the anti-European party. If anyone had said in 1972 of the Conservative party which took us into Europe that, in 1996, senior Tories would be seriously contemplating leaving Europe, few would have believed it. Labour's view is clear. We cannot afford to hover half in and half out, heckling from the sidelines and sending out search parties to find issues on which to attack Europe, purely for domestic propaganda; failing to take participation seriously and leaving empty chairs at negotiations on social legislation."reconsideration of certain investment decisions. If the UK was gently floating off into the Atlantic, we'd have to reconsider things."
Shall we just take our orders from Brussels?
I tell the hon. Gentleman that Labour opposes a unitary, federalist or centralised European state—a sort of united states of Europe. We seek co-operation between member states, based on a common enterprise. We believe that subsidiarity can decentralise power. We do not believe that the European Union presents any threat to our culture, our institutions, our language or our character.
Labour believes that the Maastricht treaty should remain a treaty between independent nations that pools sovereignty by agreement, rather than represent the consolidation of some sort of European super-state. We want an inclusive union. We prefer greater subsidiarity to the large-scale extension of the competence of any of the European Union institutions.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I have said that I will not give way, for the reasons that I have stated.
There is no danger of a European super-state—the different cultures and national histories in Europe are too strong. I agree with the Prime Minister's assertion that to see the single currency as a step towards federalism is "unrealistic". The dire warnings of some Euro-sceptics are often hyperbole bordering on the absurd. There is and ought to be a debate about the nature of Europe, whether there should be a single currency and the relationship between the nation states and the Union; but the terms of that debate as reported in our national media have so far produced more heat than light. The fact is that Labour's position on the single currency is almost entirely the same as that of the Chancellor—I cannot say that it coincides with the Cabinet's view, because members of the Cabinet seem to have several different versions of the policy. Both the Chancellor and the Labour party are pro-European, but not federalist. We are not opposed in principle to a single currency, but we understand the practical difficulties. The Chancellor and Labour disagree on the social chapter, but we are not far apart on monetary union.What about Ted Heath?
The hon. Gentleman asks from a sedentary position about the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath). I was delighted to hear—
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Let me respond to the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow); then I shall give way.
I was delighted to hear the comments of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup at the weekend that he, as the last but one Conservative Prime Minister, endorses Labour's views on the social chapter, devolution and the minimum wage. Both the Chancellor and Labour want to keep this country's options open on a single currency.rose—
I wonder whether the Minister can say that he is not a Euro-sceptic, and that he agrees with his Chancellor on the Government's policy. I suspect that he will not.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, 16 minutes into his opening remarks in a one-and-a-half-hour debate. He said earlier that the Government's position on economic and monetary union was confused and confusing, and he has just stated the Labour party's policy. In the debate on this subject almost exactly a year ago, he said:
He also said:"Unlike the Government, Labour has a clear principle to guide it".
Does he still stand by that statement?"The position of the Labour party on European economic and monetary union is quite clear. We approve the principle of economic and monetary union".
The Chancellor has repeatedly said—
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Will the Minister sit down and let me answer his question?
The Chancellor has repeatedly said that he does not oppose the single currency in principle, and I say that we have made our position clear all along. The Labour party and I take the view that we are not opposed in principle to a single currency. I understand that that is the view of the Government, and it is the view of the Labour party.I will read the words again carefully, so that the hon. Gentleman can give a straightforward answer about whether it is still the Labour party's policy and his own view. He said:
Does the hon. Gentleman stand behind those words? Is that still Labour's policy?"The position of the Labour party on European economic and monetary union is quite clear. We approve the principle of economic and monetary union".—[Official Report, 12 February 1996; Vol. 271, c. 772.]
Is it not also Government policy? Is it not the Government's policy to say that they are not opposed to a single currency in principle? The Labour party is saying clearly that we are not opposed to a single currency in principle. There are many advantages to a single currency, such as reducing transactional costs, stability in the currency in the long term, and many others.
We must also be aware of the practical difficulties. The Labour party has set out quite clearly the fact that there are some practical difficulties that we have to bear in mind. Labour has made it clear that any decision will not only involve applying the Maastricht criteria: does the Minister agree that there should also be British criteria? Let me set out the criteria clearly. What is to be the likely impact on investment by British firms in Britain and Europe and on inward investment into Britain? What would be the effect on our financial services? Are the various European countries at different stages of the economic cycle, and what impact would that have on our economy? Is there sufficient flexibility to respond to any problem that may arise? What would be the impact upon employment? The jobs issue is crucial for Labour; is it crucial for the Government? Unfortunately, so far the European Union has talked about employment but has not done enough. Europe cannot be well placed to be a successful union on the backs of 17 million unemployed. Our vision is not of a Europe of bureaucrats or politicians, nor just of a Europe for business—although we want business to succeed and prosper. Our vision of Europe is of a community for ordinary people. That means jobs for people. We want workers to have rights at work, and that is why we will sign the social chapter and join our European partners in having a minimum wage. That is why we have made it clear how we will determine what is in Britain's national economic interest. We will take a hard-headed look at the economic practicalities of the single currency and how it will affect the ordinary people of Britain.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I have said repeatedly that I am trying to make progress. The Minister has already suggested that I am taking too long.
rose—
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but this is the last time. I am about to finish.
I have been listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman, and, although I do not disagree with the general pro-European sentiments being expressed, I am less than enamoured with the manner in which they are expressed. The hon. Gentleman set out the British criteria under a putative Labour Government. Is it the Labour party's negotiating stance for the completion of the intergovernmental conference that those criteria should be part and parcel of any subsequent decision that is taken?
The single currency issues will be determined apart from the IGC.
rose—
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would clarify his question, because I do not understand it.
Perhaps I am not making it clear. Although the single currency issue is not folded into the IGC discussions, is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Labour party's stance would be that there could be no agreement at the IGC without those criteria being met subsequently?
I think that the hon. Gentleman is still, to some extent, confusing the single currency issues with the IGC.
We are setting out criteria by which we will judge whether to enter a single currency, and, if so, at what time. That is the purpose of setting out the criteria. I still do not quite follow the hon. Gentleman's question, but perhaps he will talk to me afterwards, when I can explain the difference between the IGC and the single currency. No sensible Chancellor could close down the options, especially in an area which has over half our trade and 3.5 million jobs dependent upon it. Getting it right is more important than getting it quickly. That is why there is a triple lock on any decision. Not only the British opt-out, but the vote of the British Parliament and the referendum of the British people make up the triple lock. The decisions will be made by Labour in Britain's interests, to meet British needs, after a cool and hard-headed assessment of our national economic interests. Within three months, the people of this country will decide on the Government to take Britain into the 21st century. The choice will determine the shape of Britain's relations with our European neighbours for a generation. The choice is whether Britain will go forward with Labour to be a leading force in shaping the future of Europe, or turn in on itself with the Conservatives to become a country at the margins, for ever left behind.4.14 pm
We have just heard the most extraordinary speech from the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien). Not only is he apparently incapable of giving a straight answer to any question, but he could not even tell the House whether he stood by his own words in the Chamber a year ago.
The British people cannot possibly be tempted to put the government of this country in the hands of politicians who conduct themselves in that way. I have never heard a less inviting prospectus for any candidate for the government of Britain than the hon. Gentleman's speech. Such indecisiveness and mealy-mouthed ambiguity are the hallmark of so many speeches that we hear from the Labour Front Bench. It comes a bit rich from Labour Front Benchers to deliver homilies in favour of the European Union and the European single market, when we know perfectly well that had the British people elected Labour to power in the 1980s—in their wisdom, the British people did not do so—we would not have been part of the European Union. There never would have been a single market. Even the present Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), fought the 1983 election on a programme of getting out of the European Community, as it then was. I must not use unparliamentary language, but there must be real doubts in the minds of the British people about the sincerity of a great many statements made by Labour Front Benchers. It is clear that the Labour party's new-found enthusiasm for the European Union and the single market is just part of the parcel—of a purely cynical attempt to gain power at any expense, and to change Labour's marketing strategy to embrace the whole range of Conservative policies, because those policies have so obviously worked and carry the confidence of the country. The only way in which the Labour party can hope to form a Government again is by trying to persuade the electorate that it has adopted our policies and is capable of implementing them. That is a thoroughly implausible proposition, and the hon. Gentleman's speech today gives little confidence that the Labour party would be capable of pursuing any consistent line of policy on any subject, if ever it came to power. The decisions of Conservative Governments at the relevant time, to enter the European Community, as it then was, in the 1970s, to establish the Single European Act, which set the framework for the single market in the 1980s, and to sign up to the Maastricht treaty in the 1990s, have been magnificently vindicated by events. Britain has gained enormously from the single market. I have not yet seen any trade figures for the whole of 1996, but the figures for 1995 showed that our exports to the rest of the single market increased by 18 per cent. In the first year of the single market's full operation in 1993–94, our exports had risen by 11 per cent.—vastly more than our trade as a whole. When I go round businesses in my constituency in Lincolnshire, as I do almost every Friday, I see how many small and medium-size businesses, especially in manufacturing, food processing and food wholesaling, are for the first time selling across the water, particularly in the Benelux countries and often in France and Germany. If Britain has had a fine economic record over the past several years, the single market has played a major part. The single currency is a highly emotive issue. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to debate the subject rationally either in the House or elsewhere. I regret that, as it will be necessary for the British people to take a careful, cool and rational decision in a referendum—which is what we have promised them—on this important matter. A single currency clearly has considerable benefits for trade, business, the development of a single market and travellers. Those facts are not in dispute. However, the essence of the whole monetary union programme is that we would give up the option of devaluing in the future and commit ourselves indefinitely not to run fiscal deficits above the level of excess deficits as defined in the treaty—it may be 3 per cent. or perhaps 2 per cent. under a stability pact. I understand that some people do not want to give up those freedoms. Others believe that it would be splendid to resist those temptations—it would be rather like an addict giving up heroin, which would be locked away permanently. We shall have that argument in the next Parliament, I hope in a cool and a detached manner. The British electorate will have to evaluate the considerable economic stakes very carefully when the time comes. It will be important to listen to the voice of business: to those who are responsible for their companies' fortunes and who take decisions about investment patterns that will determine our prosperity and employment opportunities.In dealing with these matters in a calm and rational manner, the hon. Gentleman achieves what most hon. Members can only attempt to do. Does he agree that economic and monetary union involves two aspects: first, the principle itself; and, secondly, the convergence criteria, which he has touched upon—the 3 per cent. and the 60 per cent.? We heard yesterday about the proposed privatisation of London Underground. The Secretary of State claimed that public investment would "score", but that private investment would not. The hon. Gentleman is knowledgeable in such matters. Will he explain why Treasury money that might be invested in London Underground would count against the 3 per cent. and the 60 per cent. convergence criteria limits, but private borrowing would not? If that is so, how would precisely the same work on the same trains in the same tunnels in the same city prevent our joining EMU on the one hand, but favour our joining on the other? If my description is correct, is that rational?
If I may return the compliment, the hon. Gentleman has always played a particularly distinguished role in discussions on this subject in the House. I always enjoy debating the matter with him. I have never known him to turn up to a Committee without first doing his homework—and one cannot say that with confidence about many hon. Members. If it is possible to say that I shall regret the departure of a Labour Member of Parliament, I shall regret the fact that the hon. Gentleman will not be participating in future debates on this subject.
I refer to public and private investment—and I think that my answer will not surprise the hon. Gentleman. There is all the difference in the world between investment undertaken in the public sector and that undertaken in the private sector. Public sector investment is not necessarily undertaken according to commercial and economic criteria. The resources used for investment in the public sector are drawn compulsorily from the public through taxation—no one has any choice in the matter. In the private sector, if one wants to invest, one must persuade one's shareholders, lenders or other stakeholders to provide the money. There is a natural discipline that is absent from the public sector. It follows that it is potentially dangerous to allow Governments to spend large amounts and to call it investment expenditure. If we allow the private sector to undertake commercial investments of the kind that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, in London transport or in any other field, we may be certain that those investments will be justified according to economic criteria. If they are not, the financial markets will not make the money available. There is a real conceptual distinction and a sensible discipline that is reflected in the way in which we have always taken public spending—whether as investment or consumption—into account in the public sector borrowing requirement. I believe that Eurostat will do the same for the purposes of calculating public expenditure under the convergence criteria. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) referred to my reference to the fiscal deficit rule as merely part of the convergence criteria. It is, of course, one of the essential convergence criteria, but the obligation permanently to maintain fiscal discipline is at the very essence of monetary union. It is necessary to underwrite the stability of monetary union. It is extremely important. We shall argue on future occasions whether it represents a net gain or a net loss to economies to give up that particular freedom.Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No. I know that the hon. Gentleman would like to catch your eye, Madam Speaker, later in the debate to pursue these important matters.
Before I leave monetary union, it is important to emphasise that although it implies constraints on Governments' borrowings, absolutely no constraint is implied at all on what Governments can spend or tax. By definition, as the deficit is limited, if Governments wish to spend, they will have to raise the current revenue to finance that spending. To some of us, that is a great gain not only for the economy, economic stability and sound finance, but for democratic accountability, because Governments will not be able to return to the habits of the 1970s, when the Labour Government made entirely irresponsible spending promises to the electorate, and delivered them not merely by increasing taxation—heaven knows they did that, and by more than enough—but by borrowing and running the public sector borrowing requirement up to more than 12 per cent. of gross domestic product. That was a scandalous level. We now hear self-righteous speeches from both sides of the House, denouncing the Italians for running an irresponsible public deficit that is half the level that the Labour party had in the 1970s. The purpose of today's debate is to approve the Government's sending to the European Commission the analysis of the British economy contained in the Red Book. It is clearly a matter on which the hon. Member for North Warwickshire was not going to touch, because the Red Book presents the most formidably successful story of any economy in living memory in western Europe. We have had five years of constant growth. Unemployment has fallen by more than a million in the course of three years. I challenge Opposition Members to tell me of another western European country that has been able to reduce unemployment by that amount in that period. We have been able to reduce unemployment without running into inflationary or balance of payments constraints, which always happened when a Labour Government were in power, because as soon as demand increased steadily for a year or two, the British economy could not supply the goods and services demanded, so we sucked in imports. There has been a genuine supply-side revolution in this country, and that is testified to by the extraordinary way in which the balance of payments has not gone into significant deficit, despite five years of continuous growth.rose—
I shall give way briefly to the hon. Gentleman, because I referred to him.
The hon. Gentleman is indulging in a pantheon of success for the Conservative Government, but does he accept that the level of unemployment is almost double what it was when the Conservatives came into office in 1979?
The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the structural level of unemployment throughout western Europe has increased substantially over the past 20 years. I hope that we shall have the support of the Labour party in taking the measures that are likely to reduce the structural level of unemployment in this country, particularly reform of the benefits system. So far, all that we have had from the Labour party is a lot of promises that would make the position far worse and increase structural unemployment in this country, particularly by introducing the minimum wage. I cannot think of a more disastrous and ill-conceived policy, either from the humane or from the economic point of view.
I commend the report to our partners in the European Union. They will find it extremely interesting reading, and it will be one more piece of evidence likely to persuade them that the British model under Conservative Governments delivers employment, delivers prosperity, and delivers investor confidence in modern conditions better than any others currently on offer.4.29 pm
It was interesting to hear a series of soundbites about Europe from the Opposition, rather than specific answers to specific questions. We must put the Labour party right on its view that Britain is alone in having doubts about the way in which Europe is going on economic affairs. All the evidence shows that throughout the continent there is a sudden awakening of concern and alarm about what the European Union is doing to people.
I can do no better than to quote from one of the splendid papers that I am sure Labour Members read, called The Guardian, in which it was reported today that 77 per cent. of the people of Germany are now opposed to economic and monetary union. That is not 10 per cent., 20 per cent. or merely a handful: the great majority of the people of Germany do not want it. I was also interested to read in that article that a gentleman called Gerhard Schroder, who is an important person—he is a state premier—is planning to challenge Mr. Kohl for the chancellorship next year on a Euro-sceptic platform. In today's Der Spiegel, which is an important magazine, he said:The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) shakes his head. He can have this article: that is what the bloke said, and that is the truth."You have to be able to stop a train which is running in the wrong direction."
I do not want to enter into a discussion about Mr. Schröder's politics, but he is a nationalist. His speeches in Germany are profoundly nationalistic, and he alarms many people, although he is in our sister party.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, in the early 1980s, every opinion poll showed that three out of four British people wanted to withdraw altogether from the European Community, as it then was? That was official Labour party policy in 1983. Does the hon. Gentleman recall which party won the election in 1983, when the British people, according to opinion polls, were wholly opposed to the European Community?That is the most depressing thing I have heard in a long time, and I have been in the House for 30 years. The hon. Gentleman is saying that we should go along with what people seem to be thinking so as to win elections. It is scandalous if the hon. Gentleman has come to Parliament only to support what he thinks people are saying today. I am not making a personal attack on him: I just hope that he will wake up, think about telling the truth and give guidance on what is right.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
No, get lost. I am trying to make a brief speech on important issues.
We must wake up to the fact that throughout the continent of Europe, people are realising that something nasty is happening to them. The hon. Member for Rotherham may laugh, but it is not funny for the 5 million people on the continent of Europe outside the United Kingdom who have lost their jobs in the past five years.My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) referred to our trade success. What about the facts? The plain fact is that since we joined the EC, we have had a deficit of £100,000 million, which is a lot of money. I wish that, instead of making European slogans, people would wake up to what is happening.
I have great respect for the hon. Member for Rotherham, but I wish that people would listen to what the bunch of people who come along to these debates, in which no one is interested, have been saying for some time. We may not be terribly clever, but a small group of us—almost all of us are here now—voted against the exchange rate mechanism, because we believed that it was a recipe for mass borrowing and unemployment. People said that we were nuts and silly. We all know what happened: our pathetic Ministers pleaded that they were terribly sorry, that they could not borrow any more money or add to unemployment, and had to chuck the ERM.
We should realise what is happening in France. It is a lovely country, but more unemployment is being created every day because of the absurd nonsense of an artificial exchange rate. Surely Conservatives, of all people, accept that if we pretend that something is worth what it is not, we create distortions. As we see from the Red Book, the greatest problem of all is the distortion created by the agriculture policy, which does not allow food to find its normal price. Clever people in their blue ties, probably supported by public opinion polls, say, "Let us decide what the price of beef and sugar will be." All that we do is spend more and more each year on destroying food and forcing up prices for low-income households who have suffered enormously from the effects of the common agricultural policy.
When I hear representatives of the Labour party talking about "the Europe of the people", I ask them, in all sincerity—as people whose party used to justify democracy—what the blazes people in Europe can do if they think that the CAP is a foul protection racket that is costing enormous sums in waste and destruction, which gives them no entitlement and no rights. Destroying democracy is particularly bad for this country.
Let me make two brief points. The Minister said, "We must tell them what they are doing." I read through the articles in these wretched treaties: that is probably why I do not sleep well at night. The trouble with European treaties is that they can always be stretched a great deal further. According to article 103(4) of the Maastricht treaty, the European Union is not just interested in what
we are doing, and how brilliant the Government's economics are; it wants to find out whether our economic policies are inconsistent with the broad guidelines, and may jeopardise the proper functioning of economic and monetary union.
What on earth does that mean? Does it mean that the Government have an obligation—as I believe they have, under the treaty—not only to run the economy in accordance with the principles that have been laid down, although that means deliberately creating unemployment, but to implement policies that will not in any way frustrate the operation of economic and monetary union? To some extent, our policies are doing that. Unemployment in all the other European countries is rising, while ours is falling, and our sound pound is probably having a frustrating effect. That is not helping those countries at all.
It is clear that, under another funny little clause—paragraph 7 of article 104c—Her Majesty's Government do not tell the House of Commons what the Europeans say about the information that we have sent to them. I think that that is the least that the House of Commons is entitled to: surely, when we send our annual information bulletin to Europe, we should be told what the Europeans say in reply to the Government. If, for example, they say to the Government, "We think that you are spending too much on this or that, or borrowing too much," or, "We think that your promises will lead to all kinds of problems," should not the House of Commons be told? I hope that the Government will give an assurance that, notwithstanding paragraph 7 of article 104c, they will endeavour to report back to Parliament any recommendations made by the European Council on the management of the United Kingdom economy. If the Minister can say yes to that, I shall be very grateful.
Will the Government also give an undertaking that Her Majesty's Government will seek to initiate a review within the European Union, of the merits of seeking economic advice from nations that have created an economic nightmare and massive unemployment in their domestic economies?
I have quite a lot to do with Sweden. Being a Tory, I have a massive number of important business interests, one of which is a directorship of a wonderful company called Ansvar Insurance. Ansvar Insurance insures total abstainers from alcohol, a cause that I have always promoted because I signed the pledge in Glasgow when I was six—and, like all Conservatives, I have kept my promise ever since. We do not pay the directors a great deal of money, but we give a great deal of support to the temperance movement.
I am astonished at what has happened in Sweden. The people there were told by the clever people—the equivalent of our silly Confederation of British Industry—"Let's vote yes in the referendum to safeguard employment and prosperity." Of course, the poor old Swedes voted yes, by 51 to 49 or thereabouts. I just wish that the EU enthusiasts would visit Sweden today. The situation there is tragic: everything is going wrong. Taxes are rising, public spending is being cut, and things have gone from bad to worse since the Swedes listened to the clever people and voted yes. Their friends from Norway go over to laugh at them, and to say, "You were daft." I am well acquainted with public opinion in Sweden, and
I know that the massive majority believe that getting involved with the European Union is the worst thing that they have ever done.
The final point that I hope the Minister will bear in mind is that the people who loathe and despise the European Union are in no sense anti-European. Basically, the Euro-sceptics are probably more pro-European than some of the people who shout for Brussels. Basically, we like Europe. We like the comforts of Europe and we deplore what the Europeans are doing to themselves. I just hope that people in all the parties will wake up to what is actually happening in Europe today. There is the absolute tragedy in Germany, where the Germans have created a massive nonsense of unemployment because of a single currency there. They never seemed to consider what would happen. They said to the poor people in East Germany, who of course had lots of problems, "We shall give you the special privilege of making the deutschmark equal to the currency of East Germany." It did not help East Germany. It simply created mass unemployment. It was nonsense and it was silly.
There are also tragedies in France, Italy, Spain, where things are particularly bad, and Belgium, probably the worst of all. I just wish that people would wake up to what is happening, stop trying to convince themselves of silly slogans and realise that what is happening in the European Union is not only bad for Europe and for its people, but destroying democracy and jobs. Some time, people must wake up.
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One sometimes goes to public meetings and there is a discussion afterwards. Someone gets up and says, "Mr. Chairman, I did not intend to contribute to this meeting before I came into the hall." I had not intended to take part in the debate until we heard a couple of speeches, particularly that of the hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies). Unusually, not many Labour Members wish to contribute. I took his invitation to add a few words. I thank him for his kind words. Although I disagree with him profoundly on politics, dependent on his successor, any non-return of him to the House would be a loss of someone who has, in a sphere other than finance, brought distinction to a particular Select Committee. I shall leave it at that.
I wish to take up the fundamental points on which the hon. Gentleman and I had a brief exchange. The reason why I did not intend to participate was that I intended to listen to a Select Committee that is discussing investment in London Transport, but that is a good illustration of the fundamental issues that we are discussing—economic and monetary union and the criteria with which, to keep their option open, the Government must comply. I challenged the hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding to make a distinction on the source of borrowing for much needed replacements of tunnels, wiring or signalling—the capital investment that everyone in the House, whatever their party, wherever they sit, whatever they think of the Common Market, recognises is badly needed for the people of London, as no doubt it is required in Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen or anywhere else. Therefore, we are talking about the extent to which, if at all, the criteria that we are discussing—my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) mentioned them and the progress towards the convergence criteria—affect fundamental and democratic choices, in this case, of the people of London or of the people of Great Britain, in respect of other forms of public investment. The hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding did not contest my point that such investment would be virtually identical, wherever the money came from—whether from the Treasury, which would then borrow on the markets by way of gilts or whatever, or from a private firm buying capital or indeed receiving money indirectly from the Treasury, which the Government proposed yesterday. It would be identical investment in identical infrastructure for broadly the same purpose, that is, the transport of people by underground railway in London. My understanding is—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but the hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding did not, so I suspect that I am right—that, if those millions of pounds were added to public expenditure, they would count against the 3 per cent. gross domestic product limit, which is part of the convergence criteria, as expenditure would be to the 60 per cent. GDP limit in relation to total Government borrowing. Those details are in the Red Book. Chapter 5 of the Red Book, headed "Public Spending", makes it clear that public expenditure is being enhanced by the private finance initiative. Paragraph 5.17 contains an interesting phrase:the next bit is important—"Public services benefit not just from direct public sector investment but also from capital spending by the private sector under the Private Finance Initiative … Table 5.4 shows total capital spending sponsored by the public sector"—
The paragraph refers to"including the increasingly significant contribution through the PFI."
However, table 5.4 makes it clear that the PFI will play an important part in future. In the estimated outturn for 1996–97, the total public sector capital expenditure is £19.7 billion and the PFI is £1.1 billion. Those figures change to £17.7 billion—that is a drop, presumably at constant prices—in 1999–2000 and £4.3 billion respectively. Perhaps in his winding-up speech the Minister will confirm those figures. While total public sector capital expenditure will count towards the criteria ceilings, the additional amount via the PFI, which will be substantial if the Government are returned to office and continue with their programmes—and another Government might be forced into them—will not. Effectively, it is all investment in public sector areas. The lack of a fundamental distinction between those two figures is clear in paragraph 5.18 of the Red Book, which states:"capital spending sponsored by the public sector".
That means that if a public body has a high proportion of contractors, the capital for those contractors will come from the private sector. Although it may be devoted entirely to public works, it will not qualify for the expenditure criteria. My supposition goes further, because the Red Book states:"even these figures can give a misleading picture of the level of investment … When the Government buys services from the private sector, investment undertaken by the companies that provide the services is not counted as public sector investment; very often, however, it involves the formation of assets which are deployed to meet public needs."
My remarks are fundamental to our debates, and relate especially to hon. Members who may prefer public and private expenditure in any combination. Is it not true that the nature of the criteria for qualifying for economic and monetary union, about which one can argue—it is either a necessity or the limit—is distinct from the principle? I maintain that these are two different but complementary issues. Will they not affect the degree of public and private investment and control, and the boundary of which the Red Book speaks? However, they do not alter, as in the case of London Underground, the sums that are involved, or—given that they are roughly equivalent—the degree to which they affect the country's economy. Why are the criteria there? I can only conclude, as the hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding made fairly clear, that those who set the criteria and who sustain and believe in them, understand that they press one way or the other on that boundary between public and private capital. They therefore control the mixture and believe that, inherently, private capital is more efficient and must be maximised, while public investment must be minimised. That is his doctrinaire thesis—although a Marxist would have it the other way round. The Labour party and many Opposition Members have believed in a mixed economy, and in the most beneficial mixture of both sources of capital. It looks as if the European Monetary Institute's criteria—regardless of whether one is in favour of them—are pressing unfairly in one direction, thus constraining the democratic right of the electorate to choose the balance that they wish."The boundary of the sector has shifted. The privatisation programme has brought significant qualitative and quantitative benefits from capital investment in industries which used to be predominantly in the public sector."
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I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the significant progress that he is making in meeting the Maastricht convergence criteria. The inflation level set in the Red Book certainly meets the criteria as defined in the Maastricht treaty, our debt to GDP ratio is one of the most satisfactory in Europe and the projections for our budget deficit as a percentage of GDP are well within the 3 per cent. level, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) mentioned earlier in the debate.
My right hon. and learned Friend's progress in achieving the convergence criteria leads me to the recent remarks of Jacques Santer, the European Union President. He said:In one sense, he is absolutely right; in another, he is absolutely wrong. The United Kingdom is certainly achieving some of the Maastricht convergence criteria, such as that on inflation, and it is making considerable progress towards meeting the debt to GDP criteria. Clearly, the UK will also achieve the overall debt to GDP ratio. In another sense, however, we are in no way convergent with many of the economies of Europe. I draw particular attention to the fourth criterion, on the currency, under article 109j of the Maastricht treaty. I recommend that hon. Members visit the Library, obtain a copy of the February 1997 inflation report and examine chart 213, which shows the movement of sterling against the deutschmark over the past 14 months. In that period, sterling has appreciated by 22.5 per cent. against the deutschmark. The chart also shows sterling's appreciation, at 4 per cent., against the dollar. I urge hon. Members who support the idea of a single currency and those who are agnostic—those who do not know whether it would be a good thing and cannot make up their minds on the matter—to examine the chart and to ask themselves two questions. First, what would have happened to the German and UK economies if there had been no exchange rate and they had had the same currencies? What adjustments would have to be made in those economies if there was no exchange rate flexibility? Such an exchange rate movement reflects a realignment of the exchange rate, which reveals underlying pressures within the individual economies."We have never had such convergent policies in the economic fundamentals, inflation rates, interest rates and so on."
Rubbish.
If we did not have an exchange rate, there would be considerable regional booms and slumps and there would have to be significant transfer payments. The chart clearly shows that the German and UK economic cycles are not synchronised, and that the UK economic cycle is much closer to that of the US.
I am afraid that the currency fluctuations to which my hon. Friend referred prove a point opposite to his argument. Sterling fell out of the exchange rate mechanism at a parity of DM2.95. The rate fell at one time to DM2.17 and is now back to, I think, DM2.72—it is certainly over DM2.7. Those fluctuations do not make sense. They do not correspond to fundamentals. We are back almost to where we started, but in the meantime, enormous and gratuitous uncertainty about costs has been caused to traders and to business.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He has added to my arguments. He has shown that we need considerable exchange rate flexibility. The rate has floated, varying freely in accordance with the market since we left the ERM. The United Kingdom economy has benefited substantially from that. I am afraid that my hon. Friend has strengthened my case.
We have heard that there should not be fudging of the criteria. I urge my hon. Friends to think carefully about that. Many of them say that joining the single currency should be our objective; but when exchange rate fluctuations are pointed out, they say that they do not want to be judged by the fourth criterion. They want to put the exchange rate stability criterion aside. That is a considerable fudge. We should be saying that we need exchange rate flexibility, which is good for our economy. That is one reason why we should not envisage joining a single currency. The Red Book and the inflation report give a good idea of some of the convergence criteria that we are achieving, but they also show that in no way is the UK economy so convergent with the German economy that they should have the same currency. There are considerable structural differences between the two economies. Can anyone argue that this would be a good time for the UK and Germany to have the same currency when Germany clearly has to deal with substantial structural problems in its economy? The social costs in the German economy are high. Unemployment has recently gone up by 500,000. There are 4.7 million unemployed in Germany, with another 2 million on make-work schemes, and there are very few real jobs in east Germany. It would be economic nonsense for Britain and Germany to have the same currency at the moment. Those are the economic arguments. However, too much concentration on the convergence criteria obscures what economic and monetary union is all about. Historically, states have adopted single currencies for political reasons, because of a perceived common interest in those states that justified having one Government and one currency. Looking at the convergence criteria obstructs that view. Having a single currency is not just another step in the process of achieving greater economic co-operation, as the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) seems to think; it is a step that inevitably leads to a single state and a single Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding seemed to swallow that line. He thought that, if we joined a single currency, we would have financial prudence for ever and a day—no longer would it be possible not to have prudent financial policies. He was wrong. The wording of the convergence criteria is flexible. There is no 3 per cent. limit. The deficit qualification says—Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I have very little time. I have already given way. I should prefer to continue making my points.
The deficit qualification says that, if the deficit is only exceptional and temporary, the 3 per cent. limit can be ignored. As we have not yet achieved the holy grail of a 3 per cent. deficit, in which of the four years of this Parliament that we have not been able to achieve a 3 per cent. deficit does my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary consider the excess to have been "exceptional and temporary"? That phrase provides the let-out for the European single currency. Economies cannot operate in a formulaic way. Political judgments will have to be made. In respect of the single currency, political judgments will be made by European institutions. The economy cannot run on autopilot. Bureaucrats and politicians will have to make political judgments. That is why the single currency is becoming more unpopular in the United Kingdom and why more of my hon. Friends feel that we should not go ahead with it. One would think that the fact that we were achieving the criteria set out in the Red Book would lead to greater confidence on the Conservative Benches that we should go for the single currency, but the reverse is happening: there is more scepticism about the single currency among my hon. Friends, because they realise that a political project lies behind it. They have seen many examples over the past four years of political power having been given up to European institutions. They now understand the political power that would have to be given up along with the currency. The regulations before Christmas concerning the stability pact made that absolutely clear. Under the conditions in those regulations, it was clear that no delay from national institutions in implementing the excess deficits procedure would be countenanced. That means that the House would have to comply with the directions that it received from Europe concerning levels of spending and taxation, and the ancient rights of the House would be taken away. I believe that the single currency is becoming more unpopular among my hon. Friends because of that wider realisation. They can see the political consequences that lie behind it.Will my hon. Friend give way?
No. I am coming to the end of my speech.
I remind the House of what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the Treasury Select Committee in December. He said:If we take the single currency, there is no going back. Last week, the House debated devolution and whether powers could be removed from a Scottish Assembly or Parliament once it had been set up. On the single currency, we have the answer: it is a one-way option and there is no going back. It represents an irreversible transfer of power from the House to European institutions, and for that reason alone it will never go ahead with the United Kingdom participating."The single currency is a one way option".
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I enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg), but I could not for the life of me work out whether the convergence criteria were a straitjacket, as we heard previously, or some type of rubber corset inasmuch as they were indefinitely expandable. I was curious about the hon. Gentleman's scenario on what should happen. In effect, he was saying that Europe should disintegrate into 15 separate states, each with its own currency, monetary and, ultimately, trade policy. I do not believe that the single market for which I expect he voted, as did most Conservative Members present, is achievable without a level of co-operation and, ultimately, a single currency. Getting there will be difficult; that is for sure.
I rise in particular to respond to the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor), who gently invited me to get lost. That is strong parliamentary language. I am Irish and I rise to such suggestions. The hon. Gentleman is friendly on many other issues, but when he used the language of loathe and despise, I found that much more worrying than a passing ad hominem remark. That language, like the language of hostility from the Foreign Secretary last week, reveals something deeper and more worrying in the Conservative party. I shall be interested to hear whether the Exchequer Secretary confirms the Euro-scepticism of which he was boasting in a debate in the House before Christmas, aligning himself with the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), or whether he chooses to side with his nominal boss, the Chancellor. One would think from the remarks of the hon. Member for Southend, East that the past 18 years had been a miracle of low unemployment in this country, but some of us who may not have been sitting on the Conservative Benches at the time have memories of when unemployment went through the roof before entry to the exchange rate mechanism. Some of us believe that the lowered unemployment that we have today may not last. There is also the problem that, if one measured unemployment in this country using the same criteria as Germany and France—the International Labour Organisation criteria—it would be higher. If one included the criteria used by the American Bureau of National Labor Statistics, which includes people who would like a job but cannot get one, a further 2 million people would have to be added to our unemployment total. Those are inconvenient facts; facts washed away by a diatribe against the problems that Europe faces on unemployment. The fusion of two countries—a third-world country with a third-world economy such as East Germany and a successful West Germany—was bound to cause problems. The hon. Member for Southend, East seemed to imply that Germany should have run with two currencies in one country. I have heard of the Chinese one country, two systems but never of one modern economy with two competing currencies, as he seemed to imply should have been the choice of the German Chancellor and the Bundesbank in 1990. I invite the hon. Member for Southend, East to be careful about quoting opinion polls. He completely misunderstood what I said. In the early 1980s, every opinion poll in this country showed that a majority of people were for withdrawal from the European Community. That was the policy adopted by my party in 1983, and a fat lot of good it did us. What people say in opinion polls and how they vote are two very different things. When the British people are invited in the forthcoming election to decide between a party that has set forward clear positions to defend British interests but advance in Europe and a party that is full of the language of loathing, despising and hostility, we shall see which way they vote, just as we shall see which way people vote in future elections in Europe. The people of Europe do not want to break themselves down into competing, rivalry-driven states, which is the avenue and vision offered by Conservative Members.5.7 pm
I particularly enjoyed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor), especially the part when he managed to say something to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) that many of us have longed to say for a long time: get lost. I also particularly enjoyed his comments on the common agricultural policy, with which I agree 100 per cent. He asked about paragraph 7 of article 104c and whether we publish the Commission's response. The answer is yes—in the form of a written answer, which is placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East also suggested that Sweden has suffered as a result of European Union membership. I suggest that the cause of major problems in Sweden is the cumulative effect of years of socialism—very high spending, borrowing and debt. It now has to adopt monetarist policies and policies of fiscal prudence and deregulation to try to turn its economy round. My hon. Friend also correctly argued that one can like Europe very much but be against the European Union. Those who are pro-European Union often try to tar Euro-sceptics, or those who are hostile to the EU, as hostile to Europe, but that is not always the case. The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) is always an assiduous contributor to these debates. He made an excellent point about the nature of public and private investment and how they relate to the public sector borrowing requirement. His comments were absolutely right, except that borrowing by public corporations is excluded from the general Government financial deficit, which is the definition of Government borrowing for Maastricht and convergence purposes, as indeed are privatisation proceeds; so, for the purposes of the general deficit, it makes no difference whether borrowing is private or public. The same applies to borrowing under the private finance initiative, which would be counted in the private sector, but, even if it was public sector, it would not count as public borrowing for Maastricht or convergence purposes. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg) made several points about convergence, with which hon. Members of all parties would broadly agree. He rightly said that convergence had not yet been achieved and that many would argue that it was unlikely to be achieved if European economies continued on their current course.Will my hon. Friend give way?
My hon. Friend will forgive me if I proceed for the moment, as I do not have much time and I want to respond to a number of points made during the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West also made the point that to proceed would ultimately be a political decision, regardless of whether the convergence criteria had been met. That is right, because the Maastricht treaty gives scope for the Economic and Finance Council that will meet next spring, followed by the Council of Heads of Government, to take a political decision; they are not bound by the Maastricht criteria. After that, the stability pact will have a political element. It will not be totally bound by treaty.We know that the Government are, on balance, hostile to monetary union. If a group of other European countries seeks to go ahead with it on fudged criteria, will the Government seek to block that in the Council of Ministers, as they are entitled to do?
No. If other countries wanted to go ahead, even with muddled criteria, it would not be our job to prevent them from doing so. We must go into the negotiations, as we have done, and try to ensure that economic and monetary union is a success, because, in or out, it will affect us in a variety of ways. If our advice is not heeded, and EMU goes ahead without us, it is not our job to block the will of other countries.
The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) spoke for 24 minutes. Apart from some platitudes about Europe, he spent most of that time criticising our economic performance. I welcome his concentration on the British economy. If it is now so awful, how come new Labour has copied all our policies? The unique selling proposition of new Labour spin doctors seems to be, "Those guys over there have made such a mess of things that we have copied all their policies." The Labour party has good reason to copy all our policies: we have the lowest debt of any European Union country except Luxembourg and the lowest unemployment by far of any major European Union country.The figures are not comparable.
The hon. Gentleman is wrong, because my figures, which are used for Eurostat purposes, are based on the labour force survey, approved by the International Labour Organisation, and the Trades Union Congress has said that they are wholly reliable.
Our borrowing is lower than that of any other major EU economy. We have the highest growth of any major EU economy. Our current account is close to balance and is in a better state than Germany's. Those points were made well by my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies). The hon. Member for North Warwickshire said that our inflation rate was higher than that of some other European countries. He is right: it is 1 per cent. higher than those of Germany and France, which is not surprising, bearing it in mind that our economy is booming, whereas theirs are in a slump. If only Labour could have achieved an inflation rate 1 per cent. higher than the German and French rate, it would have had something about which to boast. Since 1979, our growth in manufacturing productivity—the crucial indicator of competitiveness—has been the highest in any Group of Seven major industrial country; it has been 50 per cent. higher than the Japanese rate, twice the French rate and nearly three times the German rate. That is why a recent independent report stated that, since 1979, Britain has closed more than three quarters of the competitiveness gap with Germany. We export twice as many cars as in 1979 and four times the steel. We are now the world's leading pharmaceutical exporter, and we have overtaken France to become the second largest aerospace producer and exporter.The Minister keeps referring to 1979. Can he explain why unemployment is double what it was then?
My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford and Spalding has already answered that point: structural unemployment is growing throughout the developed world, not only in the European Union but in America, where unemployment is far higher, and in Japan. The difference is that, whereas in the 1970s—when, let us not forget, unemployment doubled under Labour—our unemployment was far worse than the European average, today it is far better, and falling. Relative to our main competitors we are doing far better.
The hon. Member for North Warwickshire mentioned the minimum wage as one of new Labour's great Euro-friendly policies, but he cannot tell the House at what level it would be set under a Labour Government.Very wise.
The hon. Gentleman smiles and says, "Very wise," but through his smiling face we can see the con that is being perpetrated on the low-paid. It is no good his throwing kisses at me across the Chamber: that will not get him very far. He is trying to convince the low-paid that there is some easy, no-cost solution to low pay.
We all want higher wages for everyone, especially the low-paid, but to pretend that there is some easy option and that politicians can dictate levels of pay with the wave of a magic wand is an unpleasant and dishonest con. The only way to increase the pay of the low-paid is to improve education standards and the competitiveness of the economy. That is why pay at all levels since 1979 has risen rapidly in comparison with what happened under Labour, when pay for the lowest-paid stagnated. I am pleased that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire concentrated on the economy, because the economy will win us the election. Most people realise that, although the Government have made some mistakes, by and large we have got things right. That is why, since 1979, we have closed four fifths of the competitiveness gap with Germany, and why new Labour's unique selling proposition is that we have got so much wrong that Labour has copied all our policies. Amusing and enjoyable though this diversion across the economy has been, the purpose of the debate is to take note of the Government's assessment. There is nothing sinister in the surveillance that it outlines, and I urge the House to support the motion.It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14B.
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note with approval of the Government's assessment as set out in the Financial Statement and Budget Report 1997–98 for the purposes of section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993.
Contract (Scotland) Bill
Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered. Order for Third Reading read.
5.16 pm
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill will reform what the Scottish Law Commission has identified as three bad rules in contract law. Consultations by the commission established that there was strong and widely held support for reform and that the rules should be abolished as soon as a legislative opportunity arose. The draft proposals for legislation were published by the Secretary of State in September and have been generally welcomed. They have the support of the Law Society of Scotland and the Confederation of British Industry (Scotland) among others. I was grateful to hon. Members of all parties for their strong support for the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee. The three rules to be reformed have been responsible for instances of obvious injustice in the past. There is no justification for their continued existence and widespread approval for their abolition. The Bill will reform the law in three important respects and will be of benefit to both the legal profession and the general public. I commend it to the House.5.18 pm
I thank the Minister for his comments, which are welcomed by the official Opposition. As he said, the three bad rules in contract law were an impediment to the law in Scotland. It is commendable that the Scottish Law Commission report has sent us on our way to making better contract legislation. I commend the Minister on the way in which the Bill was introduced. The draft Bill was produced in September and sent to interested parties for their comments. That is the proper way to do it, and if other legislation were treated in the same way, we might get better laws.
The Bill will make the Scottish legal system more cogent. The Minister mentioned the Law Society of Scotland, which has been closely involved in the Bill. The Law Society's secretary, Michael Clancy, has commented to me that the society is happy with the Bill, especially the provisions onThe principle of the Bill is sound, its passage has been commendable, and it will improve Scots law on contract."the admissibility of extrinsic evidence to prove an additional term of a contract or unilateral voluntary obligation; the supersession of a contract by a deed executed in implement of it; and the obtaining of damages for breach of contract of sale."
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman And Commissioner For Local Administration In Scotland Bill
As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
Clause 1
Functions And Powers Of Ombudsman
5.20 pm
I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 2, line 42, leave out from 'and' to 'the' in line 44.
The Bill is largely uncontroversial. It clarifies and extends the existing powers of the legal services ombudsman, and gives extra powers to the local government ombudsman. We welcome the new power for the legal services ombudsman to recommend that a professional organisation—the Law Society of Scotland or the Faculty of Advocates—should pay compensation of up to £1,000 to a complainant who has suffered loss or distress because of its poor handling of his complaint. The amendment is motivated by our concern about the handing over of confidential information or documents to the ombudsman. The issue was first raised in the Scottish Grand Committee by the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell), my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and myself. The Minister tried to reassure us by saying:Therefore, we were surprised that a Government amendment was tabled in Committee that provided that the supplying of confidential documents to the ombudsman could not be legally challenged on grounds of breach of confidentiality. To be fair, the amendment contained other changes that we welcomed, but we were surprised by the inclusion of the words:"The ombudsman can require bodies to produce such information only if he considers it to be relevant … The ombudsman is concerned only with the Law Society's handling of a case—confidential papers from solicitors' offices are not relevant … I am a lawyer … I have no desire for the ombudsman to be involved with confidential papers".—[Official Report, Scottish Grand Committee, 9 December 1996; c. 74.]
We take the view that it would be better to leave that open to legal challenge so that the greatest possible care would be taken in handing over confidential documents. To be fair, the word "relevant" provides some check. Clause 1 also states:"notwithstanding any duty of confidentiality owed to any person by the professional organisation as respects any such information or, as the case may be, documents, the organisation shall comply with such a requirement."
The question of who decides what is relevant still arises, and the answer is that the ombudsman decides. In Committee, the Minister also told us:"the ombudsman … may require the professional organisation … to provide him with such information, being information which is within the knowledge of the professional organisation, as he considers relevant to his investigation; or … to produce to him such documents, being documents which are within the possession or control of the organisation, as he considers relevant to his investigation".
That may provide some small comfort, but other checks are necessary. I considered tabling an amendment to provide that the consent of the complainant should be required before documents were released. If our amendment is accepted, it would be wise for the consent of the complainant to be obtained before confidential documents are handed over, because that would give the Law Society and the Faculty of Advocates some protection. However, the wording "with the consent of the complainant" would not have covered every eventuality, because the confidential documents could belong to someone else, as the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East pointed out in Committee."the Secretary of State for Scotland will direct the ombudsman to use only information or documents that are obtained in the exercise of his powers in connection with his statutory functions."—[Official Report, First Scottish Standing Committee, 28 January 1997; c. 5.]
He did a good job.
I agree. The hon. and learned Gentleman made a helpful speech in Committee. Although I accepted the substance of his amendment, I was not entirely happy with the wording, which is why I have tabled my amendment today.
The amendment is partly about protecting the interests of third parties. In Committee, the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East gave the example of an accident involving two passengers in a car. The complainant might agree to his medical documents being handed over but the other passenger might not. The example of medical records is the most obvious type of document that some people might not want handed over, because they contain confidential information about previous medical history.I am grateful to my hon. Friend, although I do not know why, after this morning's performance. The Minister's performance was even worse. They both talked about E. coli 0157, when they should have been talking about the care of the elderly.
If the amendment is not accepted, could the ombudsman overrule a complainant's legitimate objections about confidential documents and acquire them anyway?That is precisely the point. The Bill would give the ombudsman the power to do so, if it is not amended. The Minister tried to answer the point about medical records in Committee. He said:
That may sound contradictory, but it amounts to saying that consent would not have to be specifically asked for because it would be implied when the complaint was made. In other words, the power of the ombudsman will override confidentiality. That power is not held by the local government ombudsman or the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration. Indeed, the Parliamentary Commissioner must seek the agreement of a complainer before confidential documents are handed over. In Committee, it was suggested that if an amendment such as this were passed, it would obstruct the ombudsman in the course of his necessary and welcome duties. The last thing that we want is to obstruct the ombudsman going about his duties. Before Committee, we had many representations from the Consumers Association and other bodies saying that they wanted the Bill. The point is that the ombudsman would still have recourse, if documents that he thought were essential for an investigation were withheld, to apply to a sheriff by way of summary procedure for an order determining whether such information should be provided."Medical records could be released only with the consent of the individual concerned … consent is implied when a complaint is made".—[Official Report, First Scottish Standing Committee, 28 January 1997; c. 14.]
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Does my hon. Friend agree that there is some logic in all the ombudsmen having precisely the same powers and remit, so that there is no confusion in the public mind? I can see no argument at all for this ombudsman having powers greater than those of, say, the Commissioner for Local Administration in Scotland. I do not understand what the Government are doing.
My hon. Friend makes a good and pertinent point. Consistency is not a hallmark of the Government, but perhaps the Minister can rise to the challenge of that point when he replies. It is up to the Government to explain the discrepancy between the powers of the legal services ombudsman under the Bill and those of other ombudsmen.
Those concerns were expressed on Second Reading and in Committee. We approached the matter in various ways. The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East suggested one formulation that was not successful. We suggest the simple expedient of deleting the words that mean that confidentiality will be overridden. Our amendment would mean that the ombudsman would have to be much more careful about demanding confidential documents. If he must get such documents, there will still be recourse in law. The amendment provides the necessary protection for individuals whose records are held by lawyers or the Law Society. I am sure that my hon. Friends wish to speak because they have concerns. The amendment does not mean that we want to water down the powers of the legal services ombudsman or the scope of Bill. We welcome the Bill and the new powers, and we do not believe that the amendment will damage them. However, it is important to write safeguards into the Bill for those whose confidential records may be held by the legal profession.I listened with interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm). I want to return to the point that I made in support of the amendment.
It is not very helpful to look at the amendment because it simply deletes some words. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will be able to say exactly why this ombudsman should have a remit different from those of the other ombudsmen in Scottish statute. The public could become confused about the powers of ombudsmen if we give each of them different powers. I understand that they operate in different areas and that this ombudsman operates in a specialist area relating to one profession, whereas the local government ombudsman deals with many professions and many functions discharged by local authorities. To a lesser extent, that is true of the health service ombudsman. The Bill deals with a specialist ombudsman who is to have different powers. Why do we always seem to be giving lawyers different and better regulations from the ones that we give to everyone else?Quite right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) says that I am quite right. I am encouraged to proceed further. I hope that the Minister, who is himself a distinguished lawyer—
He is an advocate.
The Minister is no less than a Scottish advocate—someone who is really to be respected. I hope that he will say why lawyers are, as usual, being treated differently. Why should the regulations that affect this ombudsman be more extensive than those for other ombudsmen who cover professions of equal status and of equal importance to Scottish society? If he does that, he may be able to convince me that this Bill has merit as it stands. At present, I think that the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Leith is sound.
I have no doubt that the Minister will employ all his legal skills to defeat the amendment but, even though he is a lawyer, he must agree that complainers must have complete trust in the handling of complaints by the ombudsman. He will have received complaints from constituents—not many; they do not come along very often—and, like the rest of us, he will have sent to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration complaints that have been raised with him. I recently sent one. I explained the position in detail to my constituent, who believes that he has a complaint against a Department of State—not the Scottish Office, I hasten to add. It is welcome to have such an ombudsman, because, God knows, lawyers need to be monitored.
Lawyers are the most conservative profession in the land. They are as conservative as the medical profession. It is right and proper that people can take complaints to an ombudsman. The Law Society and the lay observer perform important functions, but the question of confidential documents is important. I raised the matter in Committee with the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch).indicated dissent.
Perhaps I raised it with the Minister of State.
indicated assent.
I might add in passing that the Minister of State is far more handsome than the other Minister—not that he behaved very handsomely towards me in this morning's Adjournment debate. This question of confidential documents is important. It is all very well for the Minister of State to laugh—he is behaving like a typical Edinburgh lawyer.
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, had the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) not asked so many questions, I would have spent much longer answering his points? However, the hon. Member for Leith raised serious issues, which I answered.
You see what I mean, Madam Deputy Speaker—a typical Edinburgh lawyer. I suspect that he was trained in the Edinburgh faculty and not in Glasgow—he has not got that Glasgow look about him.
Order. I had better give the hon. Gentleman a gentle warning that—interesting though his observations are—he is now going rather wide of the amendment.
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think that my hon. Friend is out of order, I really do.
Would the hon. Gentleman like to come and do my job?
Who told you that that was what I wanted?
You are famous for your gentle reprimands, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall not stray again, but I could not resist having a wee go at the Edinburgh lawyer opposite.
To return to a serious point, there are legal cases involving medical records that deal with matters that are not only confidential but extremely intimate. The Minister knows that I have been seeking to assist several women in my constituency who suffered grievously because of the malfunctioning of the Inverclyde cervical smear programme. Those women had to seek legal advice in order to pursue, rightly and properly, their case against Argyll and Clyde health board. I have spoken to the Minister about those cases, which illustrate perfectly the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm). The women—there are, thank heavens, few of them—have had to give all kinds of information to their legal representatives. If one of those women wanted to raise a complaint and approach the legal ombudsman, she should have the right to say, "Yes, by all means you may have access to all of my confidential records." Conversely, she should also have the right to say, "No, there are certain documents that I do not want to be released to the ombudsman." In addition, I do not like the ombudsman being able to appeal to the Secretary of State. All kidding aside, I appeal to the Minister of State to treat the amendment with the seriousness that it deserves. If he cannot accept the amendment, I ask him to give an assurance that the leaflets that go out to citizens advice bureaux and libraries telling people how to apply to the legal ombudsman will contain a paragraph on the issue of confidential documents.It has been a long time since I participated in a Scottish debate. Not only does being here give me a feeling of déjà vu, but the Minister of State's presence doubles that sensation. Not only is he an Edinburgh lawyer, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) said, but he is a former Edinburgh councillor. He and I crossed swords in another chamber on many occasions and I have great respect not only for his legal ability, but for his wit and perception. I know that he will be able to deal with all the points raised.
I want to raise a serious point, but I will not keep the House long in doing so. It follows on from the remarks that my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) made earlier about lawyers being treated differently, because one of the matters that concerns me is the method of self-regulation. Admittedly, the legal services ombudsman is outwith the legal system, but until a complaint reaches that stage all complaints against lawyers are dealt with by lawyers and by the Law Society in particular. 5.45 pm I do not know about other hon. Members' experience, but I have found that when complaints are made by Members of Parliament on behalf of constituents who have experienced problems with lawyers and legal firms, the Law Society does not deal efficiently and effectively with those complaints. I have engaged in long correspondence with the Law Society about several complaints against lawyers. I shall not mention all the cases—to do so would take far too long and would be far too tedious—but I want to refer to two in order to illustrate the problems. The issue of confidentiality comes into those cases. I do not know whether the Minister remembers the case of the crooked lawyer, Graeme Adam, who practised in Ayrshire during the 1980s, at a time when many miners were receiving large redundancy payments. I know that my hon. Friends will remember the time when the current Deputy Prime Minister was closing pits that were allegedly uneconomic, but which would still be running today had he not shut them down. Various individuals and organisations rushed in to give the miners advice on how to invest their redundancy money. One of those was the solicitor Graeme Adam, who was subsequently imprisoned for having embezzled the money paid to miners for their long periods of service in the mines. What had happened was clear to the miners, to me as their representative and to people with whom I discussed the case, but when I raised the problems with the Law Society, I found that the presumption which applied within that organisation was that the lawyer was automatically innocent and that that sort of thing could not happen. That attitude was displayed throughout the organisation, all the way up to the then secretary, Kenneth Pritchard. The Law Society was dismissive of the miners' complaints. That has happened on several occasions when I have raised constituents' complaints about lawyers. The Law Society's presumption is always that such problems cannot happen and that lawyers do not do that sort of thing—they are honourable men and women who cannot possibly involved in wrongdoing. As a result of that presumption, many people have had to fight hard to get justice out of the Law Society, which takes a great deal of time and effort.In view of his criticism of the Law Society, does my hon. Friend nevertheless agree that those persons who have performed the role of lay observer have done so with remarkable distinction and that that role is close to that of the ombudsman?
I certainly accept that, but I would be straying from the amendment if I pursued the point.
What worries me is that the people whom I represented were not getting all the information. Disclosure of information and issues of confidentiality are extremely important in such cases. At one point, I had to take a deputation of legal clients to the Law Society to get it to look into the problems relating to Graeme Adam. The Law Society's attitude was unbelievable—implying that it was the clients who were mistaken and that the lawyer was in the right. In the end, in the case of Graeme Adam we found that the opposite was true. I hesitate to go into detail, but confidentiality is also important in cases of child abuse or sexual abuse. Such cases are being highlighted currently by the Daily Record. I have great respect for that newspaper, but it is ironic that it is now highlighting the problems of child abuse and the threat to young children from convicted paedophiles. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow will remember the Ayrshire child abuse case, which I dealt with some months ago. On that occasion the Daily Record took the other side of the argument. I suppose that it is the privilege of the fourth estate to take such a contradictory line. I have made a complaint to the Law Society about a Glasgow lawyer, Mr. Paul Burns, who made statements during the Ayrshire child abuse case which were critical of social workers in Ayrshire and which I believe were unjustified. The Law Society has rejected that complaint and said that I now have the opportunity of going to the Scottish legal services ombudsman, which I am considering. When one complains about a lawyer, there is always the feeling that one will not get anywhere and that the Law Society will not look at the case in detail. As my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow said, the legal profession in Scotland is a relatively small and closed profession. There is no better example of a closed shop, especially the advocates.My hon. Friend will know that I worked in a law company for five years and I saw one side of it. However, as a regional councillor and now as a Member of Parliament, I have met many people who feel that the legal profession is a fortress that cannot be penetrated and that one needs to be towing the Bank of Scotland to be able to afford to purchase justice. Using the ombudsman is the right course for folk with a problem, but ordinary men and women in the street are terrified; they believe that lawyers are God's gift to man and that one cannot have a go at them. In my constituency, there was a horrifying case of a person who was impoverished by over £100,000; he was totally innocent, but the Law Society could not do anything about it.
I understand only too well the problems that my hon. Friend has experienced.
I just want to express my concerns. One puts a great deal of trust in a lawyer, whether one is buying a house or dealing with other legal issues. The profession is a closed shop and we have to go to lawyers to get things done. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to trust a lawyer. I believe that that trust has broken down in Scotland in a number of cases in the past few years. Many of my constituents are concerned about the legal profession. It needs to pull its socks up. The Law Society needs to ensure that complaints against solicitors are dealt with quickly, efficiently and effectively, and its consideration of them must be seen to be as fair as possible. That means something different from self-regulation. An independent element needs to be introduced in a decisive way. I hope that the Minister will take account of my points when dealing with the amendment.In view of the criticisms about lawyers and the Law Society, will the Minister accept that one way of resolving the difficulties would be to abolish the Law Society's powers to exercise self-regulation over the profession? We may have reached a point at which we accept that for lawyers self-regulation can be shown to have worked not in the public interest but only in the interests of the profession.
This has been a useful debate and many important points have been raised. In answer to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson), I should say that we wish to avoid excessive regulation. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) raised some important points in that connection. It has been the view of successive Governments that the legal profession should police itself. Under the Solicitors (Scotland) Act 1980, the object of the Law Society is the promotion of the interests of the solicitors' profession in Scotland and the interests of the public in relation to that profession.
As has been said, we do receive complaints, but in general we are satisfied that the system works well. I am encouraged by the fact that the Scottish legal services ombudsman supports the present system of self-regulation and suggests that few advantages would be gained from wholesale change. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley will be assisted if I say that the Law Society's three complaints committees all have four lay members out of a total of 14. A lay member is regularly called on to prepare the report on a complaint for the committee to consider, particularly when it is clear that a lay person's perception of events may differ markedly from that of a member of the profession.Can the Minister say who chooses the lay members? Is it the Law Society?
Yes, but they must be independent of the Law Society and the legal profession. The Scottish legal services ombudsman must be a lay person and is prevented by statute from being a solicitor, advocate or other member of the legal profession. There is no special pleading on behalf of my profession. The lay person is able to have a different perspective to oversee the process and to ensure that it works fairly.
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) raised important issues about whether there is a discrepancy in the ombudsman's powers. The legal services ombudsman looks at how a professional organisation handles a complaint, not the complaint itself. The local government ombudsman and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration look at the complaint itself, so the remits and powers are different. The legal ombudsman must be able to look at all the papers that a professional organisation has considered. The handling of the complaint must be relevant. The hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth asked for consistency. I can confirm that the local government ombudsman and the Parliamentary Commissioner may require any member or officer of the body being investigated or any other person who in their view is able to furnish information or produce relevant documents to do so. There is no suggestion that confidential documents or information would be considered exempt. In Committee, I told the hon. Gentleman that I had no desire for confidential material to be produced. I was talking about confidential material that was not relevant to the handling of the complaint. The amendment would remove the provision that the professional organisation's duty to provide relevant information or documents supersedes any duty of confidentiality that the organisation owes to another person. The provision is essential to ensure that the ombudsman has access to all relevant information. The important word is "relevant". The ombudsman investigates the organisation's handling of a complaint, not the actual complaint. Any information or documents required have to be relevant to the consideration of the complaint. It is right that the ombudsman should have access to all relevant documents so that he can investigate the matter properly. The current provision in the Bill puts the existing practice on a statutory basis and provides protection for the professional organisations. The complainer who has asked the ombudsman to investigate the handling of a case would have no reason to complain that the ombudsman had seen documents which would otherwise be confidential. It is in the interest of the complainer that the ombudsman should have access to the relevant information. Documents containing confidential information relating to third parties—a point raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm)—would be unlikely to be relevant to the way in which the organisation handled the complaint. They are therefore unlikely to be required by the ombudsman. I understand hon. Members' concern to prevent confidential information obtained by the ombudsman from being misused. I give an undertaking to the House that the Secretary of State for Scotland will issue the ombudsman with a direction that he should use such information or documents only in exercising his powers in connection with his statutory functions, and should ensure that his staff do likewise.What size staff is envisaged for investigations? Will the Minister advise the ombudsman to ensure that leaflets are published which can be given to people—for instance, in citizens advice bureaux?
The staff will be sufficient to handle matters effectively. An annual report will be published in due course.
I hope that the hon. Member for Leith will not press the amendment.6 pm
I thank the Minister for his reply. I agree with him that the word "relevant" is relevant. We hope that it will never be necessary for confidential documentation to be handed over.
I thank my hon. Friends for their valuable contributions. I support everything that was said by them, with the possible exception of the remarks about Edinburgh by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman). I have a certain Edinburgh solidarity with the Minister of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), who represents a neighbouring constituency to mine and is poaching some of my constituency for the general election, although I do not think that he will get many votes from that area. We shall keep a close watch on the way in which the Bill operates, and pay particular attention to problems with confidential documents.I endorse the welcome given by my hon. Friend to the contributions made by our hon. Friends. I take it that he agrees with the criticisms of the Law Society. It can be said that professional self-regulation by lawyers has now received a yellow card. It will be closely monitored during the term of the next Labour Government, with a view to possible abolition.
I am not sure how wide a topic was covered by my hon. Friend's remarks, so I shall be careful in replying. It was an interesting point.
I do not intend to press the amendment to a Division.Amendment negatived.
Order for Third Reading read.
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I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I could speak at immense length, but I think that we have given the subject a general airing.Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Flood Prevention And Land Drainage (Scotland) Bill
As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
New Clause 1
Emergency Power Of Entry
'.—(1) Section 8(2) of the 1961 Act shall be amended by inserting at the beginning, "Subject to the next following section".
(2) After section 8(2) there shall be inserted—
"(2A) Notwithstanding any provision of this section, any person authorised by a local authority may for the purpose of exercising the duty conferred on that local authority by section 4B above enter any land at any time if he is satisfied that such action is required in a case of emergency.".'.—[Mr. Chisholm.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
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I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 1 deals with emergency powers of entry with reference to clause 2, which deals with cleansing, repairing and otherwise maintaining watercourses. We welcome the Bill in general and the fact that duties are to be imposed on local councils with reference to the maintenance of watercourses and flood prevention. The Bill changes the "can" of the Flood Prevention (Scotland) Act 1961 into a "must". However, if councils are to fulfil their duties properly, they must have the necessary powers and resources. One issue that we raised in Committee with reference to powers related to fines for dumping. One of the main causes of flooding is dumping in rivers. We argued that the maximum fine should be increased from £1,000 to £2,500. Councils need that power to do their duty, but the proposal was rejected by the Government. That shows, once again, that the Labour party is prepared to be tough on anti-social behaviour. To do their job properly, councils also need powers of access in an emergency—access to a building or land that causes a serious flood problem. Councils want that power, yet the Government deny it to them. I raised the issue on Second Reading, as did the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie)—I seem to be quoting Liberal Democrat Members rather a lot this evening. The hon. Lady said:The matter was also raised by me in Committee, as part of a large group of amendments, and it did not merit a great deal of the Minister's time when he replied. He said:"Such powers could be needed in an emergency such as that which occurred recently in Dunoon. Then, equipment had to be diverted a considerable distance to gain access to a watercourse in flood because a private landowner would not allow access over his stretch of land."—[Official Report, Scottish Grand Committee, 13 January 1997; c. 65.]
Today, the Minister has an opportunity to amplify that remark. Section 8 of the 1961 Act provides that admission to any land shall not be demanded as of right by councils, unless 14 days' notice of intended entry has been given to the occupier of the land, but that, on application to a sheriff, the sheriff may warrant the council to enter that land if he is satisfied that there is a case of urgency. That has been extended slightly in the Bill through a Committee amendment, which allows a justice of the peace to grant the council the power to enter the land. That does not go far enough."We, too, want to allow for quicker access to land but we do not consider that access without a warrant is necessary or appropriate."—[Official Report, First Scottish Standing Committee, 11 February 1997; c. 18.]
Might it not be the case that the justice of the peace who gives authorisation is a member of the council?
I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting point, which should be noted by the Minister.
The Bill places a new duty to act to clear watercourses if that would substantially reduce the likelihood of flooding. Blockages of culverts, in particular, can occur very quickly as a result of natural debris, such as broken branches, or irresponsible dumping in watercourses. I have referred to the problems that that can cause councils in pursuing their duties. There can be no guarantee that a regular maintenance programme would necessarily detect such hazards before a storm or flash flood. On occasions, blocked culverts have rapidly caused significant flooding of property. If councils are to carry out their duty effectively, it is essential for them to be able to access blockages in an emergency, before the flood waters rise to dangerous levels. For example, in Paisley, which was badly affected by floods in the winter of 1994, a light engineering company called Tercet, which makes high-quality products for the electronics industry, was badly flooded. The flooding arose from a blocked culvert on an adjoining vacant site, which was owned by a private development company, whose whereabouts were not known at the time. Ownership had changed and was initially denied. The flooding rose to a depth of 0.5 m within two hours. The company closed its operations for about six weeks and the damage cost £1.5 million to repair. Although it is not usual to allow emergency access without a warrant, the speed of flooding and the gravity of the consequences make this an exceptional case. The new clause would allow emergency access without a warrant only if, in the view of the responsible officer, waiting for a warrant would result in significant flooding of property. In those circumstances, the measure is reasonable and necessary. It should be noted that, in paragraph 18 of the original consultation paper, the Government suggested:The Government should explain why their original intentions as embodied in the consultation paper have not taken shape in the Bill. The simple fact is that, without this emergency access power, there would be a risk of unnecessary flooding occurring in certain cases. I have said that we support and welcome the extra duties for councils conferred by the Bill—indeed, Labour Members pressed for those powers during debates on environment legislation two years ago. However, if councils are to exercise their duties properly, they must have the tools to do the job. One necessary tool is the emergency access power. The other essential tools, which are not mentioned specifically in an amendment tonight, are the resources to do the job. Hon. Members may raise that issue on Third Reading. There are clearly serious problems, particularly in relation to clause 3, because the plans cannot be realised without funding. Perth has applied for challenge funding, but there are many more applicants than there is money available for the work required. It is good that councils should have those duties, but they must also have the resources and the powers to perform them properly. Emergency access is an essential power. The councils want it, so why will the Government not grant it to them?"Authorities would be able to carry out work at their own expense with similar access arrangements as obtained in the 1961 Act with the addition of a power to act in an emergency without service of notice."
Madam Deputy Speaker, like me, you have served in the House for a long time. You will remember a time when Tories were toffs. Unfortunately—with the exception of the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro), who is undoubtedly a toff—they are not toffs any more. They used to know a thing or two about land. However, present Tory Members do not know very much about that issue—although they often sell it in small parcels as estate agents. When they knew about land, they would contribute to debates such as this, and they would have been able to tell us why the new clause is inappropriate.
I do not understand why the Government should resist our new clause, as it seems to be eminently sensible for all the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) offered. I do not understand why restrictions should be put on local authorities when dealing with emergencies. I do not see why a justice of the peace must be involved. It has always been a great source of irritation to me that I was never made a justice of the peace. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] I did something to offend Willie Ross, which was a grotesque mistake for a young man in politics to make. As I was never a justice of the peace, I do not really know what their powers involve. However, such restrictions amount to impediments that will prevent authorities from taking the proper action at the right time to avoid difficulties. This House and the other place will go to great lengths to defend landowners. We have discussed defending the lawyers—we can be relied on to do that well—but the defence of land is everything to some hon. Members. I notice that the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch), will reply to the debate. I hope that he will explain why the new clause is not sound, because it seems to be an eminently sensible idea. The local authority or the three water authorities—the strange creation of the present Administration—are the appropriate bodies in Scotland to deal with such emergencies. I cannot wait to hear the Under-Secretary explain why the new clause is not a good idea.The hon. Gentleman should bear it in mind that land is a finite resource and water is not.
6.15 pm
I have always known that the hon. Gentleman is a philosopher. I may not be able to sleep tonight, because I will be thinking about that interesting idea. I shall look for him tomorrow to tell him my thoughts on it.
I believe that we should agree to this reasonable new clause. Goodness knows why the Government always think of reasons why they should not be sensible. I am sure that they will run true to form tonight and resist our new clause. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Leith will not cave in, as he did on a previous occasion. I urge him to press the matter to a Division.As many hon. Members will know, my constituency was devastated by floods in 1994. Many people suffered an unbelievably horrific winter: they were forced from their homes, their houses were ruined and their lives were destroyed. Those folk have now returned to their homes, but they continue to fear further flooding. At the time, my constituents did not know who would come to their rescue—they expected some Government help, but this Government certainly did not provide it. It was said at the time that the Government had left them high and dry. Assistance from central Government was certainly a long time in coming.
The local councils did their best. They did not know where the money would come from or how they would deal with the problems created by the floods. [Interruption.] I hope that the Minister is listening—he seems to be paying more attention to his hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker), who talks with finesse about water. My constituents had to wait a long time to receive assistance. On one occasion, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) and I visited a family at 1.30 am. We waded through 2.5 ft of stinking sewage which surrounded my constituent's house. Families could not get out and about. The fire service was doing its damnedest to assist people: it was pumping water, but was making little progress as the rain was torrential and the drains were blocked with debris. The Minister must give local authorities real powers and real finance. Just a week ago, a constituent of mine was going bananas because the river outside her house had nearly reached flood level, and she was imagining what it would be like when the water came over. Madam Deputy Speaker, you are a woman. You can imagine how my constituent felt when she got up and saw sewage all over her house, her carpets and kitchen stinking of bog and human dirt. The Minister knows about that case, because I have written to him a number of times. I plead with him not to let my constituents suffer that indignity once again. Surely the local authority should be given the power to act quickly in an emergency. However, it takes intensive manpower. Last weekend, dozens of men came out with sandbags. That cost money, but the people who are living in fear of flooding cannot but look to the Government and to local government to give them some security. I shall finish, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I promised to speak for only five minutes, although I could speak for five hours on this subject. The folk who get flooded live in my village, in Linwood. I saw them all the time. It broke my heart to see people at Christmas whose toys and everything else for which they had worked had been ruined.I am interested in the compelling case that the hon. Gentleman is making, but what practical advantage does the new clause give for emergency access to prevent flooding?
I am speaking about new clause 1. I ask the Minister to consider the points that I am raising on behalf of my constituents, to ensure that the local authority has meaningful powers so that it can spend money to do the job.
That is not what it is about.
The hon. Gentleman said something from a sedentary position. If he stands up, I will give way.
The hon. Gentleman should read what the amendment is about and what the powers are for. It is not about spending money.
I could respond to that, but I have manners. The hon. Gentleman is just being provocative. That man should understand the suffering of my constituents.
I went on record and said that I welcomed the Bill. It is a step in the right direction. I welcome it in every way, and so do my constituents, my local authority and the people who are worried about the threat of flooding. I ask the Minister to go a stage further: give us rock solid assurances so that local government does not need constantly to look over its back, so that it can do the job properly. We are asking for strong emergency powers to deal with the problem. I hope that the Bill will help us in the long term. That is the message that I want the Minister to give my constituents. I congratulate the Minister on introducing the only decent Bill that I have seen in the past 10 years.May I point out to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you are fortunate in one respect and I am unfortunate in another? My hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mr. Graham) is a neighbour of mine; you just come across him occasionally. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker) may laugh, but he was being deliberately provocative when he intervened on my hon. Friend's passionate speech.
Talking about provocation, I wish to say mea culpa, that I was not being provocative when I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) a question concerning a justice of the peace in the scheme of things. The JP approached by a local authority may in fact be an elected representative of that authority. My question was prompted by the fact that, most weekends, I meet up with a delightful woman in Scotland who is both a JP and a councillor. Far from criticising Edinburgh—if I can catch my hon. Friend's attention for a moment—I love that city. I lived for 14 years just off the new town. The new clause is important. A local authority should have the power to take decisive action to defend our constituents where, say, a neighbour—be it a large company or, perhaps, Clyde port authority—is acting irresponsibly. Many people complain about local authorities acting in a cumbersome, bureaucratic way, but in these circumstances, outlined so graphically—I would not say elegantly or even eloquently—by my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde, a local authority has to act promptly. I know of many councillors and local authority officials who would not dream of abusing the powers in the new clause, but decisive action may have to be taken occasionally to deal with some riparian owners, and I refer to Clyde port as a riparian owner. I am grateful to the Minister for his letter dated 25 February, which was delivered almost by his own fair hand, in which he gave a substantive answer to a serious question that I asked him in Committee. As he said in his letter, he has sent copies to other members of the Committee. There is an important issue here, and with respect to what the Minister says in his letter, a local authority along the Clyde might need to take decisive action against a landowner. When I say "landowner", I am not talking about someone who owns an estate or a farm. We could be talking about an industrial enterprise such as Clyde port. I am not saying for one moment that Clyde port would neglect its obligations to the authorities and the people who live along the Clyde, as my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde and I do. Nevertheless, elected representatives and their officials should have the power to deal with negligent riparian owners or landowners who fail to honour their obligations to their neighbours. The new clause would strengthen a Bill that will be welcomed by my constituents. Sometimes it is almost impossible to drive through Port Glasgow after heavy rain, as the Minister and the hon. Member for North Tayside know. In other areas in Greenock and Port Glasgow, the water runs heavily off the land. Perhaps Inverclyde council needs to take decisive action. Who can imagine someone like Bailie Tricia Godman behaving ultra vires, behaving badly, if the powers in the new clause were to hand? We have to trust our local authorities and our much-maligned elected representatives. I know that every hon. Member would rather be a Member of this place than a member of a local council. Members of local councils have many onerous duties. They are much more amenable where their constituents are concerned. We are down here, 400 or 500 miles away from our constituents. Because of the damage that flooding inflicts on people's homes—on their carpets, furniture and so on—a local authority should have the right, through the new clause, to act decisively and expeditiously on behalf of the people in the community.Like the hon. Gentleman, I too have had sad experience of flooding. I do not want the House to debate this matter without my placing it on record that I believe that the record of Harry Robertson and his emergency team in Perth and Kinross is exemplary. They have done a tremendous job, and will continue to do so. It is the officials and not the elected representatives who run the show when things go awry.
6.30 pm
I am sure that Harry Robertson and the other officials do a first-class job. The overwhelming majority of local authority officials, from Shetland to the borders, do a first-class job in emergencies, as they did during the dreadful disaster in the Dumfries constituency. I was thinking about that the other day when my wife and I drove past Lockerbie. Heaven forbid that such a disaster should happen again—I never want to see it. The everyday problems of flooding have implications for ordinary people who have saved to make beautiful little homes of their houses.
I believe that first-class officials and first-class elected representatives at local level—the Minister may say that I would say that, because I am married to one, but I hope that it will earn me some brownie points—act judiciously in 99.99 per cent. of cases against a negligent and careless neighbour. We have a first-class new clause.As I explained in Committee when we debated this issue, I understand the motivation behind the proposal of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm). We also want to allow for quicker access to land, but we do not consider that access without a warrant is necessary or appropriate. That was why the Government tabled an amendment in Committee, which provided for a justice of the peace to sign warrants for access. We consider that to be appropriate and sufficient in the circumstances.
The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) raised the issue of justices of the peace who are also councillors. So be it. Justices of the peace, on appointment, must swear an oath of allegiance in court to Her Majesty the Queen. They have to swear that they will act independently. There is a distinct separation between their duties as justices of the peace and their duties as councillors.I have great trust in and respect for justices of the peace. In a modest way, their role is analogous to that of a Government Law Officer. As councillors and justices of the peace, they perform two roles, and they do so honourably.
My point was that there is easy access to justices of the peace, so they are the right people to make access easy. Both in Committee and tonight, the hon. Member for Leith said that, on occasions, blocked culverts have quickly caused significant flooding of property. The hon. Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mr. Graham) was not there in the Committee, although he was a member: unfortunately, he was ill at the time and we did not have the benefit of his, I would say, eloquent contribution, even though the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow did not recognise it as such. The hon. Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde referred to the misery caused by flooding in his constituency last year.
I want to get on, because we have covered much of that ground in Committee. The hon. Member for Leith referred to Tercet, which is a light engineering company that was affected by the 1994 flooding in Paisley. As with all victims of flooding, it is of great concern to me that that company suffered, as did the constituents of the hon. Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde. The Paisley flooding was one of the events that led to the Government's decision to review existing flood prevention legislation. However, it is fair to say that the floods in Paisley and elsewhere in Scotland in 1994 and 1995 were exceptional. They occurred at a time when some councils were not doing enough to prevent flooding. I am on record as saying that there is evidence that the situation has improved since local government reorganisation. I hope and expect that, when the Bill is enacted, the situation will be further improved. I accept that there will always be exceptions: no legislation can cover all eventualities. The Bill will make flooding less likely than before. This part of the Bill will ensure swift action using justices of the peace, and I believe that is sufficient. The hon. Member for Leith referred to the consultation with councils and others on the proposals. It may interest him to know that only 8 per cent. of councils said that they wanted a provision without service of notice. I believe that we have responded to the consultation exercise, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the motion.We welcome the extension of the role to justices of the peace. I do not think that we have had an entirely satisfactory explanation of why the emergency power has not been granted. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3
Duty Of Local Authorities To Publish Reports
I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 3, line 2, at end insert— 'Guidelines and consultation
This is an important amendment, because it deals with serious concerns about the Bill. In general, the Bill has been widely welcomed. However, it fails to adopt a catchment area approach, and to deal with the wider environmental implications of flood prevention. There are various ways of taking a more holistic approach to flood prevention. A simple way that was suggested in Committee is to require riparian owners to seek planning permission before undertaking flood defence work that may affect other parts of the river. That is an example of how flood defence work can have knock-on effects. Another way of achieving a more holistic approach is to have flood appraisal committees, so that councils come together and co-ordinate their activities. That is allowed for under national planning policy guideline 7. We actively encourage and support the formation of such committees, so that local authorities can co-ordinate their work. Beyond that, there is a strong case for an independent body to have a strategic overview of flood control, particularly with reference to the reports about flood control under clause 3. Two years ago, during the passage of the Environment Act 1995, Labour argued strongly that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency should have such a strategic role, and we continue to hold that view. SEPA's duties are already relevant. Under section 24 of the 1995 Act, it has a consultation role before drainage work is carried out. Under section 25 of that Act, it has a remit to access flood risk. Under section 32, it has general duties in respect of water, such as promoting the conservation of flora and fauna that are dependent on an aquatic environment. In Committee, the Minister said:6B. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency shall publish guidelines as to the content of reports made pursuant to section 6A(2) above; and in preparing any such report the local authority shall consult the Agency.'
SEPA has already produced some best management guidance on flood alleviation works. It has reissued a small document that the previous river boards produced, which warns about the risk of certain flood defence activities. I am told that SEPA has also produced a video on soft engineering flood alleviation techniques, about which I hope to say more shortly. In its submission to the Scottish Office on the Bill, SEPA highlighted some of those issues. It said:"SEPA has no responsibility for, or specialised knowledge of, watercourse maintenance."—[Official Report, First Scottish Standing Committee, 11 February 1997; c. 25.]
"The powers given to local authorities under Section 2(1)(a) of the Flood Prevention (Scotland) Act 1961 are expanded under Section 3 of the same Act and allow various activities both within and on the banks of a watercourse (removal and deposit of mud, gravel, bush and timber) which might lead to serious pollution of a watercourse or damage to conservation, or other wider interests both within the watercourse and on associated land. We are particularly concerned, for example, about increased aquatic and riverbank herbicide spraying.
Later in the submission, SEPA says that the report referred to in clause 3We expect the exercise of these powers to be subject to statutory consultation with SEPA … It would be appropriate for SEPA … to develop and make available guidance on best management practice relating to any works within and alongside watercourses."
The flood defence schemes referred to in clause 3 can clearly have knock-on effects, such as siltation, erosion and acceleration of flow, and can damage not only the watercourse itself but the plant and animal species that depend on it for food and shelter."should also record any instances of non-compliance with comments offered as statutory guidance and with any best management practice guidelines provided by SEPA".
according to the World Wide Fund for Nature—"Increasingly"—
Equally, what happens in the wider catchment area can have profound effects on the river. For example, drainage of forestry land upstream can produce increased run-off, increased land erosion and an increased risk of flooding. All that highlights the need for a strategic overview, a catchment area approach and a role for an environmental organisation such as SEPA. Flood defence schemes often unnecessarily straitjacket rivers, fill in wetlands or remove islands, damaging rivers and their own ability to absorb flood impact. The so-called soft engineering techniques to which I referred a moment ago can provide long-term flood alleviation, while at the same time enhancing the natural heritage. Such techniques are now widely accepted. I am told that there are now examples at Stenton in central Fife, where wet and dry ponds have been created, and that there is a new pool system near Beattock following motorway developments there. Not much information on such techniques is available, however. It could be provided by SEPA. I look forward to watching the SEPA video in the near future; I have been promised a copy, and I am told that it covers not only some of the examples that I have given, but other examples from Europe and America. The point is that we must have the benefit of expertise in regard to the broad issue, as well as narrow specifics such as the effects of spraying and dredging river banks and upsetting buffer zones between agricultural land and the river. There must be an holistic approach that takes account of the wider ecology, which means that SEPA must be involved in terms of both being consulted and giving guidance. As I said at the outset, we want co-ordination among local authorities, and we welcome the establishment of the flood appraisal committees; but, beyond that, there must be a role for SEPA. It must be able to provide an environmental overview, and to ensure that an holistic approach to flood prevention is adopted."Scotland's rivers are suffering incremental damage from these activities".
If the Minister refuses to accept the amendment, will he assure us that the Scottish Office will provide guidelines for our local authorities? As he may recall, I spoke of the difficulties that some smaller authorities may have in producing reports. We seek expert guidance, enabling even the smallest authority to act in a realistic, purposeful way when dealing with the problems that have been outlined so often during the Bill's passage.
6.45 pm Does the Minister agree that, if he accepted the amendment, the Bill as amended would not place an onerous burden on SEPA's officials? Indeed, I think that those officials might well be pleased to undertake such a task on behalf of local authorities. As I said earlier, I have every confidence in both the elected representatives and the officials of Inverclyde council, but I am sure that they would welcome guidelines issued by SEPA or, if that was not possible, by experts commissioned by the Scottish Office. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us proudly that the Scottish Office has such experts in its own ranks, and that it can produce the guidelines. Problems such as this occur from time to time in constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mr. Graham). If the Minister is going to reject the amendment, I appeal to him at least to give local authorities such as Inverclyde an assurance that guidelines will be issued, as the amendment requires,The principle of the amendment is essential—that authorities, large and small, should be helped to deal with these troublesome matters as realistically, effectively and efficiently as possible."as to the content of reports made pursuant to section 6A(2) above".
The Forth and Clyde canal is an important facility in my constituency. As the Minister knows, the millennium fund has come up with a large sum for its improvement. We want to know how far the provisions of clause 3 would relate to the canal, and whether there could ever be any difficulty in future in regard to who was funding what. If the Minister cannot answer tonight, I should be glad if he wrote to me later.
An amendment along similar lines was tabled in Committee, this time by the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith). It was one of three amendments proposed by the Opposition, which sought to involve SEPA in flood prevention activities. As I explained then, the Government feel that it is best for councils to deal with the matters involved in the Bill. Councils will be able to determine, on the basis of local circumstances and priorities, what should go into reports.
SEPA is not a flood prevention agent. Its main role is to deal with pollution matters, although it will also advise councils on flooding risk. That said, I also explained in Committee that we are interested in reviewing from time to time whether new developments are reflected in existing policies and objectives. In that connection, I said that we expected the publication soon of a European Commission proposal for a water resources framework directive. It would be premature to anticipate the content of the directive and the implications for catchment management, but we offered to reconsider how that might impact on flood prevention activities, including consultation between interested parties. However, our view is that we should do that outwith consideration of the Bill. Meanwhile, as I further explained in Committee, there is the continuing possibility of voluntary arrangements, and I remain confident that councils, along with SEPA and Scottish Natural Heritage, will approach those issues in a spirit of co-operation. I hope that the House will accept the assurance that I gave in Committee, that I do not oppose the principle of effective, wider communication on the subject, but in the context of the continuing discussions on this and related matters, it would be premature to act at this stage. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) referred to communication from the Scottish Office. As with all new legislation affecting the powers or duties of local authorities, the Scottish Office will issue a circular as soon as possible after Royal Assent, explaining the main provisions of the Act. Obviously, that will include reports. Therefore, on the understanding that the Government are prepared to consider the principle of the matter in drawing up any future legislation, I ask the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) to withdraw his amendment.As the Minister pointed out, there was a similar amendment in Committee, but, first, it was not pressed to a vote and, secondly, it was not identical. That amendment, which was supported by my hon. Friends the Members for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) and for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman), did indeed refer to consultation, but there was no amendment in Committee about guidelines with reference to the reports in clause 3, so amendment No. 1 builds considerably on the amendment in Committee.
The Minister repeated his claim that SEPA has no remit in that area, but all the evidence that I gave from the Environment Act 1995 and from SEPA's submission to the Scottish Office showed that that is simply not true. SEPA has the expertise on the environment rather than councils and, in saying that, I make no criticism of councils. We welcome the Minister's undertaking that he will consider the matter in principle in future, and we welcome the new duties for councils, but there is a gaping hole in the Bill, because there is no catchment area approach, there is no holistic approach and no account is taken of the environmental implications of flood defence works. Because the environmental principle is so important for Labour Members, we shall press the amendment to a vote.Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 174, Noes 223.
Division No. 85]
| [6.52 pm
|
AYES
| |
| Abbott, Ms Diane | Fyfe, Mrs Maria |
| Allen, Graham | Galloway, George |
| Alton, David | George, Bruce |
| Anderson, Donald (Swansea E) | Gerrard, Neil |
| Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale) | Godman, Dr Norman A |
| Armstrong, Ms Hilary | Golding, Mrs Llin |
| Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy | Graham, Thomas |
| Austin-Walker, John | Grant, Bernie (Tottenham) |
| Barnes, Harry | Griffiths, Win (Bridgend) |
| Barron, Kevin | Grocott, Bruce |
| Battle, John | Gunnell, John |
| Bayley, Hugh | Hain, Peter |
| Beckett, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret | Harvey, Nick |
| Beith, Rt Hon A J | Henderson, Doug |
| Bell, Stuart | Hill, Keith (Streatham) |
| Bennett, Andrew F | Hoey, Kate |
| Bermingham, Gerald | Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld) |
| Berry, Roger | Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A) |
| Blunkett, David | Hoyle, Doug |
| Boateng, Paul | Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N) |
| Bray, Dr Jeremy | Hughes, Robert (Ab'd'n N) |
| Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E) | Hughes, Roy (Newport E) |
| Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon) | Hughes, Simon (Southwark) |
| Byers, Stephen | Hutton, John |
| Caborn, Richard | Illsley, Eric |
| Callaghan, Jim | Ingram, Adam |
| Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge) | Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampst'd) |
| Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE) | Jackson, Mrs Helen (Hillsborough) |
| Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V) | Jamieson, David |
| Campbell-Savours, D N | Jones, Dr Lynne |
| Canavan, Dennis | (B'ham Selly Oak)
|
| Chidgey, David | Jones, Martyn (Clwyd SW) |
| Chisholm, Malcolm | Kennedy, Charles (Ross C & S) |
| Clark, Dr David (S Shields) | Kennedy, Mrs Jane (Broadgreen) |
| Clarke, Tom (Monklands W) | Kilfoyle, Peter |
| Clwyd, Mrs Ann | Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles) |
| Coffey, Ms Ann | Liddell, Mrs Helen |
| Cohen, Harry | Litherland, Robert |
| Corston, Ms Jean | Livingstone, Ken |
| Cousins, Jim | Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd) |
| Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr John | Loyden, Eddie |
| Cunningham, Ms Roseanna | Lynne, Ms Liz |
(Perth Kinross)
| Macdonald, Calum |
| Dalyell, Tam | McFall, John |
| Darling, Alistair | McGrady, Eddie |
| Davidson, Ian | McKelvey, William |
| Dewar, Rt Hon Donald | Mackinlay, Andrew |
| Dobson, Frank | McLeish, Henry |
| Donohoe, Brian H | Maclennan, Robert |
| Dowd, Jim | McWilliam, John |
| Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth | Madden, Max |
| Eastham, Ken | Maddock, Mrs Diana |
| Etherington, Bill | Mahon, Mrs Alice |
| Evans, John (St Helens N) | Marshall, David (Shettleston) |
| Ewing, Mrs Margaret | Marshall, Jim (Leicester S) |
| Fatchett, Derek | Martlew, Eric |
| Faulds, Andrew | Meacher, Michael |
| Fisher, Mark | Michael, Alun |
| Flynn, Paul | Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley) |
| Foster, Rt Hon Derek | Milburn, Alan |
| Foster, Don (Bath) | Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby) |
| Foulkes, George | Morgan, Rhodri |
| Morris, Rt Hon Alfred (Wy'nshawe) | Steel, Rt Hon Sir David |
| Mudie, George | Strang, Dr Gavin |
| Mullin, Chris | Straw, Jack |
| O'Brien, Mike (N Warks) | Sutcliffe, Gerry |
| Olner, Bill | Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury) |
| O'Neill, Martin | Taylor, Matthew (Truro) |
| Orme, Rt Hon Stanley | Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck) |
| Pearson, Ian | Thurnham, Peter |
| Pike, Peter L | Timms, Stephen |
| Powell, Sir Raymond (Ogmore) | Touhig, Don |
| Prentice, Gordon (Pendle) | Tyler, Paul |
| Prescott, Rt Hon John | Walker, Rt Hon Sir Harold |
| Radice, Giles | Watson, Mike |
| Raynsford, Nick | Welsh, Andrew |
| Rendel, David | Wicks, Malcolm |
| Wigley, Dafydd | |
| Robertson, George (Hamilton) | Williams.Rt Hon Alan |
| Roche, Mrs Barbara | (Swansea W)
|
| Ross, Ernie (Dundee W) | Wilson, Brian |
| Rowlands, Ted | Winnick, David |
| Ruddock, Ms Joan | Wise, Mrs Audrey |
| Sheerman, Barry | Worthington, Tony |
| Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert | Wray, Jimmy |
| Simpson, Alan | Wright, Dr Tony |
| Skinner, Dennis | Young, David (Bolton SE) |
| Smith, Chris (Islington S) | |
| Soley, Clive | Tellers for the Ayes:
|
| Spearing, Nigel | Mr. Thomas McAvoy and Mr. Eric Clarke.
|
| Spellar, John |
NOES
| |
| Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey) | Conway, Derek |
| Aitken, Rt Hon Jonathan | Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F) |
| Alexander, Richard | Coombs, Simon (Swindon) |
| Allason, Rupert (Torbay) | Cope, Rt Hon Sir John |
| Amess, David | Cormack, Sir Patrick |
| Ancram, Rt Hon Michael | Couchman, James |
| Arbuthnot, James | Cran, James |
| Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham) | Currie, Mrs Edwina |
| Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E) | Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd) |
| Atkinson, Peter (Hexham) | Davis, Rt Hon David (Boothferry) |
| Baker, Rt Hon Kenneth (Mole V) | Deva, Nirj Joseph |
| Banks, Matthew (Southport) | Devlin, Tim |
| Bates, Michael | Douglas-Hamilton, |
| Bellingham, Henry | Rt Hon Lord James |
| Beresford, Sir Paul | Dover, Den |
| Biffen, Rt Hon John | Duncan, Alan |
| Booth, Hartley | Duncan Smith, Iain |
| Boswell, Tim | Dunn, Bob |
| Bottomley, Peter (Eltham) | Durant, Sir Anthony |
| Bottomley, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia | Dykes, Hugh |
| Bowden, Sir Andrew | Elletson, Harold |
| Bowis, John | Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'ld) |
| Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes | Evans, Jonathan (Brecon) |
| Brandreth, Gyles | Evans, Nigel (Ribble V) |
| Brazier, Julian | Evans, Roger (Monmouth) |
| Bright, Sir Graham | Faber, David |
| Browning, Mrs Angela | Fabricant, Michael |
| Bruce, Ian (S Dorset) | Fenner, Dame Peggy |
| Burns, Simon | Forman, Nigel |
| Burt, Alistair | Forsyth, Rt Hon Michael (Stirling) |
| Butcher, John | Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman |
| Butler, Peter | Fox, Rt Hon Sir Marcus (Shipley) |
| Butterfill, John | French, Douglas |
| Carlisle, John (Luton N) | Gallie, Phil |
| Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n) | Gillan, Mrs Cheryl |
| Carrington, Matthew | Goodlad, Rt Hon Alastair |
| Cash, William | Grant, Sir Anthony (SW Cambs) |
| Channon, Rt Hon Paul | Greenway, John (Ryedale) |
| Chapman, Sir Sydney | Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N) |
| Clappison, James | Grylls, Sir Michael |
| Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth | Hague, Rt Hon William |
(Rushcliffe)
| Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archibald |
| Coe, Sebastian | Hamilton, Neil (Tatton) |
| Colvin, Michael | Hampson, Dr Keith |
| Congdon, David | Hannam, Sir John |
| Hargreaves, Andrew | Pawsey, James |
| Harris, David | Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth |
| Haselhurst, Sir Alan | Pickles, Eric |
| Hawkins, Nick | Porter, David |
| Hawksley, Warren | Powell, William (Corby) |
| Hayes, Jerry | Rathbone, Tim |
| Heald, Oliver | Redwood, Rt Hon John |
| Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David | Richards, Rod |
| Hendry, Charles | Riddick, Graham |
| Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael | Robathan, Andrew |
| Hicks, Sir Robert | Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn |
| Higgins, Rt Hon Sir Terence | Robertson, Raymond S (Ab'd'n S) |
| Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test) | Robinson, Mark (Somerton) |
| Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas (Grantham) | Roe, Mrs Marion |
| Horam, John | Rowe, Andrew |
| Hordem, Rt Hon Sir Peter | Sackville, Tom |
| Howell, Rt Hon David (Guildf'd) | Scott, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas |
| Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W) | Shaw, David (Dover) |
| Hunt, Sir John (Ravensb'ne) | Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey) |
| Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas | Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian |
| Jack, Rt Hon Michael | Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd) |
| Jackson, Robert (Wantage) | Shersby, Sir Michael |
| Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N) | Sims, Sir Roger |
| Jessel, Toby | Skeet, Sir Trevor |
| Johnson Smith, | Smith, Tim (Beaconsf'ld) |
| Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey | Speed, Sir Keith |
| Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N) | Spencer, Sir Derek |
| Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine | Spicer, Sir Jim (W Dorset) |
| Kirkhope, Timothy | Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs) |
| Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston) | Spink, Dr Robert |
| Knox, Sir David | Sproat, Iain |
| Kynoch, George | Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John |
| Lait, Mrs Jacqui | Stephen, Michael |
| Lawrence, Sir Ivan | Stewart, Allan |
| Legg, Barry | Streeter, Gary |
| Leigh, Edward | Sweeney, Walter |
| Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark | Sykes, John |
| Lester, Sir Jim (Broxtowe) | Taylor, Ian (Esher) |
| Lidington, David | Taylor, John M (Solihull) |
| Lilley, Rt Hon Peter | Temple-Morris, Peter |
| Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham) | Thomason, Roy |
| Luff, Peter | Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V) |
| Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas | Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N) |
| MacGregor, Rt Hon John | Townsend, Sir Cyril (Bexl'yh'th) |
| MacKay, Andrew | Tracey, Richard |
| McLoughlin, Patrick | Tredinnick, David |
| McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick | Trotter, Neville |
| Maitland, Lady Olga | Twinn, Dr Ian |
| Malone, Gerald | Waldegrave, Rt Hon William |
| Marlow, Tony | Walden, George |
| Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel) | Walker, Bill (N Tayside) |
| Martin, David (Portsmouth S) | Waller, Gary |
| Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick | Ward, John |
| Merchant, Piers | Wardle, Charles (Bexhill) |
| Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling) | Waterson, Nigel |
| Mitchell, Sir David (NW Hants) | Watts, John |
| Moate, Sir Roger | Wells, Bowen |
| Monro, Rt Hon Sir Hector | Whittingdale, John |
| Montgomery, Sir Fergus | Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann |
| Needham, Rt Hon Richard | Wiggin, Sir Jerry |
| Nelson, Anthony | Willetts, David |
| Neubert, Sir Michael | Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld) |
| Newton, Rt Hon Tony | Wolfson, Mark |
| Nicholson, David (Taunton) | Wood, Timothy |
| Norris, Steve | Yeo, Tim |
| Onslow, Rt Hon Sir Cranley | Young, Rt Hon Sir George |
| Oppenheim, Phillip | |
| Paice, James | Tellers for the Noes:
|
| Patnick, Sir Irvine | Mr. Roger Knapman and Mr. Richard Ottaway.
|
| Patten, Rt Hon John |
Question accordingly negatived.
Order for Third Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[ Mr. Kynoch.]
7.6 pm
I agree with hon. Members who have said that there is little in the Bill to criticise. As it stands, it imposes duties to assess watercourses, publish reports and so on, and that is worth while.
I should like to mention some studies that have been carried out in Perthshire in the past couple of years. There has been a River Tay catchment study and rural communities flood studies at Bankfoot; at Bridge of Earn; at Milnathort; at Comrie-Dalginross; at Auchterarder; at Aberfeldy; and at Birnam. There have been flood studies on the benefits and costs of flood defences at Aberfeldy and Birnam, which were separate from the two individual studies, and there was a study on the benefits and costs of flood defences at Almondbank. Those studies were all carried out between 1994 and 1996 and they related only to the rural part of Perthshire. The list does not include the detailed work on the Perth flood prevention scheme, about which the Minister knows a fair amount. The floods in Perth in 1993 were most spectacular in the city, but the rural areas were also flooded, and it is those areas that I should like to speak about. People live in fear of further floods. All the coverage and publicity is of the most spectacular images, and they are to be found in the built-up urban areas. However, sometimes the rural areas suffer just as much, but do not get the same coverage. I was in Comrie on Wednesday night, when parts of it were flooded. Roads were closed and I was wearing wellington boots as I looked at homes that had been flooded. That was a small flood and was unlikely to attract the cameras, but it was important for those who were affected. I spoke to people in Bridge of Earn on Saturday. During the week, they had anxiously watched the river rising because they had been badly flooded early in the big flood, and they were worried because it looked as if they would be flooded again, especially when they heard the news from Comrie. On Saturday, people in Comrie had words of praise for Perth and Kinross council's response, and they said that many changes had been made since the flood. During the week, they certainly did not have any criticism of the response to the imminent threat. However, they want more than a response—they want prevention. When rain has fallen for more than an hour, they do not want to have constantly to look out of their windows and worry whether it will be another occasion on which they are flooded. The people of Comrie were flooded very badly. I saw a home video that had been made in the previous bad flood. They have a very anxious time when rain falls heavily and the rivers rise. They worry that there will be another such flood, and they cannot understand why prevention work has not been done. Perth and Kinross council—in both its previous and its current incarnation—has not shirked its duty on reports. When speaking to new clause 1, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) mentioned that one or two hon. Members might like to talk about the issue of finances. I am one of those hon. Members. The council in my area has not shirked its duty on reports, even when that duty had not been imposed on it by legislation.The simple answer to the hon. Lady's question on why the measures have not started is that there are still two objections. I am very surprised that she is not aware of that. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker), who is ardently in support of speedy action in such matters, is certainly well aware of the objections. This afternoon, he spoke to both my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself on that very subject.
I appreciate that comments are being made. Unfortunately, however, when one speaks to constituents, they simply do not understand why the work cannot be done. The delay cannot go on indefinitely. We are not short of reports showing the work that needs to be done; we are short of the financial resources that are required to do the work.
rose—
The Minister knows that Perth and Kinross council has been able to place the Perth flood prevention scheme under the challenge fund. The sums required for the scheme are so great that it cannot be funded by the capital allocation. As he knows, rural schemes do not come under it. In this debate, I am talking specifically about rural schemes—about such areas as Bridge of Earn, Comrie and others. About £1 million-worth of work is required. Under current legislation, it is possible to obtain grants from central Government to finance such work, and the grants would be about 50 per cent. of eligible scheme costs. However, in the years indicated, councils would be required to fund the remaining costs from the block capital allocation, which would require section 94 borrowing consent.
One of the difficulties is that we cannot allow the Perth scheme to proceed unless the rural works are done first. If the scheme proceeds without completion of the rural works, the effect on places such as Bridge of Earn will be even worse. Will the Minister reassure the council and my constituents that borrowing consent will be forthcoming for those rural works?I thank the hon. Lady for giving way once again. Very briefly, no scheme has yet been submitted for the rural areas. Until such a scheme is submitted, my officials in the Scottish Office clearly cannot consider it. She should know that I have been full of praise for Perth and Kinross council and its predecessor, for the work that they have done so far in developing schemes. I am disappointed that she seems to take the attitude that she does towards measures that are intended to try to help both her constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside. He at least realises that such things must be done properly, and that there is no half-measure.
7.12 pm
I shall be very brief. I should first like to thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister for meeting me earlier today. That meeting was a follow-up to others that we have had on the same matter. I should tell the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) that the Secretary of State was very sympathetic to the case that I made. I only wish that some of the councillors were not quite so keen to jump into the public debate on the matter, because I believe that the work record that we have achieved together is worth noting. I should also like to say again that all those involved have the highest respect for Harry Robertson and his team.
As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross should have known and probably does know, the scheme for rural Perthshire is incomplete. That is what I am concerned about. The damage sustained in the upper reaches of the River Tay when it breaks its banks is horrendous. I have been discussing that aspect, the challenge fund requirements and other matters. All I can tell the hon. Lady is that, like her, I want things to happen. Unlike her, however, I think that I have been attacking the matter in a structured and organised way. I believe that the results that I have achieved in the past could well be repeated.7.14 pm
I shall speak for even less time than the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Walker), and I shall stay away from the situation in Perthshire—that beautiful county where my wife and I have spent so many happy holidays, particularly in Kenmore, where the fishing is good. If the Bill improves matters for our constituents who suffer flooding to any extent, obviously it must be welcomed by both sides of the House.
In response to a comment made earlier in the debate by the hon. Member for North Tayside, I should like to say that I am utterly confident that, with this legislation, Councillor Harry Mulholland, leader of Inverclyde council, his fellow councillors and officials will act expeditiously in dealing with such problems. I was pleased that the Minister, when I asked him about guidelines, promised a circular. Matters will be improved for our constituents if such advice is forthcoming to Inverclyde and other councils—heaven knows, they deserve no less. There is nothing worse than a flooded house, with treasured possessions ruined. My local council—Harry Mulholland and his team, officials and elected representatives—will be able to use the legislation to improve matters for people in the communities across Inverclyde.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Delegated Legislation
With permission, I shall put together the motions relating to delegated legislation.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
Professions Supplementary To Medicine
That the draft Professions Supplementary to Medicine (Arts Therapists Board) Order of Council 1997, which was laid before this House on 6th February, be approved.
Legal Aid And Advice (Scotland)
That the draft Advice and Assistance (Financial Conditions) (Scotland) Regulations 1997, which were laid before this House on 7th February, be approved.
That the draft Civil Legal Aid (Financial Conditions) (Scotland) Regulations 1997, which were laid before this House on 7th February, be approved.— [Mr. McLoughlin.]
Question agreed to.
Deregulation
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14A(1) (Consideration of draft deregulation orders),
Betting Licensing
That the draft Deregulation (Betting Licensing) Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 27th January, be approved.— [Mr. McLoughlin.]
Question agreed to.
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (Nottinghamshire)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. McLoughlin.]
7.17 pm
I have initiated this debate to request that the Government help to extend Nottinghamshire's highly successful DARE—drug abuse resistance education—scheme across the United Kingdom. Nottinghamshire pioneered the scheme, and it should be extended, because it has been such a success and because it is helping young people to say no to drugs.
Any disappointment that I might have because the Government's reply will not be made by the Lord President of the Council—who is meant to co-ordinate the Government's anti-drug strategy—is more than made good by my pleasure in learning that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment will reply. She has established a reputation as a fierce advocate of anti-drugs activity. Moreover, but for her generosity and accessibility, I could not have prepared for the debate as constructively as I hope I have. I also pay tribute to her civil servants, who were extremely helpful in answering one or two of the most important questions ahead of the debate. The drug problem in the United Kingdom is one of the worst problems afflicting our society. It registers very high in everyone's concerns, and in all the polls. All parents care very much about the issue, and they want something to be done about it. The DARE programme provides a clear and effective way in which to tackle the problem. I shall not spend a lot of time on the detail of the project, but, in a nutshell, a police officer visits a school weekly for 17 weeks and talks, acts out role plays, and has fun with the nine-year-olds to educate them in the risks of drug taking, giving them the knowledge and skills to resist those who would push drugs at them. It makes the children more confident, and has a massive positive effect, which is difficult to quantify, on the rest of their education. Having seen the joy and enthusiasm that the scheme generates among the kids, the police, the teachers and the parents, I can honestly say—even having been in politics for some years and having perhaps grown quite cynical about many things, particularly those that we come across in this place—that I have never been more inspired by anything during my years in politics than I have by the enthusiasm and keenness of everyone from the police officers to the nine-year-olds who get so involved in the anti-drugs campaign. A vast team of people work to make DARE happen in Nottinghamshire: the infectiously enthusiastic Police Inspector David Scott; WPC Diane Curly and Geoff Stafford, the first of Nottinghamshire's DARE officers; the many teachers who give their time, some of whom I met recently at Brocklewood school in my constituency, where I first saw DARE in action; and the local councillors who are committed to the project—Councillor Sue Scott was the first to point out the project to me. The list continues, with officers from the United States who flew in to help train the first British police authority to operate a DARE project. There are seven officers from different American forces in the United Kingdom today. Phillip Ridyard has done a great deal of voluntary fund raising and publicity work. Dozens of local businesses throughout Nottinghamshire deserve credit for their role. Colin Bailey, the chief constable of Nottinghamshire, had the courage to back his judgment and his officers in this bold initiative. Above all, we should remember the children, whose confidence grew before my eyes as I sat at the back of a classroom while they were going through their paces with the local bobby. DARE is an unalloyed good thing. National Government must now take another step to give it the boost it deserves and the clout it needs. Every nine-year-old in Nottinghamshire participates in the DARE programme. That includes 342 schools, 700 classes and 15,000 kids. The impact has been terrific. It is said that cautions to young offenders have been slashed by half in Mansfield, where the first pilot project has been running since 1993. I hope that the Minister will be able to press for more thorough research, so that we can quantify the benefits of the project. Everybody knows that DARE works, but it is easier for hard-pressed chief constables and head teachers to target their limited and valuable resources if they can present hard statistical evidence to their paymasters. I hope that the Minister will consider the possibility of the Department's research programme statistically underpinning the good effects of the DARE programme. The idea was piloted in Los Angeles in 1983, and was quickly adopted throughout the United States of America. It is now compulsory in all elementary schools. Federal funds were invested in its start-up year, and the programme was then taken up by local government, giving each scheme its own flavour. Television stations helped by showing anti-drugs cartoons, and all manner of celebrities and companies aligned themselves with it. Presidents signed up to it in the United States. I entertain hopes that perhaps princes will do so in the United Kingdom. The DARE logo is displayed on "Power Rangers" and "Baywatch" merchandise. The kids see it reflected in many of the sports, activities and entertainments that they participate in. Fifteen years later, DARE is still spreading in America, and has been adopted in 41 other countries. A long-term evaluation to consider its progress over 10 years was commissioned in 1986, showing a 65 per cent. reduction in drug experimentation and misuse among children who finished school and went into employment. DARE in the United Kingdom is franchised from America to the trustees, based in Nottinghamshire, and has developed practical methods to teach a generation of children how to say no to drugs. The programme is aimed at children between nine and 13, and is taught in the classroom by a DARE-trained police officer for one hour a week over 17 weeks. Lessons focus sharply on the development of personal skills and the strategies that young people need to resist the increasing pressures on them to experiment with drugs. There is nothing quite like seeing the local bobby, tunic off and sleeves rolled up, playing and having great fun with nine-year-olds, communicating with them and participating in the development of their awareness of the many ways of saying no to drugs, drink and cigarettes. Seeing the programme in action is exciting, but it is not enough to see it in action just in Nottinghamshire—we need to see it in action throughout the United Kingdom. I hope that I sound relatively enthusiastic about the programme. The Minister would be welcome to visit Nottinghamshire and see a DARE class at first hand. I shall take the liberty of asking the chief constable to invite her. During the next two weeks would be a good time for her to go, because seven policemen from seven different United States forces are currently over here working closely with the Nottinghamshire constabulary, training police officers from West Yorkshire—which covers 61 classes and 2,000 kids—and the City of London police force, where today, I believe, the Sir John Cass school became the first DARE school in London. The next group to be trained in Nottinghamshire could include officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Metropolitan police and the Merseyside police. DARE is part of the development of rounded human beings. It could therefore fit smoothly into the national curriculum and its programme of personal and social education, particularly as targeted on primary schools. I understand that the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority is looking at the life skills and personal development in the national curriculum and will present its report to the Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister has made or will make representations to the authority on drug awareness aspects of the programme. DARE gives pupils facts about the harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. It emphasises the benefits of a healthy life style, and teaches young people to make informed and responsible choices. They then make the decision to say no. That is far more important than any number of lectures and slide presentations, giving children the confidence, the nerve and occasionally the courage to resist when some in their peer group—their fellow pupils, for example—are making lots of different and ingenious offers to get them started on the road of smoking, drinking or drug abuse. Children carry that personal inoculation with them, as many of us did from our parents, by drawing in those values and making their own assessment. That is the best inoculation, and that is what DARE provides. Parents, who in many areas feel anguished and powerless about the threats that drugs pose to their children, are very involved in the programme in Nottinghamshire. They feel that it is for them, as well as for their youngsters. They are involved in the meetings with teachers and with the DARE police officers. They are involved right up to the graduation ceremony, at which children perform plays, poems and songs that they have written from their experience through the DARE programme. At the end of the 17-week process, it is not just back to school. There is a prize giving, so that children have not only a certificate, but a sense of achievement that will encourage them to respect and look after what they have achieved in those 17 weeks, which will live with them for the rest of their lives. The publicity that DARE has generated means that the message has reached a wider community through press coverage and the media. I pay particular tribute to Blue Peter and other television and radio programmes. DARE has been successfully piloted in Nottinghamshire for three years, with the backing of the police, local authorities, hundreds of local businesses, parents, school governors and national companies. It is a registered charity, with nine trustees and 350 members. We all owe those trustees and members a massive "thank you" for being unpaid volunteers, creating and sustaining the initiative. In addition, the chief constable in Nottinghamshire has committed 24 constables and one inspector to the project full time. More than 15,000 nine-year-olds—the entire year group in Nottinghamshire—will move on to their senior schools in the summer with self-confidence, high esteem, pride, values and morality that will allow them confidently to walk away from most of the pressures—particularly the inevitable offer of drugs—that sadly are part and parcel of young people's lives today. It was never so in my school days, but it is now part and parcel of the experience of young people in schools to be offered drugs. They need the protection and the assertiveness that DARE provides to enable them to say no when faced with peer pressure. In order to assess the success of DARE, North Nottinghamshire Health Promotion was commissioned to evaluate the short-term effects on children of the pilot programme. Its two-year evaluation is due to be published in March, and I understand that it is most complimentary. It shows that, after children have completed the DARE lessons, they know at least one practical way of saying no to drugs, they identify cigarettes and alcohol as drugs, they know that drugs can be harmful and that drink-driving is illegal, and they understand the difference between prescribed drugs and harmful ones. The report also concluded that the whole-community approach had many benefits for individual organisations involved and for the children, and played a significant part in the success of the project. The report is a ringing endorsement of the DARE project. The effectiveness of DARE has also been noted in individual Office for Standards in Education reports that comment on the positive contribution it has made to pupils' welfare and guidance. The lessons are there to be learned. The Ofsted report on drug education in schools throughout the United Kingdom is to be published in the near future, and I very much hope that, when the Minister has had a chance to digest the report, she will drop me a line with her considered view on whether DARE can be applied nationwide. I am very grateful that the Lord President of the Council has found time to listen to the debate. The DARE project in Nottinghamshire has been an outstanding success by every possible measure. The Government—of whatever political complexion; this is a non-partisan debate—should consider whether the experiment can be applied further afield. The inoculation of the DARE programme works. DARE has clearly harnessed an incredible amount of energy and imagination from local communities. All those to whom I have spoken in the police force, the Prince's Trust, the local education authorities, the county council and local schools are united in agreeing that its benefit could be expanded nationwide. All those who have personally seen DARE in action, from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the Home Secretary and their shadows, all commend DARE. There has been enough commending: let us start promoting. What can we do at national level? There are many opportunities for the Minister to enhance DARE's already high reputation. Action on even one of the seven points that I shall raise would certainly help. First, it would be great for morale if the work in Nottinghamshire of the DARE trustees and members of the charity were recognised and commended in the House. DARE needs ministerial support, particularly from the Department for Education and Employment, to promote it within schools throughout the nation. Perhaps the Minister will consider issuing a guidance note to local authorities to help spread best practice and facilitate matters for local education authorities that want to pick up DARE. I was a little disappointed by the Minister's response to my parliamentary question in October, when she said:Of course it is, and there are a number of good schemes around. But surely, on such a vital issue as anti-drugs strategy, we need to make up our minds which programme is the most effective and works best. We should make it clear as part of the national curriculum. We should be prescriptive, as every day we linger, hundreds of youngsters go astray. Knowing the Minister's deep commitment to the issue, I hope that she will use her influence and weight to press for nothing less. Secondly, Ministers could seize the political lead and co-ordinate involvement of the Education and Employment Department, the Health Department, the Home Office and the Lord President's Office to extend DARE's success nationwide. As the Lord President is in his place, let me take the opportunity to ask the Minister to table DARE in Nottinghamshire and its success at the Cabinet Sub-Committee on drug misuse which is chaired by the right hon. Gentleman. "Tackling Drugs Together" should be a strategy for prevention as well as the title of a document. While a "drugs Tsar" may not be necessary, a political figurehead and a champion for DARE at ministerial level certainly is. Thirdly, as teacher and police time is allocated from existing budgets, and course materials are paid for by local sponsors, costs are very low. However, the Department could promote business involvement in a more systematic way. In Nottinghamshire, local and national businesses provide a DARE pencil, a DARE ruler and a DARE course book. I do not know whether I am allowed to use props, but course books like this one are provided and sponsored by businesses at no cost whatsoever to the council tax payer or to the taxpayer. Every child who graduates from the programme is given a party courtesy of McDonald's, the local bus companies in Nottinghamshire contribute to the transport costs, and the local press have printed a centre spread roll of honour for every graduation. Much more will be necessary if DARE is to go nationwide. If the scheme goes nationwide, I hope that the Ministers present today will be prepared to take the lead in co-ordinating private sector involvement. For example, perhaps the Minister or her officials could meet the sports shoe company, Converse, and the Prince's Trust, both of which have expressed an interest in supporting the scheme on a wider basis."No estimates of requiring the DARE programme to be implemented nationwide have been made … it is for the individual schools to decide".—[Official Report, 28 October 1996; Vol. 284, c. 35.]
I intervene not to pre-empt my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary's speech, but simply to express my appreciation of the way in which the hon. Gentleman is addressing the House on a subject that is important to hon. Members of all parties; and to underline the fact that I very much share his emphasis on improving the effort in schools. I shall carefully examine everything that he has said. I have been putting a considerable effort into encouraging private sector involvement throughout the country in various ways, including the drugs challenge fund, which has proved very successful.
My intervention provides me with an opportunity both to give the hon. Gentleman a pointer and to express my thanks in another direction. One of Nottingham's major economic features is Boots the Chemist. The company has done a great deal, including running its own anti-drugs information weeks in its stores throughout the country. It is a good example of what the hon. Gentleman and I wish to encourage.I am very grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's intervention. I am also pleased to see the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), in his place.
Tremendous linkage with local business in Nottinghamshire has been one of the features underpinning the project's success. Opportunities are available to cast the net more widely, to make good the very small amount of income necessary to produce the basic materials, such as T-shirts and badges which, through celebrity endorsement, make DARE recognisable to a child, not merely in the classroom but on Saturday morning television when their favourite pop star wears a DARE logo, as has happened in the United States, where, for example, famous basketball players endorse the DARE campaign. Fourthly, for DARE to spread, we need a core group of DARE-trained police officers seconded either to the Home Office or, if the Home Office cannot or is unwilling to handle it, the Department for Education and Employment, to form a national unit for DARE training and a central resource for best practice in all DARE work. That requires a tiny reallocation of the central budget, but would give the most tremendous signal to chief constables, who would be far more willing to use resources to staff the scheme with local police officers as a result. After all, the commitment by the chief constable of Nottinghamshire, for example, of £650,000 a year for the 24 officers involved in DARE is sizeable. Another appealing thing about DARE in these stringent financial times is that it does not drain public resources. Apart from the fact that it saves taxpayers millions of pounds in the long run, DARE uses existing resources allied to private sector funding. Having said that, I pay tribute to the £6 million per annum committed by the Minister and her Department to the grants for education support and training scheme and other anti-drug funding, which is very welcome. Fifthly, an area that falls very clearly within the Department's remit is the need to conduct proper long-term research along the lines of the 10-year evaluation in the United States to assess and continue to improve the effectiveness of DARE. I wrote to Lord Henley about that on 25 June 1996, and he promised an evaluation of one of the anti-drug programmes by the end of the year. Perhaps the Minister could write to me about the outcome of that evaluation, and comment in broader terms about the Department's research into the effects of DARE.The hon. Gentleman might like to know that we will be publishing an evaluation document covering all the GEST projects, including the DARE programme carried out by Kirklees local education authority, which I believe is the one he is discussing. It is not available as I speak but will be shortly, and I shall be very happy to send it to him.
I thank the Minister for that very helpful reply. The £65,000 spent on that survey is an incredibly small investment, but will have a tremendous multiplying effect if we can learn the lessons of the Kirklees project and the Nottinghamshire example.
The figure is £80,000.
I stand corrected—£80,000. It is going up as we speak.
Sixthly, how can we take the tremendous work done for nine-year-olds—let us imagine that we can do it nationwide—into secondary schools? People need a refresher. I understand that the key age for a booster to young people's resistance to drug offers would be 15 years old. In Nottinghamshire, the county council is working with the police and health promotion officers to develop such a follow-up. The Department may want to call for papers on that and request that officials discuss how it is going. Seventhly, I wonder whether the Minister and the Leader of the House—I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman is present—feel that we should knock some heads together on the budget process that police forces have to go through, which is a serious problem for chief constables. I know that the process is part of the Home Office's empire, but I should like to explain why it has appalling consequences for young people's education and health. Putting bobbies into the classroom through a DARE project prevents thousands of crimes and saves billions of pounds-worth of drug-related crime. Such prevention means that we do not have to chase the drug abusers, lock them up, put them through the courts, build prisons or pick up the human pieces consequent to drug-related crime. Yet the statistics upon which chief constables' budgets are based and allocated give greater weight to one burglar being caught than all the drug-related crime being prevented, making it more and more difficult for chief constables to allocate resources to drug programmes. That is complete stupidity, and must end. Many chief constables are eager to experiment with a DARE project but are not able to show on the bottom line that it prevents crime. By definition, since the crime has not occurred, it cannot be quantified. Nottinghamshire's 24 DARE officers would doubtless enable chief constables to say that they had caught X burglars. Such budgeting is therefore counter-productive. I do not want to destroy the way in which the police account for their activities, but I hope that the Minister will be able to take that point away and discuss it with her colleagues and the chief constables, so that we can arrive at a prevention strategy. Eighthly, I would like the Minister to use her muscle and authority to end the nonsense of the misuse of the Drug Trafficking Act 1994. I shall explain how. The drug confiscation fund, with which I know the Leader of the House is very familiar, is made up of the proceeds of drug crime, which is a good idea. That fund can be used for drug-related policing—so far, so good—but I understand that the Home Office's interpretation of such policing relates only to enforcement not prevention. I understand that that is an interpretation of the statute, not a requirement of it. I therefore very much hope that, if the Home Office cannot see that money spent on prevention yields many more times its value than chasing the symptoms, the fund will be made available to other Departments—perhaps the DFEE—or some other distribution body. It is perfectly sane, indeed quite ironic, to take money from the drug barons—their ill-gotten gains that they have squeezed out of our young people—and turn it against them by educating young people, so that the drug barons' market is not provided in future. I hope that that very nice irony appeals to hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is not acceptable for Members of Parliament, Ministers and shadow Ministers to wring their hands and whinge about how difficult and intractable the problems are; that is not an acceptable posture for anybody in Parliament or the Executive. DARE proves that the problem is tractable if we have the political will to tackle it. The evil of drug abuse must be tackled seriously. Removing its market—uneducated young people—is the biggest contribution we can make. If we merely pursued the consequences, it would be nothing short of a dereliction of duty, as we have it in our power easily and cheaply to inoculate our youngsters against this evil infection. DARE in Nottinghamshire shows the way, and the effort must go nationwide. I know that the Minister, along with the Lord President, can give real leadership to DARE. If she does so, she will inspire even more teachers, police officers, parents and children in their fight against drugs. I wish her well in that.7.49 pm
First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on his success in the ballot. I am pleased that he has chosen to raise an issue of such importance to the Government and to the country.
I was delighted that my right hon. Friend the Lord President could be present for most of the debate, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), who, as Nottingham's sponsor Minister, has taken a close interest in the drugs prevention programme in Nottingham; I believe that the DARE—drug abuse resistance education—project visited by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was in his constituency. I also thank the hon. Member for Nottingham, North for his kind remarks, and especially for his invitation to visit the DARE project in Nottinghamshire. Sadly, he will know that I cannot give a commitment, but I shall look as sympathetically as possible at any invitation that may arrive on my desk, and, if at all possible, take it up. He will understand that that will probably be impossible in the coming two weeks. We all know, from the familiar names of individual tragedies, that preventing drug misuse and protecting our young people from drugs cannot be anything but a national priority. As the hon. Gentleman has so recently become a father—he and both mother and child have my very good wishes and congratulations—he is doubtless more aware of the problem than most. Before I deal with the Nottingham DARE project and the hon. Gentleman's comments, I want to offer a little background on the Government's overall approach to drug prevention. I hope that that will cast some light on some of his specific points and demonstrate that much action is already in hand. "Tackling Drugs Together", the Government's three-year strategy for combating drug misuse, puts new emphasis on preventing young people from taking drugs. On the prevention front, it brings together the resources of the Home Office, the Department of Health and my Department in a concerted effort to prevent young people from being drawn into the world of drugs. Therefore, the whole ethos of the White Paper is to put a new emphasis on education and prevention, to reduce both the availability and acceptability of drugs to young people. The great value of the strategy is that it has set up a mechanism to ensure that the title of the White Paper, "Tackling Drugs Together", is followed through in practice. We lay great stress on the value of co-ordinated action under the leadership of the Lord President and his Cabinet Sub-Committee on drugs, as well as the officials in his central drugs co-ordination unit. Colleagues in the Department of Health oversee a £5 million-a-year campaign to alert young people to the risks of taking drugs and to inform parents about the effects and dangers. The campaign has recently targeted Ecstasy, LSD and speed in radio and magazine advertisements. It has also produced a booklet, "A Parent's Guide to Drugs and Solvents", which was launched by the Prime Minister last May. In less than a year, 1.7 million copies of the booklet have been distributed, equipping millions of parents with the facts. The Department of Health also supports the national drugs helpline; in the two years since it has been operating, it has answered more than 500,000 calls. The Home Office central drugs prevention unit supervises the operation of a series of local and regional projects through its 12 drug prevention initiative teams, which show what effective drug prevention action local people can take in partnership with others in the community. All DPI projects are fully evaluated and the resulting good practice is made available nationally. That research will help to inform future programmes of drug prevention work in line with the hon. Gentleman's expectations. The east midlands team, which includes Nottingham, works closely with local agencies to develop those aims, including a project to devise culturally appropriate drug prevention materials within schools; I consider that particularly important. My Department has made available £6 million in each year of the strategy to enable local education authorities to train teachers and to develop innovative approaches to drugs education. Those projects have been evaluated and we shall publish a document summarising the findings of the reports. We shall also have the reports from the Office for Standards in Education on drug education in schools and on the contribution of the youth service. Ofsted has found that, in response to guidance issued by the Department to schools in May 1995, around a third of primary schools and three quarters of secondary schools have introduced policies for drugs education and for dealing with drug-related incidents. All those documents, I am pleased to say, will be published on Monday. They will be distributed widely to professionals and made available free of charge to schools. I hope that the booklet will provide a useful pointer to those seeking to develop drugs education programmes as to the range of options that exist. We shall also look terribly carefully at the conclusions of the Ofsted report to see how we might build on our existing work programme in the coming 12 months of the "Tackling Drugs Together" strategy and beyond. That clearly demonstrates that schools share our concern to ensure that the issue of drugs is not ignored. They have not shirked their responsibility to address what is a sensitive educational issue. Schools have a clear role to play and the evidence shows that they are playing it with increasing conviction. One way in which schools often choose to tackle the issue is through the involvement of outside professionals in the classroom. When conducted in a reasonable way, complementing existing provision, such partnerships epitomise the spirit of the White Paper, which places great stress on the need for close co-operation. The DARE scheme in Nottinghamshire is a worthy example of such partnership. Bringing together all elements of the community, and especially schools and the police, its benefits can go much wider than the vital focus of drug prevention. I have been impressed by all that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North has had to say in praising the scheme in Nottinghamshire and I shall take careful note of his words. The scheme promises better relationships with the police, improved self-esteem and healthier decisions by our young people. Above all, it promises to make a significant impact on drug misuse in the east midlands. I know that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were suitably impressed on their visits to the scheme. I am pleased to be able to take this opportunity to applaud the valuable work of the DARE trustees in Nottinghamshire. Other police forces and local education authorities will no doubt want to look closely at the emerging results of the Nottinghamshire programme as they consider whether DARE has a contribution to make in their work. Local needs and circumstances will always, quite rightly, determine the best course in any particular area, but I am pleased that the agencies in Nottinghamshire have been able to agree a way forward that they consider meets the needs of Nottinghamshire and its pupils. I am especially pleased to note the widespread involvement in DARE of private business. I was grateful to my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council for his intervention on that point. That involvement demonstrates that the problems associated with drugs affect all of society. The hon. Member for Nottingham, North was quite right to pay tribute to the role of the private sector. My Department fosters private sector input in a number of drug education programmes. McDonald's is one such firm, and it complements its contribution to DARE by funding a drugs training programme for governors jointly with the Department for Education and Employment. I have myself been closely involved in a current drug prevention initiative sponsored by Iceland Foods. My right hon. Friend the Lord President has confirmed his interest in attracting private sector support. His drugs challenge fund, which matches Government funding to private sector finance raised by local drug action teams, is a prime example of the efforts we are making.The private sector has done tremendous work raising money to assist the development of the materials necessary to spread the word. However, I am sure that the Minister is aware that we would enter a quantitatively different ball game if we were to extend DARE to 42 counties and many more police forces. The effort of co-ordination needed compared to the current level would be like comparing collecting money with a tin can to a highly organised, systematic fund-raising strategy. I hope that the Minister will take away from the debate tonight the need for some real muscle to be put behind fund raising by the private sector by the Government nationally.
I shall take away a lot from the debate. I have been very pleased by the success of the drugs challenge fund. In the first year, it successfully raised more than £1 million from the private sector for local drug prevention initiatives. I note the hon. Gentleman's point and I shall draw it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Lord President.
This evening, we have talked a lot about the DARE approach, but there is no one simple or magical answer to drug prevention. There are other approaches. Other professionals will have a contribution to make in the delivery of drug education. Schools can choose from a range of materials. While I know that guidance from my Department, not least on ensuring the helpful contribution of outside agencies and on selecting materials, has assisted schools in those choices, it is quite right that schools must have those choices. Beyond the requirements of the national curriculum, which lays down what must be taught about drugs at each key stage, schools must look at their own needs and circumstances to determine what will be best for them. I noted the hon. Gentleman's comments about potential changes to the national curriculum, but he will be aware that there is a moratorium on altering it until 2000. The Government have provided leadership. They are taking a responsible approach to ensuring that the needs of all our pupils are appropriately addressed. That applies equally to the police and, quite rightly, it is for chief officers to determine the approach of their forces in light of local needs and priorities. Drug education is an area where schools may, initially, feel a little lost. Teachers may not feel confident in dealing with a subject about which they know very little, and whose jargon and subject matter can change rapidly. It is all too tempting for schools to learn to rely on other agencies to deliver their drug education for them. As I have said, schools have, generally, grasped the nettle of drug education and been prepared to overcome their fears and sensitivities to give it the attention it deserves, but leaning too heavily on others will not help our young people. Even in schools enjoying the support of programmes such as DARE, drug education must have a place in the curriculum before officers visit, and again after the programme is completed.indicated assent.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees. So long as that message is recognised, and outside involvement is acknowledged to be a strong sharing of responsibility and not an abdication of responsibility, such partnerships can be a powerful force for good. I am full of praise for the contribution that the police forces in England are making to education in their areas. Alongside the pioneering Nottinghamshire force and its use of the DARE approach, police forces in Derbyshire, Hampshire and Staffordshire, among others, are working with schools on other comprehensive drug education schemes, such as "Getting It Right".
Elsewhere, police forces have produced policy documents and materials for use in schools. There is much evidence of the commitment that the police show to effective drug prevention work in our schools. It is a partnership that, at every level, can have only positive benefits. As the recent inspection of force drug strategies by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary noted:"Police forces have responded with commitment and enthusiasm to drug prevention and education in schools, in consultation with local education authorities."
Although the word drug appears in the title of DARE, the programme is not only, or even mainly, about drugs. It is about giving young people the ability, as well-rounded and educated young people, to make decisions and choices, instead of having those decisions and choices forced on them. That is what DARE brings to the equation and its approach is applicable to drugs, drink and cigarette smoking. It is also applicable to many other areas, and it is an important part of the social education of young people. It is worth repeating that DARE' s impact goes well beyond its effect on the drug culture. It helps to develop human beings who are capable of interacting with other people rationally and productively.
The head teacher of my local school has told me about young people in the class that was taken by the local bobby. Before, their ability to communicate, even with children in their class, had atrophied. They were not stimulated at home, but they were stimulated by the police officer so that they started to interact with others in their class and to develop a wider range of social skills. That is a wonderful example of the work of DARE.I am prepared to let an intervention continue for a long time when it is so agreeable. The hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm is a joy to see, and I share it.
The inspectorate of constabulary continued:It was noticed how well police forces had responded. The hon. Gentleman made several points about police budgets and the distribution of resources confiscated from drug traffickers. The Home Secretary has provided an extra £20 million in 1996–97 for 1,000 more police officers and a further £40 million in the coming financial year for 2,000 more officers, but it rightly remains for chief officers to decide how to allocate their resources. I make no apology for the fact that strong enforcement measures remain a key element of our strategy. Nevertheless, I was interested in the hon. Gentleman's comments and I am prepared to pass them on to Home Office Ministers. My right hon. Friend the Lord President listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman had to say. We are, after all, pursuing the same ultimate goal. DARE, in common with other approaches to drug education, aims to equip our young people with the skills to make informed, healthy choices. Ultimately, all the efforts expended on drug prevention and education depend on individuals and the choices that each of us makes. It goes further than health education; it centres around young people's personal and social development. We shall consider carefully all those matters when the School Curriculum Assessment Authority presents its replies to the Secretary of State shortly."Many varied approaches have been adopted, reflecting the needs of differing communities and environments".
The Minister has been very positive in replying to the debate. Governments do what they can, regardless of party, but the ball is in the court of those outside this place who read the debate and who care about tackling drugs. Be they chief constables, parents, teachers or even children, if they happen to read the debate in Hansard, I hope that they seize the opportunities offered by the Minister to move forward on the DARE agenda. I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr. Deputy Speaker and that of the Minister. The debate must not end here. The people who care about the initiative must help the Minister and the Lord President of the Council to ensure that we join together, regardless of party, to attack the evil of drugs.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is not simply about personally rejecting drugs but about not turning a blind eye, not casually accepting drugs as someone else's problem or some other family's tragedy. It is about making it plain, whatever the short-term high and whatever the style gurus say, that drugs are damaging to the individual, the family, the community and the country. It is about confronting drug misuse and making it clear that it is not tolerable and not worth it. It is about explaining rationally not only the risks that the individual misuser is toying with, but their wider social impact. They feed local crime and provide a market for greedy opportunists.
Ecstasy misusers may regard their drug taking as a bit of harmless fun, but their decision to take the drug not only places their health at risk but places them at the end of a chain of supply that is inevitably involved in criminality. It is the sum of those individual decisions that nurtures the greed and feeds the misery that drugs bring with them. All the Government's efforts on drugs are focused on defeating that greed. Any other approach is simply the efficient management of moral decline—an approach that the Government will never countenance. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important subject. I hope that I have replied to him fully. I am comforted that we are in full agreement about the way in which to go about tackling drugs together.Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes past Eight o'clock.