asked Her Majesty's Government:What was the occupation of each of the members

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they will state the number of requests for asylum which have been received in each of the last five years for which figures are available and the number of those requests which have been granted.

Comprehensive statistics on such applications were not kept before 1st January 1979. In 1979, 1,550 individual applications were received, 708 of which were granted in that year and 619 were under consideration at the end of the year. In 1980, 3,044 applications were received; 1,413 applications were granted and 1,566 remained under consideration at the end of the year. The above figures do not include people admitted under the special programmes for Vietnamese and Latin American refugees. In 1979, 5,094 Vietnamese refugees were granted asylum in the United Kingdom. The figure for 1980 was 6,953. Sixty people were admitted in 1979 under the special Latin American refugee programme and 96 in the first part of 1980. This programme was closed at the end of 1979.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

The working party was appointed by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to consider how the Police Complaints Board's recommendation for an independent element in the investigation into complaints against the police might be implemented. The chairman, Lord Plowden, was appointed in a personal capacity. The occupation of each of the other members is as follows:Whether they have sought, or been offered, any views on the spread of Islamic slaughterhouses from the National Farmers' Union.

No.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether the growth of Islamic ritual-slaughter-houses for the slaughter of farm animals for export is under consideration by the Farm Animals Welfare Council and, if so, when they are likely to make a report.

I understand that the Farm Animal Welfare Council intends, as part of its review of the welfare of farm animals at the place of slaughter, to consider all the welfare aspects of slaughter by religious methods. I cannot say when the council's report will be completed nor whether they are likely to express a view on the specific subject to which the noble Lord refers.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What are their future plans concerning the provision of arms and military equipment to Iraq and Iran.

Sales of arms and military equipment are subject to customary licensing procedures. Applications are considered in the light of all relevant circumstances, including our relations with the countries involved and, in the case of Iran and Iraq, our neutrality obligations during the present state of hostilities, where Her Majesty's Government's overriding interest is to encourage an early and negotiated settlement.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What information they possess concerning the case of Mr. Viktor Ryzhov-Davydov, a Russian said to be undergoing unnecessary drug treatment for an invented psychiatric condition in the Blagoveshchensk prison-hospital near the Pacific coast of Siberia.

Mr. Ryzhov-Davydov was arrested in November 1979 and charged with libelling the Soviet system. A Soviet psychiatrist found him to be responsible for his actions. He was, however, further examined at the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow and was sentenced in September 1980 to compulsory drug treatment in a special psychiatric hospital in Kazan. He was moved to Blagoveshschensk in November 1980.Her Majesty's Government find particularly repugnant the abuse of medicine and psychiatry for political purposes in the Soviet Union as well as the persecution of those who have attempted to investigate and expose the misuse of psychiatry.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether diplomatic privilege extends to cars parked on the pavement in narrow streets, thus endangering blind pedestrians and the flow of wheeled traffic.

Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations provides that it is the duty of all persons entitled to privileges and immunities to respect the laws of the receiving state. Immunity is a bar to prosecution but the police can and do, in cases of severe obstruction, remove offending vehicles.House adjourned at a quarter before eleven o'clock.