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Category: Speeches

  • Michael Gove – 2020 Statement on the Coronavirus

    Michael Gove – 2020 Statement on the Coronavirus

    Below is the text of the statement made by Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, on 31 March 2020.

    Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for our daily briefing in the fight against COVID-19.

    I am joined today by Dr Jenny Harries, the deputy chief medical officer, and Professor Stephen Powis, the Medical Director of NHS England.

    I would like first to update you all on the facts about the spread of COVID-19 and the steps that we are then taking in the battle against this virus.

    143,186 people have now been tested for the virus.

    Of those, 25,150 have tested positive.

    And sadly, yesterday we recorded the highest single increase in the number of deaths as a result of COVID-19.

    381 people died, meaning that of those hospitalised in the UK, the number who have passed away now totals 1,789.

    Every death is the loss of a loved one, and our thoughts and prayers are with those who are grieving.

    Overall, 10,767 people in England have been admitted to hospital with COVID-19 symptoms.

    The largest number of those is in London, with 3,915 people in hospital care.

    While in the Midlands, the number of those hospitalised is now 1,918 and accelerating upwards.

    These numbers reinforce the vital importance of following the Government’s social distancing guidelines.

    The more we restrict contact, the more we slow the spread of the infection, the more that we can help the NHS build the capacity needed to care for those most in need.

    And that capacity is increasing.

    More NHS staff are returning to the frontline and more testing is taking place to help those self-isolating come back and to protect those working so hard in our hospitals and in social care.

    But while the rate of testing is increasing we must go further, faster.

    A critical constraint on the ability to rapidly increase testing capacity is the availability of the chemical reagents which are necessary in the testing.

    The Prime Minister and the Health Secretary are working with companies worldwide to ensure that we get the material we need to increase tests of all kinds.

    And as well as increasing the number of staff on the frontline, and the tests which protect them, we must also increase the capacity to provide oxygen to those worst affected by the disease.

    We have just over 8,000 ventilators deployed in NHS hospitals now. This number has increased since the epidemic began, thanks to the hard work of NHS professionals.

    But we need more.

    That is why we are buying more ventilators from abroad – including from EU nations.

    And it’s also why we are developing new sources of supply at home.

    Before the epidemic struck we had very little domestic manufacture of ventilators.

    But now, thanks to the dedication of existing medical supply companies and the ingenuity of our manufacturing base, we have existing models being produced in significantly greater numbers and new models coming on stream.

    Orders have been placed with consortia led by Ford, Airbus, the Formula 1 Racing teams including Mclaren, GKN Aerospace and Rolls Royce and Dysons.

    And I can announce that this weekend, the first of thousands of new ventilator devices will roll off the production line and be delivered to the NHS next week. From there they will be rapidly distributed to the front line.

    And as well as increasing the capacity for ventilation – which helps support those patients worst affected – we are also increasing the capacity to provide oxygen to affected patients at an earlier stage in the process of the disease, helping to avert, we hope, the deterioration of their condition.

    A team led by UCL, working with Mercedes Benz, will produce 10,000 new CPAP devices to support affected patients and a team from Oxford University are also developing related technology.

    And in our determination to prevent as many patients as possible seeing their condition worsen we are conducting rapid clinical trials on those drugs, including anti-malarials, which may be able to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on those affected.

    But even as we seek to explore every avenue to slow the spread of the disease, to reduce its impact and to save lives, I am conscious of the sacrifices that so many are making.

    That is why the Chancellor’s economic package is in place – to support people through a difficult time.

    It is also why we we are working so closely with our colleagues in the devolved administrations to coordinate our response across the United Kingdom and I am grateful to them

    As I am to the thousands of dedicated public sector workers – cleaners and social workers, prison and police officers, those in the Royal Mail and in our schools – and I want to thank them and also the leaders of the trade unions who represent them.

    In this united national effort we also are delivering food and prescription drugs to up to 1.5 million of the most vulnerable who are self-isolating for three months.

    And we will do more to help, working with the three quarters of a million people who have volunteered to help at this time. Many are already heavily involved in local community support schemes.

    And we want to work with them to ensure that we support not just the 1.5 million most vulnerable to the disease but all those who need our help through this crisis, those without social support, those in tough economic circumstances, those who need the visible hand of friendship at a challenging time.

    That is why my cabinet colleague George Eustice and the Food and Farming Minister Victoria Prentis will be leading work, with food suppliers, retailers, local authorities and voluntary groups to support our neighbours in need.

    I also want to thank the men and women of the military who have stepped up their work as part of the ongoing response to coronavirus.

    three RAF Puma helicopters are now stationed at Kinloss Barracks in Moray. These Pumasare working closely with a Chinook and a Wildcat helicopter based at RAF Leeming, North Yorkshire, to meet any requests for assistance from NHS boards and trusts across Scotland and Northern England.

    A second helicopter facility covers the Midlands and Southern England working out of The Aviation Task Force Headquarters at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. Chinook and Wildcat helicopters normally based at RAF Odiham and RNAS Yeovilton respectively support the Southern areas.

    And these helicopter facilities have been set up to support medical transports across Scotland and the rest of the UK. The task force is also available for general support such as moving equipment and personnel to where they are needed across the UK.

    The Kinloss-based support follows last weekend’s use of an RAF A400M transport aircraft, working with the Scottish Ambulance Service, to evacuate a critically ill patient from the Shetland Islands to Aberdeen to receive intensive care treatment.

    I am deeply grateful for everyone in the our armed forces and in the public sector who are doing so much to help in the fight against coronavirus

    And, of course, all of us can continue to play our part in supporting them and the health service by staying at home, supporting the NHS and saving lives.

  • Richard Buchanan – 1978 Speech on British Rail Catering

    Below is the text of the speech made by Richard Buchanan, the then Labour MP for Glasgow Springburn, in the House of Commons on 26 April 1978.

    Throughout the period that the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Shaw) has been in the House, I have served on various Committees with him and have formed a high opinion of his ability and have appreciated his pleasant personality. It is therefore more in sorrow than in anger that I oppose the Bill, because he is stooping to the tedious repetition of the anti-nationalisation argument perpetuated by the Conservative Party.

    The hon. Member is seeking the denationalisation of British Rail catering. Which part? Does he mean the hotels which make a profit, the station buffets which make a profit, or the train catering which makes a huge loss? There are no prizes for the answer to that one.

    I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is acquainted with the realities of the situation. It is true that British Rail catering makes a loss. The hotels make a profit of about £850,000, the station buffets about £750,000. But there is a ​ loss on train catering of £2,300,000, which is less than 1 per cent. of the Inter-City passenger revenue. Its impact on the generality of passenger fares is minuscule. To say that passengers who do not participate in the catering subsidise those who do is arrant nonsense.

    One can consider our own Refreshment Department. One of its great handicaps is that it can never estimate the needs. On a running three-line Whip, the Dining Room might be empty. On a one-line Whip, when it seems that hardly anyone is about, the Dining Room might be packed. A similar impossibility of gauging needs leads British Rail, particularly on its trains, into this deficit.

    We seldom hear complaints about similar losses on airlines, simply because a meal is included in the marketing package. If the catering were costed separately, I am sure that it would show quite a loss.

    The hon. Member said nothing about withdrawing catering from British trains, but the last time that private enterprise dabbled in a nationalised industry, if a line or service did not pay, it was simply chopped off. How bitterly today we regret the lines in the North of Scotland which were chopped off by the Beeching axe.

    The withdrawal of train catering would be a sure loser. I do not see private enterprise, under any franchise, taking this on. It would mean extensive and expensive reinvestment in dining cars and in kitchens.

    Many of us have for long advocated a considerable reinvestment in British Rail and will continue to do so. There is to be an investment in new rolling stock, including dining cars and kitchens. Most of the outdated vehicles should be scrapped. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, who is present, will take note.

    The staff of Travellers-Fare, who have been ridiculed, do a magnificent job on trains. They work in very cramped and difficult conditions. British Rail has speeded up its service. My journey to London used to take 10 hours. I would get on a sleeper at St. Enoch’s and I could read my book for a few hours, fall asleep and wake up in London. Now I am there only a few hours. The Travellers-Fare people have to try to serve two meals in that short time. They ​ often have to do so on trains travelling at 100 miles an hour and therefore swaying considerably.

    Travellers-Fare has consistently shown a better economic return than similar organisations on the Continent and in America. The only one that makes any profit is the Swiss.

    British Rail is taking steps to improve its service across the board, including its catering provision—as it always does. Reorganisation is taking place. Travellers-Fare has been incorporated into British Transport Hotels with a remit to exploit every opportunity for the successful expansion and development of the business. New services such as the Gold Star menu are proving popular and the experimental reduction of buffet prices and an improved range of food are boons to the travellers. Station buffets are being refurbished and we are told that dining cars will be refurbished. If they are out of date, they should be scrapped.

    Who in private enterprise would take on rail catering? There is one claimant in the field—Sir Charles Forte, who hoisted himself into the top ten individual contributors to the Tory Party with a contribution of £25,000. He is a man who believes in profitability. Was it entirely accidental that Sir Charles Forte staked his claim on the very day on which the Egon Ronay survey produced the most damning report on motorway cafeterias run by his organisation? Or was it a desperate device to divert attention from his predicament? I think that that is what it was—and this Bill is an equally transparent manoeuvre by the supporters of the Tory Party.

    With all the difficulties inherent in catering on trains, Travellers-Fare services have improved immeasurably and will continue to do so. Station buffets pay and provide a good service. As I travel from Euston to Glasgow, I should hate to go into a buffet at either end and find some of the conditions that Egon Ronay found in motorway cafes.

    Let us take Newport Pagnell—[HON. MEMBERS: “No, you take it.”] Egon Ronay spoke of an indefensible state of neglect, badly worn carpets, dirty seats, sluggish table clearing and a clutter of rubbish and cigarette ends. Nor would I appreciate going for a meal or a snack in the dining car if I found, as Egon Ronay did in the motorway cafeterias, ​ that sausages were inedible, the fish was stale, the pea soup was lurid, the hamburgers were tough and there were watery carrots. And those were among the more complimentary remarks. That is what the hon. Member for Pudsey wants to introduce to British Rail.

    Sir Charles Forte has a monumental task cleaning up his own organisation. Let him begin with the motorway cafes.

  • Giles Shaw – 1978 Speech on British Rail Catering

    Below is the text of the speech made by Giles Shaw, the then Conservative MP for Pudsey, in the House of Commons on 26 April 1978.

    I beg to move,

    That leave be given to bring in a Bill to denationalise catering facilities provided by British Transport Hotels Limited for British Rail; and to make consequential provisions in relation thereto.

    Let me begin by stressing that in recent times British Rail has shown a much greater sensitivity to the need to improve standards and performance of British Rail catering both on certain station buffets and on trains. But the fact remains—in my view it is a principle which is not easily bucked—that British Rail primarily exists to run an effective and efficient railway service, which demands a much greater concentration of effort on capital projects to improve track, trains and allied engineering services than it does to maintain an efficient kitchen and dining car or a wide variety of food in a station buffet. Hence it has been obvious for many years that the catering side of British Rail is very much the Cinderella of the outfit.

    This apparently embarrassing conflict was well set out in a report by British Rail executives in evidence to Sub-Committee A of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries in February 1977. In an interview with that Committee on 8th February 1977, the director of British Rail responsible said:

    “These two aims of satisfying the customer and keeping marketing costs down to manageable proportions are sometimes in conflict, not surprisingly, and one tries to achieve a balance by sensitive judgment of priorities … This balance between a service and the cost of providing it is something which is regularly under review. In fact, there has been over recent years an ongoing—and it is still going on—respecification of the train catering requirement to meet changed eating habits.”

    The first purpose of this Bill, therefore, is to relieve British Rail of the embarrassment of seeking to be responsible for two aspects of travellers’ requirements which are so frequently in conflict.

    I do not consider that the catering facilities of British Rail should be regarded as a marketing embarrassment when it might be possible for them to be operated by the private sector as the major objective of a business. Secondly, in terms of economic performance, the whole House would be anxious to see ​ that British Rail should continue to take developments which lead to profitable business.

    From the latest public figures available, catering on stations generated a surplus of £1·2 million before paying rentals of £0·6 million. But train catering showed an operating net loss of £2·4 million in maintaining catering service facilities on more than 900 weekly trains. Therefore, the overall position of catering on stations and on trains is one of running at a very substantial loss.

    Perhaps the House should understand that catering is one of the activities carried out by a subsidiary of British Transport Hotels Ltd., the subsidiary being known as Travellers-Fare. At the end of 1976, BTH operated some 181 station and catering units. But it also had 55 operating units in the hands of tenants. So the idea of franchising in respect of British Rail’s operation is far from new. Indeed, it is established.

    It will be a second objective of my Bill, therefore, to encourage this trend to franchising which has been examined frequently as a possible solution to British Rail’s station catering problems. For evidence of this, I turn to the Central Transport Users’ Consultative Council, in whose 1977 annual report the matter of franchising was discussed. I quote from page 10 of that report:

    “To the Sub-Committee’s suggestion that where train catering facilities appeared to be uneconomical they could perhaps be provided by the franchise system, the Board”—

    the British Rail board—

    “replied that the standards specified by the Passenger Business could not be guaranteed if the train catering was fragmented in this way. The Committee decided that the Sub-Committee”—

    of the Transport Consultative Committee—

    “should investigate the advantages or disadvantages of using the franchise system for train catering.”

    It is only right equally to inform the House that the Sub-Committee to which I referred examined this possibility and gave some reasons why in its view it might not be possible. Amongst the reasons given were, first, that the private entrepreneur might consider the risks too great in view of the lack of storage and refrigeration facilities and the lack of sufficient detail regarding trade levels, ​ secondly, that of having to operate as self-employed with all the problems of VAT regulations, thirdly, that trade union opposition was most likely, and, fourthly, that choosing a suitable route for an experiment might be difficult.

    I submit that these are not sufficient reasons for deciding that a franchising arrangement for British Rail catering cannot be run and manned. It is this lack of flexibility which formed part of the criticism of British Rail by the Sub-Committee of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries in its report in 1977.

    The answer was in part clear—that such flexibility required readapting the system, and that would require modification of existing vehicles and capital reinvestment. None would deny this as being necessary, but the point is that catering services are regarded as being so low on the list of priorities that their chances of getting a slice of British Rail’s investment cake are very slim, and the travelling public today are being served in ancient rolling stock under an inflexible system.

    I do not see why this should not be livened up by a healthy injection of competition. Clearly, the most fruitful ground for this to occur would be on railway station buffets and other catering services where there are increasing signs that Travellers-Fare, while seeking to modify its menu and pricing, is still offering fairly unappetising services.

    Why is it that many station buffets close at 8 p.m.? Why is it that many do not open before 10 a.m. on Sundays? It is largely because these institutions are run as part of a greater institution, namely British Rail, and are not run by normal competitive criteria which would provide keener services for the travelling consumer.

    It would be possible to attract the public to eating in railway station restaurants if their service and pricing were improved. Such is the case on the Continent. Many gourmets descend on the Gare de l’Est in Paris and other French stations primarily for eating rather than for travelling purposes. Although within the British Transport Hotels there are many first-class hotels, they tend to be those less associated with their proximity to railway services than with their ​ proximity to leisure activities such as golf at Turnbury or Gleneagles. The principle here is quite clearly that to tailor a package to the holidaymaker and tourist is good, but that to tailor a package to those who happen to travel on British Rail is very difficult and unprofitable. In my view, the public deserve the best catering available whenever they travel, and they have been expressing concern in increasing numbers that the standards have slipped badly.

    I am aware that the management of British Rail has just announced for a temporary period a reduction of some prices of British Rail foods. The cost of coffee and biscuits has dropped from 29p to 24p and that of coffee and cheese sandwiches from 51p to 44p. A standard cup of powdered coffee plus hot water will now be 15p instead of 17p on most services. However, anyone who has the good fortune to consume it in a railway dining car will find that it still costs 24p. That is because the menu describes the cup of coffee as being “freshly made”.

    There has been a clear tendency for British Rail to concentrate on the expense account diner instead of on the travelling family. But even the business man must be getting a little doubtful when he is served grilled salmon maitre d’hotel at £3·85 or with chicken stanley at £3·40, so called because it is presumed to be chicken.

    Then, of course, there are wines from the British Transport Hotel cellars, located in Derby, I believe, including the new French table versions vin blanc, vin rouge and vin rosé, which are the Freeman, Hardy and Willis amongst viniculturists.

    The matter of principle which causes most concern remains the extent to which British Rail should enjoy the monopoly of catering services to its passengers as well as the monopoly of selling them tickets and travel. As the Price Commission said in paragraph 153 of its recent report, the British Rail board—

    “are actively developing station trading facilities including the development of franchise arrangements. The catering service on trains is currently being reviewed.”

    I accept that it is a necessary provision. But it is clear that it is seen as a marketing cost designed to hold and guarantee business when it could and should be seen as a marketing oppor ​ tunity in its own right. That is why the development of franchising, which the British Rail board apparently is considering, should be taken further and why it should become by Act of Parliament a requirement that it seeks alternative sources of capital to run and develop the catering services for the travelling public on British Rail.

    Just as British Rail offers Gold Star weekend packages at their hotels, it surely could offer an inclusive meal ticket for family snack facilities to enable Awayday returns to become a more attractive form of travel to a wider number of people.

    This Bill, therefore, will be in the interests not only of British Rail, which seeks to eliminate losses and yet is confined by restraints on capital expenditure, but also of the travelling public, who will be able to obtain better pricing through competition, a wider variety of foods and from station services a source of catering which could and should become a matter of local interest and pride.

    I commend the Bill to the House.

  • Hugh Dykes – 1978 Speech on Assaults on London Transport Staff

    Below is the text of the speech made by Hugh Dykes, the Conservative MP for Harrow East, in the House of Commons on 24 April 1978.

    I feel particularly grateful for the opportunity of being able to raise in the House tonight what I regard as an extremely important subject—the growing problem of assaults on London Transport bus crews and public transport personnel in the Greater London area. I think that not only the crews themselves but members of the public will also welcome the opportunity of this subject being debated in the House.

    It might seem unduly alarmist to raise this matter as a specific subject rather than just to deal with general matters concerning violence in modern society and law and order in general. Incidentally, I can certainly see the logic of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department attending the debate, and I thank her for coming to the House, rather ​ than a Minister from the Department of Transport being present on the Front Bench.

    But I do not think that it is enough just to treat this matter as a general problem. There is a specific problem in connection with the growing number of violent indictments on public transport vehicles affecting bus crews, and in respect of Tube trains and other trains, and there are also those involving ticket staffs and station staffs. But the main problem certainly relates to the buses.

    If anyone accused me of being alarmist, I would deny that by saying that last year there were nearly 800 cases of common assault. There were 130 other offences similar to that. If one singles out just serious assaults, including grievous bodily harm, one finds that 237 incidents were reported in 1977, and those are only the reported incidents in the Greater London area on London Transport buses alone. They do not include incidents which presumably do not get reported, the minor incidents which could easily turn into violent incidents, and all the rest of it, and they do not include assaults that occur on other members of the public in public transport vehicles, but only on staff, mainly conductors and drivers.

    One-third of the assaults, according to London Transport—and I am grateful to London Transport for the figures that I have been given—occur after school hours. Therefore, this is an indication, as with a large number of violent incidents in London—and I say this with great regret and great reluctance—that once again we must consider the growing and specific problem of juvenile offenders, particularly in the big cities and especially, unfortunately, in London.

    There are no conclusions to be reached in geographical terms, other than that—it is equally with great regret that I have to say it—most of these incidents have taken place south of the river. I refrain deliberately from singling out specific areas in Greater London where these violent and horrible incidents have taken place on buses, but that seems to be the pattern that has developed.

    Lest there be any mistaken conclusion from other kinds of sociological factors and trends in all this sad and sorry picture, there are no racial conclusions to be drawn either. As much as there may be ​ gangs of hooligans, of whatever race, operating in crowds, there are also incidents perpetrated by single assailants or by assailants going around in a group or in pairs, and they can be from all sorts of ethnic groups.

    But the incidents are now serious enough to cause grave anxiety at London Transport and particularly amongst the people who have to suffer them directly, the bus crews themselves. In respect of the Tubes, although this is much less of a problem, as we can well imagine, none the less the number of serious assaults last year, at 58, including station staff and ticket staff, is in itself sufficiently alarming for London Transport to be thinking hard about that as well. The total of common assaults was nearly 140. The increase in recent years has been about 10 per cent. per annum.

    I know that London Transport is thinking desperately and urgently about measures that can be taken. Before I get on to that aspect of the matter, I feel that it is my duty to mention one or two of the worst incidents. I am grateful to London Transport for providing me with the sad information in these accounts.

    The driver on a No. 83 bus received an emergency signal from the conductor and went round to assist. Four youths, who had apparently been trying to steal a woman’s bag, jumped off as the driver arrived. He was struck in the eye, breaking his glasses, and suffered bruising. Because of the incident he was unable to carry on driving. That driver subsequently collapsed and died in North-wick Park Hospital, which serves my constituency and the whole of the borough of Harrow. The cause of death was registered as coronary thrombosis. That driver ​ came from Harrow. That was one of the worst of the recent incidents.

    On 16th April last year the driver of a No. 147 bus, which was stationary at Redbridge Lane at 11 o’clock at night, was approached by a 16-year-old boy and asked what time the bus was leaving. The driver told the defendant, and at that point the youth struck the driver about the head and chest and then kicked him several times. The driver suffered cuts to both legs, bleeding from the nose, bruising to both legs and the lower half of his back. The youth was caught and subsequently fined a princely total of £40.

    Another incident involved a 65-year-old woman conductor who was on duty at just before midday. A youth boarded her bus and entered the lower saloon. She asked him for his fare. He said that he had no money and would not pay anything. He was told that he would have to pay. He jumped off the bus, but then jumped on again, kicking the woman conductor several times on the leg, and ran off. He was not traced, but following this incident it is unlikely that the woman conductor will be able to continue working.

    Recently there has been one of the worst incidents in recent years, as a result of which a life sentence was imposed on an assailant of a bus driver and his conductor, who in a dreadful incident were both stabbed repeatedly. I have in my hand two photographs from two separate editions of the West London Observer showing quite clearly the stab wounds inflicted on Mr. John Heath, the heroic bus conductor who, with his colleague, the driver, suffered these dreadful injuries. Those two men find it difficult to carry on with their work. They are working at the moment, but one can imagine the effect of that incident upon them.

    If it is said that I am being alarmist, I reply that I am not. Am I singling out individual incidents and exaggerating them because this does not happen as much as some people think? The answer is in the negative. These incidents have increased enormously in recent years. London Transport is very worried about the situation and so are the bus crews.
    What can be done about this growing problem? I believe that all of us in the community of London should get together to consider these problems and various ​ possibilities for action and put them together in some kind of package.
    There are no magic or easy answers. I am not suggesting that London Transport has been slow or dilatory in trying to find solutions, or in making suggestions to the police or the Home Office. Furthermore, I am in no way criticising the Government, and I am certainly not criticising the suffering bus crews who have to put up with these attacks. We must examine the background to and the causes of these dreadful incidents, the increase in their numbers and possible solutions.

    This problem is too complicated to merit superficial or glib solutions which are not real solutions but just rhetorical references to sloganised possibilities. There are certain strands which have developed recently which perhaps give us the clue to some of these crimes and to what can be done, if not to eliminate them—which would be expecting too much— at least to mitigate their effects and to reduce their incidence in future, if that can be done. This demands a strong lead and guidance from the Government. That is why I have raised the matter tonight.

    The evidence shows that many of these incidents are seemingly mindless. They often occur late at night. Many assailants have had too much to drink, which is in itself a difficult problem. It is easier to talk about it than to solve it.

    The problem is also often to do with fare-dodging or young assailants trying to pay the reduced fare even if they are over age. It is often to do with gangs going around together, waiting until the bus is empty of passengers late at night and then assaulting a conductor or conductress, often elderly, and the driver if he comes from the cab to try to assist the conductor or conductress.

    There have been fewer instances pro rata on one-man vehicles. That is probably understandable, in that there is a certain limited amount of physical protection for the operative there. Moreover, the passengers must complete the act of paying the fare on entering the vehicle, rather than paying the conductor.

    We must have enormous sympathy for conductors in London over the way in which they struggle and tussle with crowded buses and service the whole bus, ​ particularly a two-deck bus, as is overwhelmingly the case. They have to keep an eye on all the passengers getting on and off, and make sure, if possible, that all the passengers pay their fare.

    It has recently been suggested that in order to stop fare-dodging the operatives should impose on-the-spot fines. I have serious doubts about that. In many ways it could make the matter worse. I think particularly of an elderly operative on a deserted route south of London trying to get six aggressive youths to pay a fare when they flatly refuse to do so late at night. The mind boggles.

    What can be done? I hope—this is not an old suggestion but is relevant to this modern situation—that magistrates will be more realistic in imposing stiffer fines and other sentences and that the authorities, including Home Office Ministers, will again consider the arguments for a short, sharp sentence. That is better than long-drawn-out prison sentence on an assailant who may indulge in a mindless act which he—and sometimes, regrettably, even she nowadays—regrets later for a long time.

    I turn to the physical equipment side. London Transport has already been installing two-way radios and shrill sirens with flashing lights that the bus driver can operate. That must be continued and the programme should be accelerated. I understand that it is not due to be completed until 1981, which seems a long way away in view of this emergency.

    I pay tribute to the Metropolitan Police for their suggestions. They have been discussing the matter with the Government. The use of plain clothes officers, in particular, but also uniformed officers on occasion, can go a long way to reducing the number of incidents, with people being taken into custody by being arrested on the spot, even for a minor incident. There have been a number of experiments along those lines which have appeared to be extremely encouraging.

    I come to two specific suggestions that I make with deliberate emphasis, but with great care, because I do not want them to be misunderstood. The Government, London Transport and the Metropolitan Police should at least consider the possibility of using spray dye which cannot be removed and which can be administered by bus operatives on assailants. It would ​ permit identification later, because it could not be removed from the face or hands of the assailants. It sounds drastic and dramatic. I put it forward only as a suggestion, but I should like it to be seriously considered. I must emphasise that such dye does no harm to the person on whom it is sprayed.

    I come to a more serious suggestion. Again, I do not want to be misunderstood. On such occasions, the Press naturally use phrases such as “tear gas” which can be misunderstood. But it is now possible to manufacture individual canisters which can be used on one assailant or perhaps two assailants to immobilise them for a few seconds while help is summoned. I know that bus crews will have great hesitation about such an idea. I merely say at this stage that it, too, should be considered.

    I also recommend that bus crews should consider self-defence lessons, on a voluntary basis. I do not wish to be misunderstood and I hope that the Minister will not think that I mean that bus crews should become instant judo experts. That would be hopelessly unrealistic. I mean the older operatives might possibly be given limited lessons in self-defence techniques which would help them in these critically difficult situations.

    None of these is a perfect solution. It is easy to think of situations, but they usually spring up without warning. Crews have to be on the alert. I raise this matter on a day when a number of garages and routes in London are immobilised because of unofficial action by various garages. That action is totally unconnected with this subject, although there have been stoppages of late services as a result of a fear among bus crews of violent incidents, which have become more regular in recent months.

    The industrial action being taken today has to do with the rescheduling of bus services. I regret that this action should be taking place when the bus crews can see that the House is trying to help them. Their action will be inflicting problems on the long-suffering public. Even when we are critical about certain aspects of London Transport services it should not be thought that we are not equally anxious to try to help the bus crews and the public to cope with these terrible incidents, ​ only some of which I have related I could submit a case history of such incidents concerning attacks on bus drivers and conductors.

    I come now to the dilemma of the public in all this. Should the public stay out of the way if they see bus drivers and conductors being attacked? Should they have a go? What should they do? The natural advice we would give is for them to keep well away. I believe that the Metropolitan Police would say the same thing. I gather that the Tottenham depot is examining the idea of a perspex screen to protect the operatives of one-man buses. If all of these issues are tackled, the public will benefit. They will feel reassured in that the crews are being protected.

    I have put forward possibilities to be examined. This problem will continue and worsen unless drastic action is taken. I hope that matters will not just be left to London Transport but that all of us in London will feel that we are engaged in solving a disturbing and sad problem.

  • Jeff Rooker – 1978 Speech on the Zip Fastener Industry

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeff Rooker, the then Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, in the House of Commons on 21 April 1978.

    I wish to raise in this debate the problems of the zip fastener industry in the United Kingdom. In 1970, the United Kingdom imported £1·2 million worth of zip fasteners and component parts and exported £2 million worth. By 1977, we were importing £10 million worth of parts and completed zip fasteners and exporting only £7·1 million worth. In other words, we had moved into the position of being a net importer of parts and completed zip fasteners.

    The problem basically relates, in the substantial change over the last seven years, to the construction of a factory by the Japanese manufacturer YKK Limited at Runcorn, Cheshire, which is being used as a means of substantially increasing imports of completed parts from Japan. It has not been used to manufacture components and completed zip fasteners in this country, as was the intention, and thereby it has not given work to British workers to replace the jobs lost in our own factories.

    I have raised this matter on a number of occasions, and I raise it again today because the assurances I have been given on the Floor of the House and in letters from Ministers over the past three years can now be seen to be—shall we say?—erroneous.

    In June 1974 I received a letter from my hon. Friend the then Under-Secretary of State for Industry in which he said ​ that the Department had had assurances from YKK Limited that over the next four years it planned to increase substantially the United Kingdom-manufactured content of its products and correspondingly to reduce significantly its imports of both completed fasteners and components.

    On 19th February 1975, when I had an Adjournment debate on this very problem, my hon. Friend again said to me:

    “However, in discussions which took place last year, YKK assured us that over the next four or five years it planned to move towards a substantially British operation, with only specialty lines being imported.”—[Official Report, 19th February 1975; Vol. 886, c. 1521.]

    By 5th January 1976, I received a letter from the then Under-Secretary of State for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Kelvingrove (Mr. Carmichael) in which he said:

    “The total value of YKK’s imports will probably remain at about the present level over the next two or three years, but this is because it is planned significantly to increase exports incorporating imported components. There will, in other words, be fewer zip fasteners and parts of Japanese manufacture coming on the home market in the future.

    YKK has provided us with estimates of its imports and exports for each of the next three years. We have no reason to question these intentions or to doubt the company’s ability to carry them out. We shall, however, continue to monitor the situation carefully and to hold regular discussions with YKK.”

    It is now 1978, and I have the final figures for imports and exports for 1977. The figures were given in a Written Answer on 15th March 1978, which showed that in 1974 the total of imports from Japan, which all came from YKK, was £1·8 million of completed parts. This shot up in 1977 to £4·7 million. In terms of the Japanese percentage of imports, the rise was from 78 per cent. in value terms in 1974 to 80·7 per cent. in 1977.

    On 3rd April I was given the figures in volume terms for completed zip parts. Japan had 76 per cent. of all imports in 1974, and this had increased to 83 per cent. by 1977. This meant that some 6·2 million dozen complete zips, or 75 million zip fasteners, were imported from Japan. Therefore, the assurances that I was given on three separate occasions in three different years have been shown to be meaningless.

    On 17th March this year, when I asked the Secretary of State for Industry two specific questions about YKK, I incorporated some of the assurances I had received, and I asked what the Department had done. The Minister of State replied to my Questions, and he said:

    “The value of YKK’s imports, net of its exports, has not declined as the company has forecast and indeed increased in 1977, though the volume of imports was lower than for 1976. The Department continues to impress on YKK its concern to see the level of imports decline.”—[Official Report, 17th March 1978; Vol. 946, c. 363.]

    That is a pretty wishy-washy answer. It was taken up by business journalists on The Times, who got the message. Mr. Derek Harris wrote an article on 20th March in which he said:

    “The Japanese zip fastener maker, YKK, has failed to live up to assurances given in 1974 that its imports into the United Kingdom would be reduced.”

    I was concerned about the wishy-washiness of the answer, but I then realised that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State was going to Japan to encourage more business men to come to Britain to invest here. Obviously, he was not going to upset the Japanese by making it clear that those already here had failed to keep the pledges given to his Department and through it to the House.

    After that article in The Times, YKK was pretty unhappy about it. The chairman, Mr. Takahashi—I have the spelling here for anyone who wants to know, because I cannot pronounce it properly—was somewhat upset about the interpretation of the Minister’s answer in the article. The article in The Times on 14th April claimed that YKK had said that it had never given any undertakings to the Government on the level of imports. That made me wonder about the substance of the two letters that I had received.

    Before I was successful in getting this debate, I had managed to purloin a copy of the letter which the chairman of YKK (Britain) wrote to the Minister of State and of which he sent copies to the editor of The Times. In that letter, dated 28th March, he told my right hon. Friend that his replies to my Questions showed a complete misunderstanding of the situation. He said that there was

    “no undertaking between your Department or the Zip Manufacturers Association and ourselves.”

    He also said:

    “Without concrete undertakings, there can be no such talk of failure.”

    He went on to talk of

    “Our plan, which is merely an estimate and not in any way a duty to be carried out to the letter”.

    Why are we encouraging more Japanese businesses to come here, supposedly to stimulate the British economy, create new jobs and increase output, when the direct result of this company coming to Britain has been exactly the opposite? We have lost far more jobs in Birmingham, in Lightning Fasteners and in the factory owned by the Americans in Wales. Other factories have closed down. In the British sector—some of which is American-owned—more jobs have been lost than have been gained through this Japanese plant at Runcorn. In 1976–77 our imports must have been unsatisfactory for Ministers concerned with the industrial strategy.

    A civil servant at the Department of Industry, Mr. R. E. Sellers, wrote recently to the Zip Manufacturers Association in Britain claiming that YKK makes at Runcorn 65 per cent. of what it sells in the United Kingdom. We know what the company imports into this country in the way of finished products and that must represent the other 35 per cent. That is on the assumption that it is not importing completed goods for re-export. Since it has factories elsewhere in Europe, that would not make much sense. But if the total import of 75 million finished zips is 35 per cent. of its sales, its total sales must be about 215 million completed zip parts.

    The best estimate by the United Kingdom Association of YKK’s market share in Britain is between 120 million and 140 million finished zips, or about 50 per cent. of the company’s own estimate. Either the figures are wrong or YKK is not manufacturing at Runcorn anything like 65 per cent. of what it sells in the United Kingdom. It is bringing in massive quantities of semi-finished goods to finish at Runcorn and is still importing 75 million finished zips a year—77 million last year—to sell here, although it has a factory which is producing these goods.

    I want the Minister to meet my challenge. I have quoted the assertions of the Department of Industry based on the 1974, 1975 and 1976 figures. We can now see the figures for 1977, which are in flat contradiction to the assurances. What action will the Department take? The dumping claims have not been exactly successful. The Department is still seeking new investment. This story should be a warning to other industries about the effects of seeking Japanese investment.

    Will the Department toughen up the concessions that it will try to get from YKK to reduce its import content of completely and partly finished goods and to manufacture at a factory in this country using materials obtained at the nearest possible place, manufactured in Britain by British workers? That was the intention.

    Has YKK filed its accounts for 1975 yet? I understand that it is lax in filing its accounts. It is therefore more difficult for British industry to see what its competitors are up to. I am not saying that British industry is pristine white in this respect, because some British companies are notoriously bad at filing accounts. British industry needs a certain amount of knowledge about what the United Kingdom branch of YKK is doing. It seems as though YKK is breaking the law by having not yet filed accounts for beyond 1975.

    Over 500 jobs have been lost in this small industry, which employed only about 4,500 people four years ago and which now employs fewer. The United Kingdom market for this product involves only about £20 million. It is a small but vital part of Britain’s manufacturing industry. It represents a symptom of what is wrong in British industry because we have allowed the Japanese to claim a large share of the market by using allegedly unfair methods.

    It is a sorry state when our Government receive assurances and do not ensure that they are carried out to the letter. My constituents can come only to me to put their case to the Government. The Department of Industry has let down my constituents in this respect. It has also let down workers in other constituencies. In the past couple of years two factories have been closed, and the signs do not look good.

    Inflation has increased, and so one should forget the cash calculation of what has happened in the industry. But the volume has increased leaps and bounds in the last few years. This factory was supposed to create jobs in Britain. What is the Department going to do about this? I know that there is to be a meeting next week between departmental officials and members of the Zip Fastener Manufacturers’ Association. They are fed up to the teeth with meetings. They have attended meetings in each of the last four years. They have received letters and assurances but, frankly, the managers and workers in the industry, particularly at Lightning Fasteners in Birmingham, are beginning to lose any of the confidence that they might have had in the Department of Industry.

    They are not looking for protectionism. They are not campaigning to get rid of the Japanese factory. They are prepared to meet competition fair and square. Since I have had the honour to be a Member of the House, I have visited the Birmingham factory on several occasions. It does not seem to be behind in technology or productivity. The workers are not always walking out because of a dispute. They are anxious about their jobs.

    It is easy to draw a graph showing what has happened in the last four or five years. The workers can see that if the present situation continues their jobs will disappear. They can see that their firm might go out of business. YKK has made this happen all over the world. It ruined the United States zip industry by flooding the market with cheap goods at less than their production price. This put local manufacturers out of business. YKK monopolised the market and put up its prices.

    This company is massive. It is a multinational company, as is Lightning Fasteners, but, at least, other companies play the game according to the rules. Most of British industry, unfortunately, does this. Some of us believe that, if British industry did not play according to the rules, it might do better. That, however, is one of the problems of British industry. I claim that the rules are being broken by this company. Even when it gives assurances it does not live up to them. No amount of statements about the odd dispute on a building at Runcorn will ​ satisfy local manufacturers and workers. They have had assurances, but these have not been kept. They want to know from my hon. Friend this afternoon what the Government will do about it.

  • Dominic Raab – 2020 Statement on the Coronavirus

    Dominic Raab – 2020 Statement on the Coronavirus

    Below is the text of the statement made by Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, on 30 March 2020.

    Good afternoon, welcome to Downing Street for today’s coronavirus press briefing. I’m joined by our Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance and Dr Yvonne Doyle, Medical Director at Public Health England.

    Before Sir Patrick provides an update on the latest data from our COBR coronavirus dashboard, I just want to give you an update on the steps that we as a government are taking to defeat coronavirus.

    Our step-by-step action plan is aiming to slow the spread of the virus, so fewer people need hospital treatment at any one time, thereby protecting the NHS’ capacity. At each point we have been following the scientific and medical advice and we’ve been very deliberate in our actions – taking the right steps at the right moment.

    We are also taking unprecedented action to increase NHS capacity by dramatically expanding the numbers of beds, key staff, life-saving equipment on the frontline so that we give people the care they need when they need it most.

    That’s why we are instructing people to stay at home, so we can protect our NHS and save lives.

    I can report that through the government’s ongoing monitoring and testing programme, as of today:

    134,946 people have now been tested for the virus

    112,805 have tested negative

    22,141 have tested positive

    Of those who have contracted the virus, 1,408 have, very sadly, died. We express our deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who have passed away and I think those figures are a powerful reminder to us all of the importance of following the government’s guidelines.

    We must stay at home to protect our NHS and save lives.

    I would like to thank all those involved on the frontline and in particular all of those in the NHS for their battle against the virus, the amazing doctors, the amazing nurses and all the support staff working day and night.

    The thousands of other key workers – from our teachers to supermarket workers to our fantastic diplomatic network – who are all as a team working around the clock to get us through this unprecedented coronavirus challenge.

    This is a united national effort and the spirit of selflessness shown by so many is an inspiration.

    I now want to turn to what we’ve been doing to support British people travelling around the world.

    Coronavirus hasn’t just challenged us at home, it is the greatest global challenge in a generation. And as countries work to secure their borders and stop the further spread of this deadly virus, we appreciate that an unprecedented number of UK travellers are trying to get home, and we’re not talking a few hundred or even a few thousand. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people travelling around the world.

    So with that in mind, on 17 March, we advised people against all non-essential travel around the world.

    And since 23 March, we have advised that all UK residents who were currently travelling abroad should return home. Hundreds of thousands have already done so.

    But many travellers haven’t yet managed to get home. From young back-packers to retired couples on cruises. We appreciate the difficult predicament that they find themselves in.

    We also recognise the anxiety of families here in the UK, who are concerned to get their loved ones home. It is a worrying time for all those who have been affected.

    And I want to reassure them that this government, their government is working around the clock to support, advise and help British travellers get home.

    I have spoken to more than 20 foreign ministers around the world in the last week or so to support this effort, to keep airports and ports open, and to facilitate access to them by British travellers.

    Over the weekend, I spoke to foreign ministers from Australia, New Zealand, India and Brazil and Pakistan, and I also spoke to the Ethiopian Prime Minister, and in all of those cases urged them to work with us and keep commercial routes flying.

    Given the scale and the complexity of this challenge, it inevitably requires a team effort. So the Foreign Office is working with other governments, and there is a particular focus on transit hubs, and we’re also working with the airlines to keep as many flights running as possible.

    We have a lot more to do, but we have already helped hundreds of thousands of Britons get home.

    The first priority has been to keep as many commercial flights running as we can, and that’s based on just purely the scale and the number of people who want to come home.

    As a result of those efforts, and the cooperation we received from the Spanish government, we’ve enabled an estimated 150,000 UK nationals to get back from Spain. On other commercial routes that have come under pressure, we’ve worked with partner governments and airlines to get back 8,500 UK travellers back from Morocco and around 5,000 UK nationals from Cyprus.

    That gives you a sense of the scale of the challenge and the numbers of British travellers abroad.

    Now in circumstances where commercial flights can’t operate, we have already chartered flights, which proved necessary to return 1,400 UK nationals on flights, for example, from China at the outset of this crisis and more recently from Peru.

    We’ve not faced challenges in getting people home from abroad, on this scale, in recent memory. Airports are closing down or preventing airlines from operating on a commercial basis. Local authorities have placed restrictions on movement that prevent people from getting to the airport. And the critical transit hubs that we rely on for long-haul flights are also shutting down, or in some cases, limiting their flights.

    Some of these restrictions have been done with very little notice, some with no notice at all which makes it very difficult to respond. So, international collaboration is absolutely vital.

    As I said, it is a team effort, in it involves government working with other governments and also with the airlines.

    So with that in mind, I can today announce a new arrangement between the government and airlines to fly home tens of thousands of stranded British travellers, where commercial flights are no longer possible. Partner airlines include British Airways, Virgin, Easyjet, Jet2 and Titan, and this list can be expanded.

    Under the arrangements that we are putting in place, we will target flights from a range of priority countries, starting this week.

    Let me explain a little bit about how this will work in practise.

    Where commercial routes remain an option, airlines will be responsible for getting passengers home. That means offering alternative flights at little to no cost where routes have been cancelled. And it means allowing passengers to change tickets, including between carriers.

    So for those still in those in countries where commercial options are still available, don’t wait. Don’t run the risk of getting stranded. The airlines are standing by to help you. Please book your tickets as soon as possible.

    Where commercial flights are no longer running, the government will provide the necessary financial support for special charter flights to bring UK nationals back home. Once special charter flights have been arranged, we will promote flights them through the government’s travel advice and by the British Embassy or High Commission in the relevant country.

    British travellers who want a seat on those flight will book and pay directly through a dedicated travel management company.

    We designated £75 million to support those flights and airlines to keep costs down and affordable for those seeking to return to the UK.

    In arranging these flights, our priority will be the most vulnerable, including the elderly or those with particularly pressing medical needs, and also looking in particular at countries where large numbers of UK tourists struggling to get home.

    UK travellers, if they haven’t already done so, should check Foreign Office Travel Advice and that advice is under constant review, and it can help travellers to find out more details of how to access the flights under this arrangement.

    They should also follow the social media of the UK embassy or high commission in the country where they find themselves, so that they can be directed to accurate real time information, including from the local authorities.

    For any questions that can’t be answered in that travel advice, or by the UK Embassies or High Commission, we also have our call centre working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

    I know that it has been difficult for some travellers to get through. Just to give you a sense of volume: on average, we normally receive 1,000 calls a day to that call centre. Last Tuesday, we had nearly 15,000 – the highest on record.

    So we’ve boosted our resources, we’ve redeployed people to assist in the call centre and we’ve tripled our capacity.

    Yesterday, the call centre answered 99% of calls, and helped thousands of British travellers to get the answers they need.

    So, for those stranded, or for families nervously waiting news and wanting to see their loved ones return home, we are doing everything we can. We have improved our advice and boosted the call centre, so travellers get better and swifter information.

    We have put in place this arrangement with the airlines so that we can reach British citizens in vulnerable circumstances abroad where commercial flights aren’t running. And we’re working intensively round the clock with all of our partner countries and governments around the world to keep open the airports, the ports and the flights to bring people home.

    We’ve not faced an international challenge quite like this before, but together we are going to rise to it.

    And, of course here at home, we can all support our NHS by continuing to follow the guidance to: stay at home, protect our NHS and save lives.

  • Ernest Armstrong – 1978 Speech on Insulation in Council Housing

    Below is the text of the speech made by Ernest Armstrong, the then Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, in the House of Commons on 20 April 1978.

    First, I should like to commend the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on his choice of a subject for tonight’s debate. He knows, I think, that my right hon. Friends and I share his concern about the problem he has raised, which he has approached tonight, if I may say so, in a particularly constructive and responsible way.

    It is indeed a very worrying state of affairs to find homes in the public sector which have been built—some in the last 10 years—where serious problems of this sort have arisen and where the replacement of almost new central heating systems is being put forward as a bid for scarce resources in competition with much needed programmes of improvement and modernisation for houses in authorities’ stock which may be 50 years or more old.

    High fuel bills are a cause of anxiety for all members of the community. Some of the most acute problems undoubtedly arise with electric heating systems. There are as many as 900,000 public sector tenants in England and Wales who are mainly dependent on electricity for space and water heating. This problem takes on an added dimension for them because they will, in general, have had little or no say in the choice of the heating system for their home.

    One of the causes of abnormally high heating bills in electrically heated homes has been the sharp increase in the price of electricity in recent years compared with the prices of other fuels. This has made domestic electric heating systems a far less attractive proposition to run than they were when many of the decisions to install them were taken during the 1960s and 1970s. At that time the choice of electricity no doubt seemed a reasonable one to local authorities, and they were encouraged by the availability of cheap off-peak tariffs and the low capital cost of electric heating compared with most other heating systems.

    It is also true, however, that in some cases electric heating has been chosen for dwellings without sufficient care being taken to ensure that it is suitable for the dwelling. The result is that the system uses an unreasonable amount of energy to maintain reasonable temperatures.

    In an effort to economise on their use of fuel, some people—especially those with low incomes—use their electric heating systems less or, worse still, are forced to switch them off altogether. As the hon. Member said—and I have seen this in my constituency—they resort to other means of supplying heat such as oil heaters and calor gas. Some of my constituents are so afraid of running up big bills that they no longer use their systems for space heating. That is a very serious state ​ of affairs. The consequent lack of a steady level of heat increases the risk of condensation and damp and can result not only in loss of comfort but, indeed, in a danger to health—especially for the very young and the old.
    Where condensation persists for long enough, it will cause damp patches and mould growth which can damage the structure of the dwelling, as well as spoil decorations and furnishings. I have had recent examples where clothing in wardrobes has been seriously affected. There are cases where design and construction deficiencies also cause dampness.

    I should now like to turn to the ways in which the Government are tackling this problem, which, of course, is not confined to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. During the 1960s we promoted a campaign to advise householders about condensation. We are considering a further publicity campaign in time for next winter. Additionally, in 1975, the standards of thermal insulation required by the building regulations were raised. The insulation in many dwellings built before 1975 has since been increased and, for the public sector, we have the 10-year insulation programme announced in December 1977: £23 million is being made available to local authorities this year.

    Some help will also be made available to the private sector under the scheme recently announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

    The only really satisfactory answer to the problems we are discussing is one which prevents them from arising in the first place. Financial help with electricity bills can be regarded as only a partial answer at best, but it is available in some cases. In certain circumstances the supplementary benefits scheme provides an allowance towards heating costs and, over the last two winters, the electricity discount scheme has been operated by the Department of Energy. But longer term solutions are necessary and are being sought and, clearly, the problem is not one that can be solved by the Government alone. Co-operation is needed from all those bodies with local responsibility for public sector housing.
    Because of our growing concern, a joint working party on heating and energy conservation in public sector housing was set up by my Department early in 1977 to look into, among other things, problems arising with heating systems in both new and existing dwellings. The working party consists of representatives of the Department of the Environment, the Department of Energy, the Welsh Office, the local authority associations concerned with housing, the New Towns Association and the Housing Corporation.

    At one of its early meetings, the working party decided that priority should be given to producing advice on problems with electric heating systems in public sector dwellings. Its first advice note on this—domestic energy note No. 1—has been made available to all housing authorities in England and Wales. The main thrust of the note is that where the local authority considers that an electric heating system is to be provided the form and construction of the dwelling must be suitable for it.

    In particular, this means that the dwelling should have the high levels of insulation necessary to ensure that reasonable running costs can be achieved. Although the capital costs of electric heating systems are generally lower than those associated with other forms of heating, the advice note stresses that the first call on any money saved because of this should be the provision of the necessary extra insulation.

    While domestic energy note No. 1 is intended to ensure that, in the future, electrically heated dwellings will not give rise to major problems, the difficulties which have arisen in our existing electrically heated housing stock remain. The working party is therefore concentrating at present on what advice it can give to housing authorities on remedial measures where problems have arisen. A note will be issued in the near future.

    The hon. Member mentioned the com plaint, which I am afraid is a common one, that the housing cost yardstick is so stringent that it forces housing authorities to select electric heating because of its lower capital cost. It is inevitable that accusations of this sort will be levelled at any system of cost control, but the yardstick allows for a choice of heating systems complying with the Parker Morris standards. It provides for an overall sum to cover all the costs of the whole scheme. There is no allowance specifically allo- ​ cated for heating systems. There is sufficient room within the yardstick to install, for example, gas radiator systems. In fact, many authorities are doing this.

    I am aware of the tendering difficulties in the Northern Region about which the hon. Gentleman spoke—indeed, he has referred me to these matters on many occasions—and particularly the difficulties in the smaller projects necessary because of the scattered nature of his constituency.

    As the hon. Gentleman knows, since 1975 the Department has carried out a quarterly review of the yardstick levels relating to the various regions, and over the last year we have taken special steps to respond to difficulties which have emerged in the Northern Region. In the most recent review, the yardstick for the North was increased, taking the increase to the basic yardstick level together with the adjustment to the regional variations, by over 9 per cent. in average terms compared with the national average of 6 per cent.

    I hope that this substantial increase will alleviate many local difficulties. In the meantime, as we said in the housing review Green Paper we would—and I listened carefully to the hon. Member’s comments about the yardstick—we are considering new methods of cost control to replace the present system.

    The other difficult matter is the extent to which housing authorities are able to finance any necessary remedial measures ​ from within tightly drawn limits on public expenditure. The new system of housing investment programmes gives local authorities much more freedom to utilise resources to meet local problems and priorities, and this flexibility should help those authorities where this particular problem is causing difficulty. Authorities are able to put additional roof insulation, for which they can receive subsidy, in electrically heated dwellings which have suffered major problems. This will mean that it will be possible to bring loft insulation in these dwellings up to a high standard. Authorities are also able to do this under the new public sector housing energy conservation programme if the dwellings are presently uninsulated.

    Much progress has been made since the war in improving not only the supply but the standards of housing in this country. It is a matter for serious concern—I am glad that the hon. Member has raised it, and I share his concern—when families move into modern homes anticipating better living conditions, including central heating, and they are faced with a combination of excessive costs as well as a lack of comfort coupled with extensive dampness and condensation.

    We are tackling the problem with some urgency. We are working with local housing authorities to find a reasonable solution.

  • Alan Beith – 1978 Speech on Insulation in Council Housing

    Below is the text of the speech made by Alan Beith, the then Liberal MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the House of Commons on 20 April 1978.

    In this country we take some pride in the fact that by partnership between central Government and local authorities, the latter having done the major part of the work, we have housed millions of people in modern council houses in the post-war years. Without that action many would now be living in appalling housing conditions. However, it is a worrying fact that a significant number of those who in recent years went into new modern council houses thinking that they had been extremely fortunate and given a wonderful opportunity for a new start in life have found themselves faced with misery—the misery, that is, of cold, damp houses which were supposedly built to the highest modern standards. Some of these houses are a misery to live in because of the damp that they contain and the impossibility of keeping them warm.

    I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State is present to listen to a plea that I put to him on behalf of some of these tenants. I know that the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the matter and has already taken quite a bit of notice of problems of which he is aware in the North-East and other parts of the country. I shall remind him of things that he must know well from his own experience. For example, there are the elderly couples huddled round a one-bar electric fire trying to keep themselves warm in what is supposed to be a centrally heated house. There are young couples buying paraffin heaters and boiling kettles of water for washing in houses that are equipped with the most modern electrical appliances for central heating and water supply. There are those whose supply is cut off because they cannot pay high electricity bills. Perhaps the most horrifying sights of all—I think that all hon. Members have seen this in houses that we have inspected—are green and black walls that are affected by damp, furniture pulled away from the walls because it is being similarly affected by damp, and wet carpets that are sometimes even frozen to the floor. These conditions are found in houses that are modern and built with the advice of experienced architects.

    Some of the problems arise from structural damp. It is worrying that there are so many modern properties that are afflicted by damp caused by faults in the structure. Those in local authorities rarely believe that damp is structural. If a case of damp is reported, it seems that structural damp is never the cause. It is said that there is too much condensation and advice is given to wipe the window sills. It is said that the fault lies with the heating. It is rarely admitted that the problem is due to structural damp However, there is a good deal of it. I think that the Minister must know that. We must learn why there is so much, and I wonder what research the Department is carrying out to ascertain why we cannot ensure that the vast majority of local authority housing is not affected by structural damp.

    Much of the problem of cold and damp housing to which I draw attention is related to systems of electric central heating. Perhaps one of the most notorious problems is ceiling heating, that is, electric heating provided by elements in the ceiling. There are such instances in my constituency in Alnwick in the Cornhill Estate and at Pottergate The Minister will know of other areas in the North-East that have been featured on television and in the news such as St. Cuthbert’s Village, Gateshead.

    Ducted air systems have given rise to problems in the The Martins, Wooler, in my constituency. It is a system based on night storage, but the weakness of the system is that the night storage cannot generate enough heat to keep the house warm all the day. Therefore, there has to be a daytime boost. It is that daytime ​ boost on peak electricity prices that immediately puts up the cost and leads to very high bills.

    It is a problem all over the country, not only in council houses. I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that in my constituency there are modern RAF married quarters, built by the Department’s Property Services Agency at Longhoughton for RAF Boulmer, which are much appreciated. But they have a heating system which proves to be beyond the resources of an airman’s pay. We hope to see improvements in forces’ pay. But over the last winter there have been pleas for help from commanding officers’ funds and so on because of difficulties arising from heating.

    I have seen bills for between £100 and £150 a quarter in both Wooler and Alnwick in my constituency. This morning I was telephoned and told of a £200 quarterly bill. Those who try to budget and who go to the electricity board and say

    “How much a week will I have to pay? Let me go on to a weekly basis” are being asked for £9 or £10 a week. I am talking about the people to whom we give priority in filling council houses—people who cannot afford to buy houses in the private sector and many of whom, by definition, are on low wages. I am talking about people in my area with wages of between £50 and £60 a week who are paying £9·20 a week in rent and £9 or £10 a week on heating.

    What do they do? In many cases they abandon the heating, so the houses get colder and damper. Perhaps they get paraffin heaters, but they make the situation worse. I am told, on the best authority, that to burn a gallon of paraffin in a heater creates a gallon of moisture which deposits itself in condensation around the house. The local authority suggests opening a window to let out the condensation. But then the tenants freeze, because the little heat that they generate is lost out of the window.

    We are all used to the traditional system of the fire in the fireplace and the chimney providing the ventilation and letting out the condensation. People in old properties had a fire for heating in one room, hot water from a back boiler and some ventilation. They thought that they would be better off in modern property, but now they find that they have ​ virtually nothing. They have homes in which they cannot afford to live. That is no exaggeration. That is the feeling of many young couples and elderly people who, in different ways, are trying to make a fresh start. I find it deeply depressing to come across so many people, anxious not to get into debt, who cannot cope with the costs involved in these heating systems.

    What is wrong? There are two main things. First, I do not believe that electric heating of this type should have been put into these council houses. It was cheap to install. The capital costs were low. But it is fearfully expensive to run.

    On top of that, insulation in many of these houses is virtually non-existent. Houses on Cornhill Estate in Alnwick have none at all. Houses on Martins Estate in Wooler have enormous windows. They have loft insulation, but enormous windows which are not double glazed. This can be seen in other parts of the country. Looking at the window frames, one sees a groove which was intended for the second glazing. That was not installed. How did local authorities, trying to do their best for their tenants and potential tenants, produce properties which such tenants could not afford to heat?

    There was too much hard-sell by electricity boards and favourable terms for all-electric houses. I think that the Department of the Environment also played its part in encouraging electric heating. One of my local authorities points to the period in which it was told in letters and circulars—this is some years ago, long before the Under-Secretary occupied his present post—that the Government hoped to rationalise fuel costs and to make sure that all fuels were charged at roughly the same level. Those days are far off now. That was one factor. Many architects seemed to be overtaken with enthusiasm for these systems.

    An equally important factor was cost cutting at the beginning. I pick on one target, namely, the system by which the Government try to control how much local authorities spend on individual houses. It is called the housing cost yardstick.

    What happens when council houses are built? The council or its consultant architects design the houses, and they take advice from many quarters, but one of ​ the most important things they must consider is the Parker Morris standards relating to space and other building features. They design a house to Parker Morris standards, they include central heating, and if it has a certain number of bedrooms it has two toilets, one upstairs and one down. The standards are high and impressive.

    The council then puts the scheme out to tender. It finds that when the tenders are returned the houses cannot be built to those standards within the cost limitations imposted by the yardstick. The council officers and architects then say “Where can we cut?” The first thing they look at is the heating system. They ask “Is there one that is cheaper in capital costs to install?” They then examine the hot-water system and ask “Is there a cheaper type of immersion heater we can put in?” The first victim tends to be the heating system, and because of that kind of decision some switches to electric heating were made.

    The next thing that is said is “we shall have to leave out some of this insulation, and, if there is to be double glazing, we shall have to do without that. We might have to do without loft insulation, and we might have to have cheaper window frames”. I can quote many instances of items such as window frames and good quality doors and door frames having suffered.

    The result of this kind of condensation is misery. It is an ironical situation. The houses have two toilets, large rooms and heating the tenants cannot afford. There are lavish standards in one respect, but desperate cost cutting in another respect, which has been a major contributory cause of the difficulty the tenants face.

    What can be done in future to avoid such situations? I suggest to the Minister that the housing cost yardstick is in many ways a menance. One is setting for local authorities high standards of room sizes and the number of toilets they provide and then, when they have started to abide by those standards, one is saying “No, you cannot spend any money on the houses and we shall tell you from the centre exactly how much you are allowed to spend”. It has resulted in a situation—inded it has in my constituency—where the houses cannot be built at all within the cost yardstick. Equally, it can result ​ in cost cutting which tenants pay for in the future.

    I should like the Minister to consider dispensing with the cost yardstick. I have put forward this argument in election speeches for five or six years and have come to realise what a menace the yardstick can be. I reiterate my plea that perhaps we should not try to operate a yardstick of that type. Local authorities have no interest in wasting money—or in spending more than they need—in providing a decent house. It is a mistaken approach on the part of the Governments—it is a “nursemaid approach”—for them to say “We need to stop local authorities spending money in this way”. They want to build as many houses as they can to meet their needs and do not want to spend any more on them than is necessary. They are answerable to their electors and their ratepayers.

    The Government must review what it is we are trying to build and the costs of upkeep in relation to the potential income of the tenants we are trying to house. That is for the future; it will not help tenants who are now facing difficulties. We must think about the people who are living with these mistakes.

    We shall have to take seriously some of the challenges which are being made on electricity prices. Only today the chairman of the Electricity Consumer Council has challenged the Energy Minister who is responsible for electricity prices because the chairman believes that prices in relation to cost are too high.

    But that alone will not, in my view, solve the problem. I think that many houses will have to be changed to other systems—to solid fuel or gas. It has been done in some areas. It has been done in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel) and in the Minister’s area in County Durham. It is a hard decision for a local authority to take, but it may have to be taken. Alnwick District Council is considering changing the system in some of its houses and is trying to run a pilot scheme by putting solid fuel into one house. The Berwick council will have to consider doing the same.

    The difficulty that all councils face is that they can do that only at the expense of those tenants who are living in much ​ older houses and looking for basic modernisation. Houses in Clayport Gardens, Alnwick, for example, still have bathrooms leading off kitchens. They have waited for years for basic modernisation features. Any council will be concerned about how to spend its limited amount of money in this situation. I believe that the Government must recognise the need for extra help for council’s faced with this difficulty.

    We must take the problem of insulation very seriously. It was criminal to leave out insulation in the first place. It must now be installed. I am not talking about a couple of inches in the loft. There is more to it than that. In the Wooler houses there are enormous floor-to-ceiling windows which occupy more than half of the most exposed walls of houses which face the windy Cheviot Hills. Heat loss in such a home is enormous and insulation can be provided only by expensive means.

    Berwick council has only £10,000 available for the year for all house insulation work. That is the amount that it is able to spend and that can attract Government subsidy. How much can the council do with £l0,000? Can it really insulate even 20 houses to a reasonable standard and save a fair amount of heat loss? The Government have rightly given some priority to insulation. In the Budget last week they announced the provision of more money to insulate private houses. That is also necessary.

    However, we must recognise that proper insulation is a costly business and will require many resources. The Department of the Environment must share some of the responsibility, not only for future policy but for past mistakes. They must help local authorities to put right the mistakes and to put an end to the misery which many tenants are now suffering.

  • Roland Moyle – 1978 Speech on Abortion

    Below is the text of the speech made by Roland Moyle, the then Minister of State at the Department for Health and Social Security, in the House of Commons on 19 April 1978.

    I shall try to deal with the questions affecting my responsibilities as one of the Ministers responsible for the administration of the Abortion Act. First, however, I must remind the House that the Government take no collective view on the moral questions of abortion in the belief that individual Members should make their own judgments on these matters.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) invited me to remind the House of the measures taken by my Department to control the private sector of abortion and to comment on whether I agreed that these measures are effective. It might help if I indicate to the House the range of undertakings which private nursing home proprietors must give my right hon. Friend as a condition of his approval under the Abortion Act.

    Briefly, they provide for the maintenance of detailed records, the inspection of premises and records by the Department’s officers at any time without notice, the ​ giving of receipts to patients and the retention of copies for inspection, the acceptance of fees only after two doctors have certified that the Act’s criteria are met in each case, the number of patients per 24 hours not to exceed the number of beds approved, and for the examination of patients by a doctor before discharge.

    The nursing home must also undertake not to advertise abroad, either directly or indirectly, employ touts, or to accept patients who have been diverted from their intended destinations or touted for. The proprietors must have no connection with agencies or persons known to advertise abroad, or to tout for or divert patients.

    Proprietors must also, in applying for approval, provide the Department with detailed information about the business arrangements of the companies and individuals involved in the application, all of which is carefully inquired into by the Department’s investigators. Medical and nursing arrangements, including staffing, equipment, procedures and accommodation, are checked by the Department’s medical and nursing teams.

    Nursing homes which concentrate on abortions have had to satisfy my right hon. Friend that the total costs charged to abortion patients treated on their premises are not unreasonable, and must not increase these costs without prior approval. All financial arrangements between nursing homes and doctors, other than payment of fees, and pregnancy advice bureaux must be reported to the Department.

    I think that it will also be worth while on this occasion, having dealt with nursing homes, to focus on the arrangements for registration of approved advice bureaux, as this register was established only early last year.

    The background to the register is that, under the Abortion Act 1967, only places which carry out termination of pregnancy are required to be approved for that purpose by the Secretary of State. This means that nursing homes that carry out abortions, in addition to being registered with the local health authority, also have to satisfy the Secretary of State that they should be approved for carrying out abortion, whereas the bureaux which advise and refer women for abortion neither require approval under the 1967 ​ Act nor need to be registered with the local health authority.

    In the early years, following the implementation of the Act, and in the absence of control of any kind, a large number of small referral agencies mushroomed, mainly in London. It was these agencies that saw some of the most blatant abuses of the Abortion Act and caused public concern—such practices as touting for patients, employing persons to divert patients from their intended destinations, and canvassing abroad for patients. This led the Lane Committee to recommend that, whilst the existing control over nursing homes appeared to work very satisfactorily, there ought to be a system of licensing pregnancy advice bureaux.

    Even while the Committee was sitting, my Department had adopted a system of blacklisting undesirable agencies. Approved nursing homes were warned that if they accepted referrals from such agencies they would risk losing the Secretary of State’s approval. As a result of the blacklisting of 23 agencies, these abuses were eliminated and most of the people concerned put out of business. In 1975 the then Secretary of State accepted a recommendation by the Select Committee on the Abortion (Amendment) Bill, based on the conclusions of the Lane Committee, that this form of control should be extended by requiring approved nursing homes to give an assurance that they would accept only patients referred from pregnancy advice bureaux who were on a register approved by the Secretary of State. The first register was published on 10th February 1977 and there are now 35 registered bureaux; nine applications have been refused. Registration will be reviewed and, as appropriate, renewed on 1st October this year.

    Before registration, each bureau is inspected to ensure that the accommodation and facilities for counselling and medical assessment on the premises are of reasonable standard; counsellors are interviewed and counselling notes inspected to assess, as far as it is possible to do so, the standard of counselling to be provided to clients and the business arrangements inquired into to ensure that undesirable persons are not involved and that all is above board.

    In addition, registered bureaux must subscribe to various requirements governing their conduct. Amongst other things, these prohibit advertising abroad and ​ association with touts and require the maintenance of proper records, the giving of receipts, and consultation with my Department about the methods of advertising in this country. All registered bureaux have received a copy of my Department’s counselling circular, and they are expected to provide counselling in accordance with its central requirement that women should make up their minds in the light of all the relevant facts about their situation and about the alternatives to abortion which are open to them. The register appears to be working well.

    As with approved nursing homes, all registered bureaux are subject to unannounced visits by my Department’s inspecting officers. One of these officers is always a doctor, authorised to inspect counselling notes and medical records and to discuss counselling and medical procedures at the bureaux with the counsellors and doctors concerned. The other member of the team, an administrative officer, checks facilities, staffing and accommodation and general records and receipts. A full report is made on every unannounced visit.

    Bureaux may also be visited by the Department’s special investigators, who are ex-police officers, either at random or as part of wider inquiries, and the opportunity is taken to check records—other than patient records—staffing and procedures at the premises. So far it has not been necessary to remove any bureau from the register for failing to comply with the requirements of registration. My right hon. Friend, however, will not hesitate to do this, if necessary; nor will he hesitate to take firm measures against any approved nursing home which he finds has acted contrary to assurances given to him. I am of the opinion that the present system of administrative control, including as it does now the registration of pregnancy advice bureaux, is effective in preventing abuse and flexible enough to react quickly to any change in circumstances.

    The second main issue which has been raised with me concerns the effects of the 1967 Act over the first 10 years of its operation and, in particular, the extent to which the NHS has provided facilities for abortion. The statistics published ​ regularly by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys show that the number of abortions performed under the Act increased steadily up to 1973 when there were 167,149 abortions performed in England and Wales of which 110,563 were performed on women resident in England and Wales. The number of abortions notified in 1977 was 132,999 of which 102,237 were notified as being performed on resident women. The rate of abortions per 1,000 women aged Is to 45 years also increased up to 1974, but decreased after that, and appears to be significantly lower than the rate in countries with similar legislation.

    It is difficult to establish what the long term pattern will be, but, for those of us who lay emphasis on prevention, there are encouraging signs that the free family planning services are helping to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies. A survey of family planning use between 1970 and 1975 published yesterday demonstrates the growing use of more effective birth control methods particularly amongst those groups which previously seemed least inclined to use the family planning services. The most recent figures on births and abortions show that the rate of extramarital conception, measured approximately by adding figures of illegitimacy, pre-nuptial conception and legal abortion amongst the young, is decreasing. For example, the rate of extramarital conceptions per 1,000 women in the age group 16 to 19 fell from 60·4 per 1,000 women in 1972 to 45·8 per 1,000 women in 1976—a fall of 24 per cent. A similar decline occurred in the 20 to 24 year age group. Even in the under-16 age group, where the numbers are small but of considerable concern to us, the figures, which showed a rise up to two per 1,000 in 1973, remained steady thereafter.
    On the question of NHS abortion facilities, I fully accept that provision varies considerably among different parts of England, and overall the NHS performs only just over half of all abortions on women resident in England and Wales.

    But we are determined to improve NHS facilities. The letter of guidance which went out with the £50 million announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the Budget Statement last week in fact states that some of the money could be spent on day-care termination facilities.

    As a result of recent activities, I am happy to say that my Department has had discussions with two regions about improving abortion facilities—namely, Wessex and the West Midlands. I have noted that the West Midlands Regional Health Authority has accepted its working party’s report on abortion facilities in that region, which proposed the provision of day-care facilities for abortion supported by arrangements for counselling. I am sure that my hon. Friend will regard that as a considerable advance.

    On the question of the Barking case, I understand that papers relating to the incident at Barking Hospital were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who considered them and con- ​ cluded that there was no evidence of a criminal offence.

    My hon. Friend also raised the question of the Droylesden case. Mrs. Chester, the lady who made the accusation, refused to be interviewed or to give any further information about the allegation, other than what she had been told about the notice by a staff nurse. The editor—

    [Time ran out and the house was adjourned]

  • Renee Short – 1978 Speech on Abortion

    Below is the text of the speech made by Renee Short, the then Labour MP for Wolverhampton North-East, in the House of Commons on 19 April 1978.

    I am glad to have the opportunity to raise this subject on the Adjournment, because next week sees the tenth anniversary of the passing of the Abortion Act 1967 which made abortion legal in Britain.

    Too much is heard in this House and outside of alleged scandals, abuses and harmful effects, and far too little, because on the whole it is not the stuff of headlines, of the enormous sense of well-being and relief that the 1967 Act, by its very existence, has brought to many women and their families. So now is a good time to ask whether we have the administration right. Of course, it will never be right for those who believe that all abortion is wrong, but most of us know—and I hope that my hon Friend the Minister of State will bring up to date those who do not—the measures which have been taken to control the working of the Act.

    There is only one major scandal and failure of the Act, namely, the failure of the National Health Service to provide the necessary facilities for equitable treatment throughout the country, and it is a failure that needs a remedy. But it is never mentioned by those who shout most loudly about “cleaning up abuse”.

    Next week, those basically opposed to legal abortions and thus opposed to the concept of freedom of moral choice for individuals within a pluralistic society will be carrying wreaths from town to town, having wreaths delivered to hon. Members here, and generally attempting to continue their campaign of spreading lies, distortions and despondency, which have been their stock in trade ever since ​ they realised that the majority of citizens did not accept their view that abortion was the same as murder from the moment of conception.

    This campaign ignores the fact that more than 1¼ million safe abortions have taken place in Britain since 1967 and that almost every country in Western Europe has now followed and in many cases gone further in liberalising and humanising its laws. Only last week in Roman Catholic Italy the Chamber of Deputies passed a Bill to allow abortion on request to any woman over 18 and less than 12 weeks pregnant—something done several years earlier by France and Austria.

    Next week in Britain, not only will there be emotive stories spread around, but a new political initiative will be launched called “Value your Vote”, based on what has now been shown to be the completely erroneous assumption that abortion can be a major issue in election campaigns. Fortunately, the electors at Garscadden have proved the contrary to be true. So this Government or any other need no longer have any fear about introducing bold and robust measures to implement the Abortion Act and make National Health Service day-care abortions the rule rather than the exception.

    In Garscadden we saw the most highly organised, spare-no-expense campaign that the anti-abortionists could organise. We had a campaign where a pressure group acted like a political party. It ran public meetings attended by the candidates, distributed leaflets to every house, had leaflet drops outside churches, plastered the constituency with emotive posters, cruised with loudspeaker vans and even provided cars to take its supporters to the polls.

    It was a campaign in which the leading Roman Catholic lay organisation recommended the faithful to vote against any pro-abortion candidate and declared that

    “the sanctity of life transcends normal political considerations.”

    It was a campaign in which the candidate’s views on abortion were canvassed and continually publicised, a campaign in which a Church of Scotland clergyman felt impelled in his parish magazine to request his flock not to be “party political meddlers”—whatever that means—and to remind them that ​

    “Roman Catholic priests in another part of this constituency have advised their folk to vote SNP since it is the only party with an anti-abortion policy”.

    It was a campaign in which Roman Catholic priests knocked on doors of houses of parishioners showing Labour Party posters and ordered them to take them down; and one in which the journal of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Glasgow sought the views of all candidates only on abortion.

    But, despite all these massive attempts in an area with a 35 per cent. Roman Catholic population, the declared antiabortion candidates did not win, and a television programme survey of voters leaving the polling station found only 3 per cent of Roman Catholics to agree that abortion was the most important issue. It also found that 62 per cent. of them voted for the candidate who as a Member of Parliament in 1967 had voted for the Bill.

    The lesson from this must be clear to all Members who have had intimidating threats made to them about future votes going against supporters of a liberal abortion law. We know that it is a hollow threat for, if it had any substance, it would have been fulfilled at Garscadden. If it failed at Garscadden, it must fail elsewhere.

    As it must be clear that there are no votes to be lost on this issue, I hope that the Minister will propose immediate plans for day-care centres run by sympathetic staff in every region, regardless of the personal prejudices of senior members of the local gynaecological establishment.

    These centres would save not only health and happiness by ensuring that pregnancies were terminated early but money and would release overnight hospital beds for those on gynaecological waiting lists. The money saved could be used for family planning—prevention is better than cure—through contraception and sterilisation programmes. This in the long run would reduce the numbers of abortions.

    Perhaps my hon. Friend could confirm my view that if some of the extra money made available for day-care units in the Budget last week were used to increase the provision of early outpatient abortion, there would in a short time be an overall saving of money and further reduction in the already much reduced maternal ​ mortality and morbidity associated more with late than with early abortion.

    We have already seen a welcome move in my part of the country. Faced with an intransigent professor and gynaecological establishment who have ensured that only some 10 per cent. to 15 per cent. of West Midlands women have succeeded in getting NHS abortions the regional health authority, under pressure from the community health councils, set up a working party to consider what could be done. That working party has now produced a report with recommendations to improve the situation and to open daycare facilities.

    Typically, it has been publicly attacked by Professor Scarisbrick of the anti-all-abortion “Life” organisation. In a letter to the chairman of the RHA, released to and widely reported by the local and national Press, he accuses the working party of

    “a serious and astonishing error”

    in stating that the NHS has a statutory responsibility to provide an abortion service.

    In fact, it is the professor who is guilty of the “serious error”, because his letter suggests that the working party believed this duty on the NHS sprang from the Abortion Act 1967. But nowhere in the report is this said, and clearly the duty—as detailed by the authoritative Lane Report—springs from the National Health Service Act 1946, which puts a duty on the Secretary of State, among other things, to

    “promote the establishment in England and Wales of a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement in the physical and mental health of the people of England and Wales …”

    Precisely the same aims as those of the Abortion Act. Perhaps my hon. Friend can comment on this. The false premises about the 1967 Act have been enshrined in the recent series of Bills before the House which in turn were based on the report of the Select Committee of anti-abortionists.

    In fact, in all those areas—except two—where concern was expressed and changes recommended, changes and controls have been introduced. The DHSS now has complete control of the private sector, and let us hope it can now devote its energies to improving the public sector. ​ Those two areas, where little has been done, are the areas where those with detailed knowledge and objective minds know that there is no real evidence to show that change is necessary. These are reduction of the upper time limit and restrictions on the charitable services. The pressure for reduction of the upper time limit comes from repeatedly making emotive claims about live babies being killed—claims which, when exhaustively investigated, are shown to have no basis in truth.

    From the evidence it appears that there was only ever one case where a child might have lived—the Stobhill case in Glasgow in 1970. Tragic and upsetting though it was, one such case in 1¼ million legal abortions cannot justify restricting the law. That there has been only one such case is shown by the fact that it is still quoted today by the anti-abortionists. If they knew of others, they would certainly not rely on evidence that is eight years out of date.

    This lack of evidence has not stopped those opposed to legal abortion making unsubstantiated and extravagant claims that have understandably worried the public conscience, have been eagerly leapt upon and spread around by a Press that is hungry for sensationalism and fuelled by the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), who started this hare running in May 1970 with the rumour headlined in the Daily Express as

    “Abortion trade in unborn babies”

    From a whole series of unsavoury accusations I come to one of the most recent which on 8th February this year was shown in a reply to me to have no foundation in fact. On that occasion, a Mrs. Chester of Droylsden complained in a letter published in her local newspaper that a Tameside hospital had posted a notice instructing staff not to resuscitate live babies born following a certain method of abortion. Clearly, if this had been true, NHS staff would have been guilty of inciting others to break the law, so investigations were made. It was noticeable that neither Mrs. Chester nor the newspaper that printed her letter was able or willing to give the source of the information or the name of the hospital. So both DHSS time and that of the Tame-side area health authority was wasted on following up this apparently baseless accusation.

    These unfounded and untrue accusations have led to a general belief that live babies are being aborted. They waste much time of the Department and AHAs in trying to follow them through—time that could have been much better spent in implementing, through the NHS, the Abortion Act in those parts of the country where abortion is not yet available.

    Currently, if the “Life” newsletter is to be believed—and perhaps my hon. Friend can tell us what he knows of this—the most recent “horror” accusation is with the DPP. This story, featured again in the national Press with vast amounts of space and told to it by the “Life” organisation, concerned a child delivered by Caesarean section at Barking Hospital when, in the 29th week of pregnancy, the mother’s life was in dander. According to “Life”, the foetus was 25 to 26 weeks old and was thrown aside as dead and rescued only by accident while on its way to the incinerator—shades of the Stobhill story? But, according to the paediatrician concerned, the baby was in the intensive care unit within seven weeks of delivery and was thriving some weeks later when “Life” told its horror story to the Press. At the time, “Life” said that its sources were absolutely authoritative. Now its newsletter admits:

    “We have no eye-witnesses unfortunately.”

    It is a scandal that this sort of unauthorised and unfounded allegation can be picked up by the Press so avidly.

    However, the really interesting thing about that story is that the child was born on 17th December and the story was not released in the Press until 21st January—in the same week that the authors of the book “Babies for Burning” were forced to make their humiliating High Court retraction and apology to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.

    Which brings us to the only other area of concern of the Select Committee whose recommendations for restrictive measures have not been implemented separation of the counselling and other functions of the charities.

    It is noticeable that nobody questioned the good faith, the professional integrity or the great need for bodies such as BPAS until that disgusting little book was touted around. Could it have been that, because the charities were making the Abortion Act 1967 work as Parliament intended ​ and driving the exploiters out of business by providing a competitive, non-profit service, they had to be discredited by the anti-abortionists who saw their supply of sensational stories disappearing and thus their hopes of appealing to the electorate?

    Certainly the attacks on the charities intensified from that time, and most of them are as baseless as that book would have been shown to be had the authors not recognised that it was better to apologise quickly than to allow all the evidence of their lying, deception and duplicity to come out into the open during a trial. For not only did the authors lie in the book, they lied before a Select Committee of the House. That is my main reason for seeking this Adjournment debate.

    Both Mr. Litchfield and “Mrs. Litchfield”, otherwise Kentish, as she is called on the birth certificate of her and Litchfield’s child, a certificate which during the course of a BBC interview Litchfield described as a

    “fraud being investigated by Scotland Yard”

    but which so far has never been challenged, told the Select Committee that the transcripts with which the Committee was supplied were a full, true and accurate record of the relevant tape recordings. Had the Select Committee listened to those recordings and compared them with the transcripts supplied by the authors, it would have found that they were neither full nor accurate, nor complete.

    It is not surprising that the Select Committee did not make that comparison, for it took some 300 hours to do just that in preparation for the BPAS trial. Of 65 relevant conversations found on the tapes, transcripts of only 32 were given to the Committee. Among those supplied more than half differed materially from the tapes. The BPAS schedule of important differences between the tapes—that is, those that materially altered the meaning or the context of the transcripts as supplied by the authors—amounted to no fewer than 71 typed pages.

    For example—this was a thread that ran throughout the deception—Mrs. Litchfield-Kentish told the Select Committee that she was not asked about her menstrual cycle on any occasion. However, in every interview recorded on the tape recordings there is lengthy and ​ detailed investigation of her menstrual history.

    In one particular interview with a Mr. Pond, whom they visited before she saw her own doctor to confirm that she was not pregnant, despite the book stating that she was confirmed as not pregnant before their investigation started, the true transcript shows six pages of conversation about her pill-taking habits and menstrual pattern, with Mr. Pond, exasperated, saying

    “You’re most unlikely to be pregnant”.

    Before the book was published the News of the World featured that visit to Mr. Pond in its series of articles that later became the book. It not only erroneously stated that

    “first she visited her own doctor”

    but had Mr. Pond saying “You are 16 weeks”, whereas the tape clearly has Mr. Pond saying

    “You are 16 weeks on from your last period.”

    That is something that Kentish herself had told him, and which could have been true as it was quite clear from the long private conversation between the authors, which is still on the tape although they did not realise that the tape was working at the time. That conversation took place while Mr. Pond was out of the room doing the urine test. At that stage they both thought that she really was pregnant and was genuinely seeking an abortion. They were arguing about the cost while Mr. Pond was outside the room.

    Their distorting their own situation, distorting the truth and destroying with a a tissue of lies the reputations of honest charities, doctors and others are the so-called journalists whom the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) described as “virginal and pristine”, and who the broadsheet of the Festival of Light says it has

    “consistently backed in bringing their book to the attention of the Christian public”,

    going on to remark

    “Its almost unbelievable stories of the abortion racket show the dearth of moral fibre in Britain today.”

    Indeed they do, but not quite in the way that the Festival of Light intended.

    There are 71 pages of lies, omissions and variations. It is to be hoped that soon, despite the apology being given ​ before the evidence was out in court, it will be available for all. The DPP has requested the police to have the full tapes transcribed. I hope that they are, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will be able to enlighten the House on this point, for Sessional Standing Orders tell us that

    “the House will proceed with the utmost severity against any person who hath given false evidence before this House or any Committee thereof.”

    That should interest my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.

    So far this pair have got off scot-free. They have deluded the public and deluded a Select Committee into producing a report that has resulted in two Bills coming before the House, each of which has attacked and sought to destroy the work that the two major abortion charities undertake to make good the lack of NHS provision.

    I hope that my hon. Friend, 10 years after the enlightened legislation that the House enacted with the liars publicly exposed and the electorate’s views on the anti-abortion lobby made clear at Garscadden, will be able to get on with the task and that the House will provide the resources for him to do so.