UKPOL.CO.UK

Category: Speeches

  • Stephen Barclay – 2019 Speech in Paris

    Below is the text of the speech made by Stephen Barclay, the Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union, in Paris, France on 28 August 2019.

    After all, I am here because I want to be absolutely clear about the UK’s position at such a critical time, and would not want anything to be lost in translation.

    In recent years some have tried to frame the UK/ France relationship in purely Brexit terms.

    Yet the reality is that our historic, cultural, geographic and indeed economic ties are far too deep and broad to be defined by any one event.

    After all, and as M Roux de Bezieux I’m sure will happily testify, even after Brexit the Six Nations rugby tournament will still emerge next Winter.

    We work together to defend our values and our way of life as Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and leading lights in NATO.

    Our Armed Forces work closely together helping to secure peace around the world.
    In the Sahel British helicopters are helping French soldiers to carry the fight to extremists.

    While closer to home millions of UK nationals have just enjoyed summer holidays in France and vice versa.

    Indeed our shared lives will be reflected in the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK in the coming years, more than 900 years after it was created.

    And indeed in the past two weeks and the past week alone our Prime Minister has visited France twice to meet with President Macron – including at the successful G7 – and I extend the congratulations of the British Government to France for a successful G7.

    They were both clear in being united on a number of vital issues, such as climate change and the environment, both as stout defenders of the historic Paris Climate Change Agreement signed in this very city in 2016.

    Our economic relationship is also vital to the prosperity of both our countries.

    Since we voted to leave the EU in 2016 our bilateral trade has in fact increased by 12 per cent.

    In total, bilateral trade was around €90bn in 2017, and the UK continues to be the number one destination for foreign investment in Europe and number three in the world.

    In fact, since 2013, UK startups have raised more from US and Asian investors than most of Europe combined, and in the first half of this year, the UK received $3.5bn from US and Asian investors, compared to $0.9bn for Germany, $0.5bn for France and $2.9bn for the rest of Europe.

    And indeed UK and French companies continue to work closely together – in fact I used to work for a French company – Axa, the very same company as did my French counterpart, your Secretary of State Amelie de Montchalin also worked for, whom I met earlier today.

    The UK and France have a mutually beneficial partnership – one that has seen Alstom unveiling the design of its new zero-emission, hydrogen train, which will be re-engineered in Widnes, while Airbus which employs 14,000 people in the UK across 25 sites with more than 4000 UK companies in its supply chain.

    And, of course, UK companies have a substantial presence here.

    A British multinational contract foodservice Compas employs 14,000 people in its supply chains in France and serves over 210 million meals a year through its restaurants and in schools and hospitals.

    And indeed as the PM pointed out last week – the sleek French TGV trains, on which many will have travelled this summer, run on tracks made by British Steel in Scunthorpe.

    Our shared economic future is best served through a deal as the UK leaves the European Union – which we are committed to doing on the 31st October.

    It is not just because the backstop has been rejected three times by the UK Parliament that we seek its removal.

    As the Prime Minister made clear in his letter to Donald Tusk, and in their subsequent meeting, Parliament will not allow the people of Northern Ireland to be subject to an indefinite period of continued alignment.

    It would mean Northern Irish voters – UK citizens – being governed by rules in which they have no say.

    And since we can only leave the backstop by the agreement with the EU, once it is triggered we could be locked in it forever, something that the UK Attorney General has made clear and which indeed makes it harder to leave the backstop than it does indeed the EU itself.

    But the backstop is not the entire Northern Ireland Protocol – it is just the relevant articles relating to alignment.

    The Northern Ireland Protocol also covers the benefits of the Single Electricity Market. It covers North-South cooperation, the Common Travel Area.

    None of these require continued regulatory alignment.

    So the issues remaining before us are narrower than is often portrayed.

    Yet the EU is seeking through the backstop a 100 per cent all-weather guarantee on the future economic partnership before we have even started those negotiations, and with insufficient time to conclude those negotiations because of the way the Article 50 talks were structured.

    The backstop has also been universally rejected by one of the two key communities in Northern Ireland, which means it is an unstable basis for power sharing in Northern Ireland.

    There is ample room – indeed there is a shared responsibility for all – to seek a solution that can enjoy genuine cross-party consent.

    We understand the need to protect the integrity of the Single Market.

    But it is our firm view that Irish border issues should be dealt with in the talks on the future agreement between the UK and the EU, where they should always have been, and we’re ready to negotiate in good faith on that basis.

    We will do so with a cast-iron commitment to upholding the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland.

    And do not, please, misunderstand that commitment.

    Together with our friends in Ireland no one is more aware of the need to maintain peace and freedom on the island of Ireland than the UK.

    For years we have invested too much in it and care too much about it to see anything to put it at risk.

    And indeed under no scenario will we erect the barriers at the border that would jeopardise its future.

    The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement directly impacts UK sovereignty. It has been supported by successive UK Governments of different political parties, and it is a firm commitment of this Prime Minister.

    Too often the integrity of the single market is presented as a concern about the Good Friday Agreement, as if these two issues are the same.

    In fact, the single market is clearly the priority for the EU, meaning that it is the EU that will insist on putting up a hard border in the event of a no deal.

    This is something that everyone wants to avoid and the UK has guaranteed it will never do, even in the event of no deal.

    Likewise the UK is often asked for more detail on its proposals.

    Yet if the test is one of 100% certainty, all-weather, all-of-life insurance, then creative and flexible solutions will always be quickly shot down.

    Progress requires creativity and flexibility on both sides – including in the application of single market rules.

    We recognise the concern about the risk of a backdoor to the single market, but we need to deal with it in a different way, one which reflects the value of democracy that we share.

    For when politicians ask the people to make a choice, it is the responsibility of the elected representatives to deliver on that choice.

    It is not, as the PM has said, for politicians to choose which votes they want to act upon and those they would prefer to ignore.

    The UK wants to use the Implementation Period to put in place alternative arrangements.

    Now the EU says on one hand it wants to look for “creative and flexible solutions on the border in Northern Ireland” – the very words used by the European Council in its own guidelines, yet at the same time refuses to progress work on alternative arrangements until the Withdrawal Agreement has been ratified.

    Likewise it is quick to dismiss the use of technology as ‘magical thinking’, while recognising such technology is part of the alternative arrangements which indeed it has agreed to progress.

    The EU has used creativity and flexibility in the past, look at the arrangements in Switzerland, look at the arrangements when Germany reunified with the West.

    So let’s look at this issue afresh as partners.

    For if not and we move to a no deal exit, people will question in the future why there was such a lack of flexibility, and indeed why, in the pursuit of a 100 per cent guarantee of no risk on the Irish border at the end of 2020, we made real this risk in November.

    But if a compromise cannot be found then we have been clear that we are leaving whatever the circumstances on 31st October.

    People voted for Brexit and it is important to our democracy that we deliver it.

    We have stepped up our preparations in the UK significantly under the new Government.

    And we have also guaranteed the rights of the approximately 300,000 French nationals and indeed all EU nationals living in the UK.

    These people make an immense contribution to UK national life and to our economy, which is why we have established a scheme to enable them to stay that is unprecedented in its ease of use.

    It is free and more than one million people have already registered for settled status.

    Of course, I welcome the moves that the French government has taken to protect the rights of UK citizens living here, and I acknowledge that these steps are required because of the decision we have taken in the UK to leave the EU.

    But I call on the French government and others in the EU to match our offer and to provide certainty for UK nationals living here in France.

    EU leaders repeatedly tell me how important Citizens’ Rights is to them, but not only has the Commission refused to agree a specific deal on Citizens’ Rights – as requested by all political parties in the UK – the offer here in France falls short of what we have set out in the UK in several respects including the criteria for registering residency, health insurance requirements, the rights of frontier workers.

    For example, here in France UK Nationals must apply for a residence permit within six months of exit day.

    And we would call on the French Government to extend that period, particularly as French citizens in the UK have until the end of 2020 to apply for the EU Settlement Scheme.

    And while we in the UK have waived the fee for EU citizens to register, the cost of the residence permit in France is €119.

    Another area where we have concerns is healthcare.

    We spend ten times more on healthcare in the EU than the EU spends in the UK.

    And for UK nationals in France there is a shortage of information about the proposed future arrangements, while French citizens in the UK by exit day can be absolutely certain that they will have access to the NHS in the same way that they always have.

    France will also require many British nationals already here to have health insurance and show that they have sufficient money to support themselves before they will be granted residency rights, a requirement the UK has not imposed on EU nationals.

    For business visitors we are also clear that absolutely nothing will change for short trips to the UK from Europe, their ability to continue to travel to the UK to make their invaluable contribution to our economy which must continue as it has done for years.

    The need for our wealth creators to move freely between our territories is well understood on both sides, and that is something the Commission agrees with us on also.

    That freedom goes not only for passengers but also for imports and exports.

    And while we are absolutely focused on securing a deal, alongside these discussions we must also now progress talks on the mitigations necessary for any no deal that may arise.

    Take fishing for example, in the event of a no deal exit access to UK waters falls entirely within the UK’s control.

    That, of course, has a potential impact on the French fishing industry.

    Of the 250,000 tonnes of fish processed in Boulogne, the majority comes from UK waters and of the fish landed by French vessels, 40 per cent of it comes from UK waters.

    At the same time, about 80,000 tonnes of our own salmon, scallops and other seafood products end up on the French table each year – you are a significant export market for us.

    The exceptional fluidity of the cross-Channel trade routes supports the fishing industry, just as it does the car industry with its “just in time” supply chains.

    That fluidity sees more than 1,100 trucks cross seamlessly into the UK from the Continent each day laden with car parts.

    There are, of course, other changes that will arise from a no deal.

    For example, Geographical Indicators. It’s worth recognising that there are over 3,000 products registered with GIs in the EU but only 88 are from the UK.

    Or in agriculture where, according to France’s biggest farming union, French wine and spirits producers would be materially impacted. They’re set to have a €1.3bn annual surplus in trade with the UK.

    Or France’s dairy industry which – according to the French Chambers of Agriculture – has an annual surplus in exports to the UK of €700-800m.

    And let’s not forget the fantastic educational exchanges enjoyed by students across Europe, which French students in the UK take advantage of every year.

    Today we spend millions of pounds subsidising the up-front costs of those tuition fees, and indeed, allowing EU nationals access to support for undergraduate courses in England starting in the 20/21 academic year is estimated to cost us around half a billion pounds for that year alone.

    Monsieur President these are just some of the areas that it is our job – as politicians and business leaders – not just to protect but allow to flourish.

    Our new partnership must be built on the intimate understanding that it is founded on one that has existed for hundreds of years.

    France and the UK are two of the world’s oldest and greatest democracies.

    Yes we have always been global and outward looking. Champions of democracy, free trade, the rule of law and defending those who cannot defend themselves.

    But there is something deeper, an emotional connection, that binds us – and will always bind us – together as nations.

    We are inextricably linked through our shared values and our love of each other’s cultures.

    So I conclude by reaffirming that I, the Prime Minister, the British Government are aiming for a deal.

    We will be ready for no deal if it happens, but from the meetings I have had here this morning and those in Denmark, Finland and Sweden last week, one thing is absolutely clear.

    Businesses across Europe want an end to the uncertainty and have the confidence to take advantage of the huge opportunities that trading with the UK presents.

    That is best served with a deal.

    A deal which honours the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement but without the backstop as the UK Parliament has made clear.

    That is what our Government seeks, and Mr President, with good will on all sides it is what we can deliver.

    Thank you

  • John Butcher – 1986 Speech on European Industrial Policy

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Butcher, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in the House of Commons on 13 March 1986.

    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) for bringing this subject to the attention of the House. Many of my colleagues have observed his healthy fixation with this matter. He is motivated purely by a desire to help Europe produce a truly common market against which our industrial companies can make their marketing plans and, we hope, go on to achieve success on a world scale having taken advantage of that large and burgeoning market.

    My hon. Friend has asked two key questions—does Europe face an industrial problem and, if so, what can Governments do to tackle it, acting together in the European Community? In other words, do we need a European industrial policy and, if so, what sort of policy should it be?

    I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that there is a problem—a problem for Europe as a whole as well as for us in Britain. It is a problem of competitiveness: the global competitiveness of some sectors of European industry. It is manifest in the painful process of adjustment that has been necessary in our industrial structures, which is not yet complete. It is manifest equally in Europe’s relative weakness compared to the United States and Japan. Success is crucial in the new technologies if we are to create the wealth and jobs that our societies need.

    The symptoms are well known. The European Community’s share of export markets in some fast-growing sectors has declined. Between 1973 and 1983, for example, the European Commission has estimated that the Community’s share of export markets in electrical and electronic products declined by just under 2 per cent., while the United States and Japanese shares in the same sectors increased.

    Import penetration in similar sectors has increased faster in the Community market than in the markets of its major competitors. In information technology and electronics, for example, it has been estimated that penetration rates between 1973 and 1982 rose from 10 per cent. to 17 per cent. in the EEC; from around 6 per cent. to around 10 per cent. in the United States; and from around 4 per cent. to around 5 per cent. in Japan. Europe has been less successful than either the United States or Japan in creating new jobs. Since 1972, an additional 19 million jobs have been created in the United States and 5 million in Japan. In Europe as a whole, with a much larger overall population, employment levels have remained virtually static.

    What, then, can Governments usefully do to strengthen Europe’s industrial capability? Two strategies are sometimes suggested which would clearly not help—indeed, they would make matters worse. One is a strategy ​ of generalised protection: Fortress Europe. The other is a strategy of generalised state subsidy and state intervention. Both would be costly to consumers and taxpayers. Both would be anti-competitive, distort the market and blunt the edge of the primary stimulus to commercial success. For these reasons, neither strategy would ultimately work.

    As I see it, an effective European industrial policy must have three basic objectives. First, it must open up the internal Community market, making a reality of the single, integrated market envisaged in the treaty of Rome. It must improve the climate for enterprise in Europe, not least by tackling regulatory burdens on business. It must encourage closer market-led collaboration between European businesses, above all in advanced technology.

    The first of those objectives is fundamental. The sheer size of their home markets and the economies of scale that they afford offer American and Japanese industry a major competitive advantage. The creation of a similarly integrated domestic market for European business is perhaps the most important single step we can take to strengthen Europe’s industrial performance.

    The goal is a genuine European market of 320 million customers, matching the 230 million customers in the domestic market of the United States and the 120 million in the domestic market of Japan. The European Community has been working towards this goal for nearly 30 years. It still eludes us. True, tariff barriers and quotas have been effectively eliminated in intra-Community trade. But the free movement of goods throughout the Community is still obstructed by “non-tariff’ barriers, such as frontier formalities and differing national product standards.

    Similarly, the growth of a free and competitive market for services, particularly in sectors such as financial services and transport, which provide essential service infrastructure for manufacturing, is blocked by a range of restrictions in many member states. The efficient functioning of the European market as a whole is distorted by the protective use of public purchasing and other public sector aids. There is a new determination in Europe to tackle these problems.

    Last June, the European Council at Milan endorsed the broad thrust of an important White Paper from the Commission that set out a detailed plan for action required to complete the internal Community market by 1992.
    Mr. Speaker, it may be because of the early hour, but it is interesting to note that in the copy of my speech, the word “internal” looks disconcertingly like the word “infernal”. It may be something to do with the typewriter.

    The United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as the two countries occupying the Community presidency this year, have produced jointly the action programme targeting more than 100 issues for decision by the end of 1986. It will be a central aim of our presidency, in the second half of the year, to maintain maximum impetus behind that programme.

    A second aim of European industrial policy should be to improve the framework within which industry operates. That is partly a matter of action at national level on a wide variety of fronts. We in Britain are increasingly aware of the need to promote more positive attitudes to industry and to wealth creation; to make our education system more responsive to industrial needs; and to cut the burden of regulation on business. They are priority concerns for many of our Community partners, too.

    The third objective that I identified was to promote European business collaboration in advanced technology. In telecommunications, for example, about 15 European companies are competing for a share of the European market—as compared with the four or five giant American firms which dominate the United States market. The pattern is much the same in other growth sectors. Collaboration within an increasingly integrated European market is inevitable if a competitive European presence in those sectors is to survive.

    Collaboration in research and development—spreading risks, spreading costs and exploiting the strength of pooled resources—is one major way forward. The Community has developed some important support schemes to encourage collaborative R and D at the so-called ”pre-competitive” stage. The ESPRIT programme, for example, which is focused on information technology and complementing our Alvey programme, is starting to gather pace. We have the BRITIE programme for industrial technology, and RACE for broad-band communications.

    Such programmes reflect a welcome shift of emphasis in Community-funded research. They are directly relevant to industrial needs. They use Community money—public money—to stimulate spending by business. In discussions which are starting in Brussels on a new framework programme for Community R and D in the five years 1987–91 we are determined to encourage this trend towards market-oriented, cost-effective effort.

    But action at Community level is not the end of the story. Industrial collaboration in Europe can often usefully extend beyond the 12 member states. The aim must be to develop specific products or services which will be competitive on world markets. Both those elements are central to the EUREKA initiative. EUREKA is giving major impetus to European collaboration in new technology. Eighteen European countries are involved. More than 20 collaborative projects are already at an advanced stage, and British firms are participating in six of them. They are actively pursuing proposals in many other areas. We are currently hosting and chairing the EUREKA discussions. It is fair to say that our thinking has made a major contribution to the shape of the initiative, following its successful launch by President Mitterrand last year.

    EUREKA is not, and could not sensibly become, a new financing mechanism. Finance for EUREKA projects is a matter for the participating firms, with support where appropriate from their national Governments under national schemes. I should add in this connection that British firms participating in worthwhile EUREKA projects can qualify for assistance under our existing R and D support schemes.

    EUREKA offers two important advantages to industry. First, it will wire British and other European firms into a Europe-wide network for the exchange of information on new collaborative proposals and opportunities. Secondly, and even more important, it will provide a framework in which business and Governments can identify, and put new momentum behind, concrete action in the Community and elsewhere, to open the European market for the benefit of the projects concerned. There could be action, for example, to generate new European technical standards or to liberalise public sector purchasing.

    I have outlined what, as we see it, is a co-ordinated European industrial policy and what it can sensibly seek to achieve. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that no ​ industrial policy vacuum in Europe is crying out to be filled. The reality, rather, is that the Community as a whole is already acting in the areas I have described to strengthen Europe’s industrial base. Progress in those areas is essential for the health and competitiveness of industry in Britain and in other member states. We are throwing our full weight behind the initiatives in hand.

    I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I noted his endorsement of the need for what he called a Minister responsible for co-ordinating procurement and industrial policies generally, and his suggestion that full weight be given to the European alternative. No doubt those words, which are now on the record, will be noted in the appropriate quarter. In the interests of the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike), who, with great professionalism, has decided to launch his debate at 7.34 am, and those of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, the best thing that I can do now is to thank my hon. Friend once again and to wish you, Mr. Speaker, a very good morning.

  • Anthony Meyer – 1986 Speech on European Industrial Policy

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Meyer, the then Conservative MP for Clwyd North West, in the House of Commons on 13 March 1986.

    The subject I want to raise is the need for greater industrial co-operation in Europe. By Europe, I do not specifically and solely mean the European community, and when I talk of industrial co-operation I am not solely referring to ordinary industry; I wish to include the defence industries.

    It is a subject to which I propose to return on future occasions because I believe that, if we can inaugurate more far-reaching and more constructive co-operation between the European countries in this field, we can go some way towards tackling the unemployment problem, which must be a matter of concern to every one of us.

    Across the European Community, unemployment in the 12 member states is more than 14 million. While much of this unemployment may appear to be structural and as a result of technological change, and some of it may appear to be the result of temporary economic conditions, the fact is that, during the period that this is happening in the European Community, in the United States there has been a startling success in the creation of fresh employment so that unemployment levels in the United States remain at an acceptable level; and in what are undoubtedly our most dangerous competitors, that is to say, the industrialised countries of the Pacific basin, unemployment is at a very low level.

    The inference is clear, that Europe is not taking advantage of the assets it possesses in order to strengthen its industrial base and to reduce its unemployment. It is, of course, generally known that the European Community is a long way from being even the common market, which is the most basic of its aims, further still from being any kind of an economic unit which would enable the member states composing it to take full advantage of it as a means of securing employment.

    One of the points I will be urging on the Government is that they should live up to their own professions in this matter and that they really should give overriding priority to the completion of the internal market by sweeping away the barriers to trade, and particularly to trade in invisibles, which still exist.
    Generally when Members of Parliament say that they conjure up a vision of obstructive Italian frontier officials, French customs arrangements at Poitiers for the import of Japanese goods and German obstructionism in the market of insurance. But there is a very large beam in our own eyes in the habits and mentalities of HM Customs and Excise which regards itself in many respects as being almost above the law. Anyone who has attempted to import anything through any of our ports will not, I think, rush to the conclusion that our customs is much more attractive in these matters than those of other countries.

    I do not think that Customs is coming under a great deal of pressure from the Government to be any more easy going in these matters. Of course, we bring forward the arguments about the needs to control drugs and to control rabies, and both are perfectly valid arguments. None the less, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that these are being used in many cases as a pretext for slowing up the inflow of goods. What is sauce for the goose has to be sauce for the gander, and if we want our goods to flow freely into Europe we must allow European goods to flow ​ equally freely into us. The Channel Tunnel will be a step in the right direction, provided that other obstacles are not put in the way of the operation of this tunnel.

    However, that is not my main point. Sweeping away obstacles to internal trade will undoubtedly assist in the development of a single market. A single market of 273 million customers must be a very powerful home base for any industry. But there is rather more to what I want to say than that. We have witnessed over a very long time span—in Britain’s case probably since about 1870—the gradual and seemingly inexorable loss of industrial supremacy.

    In the 19th century the United Kingdom was the workshop of the world. Anybody abroad would buy almost anything that was made in Britain, precisely because it was made in Britain. That position has been eroded over the years. Two world wars have wrought their toll. We have gradually seen what were once undisputed British industrial supremacies disappear down the plug hole. What happened to the great British motor cycle industry which at one stage was almost the sole motor cycle industry in the world? Little by little we have seen such industries disappear.

    We are at a particularly dramatic moment in this process of disappearance, with the future of British Leyland very much on our minds. I do not intend to say very much about British Leyland, because there has been a debate on that subject. However, when it became apparent that British Leyland would have great difficulty in surviving as a mass car producer because it is very much smaller that any of its competitors two possibilities opened up for it. One was that it should be taken over by General Motors. The other possibility—the one that is being very much trumpeted by my hon. Friends with constituencies in the Midlands and by the Opposition—was that there should be a purely British rescue operation. Neither of these possibilities meets the bill. I accept that the American takeover makes some kind of economic sense, but an American takeover would represent a very large step towards the abandonment of a true, native-based industry. The British solution would lead us back, I fear, to the time when British Leyland was a permanent pensioner of the British state.

    It is probably too late now for the third and, to my mind, the right alternative. Before we ever got to where we are, there ought to have been in existence the possibility of a partnership between British Leyland and one of the European manufacturers. It need not necessarily have been one of the EEC manufacturers. It could have been Volvo. That would have complemented BL’s capacities in such a way as to produce a viable firm that would have been multi-centred and whose ownership would have been basically European. If British Leyland had joined up with one of the German or Italian manufacturers, it might have contained a very large American element. I am not arguing in favour of a policy that would try to shut out the Americans. However, I am arguing that we should seek to have a policy that includes, wherever appropriate, a very substantial European element.

    The same set of arguments apply to Westland. My right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) made a valiant and ultimately unsuccessful effort to mount a European rescue effort for Westland. Once again it was too late, not due to any culpability of Her Majesty’s Government but largely because such “rescue” as loomed ​ up over the horizon from Europe looked more like an attempt by the European manufacturers to snuff out Westland as a possible competitor. The faults are not on our side alone. But when we add them all together we get a failure both by Her Majesty’s Government and by the Governments of the European countries to make any use of the Community as an institution to exert its influence as a powerful trading bloc to sustain its own industry.

    The argument will present itself in another particularly acute form over the future of the European airbus family of aircraft. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. P. Morrison) is not answering the debate, because he has a particular interest in the project. The airbus has been a tremendous success technically. Of course, it is far too soon to prophesy whether the Government, or those who put their money into the project, will make a profit.

    We have the siren voice of that once sensible publication, The Economist, urging strongly that the British aircraft industry should surrender without a fight to the Americans and that we should allow all major civil aircraft to be built in the United States, leaving it to Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas to fight it out between them. That is a craven act of folly when the possibility exists of maintaining a capacity in Europe to produce not just an aircraft but a whole family of aircraft capable of meeting the demands of the world market at almost every level. I earnestly pray that the Government will listen not to The Economist but to those Ministers, of whom I am sure my hon. Friend is one, who will urge the vital importance of maintaining a capacity for the construction of civil aircraft in Europe. Here at least is one industry in which we for the moment are not faced with knock-out competition from the Pacific basin and where we should be unwise in the extreme to surrender all our advantage.

    That leads me to public procurement, which involves not only Governments but also governmental agencies. One sometimes has the impression that European airlines in all too many cases deliberately operate a “buy American” policy. If the airlines operated a European preference when they make purchases of civil aircraft, that might in itself suffice to sustain a European civil aircraft manufacturing capacity.

    The record on public procurement is frighteningly dismal. In 1982, the last year for which figures are available, in all its public purchasing the United Kingdom spent no less than 98·3 per cent. of Government cash on equipment made within our own borders. That left 1·7 per cent. with which to encourage joint ventures overseas. Though a dismal record, it is better than the Germans, who left not 1·7 but 0·3 per cent. for joint ventures; or the French, who left the enormous total of 0·09 per cent., or the Italians, who left nil per cent. of public expenditure to be spent outside their own borders.

    This reflects the enormous public political pressure in favour of a buy native policy, and one need sit in this House for only a few hours to hear it, and understandable it is. Obviously, every hon. Member will urge as strongly as possible the arguments in favour of spending public money in his constituency. I remember fighting hard for the retention, for example, of steel-making at Shotton. From a constituency point of view, that was an unanswerable case. Nevertheless, there was a national case which required that steel-making capacity should be ​ concentrated in those areas where there was a natural case for having steel-making, and Shotton was not one of them. I was, rightly, overruled in that instance.

    When we talk about the car, helicopter or machine tool industries, two sets of arguments operate at a political level. There is a powerful economic argument which says, “Let us go for the most immediately profitable solution which will bring the best return to the shareholders and give the workers in the industry the best guarantee of maintaining their jobs.” That argument often operates in favour of an American, Japanese or even an Arab takeover.

    The other argument, deployed by Back Benchers on both sides of the House, says, “The best way to do it is to use public money to maintain a buy British policy, a subsidy, a purely British solution.” There will always be those who will argue for a national solution for whatever industry comes into the public domain of discussion.

    What never operates is pressure to say, “Let us look for a solution which takes advantage of our membership of the European Community” or, at a lower level, “which takes advantage of our proximity to Europe—be it Switzerland or Sweden—which will enable us to construct an alternative future for this industry or firm and which may, in the short run, not offer the same advantages to the shareholders.”

    It may not even offer the same security of employment to its workers, but it may offer long-term possibilities for industry and for the future of employment in Britain. That may not be available through a purely British solution entailing a permanent subsidy, or through an American solution involving a total takeover, with the risk that, when the chill winds blow, the Americans will close down their out-stations, as it were, and concentrate production at home—after all, they are subject to the same pressures—to safeguard jobs in their country.

    There are no democratic pressures on the Government to exploit to the full our membership of the European Community to ensure the prosperity of British firms and safeguard British jobs. The pressures are all against such solutions. It is for the Government to see matters as a whole and to make the maximum use of our membership of the Community to achieve our objectives.

    There should be much faster progress of the consolidation of the internal market. A substantial step forward could be achieved by stabilising the exchange rate through the exchange rate mechanism of the European monetary system. All of these matters are major policy decisions which can be achieved only in concert with our European allies. I know how difficult that is until we have a much improved decision-making process in the EC, which means moving away from the veto, but I shall not go into that.

    There should be a Minister responsible for coordinating procurement and industrial policies to ensure that, whenever a controversial decision comes up, full weight is given to the European alternative. Several Departments are involved in that. The Department of Trade and Industry is one and the Ministry of Defence is another. Perhaps I should have enlarged on what is happening in the arms industry. Each country, by drawing a narrow specification of its requirements, has made it virtually impossible to achieve European co-operation. The result is that, one after another, we are equipping ourselves with expensive weapons which are unsuitable ​ for use by our allies. This is a NATO matter—the NATO group in Europe is not maximising the opportunities. The Department of Transport has a critical role to play, and the Treasury is also involved in matters such as I have mentioned.

    If, in Cabinet, there was a Minister who could say, “Wait a minute. There may be a better but not so immediately attractive European alternative” we could achieve much more in the Community and in the European part of NATO to sustain jobs and preserve industries which otherwise face a pretty grim future.

  • Peter Pike – 1986 Speech on Hospital and Ambulance Services

    Below is the text of the speech made by Peter Pike, the then Labour MP for Burnley, in the House of Commons on 13 March 1986.

    I intend to change slightly the content of my speech because of the time of the morning; I wish to give the Minister an opportunity to reply to the debate. Although I had intended to refer in some detail to other parts, I shall restrict my comments to my own constituency and to my own area of the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale district health authority; concentrating on the problems of hospital closures and reductions in the ambulance service caused by Health Service cuts in that area. This, of course, does not mean that I have failed to recognise that these problems affect the whole country, as all parts have been forced to cut services because of Government restrictions of the finance available for the Health Service.

    In my own constituency it was recently announced that two hospitals are to close, Marsden hospital and Bank Hall hospital. It was originally envisaged that the role of both these hospitals would change because of developments taking place at Burnley general hospital. When the 10-year plan for the district health authority was introduced, I welcomed the developments that were taking place at Burnley general hospital and never for one moment imagined that the two hospitals which are due to close would keep their current format.

    Having said that, however, until it can be shown that in the area that I represent and in the country as a whole we have eliminated the long lists of people waiting for medical and surgical treatment, and have provided all the necessary geriatric accommodation, I cannot support the closure of a single hospital, and I think that the step that we are taking is a retrograde one. This is especially so in an area like mine, based on the two traditional industries of coalmining, now completely gone, and textiles, both of which give rise to health problems for those working in them, particularly chest problems. Many have underestimated the effect of cotton dust in the air and of the artificially damp atmosphere that was created for the benefit of the cotton rather than that of the people working in the industry. So we have many people with chest problems, and a corresponding need for accommodation and facilities to deal with them. In addition, areas such as north-east Lancashire and Burnley, in particular, have a growing number of elderly people; we certainly need much more geriatric accommodation.

    A big campaign is already being mounted by the borough council, the Labour party and the trades council, to fight to save the hospitals and to provide the Health Service facilities that we believe the people of our towns are entitled to. We shall be supporting the prospective candidates in Pendle, Sylvia Renilson, and in Rossendale, Janet Anderson, and the many people who are fighting to preserve the hospitals due for closure, and opposing the cut-backs in the hospital services in their areas. Indeed, the Pendle borough council, which has no overall political control—Labour controls the largest party but does not have overall control—is mounting a massive campaign with all-party support to save the Hartley hospital. When I am arguing for the two hospitals in Burnley—Marsden and Bank Hall—I am not arguing for them at the expense of either Pendle or Rossendale. I would not wish to see Marsden or Bank Hall saved at the cost of losing one in Pendle or Rossendale.

    The Minister should look at the medical report of the district medical officer, Dr. Grime, which shows clearly that there is a great demand for more resources for the Health Service, rather than less, in north-east Lancashire in the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale health authority.

    The closures are clearly being made to save money—£1·5 million. But when I returned to my constituency yesterday, I was informed that at the meeting of the district health authority, held only the previous night, cuts of a further £1 million had been requested and further drastic action had to be considered.

    It must be said that even moderate people on that committee—Mr. Ashworth, who is a registrar at the county court—were talking of allowing the Government to call in the commissioners to do the dirty work because enough was enough and further cuts could not be countenanced.

    Even Muriel Jobling, the chairman of the district health authority, because she has tried to resist some of the proposals—and I do not know her political party—and has not toed the Government line, has had it suggested to her by the chairman of the regional health authority that she might say that she did not want to seek another term as chairman of the district health authority. She did not choose to do that and so she has been told that she is not being reappointed. Yet she has fought to try to preserve the Health Service for the community. The protest of people from all political parties and all parts of the Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale district health authority has shown the amazed outrage at the decision that she should not be reappointed.
    The second aspect of the debate is the restriction of ambulance services and the cutting of that service within Lancashire. That is causing people throughout Lancashire grave concern. Indeed the Burnley Express and News and in particular the Lancashire Evening Telegraph have run a big campaign attacking the new proposals and policy changes that were introduced on 6 January when a quota system was introduced to try to avoid an overspend.

    A letter from the Lancashire family practitioner committee dated 4 February to the regional general manager of the North-Western regional health authority said that it had considered a report at its committee meeting on 29 January on the current situation in the Lancashire ambulance service. The letter went on to express the concern of general practitioners at the effects of the introduction on 6 January, without prior notice, of a quota system for outpatients as a result of an anticipated overspend of £250,000 in the current financial year by the Preston health authority, the managing body for ambulances for the seven Lancashire districts. Preston health authority has, on a number of occasions, sought additional resources from the regional health authority to offset the continued effects of repeated efficiency savings and cost improvement programmes. The Lancashire family practitioner committee registered its gravest concern at the present situation and rejected completely the interim solutions which had been introduced. It called on the regional health authority to provide further resources to cover the projected overspending until the results of the review of Lancashire ambulance services, which has been commissioned by the regional health authority, are available. Similar views have been expressed by Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale community health council. It wrote to Preston district health authority on 11 February and sent a copy to the hon. Members ​ representing the three constituencies within its area. It expressed concern at the authority’s failure to consult the community health council regarding what it viewed as a “substantial variation in service” and concern at the distress caused to patients by this action. The letter said:

    “my members are amazed to have read a statement in the press from yourself and officers that as a consequence of reducing the workload in regard to transporting out-patients to hospital by some 35 per cent., some inconvenience will be caused to patients.”

    That view was being expressed to the chairman of the Preston district health authority.

    The letter attaches a schedule of cases where seriously ill patients have failed to keep their out-patient appointments. It is a long list and it is being added to all the time. It gives an example of a 43-year-old lady who was thought by her general practitioner to have suffered a stroke. She was refused an ambulance by control staff because the daily quota had been reached, despite the fact that she needed to attend the hospital x-ray department for a brain scan. It was eventually discovered that the lady had a brain tumour. I can give many examples, but time is short. It is a nonsense to run an ambulance service on a quota system which says that if the quota is used up during the first three days of the week no ambulances will be available on the next two days. As I have said, I have a long list and if the Minister wishes to look at it I will provide him with a copy.

    The change has also resulted in wasting the time of professional Health Service personnel, particularly physiotherapists. It has increased the work load for hospital administrators, who are now continually having to change patients’ appointments because the quota system means that patients cannot attend on the date or time for which the appointment was originally made. Disruption has been caused to the work of outpatient clinics.

    Ambulance men allege that the time and capacity of ambulances has been wasted because they do not always carry a full load and additional spaces have been available. There was a manpower shortage in 1984 and at that time transport was hired and hospital car volunteer drivers were used, mainly for day care cases, at a cost of £300,000.

    Finally, because I want to allow time for the Minister to reply, I want to deal with the important aspect of people who have had their training blocked and are not being allowed to do emergency work or anything else, or complete their training in the ambulance service. That is a matter of great concern. As I understand it, the reason for that is to save money. Once people are fully trained they will have to be paid slightly more. I know that the National Union of Public Employees is taking legal advice on that and is fighting on behalf of its members and is trying to ensure that they are able to provide the services necessary for running outpatient and emergency services.

    It has to be said that emergency services have now been so cut to the bone that in times of major emergency, or two incidents happening at the same time during certain stages of the night, ambulances would not be able to provide the much-needed service to the people of North-east Lancashire. These issues, at this early hour of the morning, are crucial to the people of north-east Lancashire, Burnley and Lancashire as a whole. I believe that the cases I have illustrated are examples of what is going on, not only in my part of the country but throughout the length and breadth of this country because of the cuts being imposed by the Government.

  • Jeremy Corbyn – 1986 Speech on NHS Pay

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour MP for Islington North, in the House of Commons on 13 March 1986.

    It is interesting that today we are having a number of debates on the National Health Service. That reflects the great public disquiet about its administration and the appallingly low levels of pay. I wish to draw attention to that issue.

    First, I say with pride, not by way of apology, that I am sponsored by the National Union of Public Employees, and it is right and proper that that should be on the record. I was formerly a full-time official of that union, working in the NHS, and at one stage I was a member of an area health authority, so I have some experience of NHS matters.

    There is grave disquiet within the NHS about the way in which staff are treated. During the past five years NHS workers have suffered from the threat of privatisation, which essentially means that many ancillary staff are being asked to offer their job on an annual or biennial basis to the lowest bidder, as a series of contract cleaning and catering companies line up to take the pickings from the NHS. That has resulted in job losses and a reduction in the real wage levels of many workers, and has created a climate of fear and intimidation. I hope that the Minister will try to understand what it is like to be a hospital cleaner, knowing that one’s job is with a contract cleaning company, whose bid the following year may not be successful, and that a new contractor may pay even lower wages or not offer one a job. A series of hired hands are moved from one contract cleaning company to another.

    Other groups and grades feel equally worried. It started with cleaners, moved to catering staff, and may move to building staff, the various maintenance and gardening grades and right up the scale. The NHS has a major function to play, and we could and should be proud of it. It is no way to treat employees every year to offer their jobs for sale to contractors. If it can be done for cleaners and catering grades, clearly it can be done for many other grades. A number of technical and professional grades already feel the cold wind of privatisation.

    Late last year, as in the previous year, the Department of Health and Social Security produced a glossy book called:

    “The Health Service in England”.

    It is designed to make us believe that the NHS is doing particularly well. Table 19 on page 43 deals with Health Service employed staff by main staff group for England, and shows that nursing and midwifery staff increased from 351,000 to 397,000—an increase of 13·2 per cent.—and lists other grades showing increases in staffing levels.

    I am particularly interested in the treatment of ancillary staff. Their numbers have decreased from 172,200 to 152,200, which is an 11·6 per cent. reduction over six years. That reduction appears to be continuing. The ancillary grades are not only the lowest paid in the National Health Service but are suffering the largest number of job losses.

    On page 46, appendix C shows Health Service expenditure on staffing, goods and services broken down into salaries and wages and supply and maintenance. Within the section on salaries and wages is shown the proportion of total wage expenditure that goes on nurses ​ and midwives—44·5 per cent.—and on ancillary staff—15·3 per cent.—medical and dental 13·7 per cent. and so on. However at the end as a tiny footnote there is “Chairmen’s remuneration 0·03 per cent.” There are not many chairmen in the health authorities, but together they managed to collect £1·7 million in chairmen’s remuneration. When one compares that with the average wages of an ancillary worker one begins to understand the issues I am concerned with. At one end of the scale in the National Health Service we have the doctors’ remuneration at £21,000 a year. However, they are in dispute, as consultants get far more than that. There is also the absolute scandal and disgrace of the ludicrous merit award system, which operates for consultants. Essentially, consultants nominate each other for merit awards, it is done in secret, and the public pick up the bill without having any say in the levels of merits awards that are made to those people. I believe that the last figure quoted was something like £20 million being handed out to themselves in merit awards.

    I am not saying that the doctors, consultants or surgeons do not do a valuable job. One could not run a health service without them. However, I am sure that most of those people would agree, that neither can one run a health service without cleaners, caterers and portering staff. It is a team approach that is adopted in the hospitals and I wish that the Government would understand that with regard to pay. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) spoke in the previous debate about job losses and cuts within the National Health Service. He mentioned the temporary closure of St. Thomas’s hospital and the threat to Westminster hospital. Yesterday there was an announcement in a local paper of job losses at St. Nicholas’s hospital in south-east London.

    The closure of the Dreadnought seamen’s hospital resulted in yesterday’s strike of cross-channel operators because they are not prepared to see their hospital close. That is the degree of the frustration and anger that exists among the supporters of the National Health Service, never mind those who are within the Health Service.

    I wish to put specific questions to the Government regarding pay. The pay for nurses and midwives has been in the public eye recently and is a matter of public concern. The cause of the concern is the pay gap between nurses and other grades and the way the award was funded. Health Service workers are not prepared to go on being told that they can agree a pay level—an agreed national level—through negotiations and then be told by the Government that the Government are not prepared to pay that award in its entirety, instead passing part of the cost of the award over to the local district health authority.

    That is specifically intended to create an atmosphere wherein, if the health workers accept lower wage rates, there will be more money spent on patient care. We know that this is not the case. It is a cynical manipulation of the way that negotiations should be conducted within the National Health Service.
    I wish to quote from the evidence submitted by my union, the National Union of Public Employees, in its pay review body document 1986 for nurses, midwives, and health visitors.

    “There is still a large pay gap. When we compare current pay levels with the levels established in 1974 by Halsbury and in 1980 by Clegg, and take into account movements in prices and ​ earnings since those dates, we find that a large pay gap amounting to nearly 20% of current salaries exists. It is important to emphasise that the comparison with pay levels set by Halsbury and Clegg is not intended to be purely mechanical. Our point is that on each occasion when an independent review has taken place of nurses’ pay in relation to the pay of comparable outside occupations, a substantial increase in nurses’ pay has been recommended to bring it into line. We believe that this is strong evidence that a similar independent study carried out today, making similar comparisons, would establish that a substantial increase is needed across the board in order to restore fair pay for nurses. In short, a big gap remains, and a substantial across the board increase is needed to fill it.”

    Later in the evidence of the staff side to the nurses and midwives Whitley council, it says:

    “The Review Body must now be aware of the grave concern and anger within the profession which was caused by the Government’s decisions relating to the funding and staging of the 1985 award, although the tone of the Government’s written evidence gave some indication of the cynical and intransigent view it held with regard to funding the award of an independent Review Body. It will be recalled that having acknowledged that the paybill for nurses and PAMs in 1983–84 was some 36 per cent. of health authorities’ total costs, the Government subsequently stated that pay costs in excess of those allowed for in the public expenditure programme would not be funded.

    The Government’s written evidence concluded that ‘the higher pay settlements turn out to be, the less service development will be possible overall’ (para C10). On its own admission this position represented a significant departure from previous years when the level of financial provision has been reviewed in the light of Review Body recommendations and the Government’s decisions on them”.

    On nurses’ pay and prices, it goes on to say:

    “the current (April 1985) value of the Staff Nurses’ pay remains significantly below its real 1975 value. By April, 1986, even with the second, delayed, stage of the 1985 award taken into account (February 1986), the increase in Staff Nurses’ pay since 1975 will have been insufficient to accommodate the effect of inflation, let alone facilitate the rise in living standards which has been the experience of the majority of employees over the period.”

    That is the cry of health workers over the past 15 years or longer at the way that they have continually been left behind other grades, industries and professions.

    It is not only the nurses and the ancillary grades that are concerned, but the doctors, who have seen over the years their 1981 review body decision reduced from 9 per cent. to 6 per cent. and in 1984 and 1985 the fourth and fifth rejections of pay review body recommendations. There is anger across the Health Service about pay levels.

    Ancillary workers in the Health Service have suffered the largest cut and received the lowest pay, and are very much at the bottom of the pile in the hospital, but no hospital could operate without catering workers, cleaners and porters, all those who do the dirty, filthy unclean jobs that nobody else wants to do. They deserve a substantial increase in their basic levels of pay. There is no reason why people have to live on the poverty wages that they are getting.
    I have before me the payslip of a woman in my constituency, Mrs. Gertie Turner, who is employed at the Whittington hospital at Archway. For 23 years and three months she has worked in the Health Service. Until 1977 she worked in the laundry as a press hand, until that department was closed, and since then, she has worked in the linen room. She has the important job of ensuring that the linen is distributed and is available for all the beds, as patients come and go. She has to ensure that the linen is there on time.

    I am sure that every hon. Member will agree that such people are the backbone of the Health Service. Mrs. Turner’s basic pay is £80.10. She gets a bonus of £17.06 ​ and a London weighting of £13.50. Her weekly pay and allowances total £110.66. After stoppages, she takes home £67.34 for a full week’s hard, responsible service. This is a disgraceful figure for somebody who has put in so much work for the Health Service in such a responsible way.
    I turn to the claim that has been put forward on behalf of Gertie Turner and thousands of other people like her in the National Health Service. The 1986 trade union claim for ancillary staff council employees includes:

    “1. A substantial flat rate wage increase, as a major step towards the target of two thirds of national average earnings.
    2. A revision of the grading structure on equal value principles.
    3. A substantial increase in shift and related payments.
    4. A reduction in the working week to 35 hours.
    5. An increase in annual leave and a change in the calculation of leave from a retrospective to a current basis.
    6. A change in the public holidays agreement to provide entitlement for part-time workers whose work on fixed days currently excludes them from most public holidays.
    7. The right of access to arbitration.”

    When I talk about poverty levels of wages and poverty pay in the National Health Service, there is plenty of evidence to support what I am saying. The TUC definition of low pay, two thirds of average male earnings, is £109.06 in 1985 and 117.78 in the current year. The Low Pay Unit has slightly different figures of £115.20 and £124.41. The Council of Europe’s decency threshold, 68 per cent. of the average of men and women, shows a figure of £116.28 and £125.58. The supplementary benefit levels for a family with two children would be £123.61. By all those criteria, people like Gertie Turner are well within the current poverty pay levels.

    I quote next from the document which was put forward by all the trade unions on the ancillary staffs council, trade union side, at page 7:

    “In April 1985 the difference between the average weekly earnings of male NHS ancillary workers and male manual workers throughout the economy was £40.10. The gap with average male earnings was nearly £70 per week. The equivalent earnings gap for women was £96.84 Ten years ago, the earnings gap with male manual workers was £4.90. Nearly 50 per cent. of male ancillary staff earn as little as the lowest 10 per cent. of all manual workers throughout the economy.”.

    The booklet goes on to demonstrate that the problem is even more serious for women full-time ancillary staff. Despite equal pay legislation over the years, it is quite clear to me that women workers in the National Health Service get significantly less on average than their male counterparts.

    When a comparison is made of the earnings of female and male full-time ancillary staff as a proportion of all male manual earnings between 1970 and 1985, it is found that there are certain high points. There was a high point in 1971 when women earned 55 per cent. of the male average and men earned just under 90 per cent. There were then the low points which led to the 1973 dispute. After that there was the award which took men to 90 per cent. and women to just under 70 per cent. of earnings. Then there was the low point which led to the 1979 industrial dispute. Following that there was the Clegg award that took women up to about 65 per cent. and men up to about 85 per cent.

    The current position, from graphs provided not by trade union sources but by the Government’s new earnings survey, is that at present NHS women workers are well below 60 per cent. of male manual earnings and men are just under 80 per cent. of that figure.

    Frequently employees in the National Health Service have had their wages compared with those in local government. The gap now exists on every grade between workers in the local authorities who are not overpaid by any means. Under the local authority manual workers’ agreement a cook would get £92.40 a week. A National Health Service ancillary cook on grade 6 would get £82.92 a week. At the other end of the scale, a local authority dining room assistant or kitchen assistant—that would be somebody working in the school meals service or in a municipal canteen—would get £83.20 a week. A NHS ancillary worker—canteen, grade 1, domestic—would get £72.53 a week.

    Therefore, NHS workers are not happy The Government must tell us what their policy is towards low paid workers in the NHS. And what is their policy on pay generally in the NHS? When the awards are agreed this year for all grades in the NHS, will the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State undertake that those pay awards will be paid for out of national funds and not by local health authorities being forced either to lay off staff, close hospitals, close wards temporarily, or to lock up wards to subsidise the Government’s expenditure in other areas? Will the Government give an undertaking that no longer will health workers, who maintain the health of this nation and who work so hard, for so long and for so little, have to suffer the indignity of poverty wages? I find it ironic that so many Department of Health and Social Security employers are forced at the end of each week to go to another arm of the DHSS to register for the various benefits to which they are entitled because of the poverty wages that they are given in the first place by their main employer, the DHSS.

  • Andrea Leadsom – 2019 Statement on British Steel

    Andrea Leadsom

    Below is the text of the statement made by Andrea Leadsom, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in the Scunthorpe Telegraph on 22 August 2019.

    The UK has been producing world-class steel since the 19th Century – it is a key part of our national heritage. From Scunthorpe to Sheffield, steel remains vital to our country’s manufacturing reputation.

    That is why the decision by the Official Receiver to progress an offer on the sale of British Steel is a positive step towards a secure future for the company.

    In my first week as Business Secretary, I visited the vast and impressive steelworks at Scunthorpe, seeing the dedication of British Steel’s workforce first-hand. It has clearly been a worrying and difficult time, and I was struck by the unwavering commitment to securing a future for the company. Their tenacity, hard work and dedication has helped ensure operations continue, orders are met, and production not only maintained but increased since the company entered insolvency. Reaching this milestone is due in no small part to the sheer commitment of British Steel’s employees to the company they feel so passionately about.

    British Steel plays a central role in the lives of communities across Scunthorpe, Skinningrove and on Teesside. I know and have heard first-hand what a devastating blow it would be if steelmaking were to end there. That is why our dedicated Support Group includes local MPs, local leaders and unions, as well as the company itself and its suppliers. Working constructively together has been a key factor in helping secure bids – and I also want to pay tribute to my predecessor Greg Clark, a driving force in this process.

    The government and everyone involved have left no stone unturned in their efforts to support a sale for the whole company, and as many will know, the preferred buyer of British Steel was confirmed last week by the Official Receiver as Ataer Holding.

    Ataer are not new to steel: they are the largest shareholder in Erdermir, Turkey’s largest flat steel producer – whom in the first 3 months of this year alone produced 2.4 million tonnes of steel and a profit of $186 million. When it comes to British Steel, Ataer have publicly stated that if this process is successful, their priority will be to increase production capacity and invest in clean steel production.

    The Official Receiver will now be focusing on finalising the sale. This process should be completed over the coming weeks and though there is much more work still to do, there is now cause for optimism.

    We will continue to work with all parties to ensure we do everything possible to secure a future for this business. Our aim is simple: to give British Steel every opportunity to realise its full potential.

  • John Major – 1986 Speech on Elderly Persons in Rest Homes

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Major, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, in the House of Commons on 12 March 1986.

    I have listened with care and interest to the wide-ranging speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Chope). In the time available I shall respond to as many of his points as possible. I welcome the opportunity ​ to debate this important issue, and understand and sympathise with many of the concerns that he has expressed. It is characteristic of his assiduity on behalf of his constituents that he has pursued this matter extremely vigorously over recent months. I have no objection to that, although I have frequently been on the sharp end of his activities, because few topics are more pressing to those concerned with social welfare than the provision of care for our growing numbers of elderly, especially very elderly, people. There will be an increasing number of them in society year upon year for as far ahead as we can see.

    First, I wish to look at the background to the present circumstances since it is important that it is properly understood. There have been radical changes in the past few years, which have transformed the whole character and scale of the provision of help for the elderly. Historically, many people who could no longer cope on their own have gone into local authority homes, or local authorities have sponsored them in private or voluntary homes. Many others have been cared for in the long-stay geriatric wards of our National Health Service hospitals.

    The new and welcome feature of the 1980s has been the substantial opening up of the private and voluntary sectors to many more people, who have been able to exercise choices previously open only to those with substantial private resources. That has occurred because of the substantial availability of high rates of supplementary benefit, which has become a major source of funding, enabling many people to be cared for in the private sector. The figures show beyond dispute the rapidity of this change. In 1978 supplementary benefit helped 7,000 people to pay their fees in residential care and nursing homes.

    By 1984 the estimated figure was not 7,000 but 42,000, a sixfold increase in as many years. Expenditure too has risen sharply. The figures have been often quoted but they bear repeating. In 1978 expenditure in this area was £6 million. By 1983 it had soared to just over £100 million and the estimated figure for 1984 was £190 million. It will undoubtedly be higher in 1985.
    In most ways, that growth has been beneficial. But the system was open to exploitation and abuse; and it had other features which have caused widespread concern. In the longer term, we would very much like to find a way of restoring a greater measure of responsiveness to individual need. My hon. Friend dealt particularly with that point.

    More immediately, I must reiterate what I have said. We simply could not have allowed the growth that was continuing prior to April 1985 to continue uncontrolled, in the interests both of the taxpayer and of the elderly residents themselves. My hon. Friend will know that the numbers of elderly in the population are increasing, and they must be cared for. We entirely accept that and are anxious to seek the best ways of caring for them in their interests and those of the taxpayer. Therefore, it is right that we should make a comprehensive attempt to address this issue, not simply fudge it by paying ever-increasing amounts of benefits, as some people have urged on us. We need to take a comprehensive look at residential care and that is what we are seeking to do in a number of surveys that we have undertaken.

    As a first step, in April last year we introduced a new structure for the payment of supplementary benefit to people in homes. Our aim was to regain control of expenditure and to relate benefit levels to the type of care ​ and the cost of care provided. The system of limits that we introduced was intended to allow reasonable charges to be met on the basis of the registration categories set out in the 1984 Act. The limits were set by reference to the best information that was available to us and for residential care homes they initially ranged from £110 to £170. I should mention that the limit for Southampton before April 1985 was £110, the same amount as the limit we set for the elderly under the new structure that we introduced in April.

    My hon. Friend asked about the position of people who were already in residential care homes when the changes were made. We have provided, as he acknowledged, extensive protection arrangements for people in homes who were in receipt of benefit when the changes were made and who would otherwise have been adversely affected. Those over pension age will continue to get their existing benefit for life or until payment under the new rules becomes more favourable for them. The new limits will normally apply to those who were in homes but not claiming benefit before April 1985. However, as my hon. Friend acknowledged, in cases of exceptional hardship the Secretary of State has discretionary power to treat certain long-standing residents in a similar way to transitionally protected claimants.

    My hon. Friend asked particularly about the vexed question of topping up payments, which he believes is being misunderstood, and I believe that he is correct. He asked me to spell out the position. I assume that he was referring to payments made by relatives or charities to meet the difference between the supplementary benefit payable and the homes’ charges. Such payments are not —I repeat not — taken into account when benefit is assessed. The guidance in the S manual advises local offices to

    “disregard payments from charities, friends or relatives specifically intended to meet the balance of the charge to the extent that they are used for that purpose”.

    That is entirely clear, and I hope that none of our local offices will misunderstand it.

    But we recognised that this was the first step. When the measures were introduced, we promised a full programme of monitoring and research. We did so partly because we had an early sense of some of the difficulties to which my hon. Friend drew our attention this evening. One result of the initial feedback was an increase in the limits in November 1985. The residential care home limits were increased by £10, giving a range from £120 to £180. The limits for nursing homes, which are higher because of the more intensive care provided, were also increased by just more than £30 a week. Those substantial increases show our willingness to listen and to take action when we believe it to be necessary.

    As my hon. Friend may know, we are in the process of reviewing all the residential care and nursing home limits. I listened with special care to what he said about the difficulties and problems faced by residential care home owners and residents in his constituency. We shall consider carefully the comments that he and other hon. Members have made during the review.

    As an integral part of the review, we have commissioned a firm of independent management consultants, Ernst and Whinney, to undertake a wide-ranging inquiry into the costs incurred by homes of all sorts. The review will also draw on our monitoring of the arrangements since they were introduced last year, ​ information from our local offices and representations from interested organisations and individuals. Any changes shown to be necessary following that review will be introduced in July this year at the time of the general benefit uprating. Although there is a tendency to think of £120 as the limit for the elderly, assuming that a home is registered to care for them., a range of higher limits is available to residents in residential care homes that stretches between £120 a week and £180 a week.

    As to the longer-term future, most people would agree that there are inherent difficulties in the present system of public funding in this area. The present duality, with local authorities and supplementary benefit as major purchasers and providers of care, has caused problems administratively and, in some cases, for the people whom the system is supposed to help. Our aim is to draw together the two disparate strands so that when someone needs care, it can be provided simply and at a reasonable cost to public funds.

    The first step towards that was made with the joint central and local government working party, which was set up in late 1984 by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Social Services, for Scotland and for Wales. The working party examined the scope for improving collaboration between the Department and local authorities over financial support for residents of private and voluntary residential care homes.

    In its report, issued last year, the working party made two major recommendations. The first deals with an issue which I know worries my hon. Friend—the assessment of supplementary benefit claimants’ need for care. I recall clearly the remarks of Mrs. Armstrong and the consultant geriatrician when we met in Southampton about a month ago. The working party recommended that we should explore the feasibility of extending local authorities’ existing multi-disciplinary assessments to anyone in residential care claiming benefit and of local authorities advising DHSS offices on appropriate payments. We have agreed with the local authority associations that we should carry out pilot studies to test the proposals. They will take the form of a dry run and will not affect anyone’s benefit. The pilot studies will be conducted by the social policy research unit at York university. The aim will be to explore how the arrangements would work in practice and to identify any new problems and, I trust, their solutions.

    The second recommendation was that we should seek long-term solutions to the problems created by the existing parallel systems of support. We have also accepted this recommendation. We and the local authority associations have agreed to set up a further joint working party to consider ways of harmonising financial support for people in residential care homes. The first meeting of this working party will be held at the end of this month and it is expected to complete its work within a year.

    As I hope my hon. Friend will agree, we therefore have a substantial programme in hand for reviewing the financial arrangements for people in residential care homes and the problems that he mentioned. In the short term, we are reviewing the current supplementary benefit limits, and in the longer term we have the pilot studies on the assessment of supplementary benefit claimants’ care needs and the joint central/local government working party.

    A related issue is the dual registration of homes. A home registered with the local authority as a residential care home may also be registered as a nursing home with ​ the district health authority. We call this dual registration. Indeed, the home has to be so registered if it is providing nursing care of the kind proper to a nursing home. Residential care homes themselves are classified for registration purposes according to the main categories of dependent people, such as physically disabled or mentally disordered people, or elderly people, without attendant, exceptional disability. As I mentioned earlier, different rates of supplementary benefit apply to people in those categories, providing that they are registered in homes that are properly registered to care for them.

    I hope that from all this my hon. Friend will see that we are very carefully considering the financial arrangements for residents in registered rest homes for the ​ elderly. I emphasise that a home can be registered for more than one category, and this is being made clear to local authorities, as the registration authorities, in a circular that is about to be issued, a copy of which I shall put in the Library. A home may therefore be classified to take physically disabled as well as elderly people. I hope that what I have been able to say in the few minutes at my disposal this evening will be of some assurance to my hon. Friend, to the many people who are running residential care homes and, above all, to the many residents of such homes, who may have had some uncertainty about the present arrangements.

  • Christopher Chope – 1986 Speech on Elderly Persons in Rest Homes

    Below is the text of the speech made by Christopher Chope, the then Conservative MP for Southampton Itchen, in the House of Commons on 12 March 1986.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to have a debate about the financial arrangements for people in registered rest homes for the elderly. I know that I am not alone among hon. Members in being concerned about the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Mr. McNair-Wilson) wishes me to associate his name with some of the concerns which I want to express.

    I appreciate the keen interest which my hon. Friend the Minister has taken in the subject since taking over responsibility for it. May I thank him in particular for the way in which he has listened to the representations of my constituents? In January he visited Southampton and, after meeting several residents at the Brookvale care home, he had a discussion with other rest home owners, a consultant geriatrician, general practitioners and nurses about the problems of residential care for the elderly. Later the same day he opened a new rest home which I am pleased to tell him is prospering, although it is charging fees greater than those who are on supplementary benefit can afford. More recently, my hon. Friend had a follow-up meeting lasting about an hour with two registered rest home owners in Southampton. If he paid the same attention to every constituency, I do not think he would have time to do anything else. I am most grateful for his concern.

    The Conservative Government have an excellent record in extending care in the community, and the expanding national network of residential and nursing homes in the private sector is testament to this. The passing of legislation to improve the standards of care in these homes has ensured that those who look forward to spending the later years of their life in residential care can do so with confidence. The national picture is fully reflected in Southampton and Hampshire. In Southampton, the success of the programme of extending care in the community is such that, despite increasing numbers of elderly, and particularly frail elderly, there are now fewer on the waiting list for long-stay hospital care. My hon. Friend will know, however, that one does not seek a debate on the Adjournment merely to praise the Government but to draw attention to particular problems.

    The first problem to which I draw attention is the position of those who were in receipt of supplementary benefit in respect of their rest homes charges at 28 April 1985. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State first proposed a new structure of national limits for the residential care and nursing home sector on 29 November 1984, he said,

    “These new limits will be designed to reflect the varying cost of providing different types of care. There is no question, however, of elderly, handicapped or disabled people being moved out of their existing accommodation, and their position will be protected.” — [Official Report, 29 November 1984; Vol. 68, c. 1098–99.]

    In circular LASSL 86(1), issued on 14 January 1986, there is confirmation that the level of charges being met in a person’s supplementary benefit before 29 April 1985 will be maintained indefinitely where the person is over pensionable age. I welcome that, but it does not meet the problem of rising costs and charges. Most residential rest ​ homes have had to increase their charges since April 1985 or, if they have not already done so, will soon have to.

    Who is to pay the increased charges? The DHSS will not if the charges are already above £120. By definition, the residents do not have the means to pay the extra and even if they did this would be offset against their supplementary entitlement. I know of several proprietors of rest homes in Southampton who will have to take a crunch decision soon — next month is the crunch time—about whether to waive increased charges for the residents in the category I have described or ask those residents to leave. Surely if my right hon. Friend is to be consistent with his pledge to “protect the position” of such residents, he should be willing to allow increased supplementary benefit in line with the retail prices index. He should not rely upon the charity of the home owners, and should remember that because the residents do not enjoy security of tenure both they and their relatives are extremely worried about what may happen.

    The second problem to which I draw attention is the position of those who were resident in rest homes at 28 April 1985 but who were paying privately and whose means subsequently fall to such a level as to cause them to qualify for supplementary benefit. Many of those who enter residential care use the capital released from the sale of their homes to meet the costs, but even £30,000 from the sale of a house pays for only three or four years in a rest home at £150 per week. These people expected that, once their capital was depleted, they would be in the same position as anyone else who qualified for supplementary benefit. Surely the pledge given by my right hon. Friend to which I have referred should extend unequivocally to these residents as well.

    In this context I welcome the contents of paragraph 5 of the circular of 14 January, which states:

    “For those claiming supplementary benefit after 29 April 1985 the new system of national limits applied straight away. But Ministers have decided to introduce a new provision to help some long standing residents in residential care homes who did not claim supplementary benefit until after 29 April 1985…Where application of the new limits could produce exceptional hardship the Secretary of State has the discretionary power to extend to an individual the benefit of transitional protection so that he could receive the same rate of benefit as he would have received had he claimed before 29 April”.

    I hope that much greater publicity will be given to this very welcome concession by the Government, because I know that the problem has been a cause of concern to many. I have met many residents and their relatives who are still concerned, however, about what will happen when the money runs out. I doubt that the discretionary power will allay all their worries and concerns. I find it hard to contemplate a situation in which my right hon. Friend would choose not to exercise his discretion to extend transitional protection. If I am right in that, why cannot he go the whole way and guarantee that, in the situation that I have described, the transitional protection will be extended?

    The third problem on which I seek my hon. Friend’s comments is the rigidity of the limit of £120 a week on supplementary benefit payments for residents in residential rest homes for the elderly. In most homes in Southampton this limit is well below the fees charged to those who pay privately. I imagine that £120 a week is probably too much for a pensioner who is up and about and fully in command of his faculties and who does not qualify ​ for attendance allowance. Such a person should not, perhaps, even be in a residential rest home—at any rate, not at the expense of the taxpayer.

    However, at the other end of the scale there may be a nonagenarian who qualifies for the full attendance allowance, who is very frail and who is incontinent. For such a person, living in a centrally heated, single room with full board, 24-hour care and free laundry, £17 a day is a bargain. It is clearly far below the reasonable cost. One needs only to consider the cost of care in a long-stay hospital. It is £48 a day. Therefore, £17 a day is very much on the low side where a very considerable degree of care is required.

    I do not underestimate the problems involved in having separate levels of supplementary benefit entitlement, depending on the extent of the infirmity and the degree of care being provided. But the present system, particularly now that the attendance allowance payments are taken into account and set off against supplementary benefit, discriminates against the very people that we should be most eager to help. My hon. Friend saw some such people on the occasion of his visit to the Brookvale care home in Southampton.

    The fourth problem is the one of topping-up payments. If a person is below pensionable age and a home’s charges exceed the supplementary benefit limit a local authority is able to top up the balance above supplementary benefit. The same principle does not apply, however, to a person who is a pensioner. I am sure that many local authorities would much prefer to top up a payment rather than have to provide home help services and meals on wheels. A district health authority might also be willing to make a topping up payment because it thereby saves on district nursing services. In Southampton, in the light of a recent decision to remove payments for incontinent aids, it would mean a saving of between £40 and £50 per resident per month if a person moved into a residential rest home.

    There is also a problem about topping-up payments by relatives. I hope that in his reply this evening my hon. Friend will spell out clearly what those rules are. I have spoken to the officials in the supplementary benefit office in Southampton. They are in a state of confusion. The result is that some of the decisions that have been handed down seem to be wrong. I understand that under the regulations it is possible for relatives to top up payments, but I do not believe that that is the general understanding. I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend has to say about that problem.

    The fifth problem concerns the inflexible arrangements which apply to the categorisation of residents. A nursing home resident can receive between £170 and £230 per week from supplementary benefit, yet I have had constituency cases of individuals who would clearly qualify for nursing home provision but who would prefer to stay in a residential rest home where they have already spent many years, where the environment is familiar and the standard of care is as high as they would wish or need. My hon. Friend wrote to me about one such case on 28 February. The 89-year-old lady has charges of £180 per week. When I wrote to my hon. Friend he suggested that, in view of her disabilities and the high degree of care she needs,

    “it may be that she should now be accommodated in a nursing rather than a residential care home. The limit for a non specialist nursing home is £170 per week. This higher limit could not be paid for”—

    this particular lady’s—

    “present accommodation unless the home were jointly registered also as a nursing home.”

    But joint registration of this home is not a practicable possibility. There are planning problems and the additional facilities which the owner would have to provide would only be worthwhile if all her residents were in need of the level of care provided in a nursing home. The owner does not wish to register as a nursing home and the resident does not wish to move to a nursing home.
    If a pensioner resident suffers from disablement but had become disabled before reaching pensionable age, the maximum supplementary benefit payable is £180 rather than £120, provided of course that the home is duly registered for the elderly and physically disabled. Yet if a pensioner resident becomes frail and disabled in old age, the limit is fixed at £120.
    Circular LASSL 86(1) explains:

    “This distinction is intended to avoid ambiguity between those suffering from substantial and permanent disablement and those simply becoming frail in old age.”

    That is Civil Service newspeak of the worst sort. If an 85-year-old bedridden amputee is frail and incontinent, he is disabled. Why should the cost of looking after him be deemed to be £60 a week less, if he was disabled at the age of 65 rather than 64? That is one of the worst anomalies.

    There is a similar inflexibility in the assessment of those with mental disorders. Senile dementia is not apparently classified as a mental disorder, although its symptoms are often similar. The amount of care needed to look after someone with it is a great deal more than that for an ordinary old person. Yet supplementary benefit allowances are no different.

    I know that my hon. Friend does not have responsibility for incontinent aids, but does he agree that it is desirable for health authorities to provide incontinent aids at no cost to residents in local authority, private and voluntary residential rest homes? I can understand why such facilities should not be provided to nursing homes because by their definition they are meant to provide full care and treatment, including all nursing services. But at a time when resident rest home owners are being pressurised from all sides, it is most unfortunate that in the Southampton health district the provision of such incontinent aids to residents in residential rest homes has been withdrawn by the health authority.

    In a masterly understatement in a letter to me, my hon. Friend said:

    “We do not regard the present arrangements as immune to change if the need can be shown.”

    I hope that he will show that he has thought further about the possible ways in which the system can be improved and changed, and that he will not delay in putting right some of the present shortcomings which threaten to discredit an area of Government policy for which there should be only properly great praise.

  • Roy Hattersley – 1986 Speech on the City of London

    Below is the text of the speech made by Roy Hattersley, the then Labour MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook, in the House of Commons on 12 March 1986.

    I beg to move,

    That this House, deploring the increasing influence of the City over the Government and its policies, calls upon the Government to put aside considerations of political support and personal connection and to introduce a system of regulation of, and supervision for, the financial services which will provide an adequate response to the increase in City fraud, to introduce a stricter system of surveillance of monopolies and mergers, and to adopt economic policies which are to the benefit not of the City alone, but of the whole economy and which will therefore assist in the reduction of unemployment, the rehabilitation of manufacturing industry and the provision of an adequate alternative to diminishing oil revenues.

    Today we debate the City against a background of continuing economic crisis. The fact that the existence of that crisis, the truth of the existence of that crisis, will be rejected by Conservative Members who speak underlines the gulf which divides the two sides of the House and the necessity for today’s debate. Conservatives judge economic success by the Financial Times index. We judge it by different standards, not least the ability of our nation to provide jobs for all its people.

    The facts of the economic crisis are that unemployment now stands at between 3·5 million and 4 million, manufacturing trade is in deficit and real interest rates are at record levels. Each of those individual catastrophes has been intensified by the Government’s enthusiasm for economic policies which benefit the City but damage the rest of the economy. We have today a Government of the City for the City and, by far too large an extent, by the City.

    The connection between the Government and the Tory Benches was on blatant display during the Second Reading of the Financial Services Bill when stockbrokers and underwriters from the Conservative Benches took it in turn to defend their vested interests and to argue against effective Government supervision. It is that close connection that makes a Tory Government certainly unwilling to tackle, and perhaps incapable of tackling, the City fraud crisis by instituting an effective system of regulation and supervision.

    Yet rarely a week goes past without the discovery and exposure of some other malpractice and scandal. Indeed, ​ only this morning our newest daily paper, Today, had on its front page an exclusive story about what is rightly described as the latest series of dirty tricks.

    The normal defence for the City’s behaviour and the Government’s refusal to act appropriately is the assertion that a majority of City firms is honest. Of course, I accept that, but the honest and honourable majority is not sufficiently determined to expose and act against the criminal minority. I give a current example. Ten days ago, I wrote an article in The Observer which spoke of stock exchange fraud. Early this week, I received a letter from Sir Nicholas Goodison, the chairman of the stock exchange, who asked me—I think it was intended to be a challenge—what I meant by stock exchange fraud and what examples I could give him.

    I cannot believe that Sir Nicholas does not know the facts of insider dealing, as confirmed on 11 December by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in an answer given in another place. He confirmed that there were 25 prima facie cases of insider dealing and that 80 cases were referred to the Department of Trade and Industry under section 2 of the Companies Act, and he expressed anxiety about the difficulty of securing convictions in such cases. Yet Sir Nicholas challenges me to explain what I am talking about. I can only assume that Sir Nicholas’s definition of fraud is different from mine and different from that of most people outside the City.
    Some people in the stock exchange take a stronger and clearer view on these matters than does the chairman. Michael Feltham of the stock exchange finance department wrote in the Financial Times earlier this week:

    “We can track down the small insider deals … but the big fish go offshore.”

    They go offshore because of inadequate supervision and because too many people in the City who may be honest are not prepared to expose the dishonesty among them. Indeed, the City remains a charmed and closed circle wedded to the misplaced loyalty of a gentleman’s club, although the City is clearly no longer the exclusive preserve of gentleman.

    The City is incapable of regulating its affairs. Let us consider the alternatives to that, in each area, which are offered by the Government. The Government’s remedy for bank fraud is a board of supervision which is almost a subcommittee of the Bank of England. But the Bank of England, especially under its present Governor, is wholly incapable of performing that task, because the Bank of England is not the agent of Government in the City, but the voice of the City in Government. What is more, the new supervisory agency—the Bank of England—was blamed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the going was rough and he needed something to hide behind. It was made a scapegoat for compounding the Johnson Matthey affair, yet now the bank must make sure that errors for which it was partly responsible do not happen again.

    As a remedy for the City’s general malpractices, we are offered the prospect of legislation based on the Gower commission’s recommendations. Yet the Government know that those recommendations were made before deregulation increased potential rewards, potential risks and, therefore, the temptation to defraud. As a remedy for Lloyd’s fraud, we were offered two conflicting ​ assurances. The first was that the Lloyd’s Act 1982 is sufficient; the second is that a new inquiry will examine whether the Lloyd’s Act 1982 is sufficient.

    I ask the Chief Secretary two specific questions, although in the light of previous behaviour whether anyone will believe his answer is open to question. What does he think about, in many cases, the absence and, in all cases, the delay and reluctance to mount prosecutions against City frauds? Secondly, how would he react if I were to suggest that we abandoned any hope of pursuing social security frauds, most of which are minute compared with the rewards obtained from City malpractices?

    All that being said, and my hopes of an honest answer being optimistically renewed, I must tell the Chief Secretary that the City crime wave is not the most important or most urgent issue that we should debate. The crime wave is only one aspect of a larger problem: the City’s view of itself as an independent power that is too big, too powerful, too rich and too international to be supervised by the Government, the Government’s craven acceptance of the view that the City can act independently and the Government’s agreement that the City can develop a life of its own detached from the rest of the economy.

    The United Kingdom is the only country that talks about a separate institution— the City — as though it were not part of the rest of the world, the rest of the economy and the other prospects and hopes for the country. With the City’s international connections, only in Great Britain is its interests not so much different from the interests of manufacturing economy, but often diametrically opposed to them. Indeed, as the circumstances and facts of the past seven years prove, as the real economy of investment, output, manufacturing, exports and jobs declines, the City can benefit from that, improve its position, increase its rewards and extend its influence.

    The Government’s pandering to the City’s wishes has meant that, for the past six years, our economic policy has benefited financial services but worked directly against the interest of manufacture, employment and visible trade. The City has benefited from high interest rates, uncompetitive exchange rate and the abolition of exchange control; it has benefited, in part scandalously, from the sale of national assets.

    The City has made vast sums from the privatisation programme, and again I ask the Chief Secretary some specific questions. Much of the money—certainly some of it—was made improperly. First, the City prices the assets, or, to be more specific, it underprices the assets. It is estimated that the City underpriced the assets sold by the Government by about £3 billion. Had the Government obtained the proper price, it would have been enough to fund the entire programme of jobs for the long-term unemployed that was recommended to the House by the Select Committee on Employment.

    It is worth noting that the Government, composed of City experts—or at least financial journalists—let the City get away with it. I hope that the Chief Secretary will tell us whether incompetence or malice allowed the Government to sacrifice £3 billion to City corruption. It was one or the other. One way or another, the Government lost £3 billion of taxpayers’ money and, as the afternoon goes on, the Chief Secretary must choose which it was.

    Having underpriced the assets, the City then bought many of them at the artificially low price. Indeed, I understand — I trust that the Chief Secretary will comment on it — that some City institutions bought ​ assets in excess of the amount which they were officially allocated. As well as making that killing on the underpriced assets, the City also charged the Government an unwarranted underwriters’ risk premium, when it knew that there was no risk. The City knew that the stock would be sold and that the price was too low, yet it chose to charge the Government a commission which it knew was unjustifiable.

    Some of the questions that I would have wished to ask this afternoon have, as a result of recent prosecutions mounted and continued this week, become subject to the sub judice rule, but I can at least ask the Chief Secretary this. As it is beyond dispute that many of the assets sold by the Government have been scandalously undervalued—

    Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield)

    Rubbish.

    Mr. Hattersley

    Rubbish? We shall hear the Chief Secretary defend that in a minute. Many of the assets sold by this Government have been scandalously undervalued—

    Mr. Smith

    What about the last issue of Cable and Wireless shares, which was exactly right?

    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)

    Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, he knows that there is a proper way to do so.

    Mr. Hattersley

    As it is generally accepted by all those without bias or a vested interest in financial concerns—those who have are showing their spots and colours vividly and dramatically this afternoon—that what I have said is true, I ask the Chief Secretary how he proposes to avoid that scandal in the future, or is he so anxious for a quick sale of public assets to pad the Budget and make future tax cuts possible that he is prepared to sell off national assets knowing that the city is improperly and unscrupulously lining its pockets?

    Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda)

    My right hon. Friend was challenged from a sedentary position by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith). I hope that my right hon. Friend will listen to what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Does my right hon. Friend realise that the hon. Gentleman is parliamentary consultant to the National Association of Security Dealers and Investment Managers, and to the County bank, and obviously has a strong interest in this debate and knows what he is talking about?

    Mr. Hattersley

    I think that the interesting nature of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks was not so much his authority, which I do not doubt, but the passion with which he defended the vested interest with which he is concerned.

    I concede that, not surprisingly during the past seven years, the City has done very well by its own standards. City salaries have risen astronomically. I know that the Chief Secretary is an expert in these matters. Will he give us his judgment about City salaries and about the society in which we remove the wages council protection from the young but allow City institutions to pay men of 30, 35 or 40 not only £50,000 or £60,000 a year, but a £250,000 signing-on fee—a new phrase in the English language that goes with hello, and which the Chief Secretary knows perfectly well is common in the City? Will he comment not only on the morality and propriety of that, but on how he thinks that it affects the Government’s drive for lower wages for those at the lower end of the income scale?

    The City has done well, its salaries have risen vastly and City employment has risen while employment in the rest of the economy has slumped. We have to understand — and hon. Members who defend the City have to accept—that the City has not and cannot make up for the matching and related collapse in manufacturing industry. The City cannot fill the gap that will be left in our balance of payments when the oil begins to run out. The British Invisible Exports Council was explicit on this point. It says that it does not see the growth of services

    “as being to a major extent a substitute for decline in general industrial activity.”

    In the words of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath),

    “the service industries have to have something to service.”

    In the economy in general under this City-oriented Government, it has been seven years of decline, in part because the City has hopelessly failed to provide investment in export promotions, in job creation and in the areas where manufacturing industry might grow and where new jobs might be found.

    There are three sectors of particular concern. One is small firms, particularly those that need, and should be provided with, loans and investment at the soft rates common among our more successful creditors. Secondly, there is an important need for but failure in long-term investment—the failure of the City to take a long-term view of these things. Thirdly, there is a desperate need for the City, when it is examining industry, to make a more sensible evaluation of the long-term risks.

    One of the reasons why long-term risk evaluation is so often inadequate is that the City does not know about manufacturing industries, is not interested in them and is not concerned in them. In our more successful competitors in the OECD and EEC there are banks that choose to work as part of industry alongside industry and understanding its problems. Here in Britain, the City is different, superior, exclusive and industrially ignorant. However, when charged with failure to provide an adequate investment, the City always gives the same circular, self-righteous, self-serving defence. It is that there is plenty available for suitable investment. I see the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Smith) utter the words as I say them. That is his view, but not that of British industry.

    I quote from Sir Terence Beckett, not usually on the side of Labour party economic policy, who spoke to the House of Lords Select Committee about:

    “the widespread comments I get from industry, particularly small and medium sized companies who have difficulty in getting finance from banks”.

    The British Chamber of Commerce was equally conclusive. It said:

    “Every bank will tell you that there is money available in all directions—but they have to or feel obliged to put certain criteria on the lending which are somewhat different from our overseas competitors”.

    The hon. Member for Beaconsfield may laugh at the idea of the British Chamber of Commerce complaining about the absence of investment, but he is laughing about the failure of the Government and the institutions that they support to help small firms to develop and grow.

    In any case, what does money available for suitable projects mean in practice? I give the House a definition offered to me by a west midlands clothing company whose highly successful expansion, principally into the export ​ market, was made possible only because of the help that it received from the West Midlands enterprise board. The chairman of that company, who had touted about the City looking for new investment, said;

    “If I had wanted to build a casino in Mayfair they would have pressed £5 notes into my hand. But because I wanted to make things and export things, they did not want to know.”

    They want to know about some things—the merger boom, for example, which occurs under our wholly inadequate competition policy. The City wants to finance takeovers, which have nothing to do with efficiency, output or employment, because this is a sector of easy pickings. It is work with which the real economy has no connection, work that is unproductive in terms of investment, output and jobs.

    What is more — and the tragedy and mistake is accentuated by the takeover boom—the stock exchange system as a whole concentrates far too much of its financial attention on short-term profits. Prices are determined by the most recent returns, and so are takeover profits. Now, with more and more successful predators stalking the market, company after company increasingly occupies its time in erecting protection from suddenly being swallowed up. I offer in evidence the comments made in an article in the Bank of England Quarterly by David Walker, the bank’s executive director. He talked about takeover mania:

    “re-inforcing in many boards the disposition to be cautious about innovation expenditure which reduces profit in the short term.”

    The country needs the will to innovate and a willingness to make judgments on the long-term not the short-term profits. Yet the takeover mania, the inadequacies of present competition policy, buttressed by the behaviour of the City, has concentrated industry’s mind more and more on the next share price, on the next quarterly profit and on the prospects of being swallowed up while the needs of the real economy are investment growth and jobs. Those needs are forgotten.

    Perhaps most important of all, for the City to say that its investment programmes, investment potential and the investment it makes available to manufacturing industry are meeting the economy’s needs is for the City complacently to accept an economy in which manufacture collapses, in which there is an incipient balance of payments crisis which will break over us when the oil runs out and in which there are permanently 3 million or 4 million men and women unemployed. That may be good enough for the City, with its vast salaries, its great power and its special relationship with the Government. It is not good enough for the Opposition, and I do not believe that it is good enough for the people of this country.

  • Robin Cook – 1986 Speech on Housing in Livingston

    Below is the text of the speech made by Robin Cook, the then Labour MP for Livingston, in the House of Commons on 11 March 1986.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of serious and growing concern to my constituents—the forward housing programme of Livingston development corporation. On the whole, I do not quarrel with the priorities of the corporation, and usually agree with the judgments that it makes within the resources available to it. My point, for which the Government must take full responsibility, is that its resources are not adequate to do the job that if faces.

    There are two separate issues. The first is the amount of capital allocation available to LDC to tackle the upgrading of the existing housing stock. The second is the Government’s ban on general needs building by the new towns, including the LDC. The two are linked, as, were that ban to be lifted, the new towns would require an even more generous capital allocation than they need for the upgrading of existing stock. Both cases stand on their own merit, so I shall address myself to them as separate issues.

    This debate, and my application for it, were prompted by the reduction in the capital allocation for the LDC in the forthcoming year. For the current year, it received £2–4 million net capital allocation for housing purposes. Next year, it will receive only £1.7 million, which is effectively a reduction of one third in real terms. It is difficult for those of us who know and seek to grapple with the housing problems of Livingston, to understand what possible basis there could be in the reality on the ground for that reduction in the net capital allocation for LDC.

    Livingston, by its nature, has a large number of houses that were built in the 1960s, when system building was extremely fashionable among architects. Those houses have proved inappropriate wherever they have been built, but they have proved particularly inappropriate in Livingston, which is on an exposed hillside in Scotland, 500 ft above sea level. Some aspects of the housing stock desperately needs urgent attention if it is to provide acceptable housing into the 21st century, and if it is to stop deteriorating before the 20th century comes to an end.

    First, a large number of houses have flat roofs. Unfortunately, in the 1960s, architects forgot that flat roofs do not allow the rainwater to run off. I have constituents who have reported 14 or 15 times that their roofs are leaking. To be fair to the LDC, quite often the tenants have been visited 14 or 15 times, and have had more patches put on the fiat roof above them. That is no solution. The only solution to the problem faced by the tenants and the LDC is to provide the houses with proper pitched roofs. If the rain does not get in through the roof, it gets in through the Bison cladding. The Minister will be familiar with the problems of Bison-built houses, and he will be aware that where such buildings are in an exposed position, as in Livingston, the case is as strong as anywhere else for urgent treatment of that form of building.

    My next point concerns the provision of the heating systems in those houses. Unfortunately, many of the houses were built at a time when architects blithely ​ assumed that energy, and particularly electricity, would be cheap indefinitely. They therefore built houses that were cheap on insulation, and which are now expensive to run.

    A number of houses in Livingston are recognised by the DHSS as exceptionally hard to heat houses. The LDC, to its credit, perfectly properly wants to replace the heating systems in those houses and provide heating systems that the tenants can once again afford. That is a matter of concern not only to the tenant but to the landlord as, while the houses are not heated, they deteriorate as a result of the familiar problems of condensation.

    In addition to all these problems with the existing housing stock, there is the further quite distinctive issue of the upgrading programme for Knightsridge 4. I will not weary the Minister with the details of that tonight, as he was good enough to meet me and the local councillor, Maureen Ryce, a fortnight ago and we much appreciate the fact that since then he has been able to make a decision approving that upgrading programme.

    That upgrading programme alone requires a capital expenditure of £3·6 million spread over two years. Therefore there will be an annual expenditure of £1·8 million. That figure compares to the total net capital allocation for Livingston for the current year of £1·7 million. In other words, that project alone would swallow up the entire net capital allocation. If we add the other expenditure to which I have referred, Livingston requires and can readily absorb a net capital allocation some two or three times the figure that has been offered for the current year.

    The Minister could perfectly properly argue that the net capital allocation is not the sole capital resource available to Livingston. The LDC can also apply to capital expenditure the receipts that it obtains from the sale of houses. The fact is, however, that those receipts are on a declining profile. We are over the hump in public sector housing sales. In Livingston in the past year there has been a marked reduction in interest in purchases of corporation houses. That is not surprising, since more than half the tenants in Livingston are on housing benefit and are not in a position to purchase their houses. There is bound to be finite point to the demand for council house sales and we appear to be approaching that point.

    It is possible that the Housing (Scotland) Bill, which is currently before the House, will stimulate a fresh wave of applications for purchase, should it complete its passage. That, however, will be a one-off effect. The LDC expects that its receipts from house sales will decline from £2·5 million in the current year to £1.1 million in 1990. That estimate was prepared by a development corporation which takes no view on the rights or wrongs of selling public housing and which has proved itself willing and energetic in marketing the sale of such houses. That corporation nevertheless expects to be able to achieve only a declining revenue from the sale of its houses.

    In other words, the LDC is faced with a declining capital revenue from the sale of its housing stock and a declining net capital allocation from the Scottish Office. On that basis, it is impossible for the LDC to tackle the grave housing problems that it has inherited. In the immediate future that means that it does not have enough resources to meet committed expenditure in the coming financial year. In the longer term, it means that some of my constituents will continue to live with flat roofs, with Bison-clad buildings and with heating that is too expensive for them to use, until beyond the year 2000 on the present ​ resources available to LDC. That is the situation in a housing authority for which the Secretary of State is directly responsible.

    It would not require resources beyond the bounds of imagination to tackle the problems at Livingston. The capital programme of the LDC in 1978–79, the last year of the Labour Government, was double the capital programme in the current financial year. Moreover, none of that expenditure was financed by sales of the housing stock.

    I do not expect miracles. I do not expect the Under-Secretary of State to be able to return us to those halcyon days and the expenditure of 1978–79. I do not think that he has brought his cheque book with him. However, I ask him to give serious and sympathetic consideration to the representations from LDC and to look at them with a genuinely open mind. The hon. Gentleman has been willing—I appreciate this—to recognise the problems in the Knightsridge 4 area of Livingston. He has been prepared to admit that there is a case for expenditure. I put it to him that having recognised those problems, he must now will the means to tackle them.

    I am concerned also about the ban imposed by the Scottish Office on construction of general needs housing in the new towns. That ban was imposed by the Minister’s predecessor three years ago. Since then, no general needs housing has been started in Livingston or in any other Scottish new town. The hardship caused by that moratorium has become increasingly evident during those three years.

    When I was first elected to the seat of Livingston and went to my surgeries there, I had few, if any, cases of people coming to me who were not able to obtain rehousing. I have to admit that it made a refreshing contrast to my previous constituency in central Edinburgh where such cases were the stock in trade of my surgery. However, over the three years, first a steady trickle and now a steady stream of people have come to my surgeries unable to obtain the housing that they urgently and desperately need. I share that experience with local councillors. Yesterday, West Lothian district council carried a resolution requesting the Scottish Office to lift the moratorium on the construction of general needs housing in Livingston, precisely because of the experience of local councillors in finding an increasing number of constituents coming to them whom they could not assist.

    To understand the pressure on the waiting list, it is necessary to remember that Livingston is a new town which has been constructed over the past 20 years. We now have a large number of second generation residents reaching their 20s, getting married and understandably seeking a house in which they can set up their family home. Forty six per cent. of the applicants on the LDC’s waiting list are under 25. The houses are just not there for them. The waiting list grew steadily until December 1984 when the LDC decided, perhaps understandably, that it would have to close the waiting list, except for priority cases. Even so, the average waiting time lengthened dramatically during the subsequent 18 months. The average time that must elapse before a first offer can be made exceeds a year. Many people on that waiting list cannot afford to wait a year. One hundred applicants a year involve cases where families have split up, often in desperate circumstances, occasionally in violent circumstances.

    Bluntly, LDC is caught between the twin pressures of diminishing housing stock from the sales and an increasing demand from the new generation reaching maturity and seeking a family home of their own. The only way out of those conflicting pressures is a building programme of general needs housing. I am not asking for a massive programme. I am not seeking an enormous new estate. I am asking for LDC to have the flexibility to provide a steady responsible programme of perhaps 200 houses a year.

    Some private sector house starts are being carried out in Livingston, and it is welcome, but they do not match the needs of the local community. In the past seven years, the average number of starts in Livingston by the private sector has been 137. It is estimated that we require 350 homes a year. Moreover, the people buying those houses come overwhelmingly from outside the new town. They are attracted by houses in an attractive, modern environment and are welcome to the new town. However, the houses constructed by the private sector do not and cannot meet the needs of the young couples of Livingston who cannot afford to purchase them.

    I hope the Minister will agree that I have put my case in a rational, reasoned and dispassionate manner. I ask him in return to give a reasoned and dispassionate response to my case for lifting the moratorium, but I do not want him to give an instant response tonight if it will be no. He will have adequate opportunity to respond. The five district councils representing Scottish new towns have formed a joint forum which has been examining, among other issues, the housing needs of the new towns. The unanimous view of those councils is that the moratorium should be lifted, and they will be placing a report before the Minister within a couple of months.

    I hope that when he receives that report, he will reflect on my remarks tonight and will, in the light of the evidence that they and I have given, be willing to consider lifting the moratorium. By definition, a moratorium should be only a temporary pause. I hope the Minister will agree, when he receives the report from the five councils, that the time for lifting the moratorium is long overdue.