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Tag: Speeches

  • Theresa May – 2019 Speech at London Tech Week

    Below is the text of the speech made by Theresa May, the Prime Minister, on 10 June 2019.

    Thank you. I am delighted to be at Here East to launch London Tech Week.

    Of all the events I go to as Prime Minister few I think have the energy and excitement of the week ahead – and few tell us so much about the power of technology to transform the very world we live in.

    How we harness that technological change and how we support you as pioneers of that technology is fundamental not only to the future of our entire economy – but the vision that I set out on my first day as Prime Minister – to build a country that works for everyone.

    I profoundly believe that technology can change people’s lives for the better.

    And indeed over the course of my own lifetime I have seen extraordinary advances.

    A year after I was born, the first ever satellite – Sputnik 1 – was launched into orbit around the earth, and several years later President Kennedy declared the US mission for man to land on the moon. Now, we have left the outer edges of our solar system.

    In the 1960s, computers were the size of rooms and not very fast. Now we all walk around with an incredibly sophisticated computer in our hands.

    And when I was working at the Association for Payment Clearing Services in the 1990s, I remember we were looking at how great it would be, rather than cash, to use a single card to pay for everything.

    It took a while for that technology to catch on – but last year there were 7.4 billion contactless transactions, up nearly a third from the year before.

    As Bill Gates once said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

    And we should not underestimate the scale of change over the next ten years, and the dramatic ways in which it is set to transform our world.

    It will bring opportunities for high-skilled and high-paid jobs in new sectors and new industries – the like of which we can only begin to imagine.

    And I am determined that we should seize these opportunities and spread the benefits of this future growth to every part of our country.

    But along with the opportunities that technological change will bring, is also uncertainty.

    We face profound challenges over the changing nature of work and what it will mean for the jobs of the future and the skills our young people will need to do them.

    We face profound questions about how we generate our future energy supplies in a sustainable way; how we travel; and how we harness new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence while ensuring that it cannot be exploited by those with malevolent intentions. So that technology is the force for progress that we all know it can be.

    And the only way to build an economy and country that works for everyone is to be at the forefront of working to answer those questions.

    That’s why I have put harnessing the power of technology to seize these opportunities and meet these challenges at the heart of our modern industrial strategy.

    It is a strategic long-term commitment – a partnership between business and government to make Britain the best place in the world in which to start or grow a business.

    It gets the fundamentals right – investing in infrastructure at local and national level, delivering the biggest ever long-term increase in R&D in our history. With a 2.4% of GDP target for R&D that is not about a single parliamentary term, but rather a decades-long commitment meant to transform the whole economy, and harness the opportunities presented by emergent technologies and new industries.

    It invests in equipping people with the skills they need – and the skills you need as dynamic tech-driven businesses – so you can succeed in an ever changing and ever more competitive global economy.

    And crucially it seeks to get us on the front foot in seizing the opportunities of technology and meeting the four grand challenges of our time – driving clean growth, breaking new ground in methods of future mobility, meeting the needs of an ageing population, and leading the world in Artificial Intelligence and Data.

    And that is why we have set defining missions:

    To use new technologies and modern construction practices to at least halve the energy usage of new buildings by 2030.

    To put the UK at the forefront of the design and manufacturing of zero emission vehicles and for all new cars and vans to be effectively zero emission by 2040.

    To establish the world’s first net-zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040 and at least one low-carbon cluster by 2030.

    To ensure that people can enjoy five extra, independent years of life by 2035.

    And to use Artificial Intelligence and Data to transform the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease by 2030.

    And we are backing these ambitions with action. Take Quantum as an example.

    It is set to have a profound impact on our everyday lives.

    Quantum devices might be able to see round corners.

    Quantum processors could model chemical reactions that would be beyond any existing supercomputer. This technology could transform computing, imaging and communications. We cannot put a limit on its potential – just as we could never have estimated how far and fast the Internet would transform our lives.

    The UK is already a global leader in Quantum, but I want to do more.

    So today we are investing over £150m towards this new technology, including how we can unlock its commercial value, and secure the benefits for the UK economy.

    In areas like this where the UK leads, we must also promote what we do around the world, and strike partnerships in research and best practice with key international partners.

    Because while we are not alone in identifying the Challenges that every other country will also have to grapple with – we can be at the forefront in finding answers.

    Delivering our Industrial Strategy internationally can have a real impact at home. It will drive UK exports, secure inward investment and mean local companies can expand into new global markets.

    To support this, we will launch future economy trade and partnership missions to world regions, each focused on one of our Industrial Strategy Grand Challenges. The first four of these will take place this year and act as a catalyst for sustained engagement on issues of trade, cutting edge research and the future of public policy.

    Because strengthening our knowledge networks will ensure we stay on the front foot.

    This is about backing Britain for the long-term.

    With Government playing an active role: working to provide the eco-system in which innovation can flourish.

    There is no part of that vision for our future success that does not involve the people in this room. Because even now it seems an anomaly to talk about a “tech” sector, as something separate from the rest of the economy. Digital technology – like earlier revolutions such as the printed word, or electricity – is rapidly becoming integral to everything else we do.

    And I am incredibly proud that the UK is at the heart of that revolution.

    Already we are one of the best places in the world to start and grow a tech business. British Tech is growing over one and a half times faster than the rest of the economy, adding more than one hundred and thirty billion pounds to our economy every year.

    We have a first-rate financial sector eager to invest, and last year tech venture investment was the highest in Europe. Our regulatory environment is second to none.

    We are home to extraordinary talent with the largest tech community in Europe. And when WhatsApp recently announced it will be opening a London office – it referenced the cosmopolitan nature of our workforce as a major reason in this decision.

    One of the great attractions of our business environment here in the UK, is that our consumers are innovative and always keen to try new things out. That is why we lead the world in online commerce, and why contactless payment in this country has grown so quickly.

    And of course, while we are here to celebrate London Tech Week, you can find tech thriving up and down the country: from gaming in Dundee and “Silicon Suburb” in Edinburgh, to fast-growing clusters in Manchester, Bristol, Bath and beyond.

    Oxford and Cambridge have outperformed Paris in producing ten unicorns, while Manchester – with five – has produced as many as Barcelona and Madrid combined.

    And it is fantastic that tech companies around the world are backing Britain today, with news of further investment totalling £1.2 billion. I am looking forward to meeting a number of these key investors later on, as well as the leaders of some of the UK’s biggest tech start-ups.

    British tech is thriving.

    But if we are going to maintain our position as a global leader, our challenge is how we develop British Tech and make it even better.

    We want this to be the place everyone thinks of – and comes to – first when they want to develop their world-changing tech ideas.

    This is a challenge shared between industry and Government.

    You tell us what matters most is building a competitive environment where you can thrive, and access to talent.

    I want to make sure Britain stays the best place in Europe to launch and grow a start-up.

    So I am delighted that leading figures from the tech community – including Cindy Rose – have agreed to undertake an industry-led Tech Competitiveness Study, reporting later this year.

    It will consider how to build on the UK’s competitive advantage, and what we can do better.

    I’ve heard from businesses that we should set up a major new hub, or series of hubs, for tech – one-stop shops where international investors and UK businesses can connect effectively with the sector.

    And the study will look closely at the case for this too.

    On talent, we want the brightest and the best to come to the UK.

    Our future immigration policy will clearly be at the heart of this.

    So that’s why in the immigration White Paper, we committed to looking at how ambitious start-ups can bring in skilled workers, taking into account the particular needs and circumstances of the tech industry.

    The Immigration Minister will use her roundtable this week to engage with you further on this issue, and we are also talking directly to countries like Canada and Denmark to understand best practice.

    We also know that delays to hiring skilled migrant workers can hold back business – so that is why in the White Paper we set an ambition to significantly improve the overall processing time to 10-15 working days, up there with the best systems in the world.

    But talent is more than just about mobility – it’s about home-grown skills too.

    And that’s why we’ve made coding compulsory at primary school.

    And it’s why we have invested £100 million for up to one thousand new AI PhDs and launched a new prestigious fellowship scheme for top AI researchers.

    Today, I can announce we are going further.

    We are creating up to 2,500 places in AI and data masters conversion courses around the country, starting next year.

    These courses will help people who have originally trained in other degree disciplines to contribute to the ongoing AI revolution.

    As part of this, we will fund up to 1,000 scholarships to ensure we open up these opportunities to everyone, no matter what your background.

    And as Government opens up doors for people across the country, I want to see the sector do more to reach out to diverse groups, where I believe there is huge untapped potential.

    Getting talent right is crucial for the future of the sector.

    But, to be truly competitive globally, we need to look wider than talent too.

    Creating the right conditions for growth also means we have a framework that inspires confidence. I firmly believe the right regulation is what makes capitalism work.

    It’s been true of previous technological revolutions.

    Both Government, and the sector as it becomes more mature, now see smart regulation as part of a thriving digital economy, rather than a threat to innovation.

    There are two ways in which we need to make this technological revolution work in the UK – how we create a fair market, and how we protect citizens.

    I want to thank Professor Jason Furman for his excellent work showing how we can boost competition in digital markets.

    And I am pleased that Professor Furman has today agreed that he will advise on the next phase of work on how we can implement his recommendation to create a new Digital Markets Unit.

    Building a strong environment for business also means ensuring we maintain the public’s trust in a rapidly changing environment.

    We all agree there are legitimate concerns about how technology is used, and Government has a role to play in setting standards for industry.

    Our Online Harms White Paper, published earlier this year, sets out our approach to protecting citizens, while maintaining an environment where business can thrive.

    And to get it right, we want to work with you – and I am pleased that industry has been working thoughtfully with both the Digital and Home Secretaries on the details.

    Our response to online harms, though, is not just about how Government and business come together.

    It’s also about how you work together as an industry.

    I was struck at last month’s Extremism Summit in Paris at how powerful it was to have the world’s top companies coming together with a joint statement of action.

    And I want to see this spirit of cooperation continue as we face both the opportunities and challenges ahead.

    Because today as we sit on the cusp of the next great industrial revolution, we have the opportunity to work together and ensure that the advances we see transform our world for the better, and for the benefit of everyone.

    Government will back you all the way.

    But it will also take your talent.

    And if ever we needed any more evidence of the energy and creativity that exists here in the UK – then we only need to take a look around us at where we are today.

    A home to exciting businesses and innovative enterprises – at the very place which broadcast to the world the amazing success story of the 2012 Olympics.

    Your ingenuity, your expertise and your vision are what are going to propel us to Britain’s success stories of the future.

    You are the reason why Britain is home to some of the most exciting tech businesses in the world.

    So let us work together, and create a Tech Nation that truly is worlds apart.

  • Chris Skidmore – 2019 Speech at Launch of Smart Export Guarantee

    Below is the text of the speech made by Chris Skidmore, the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, on 10 June 2019.

    Ladies and gentlemen – good afternoon. It’s great for me to be here with you during London Tech Week – an event which I’ve been looking forward to since I took the job of Science Minister back in December.

    And it’s even more exciting for me now, because as well as my usual brief – which covers science, innovation, higher education and agri-tech, among many other topics – I’m currently looking after the energy and clean growth portfolio.

    And all of these things, I think, fit together in a very real, and very important way.

    Just under a year ago we received the landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the impact of global warming of 1.5 degrees; a report which provided the clearest picture yet of the catastrophic impacts of rising global temperatures.

    We immediately sought the advice of the Committee for Climate Change, asking what we needed to do to accelerate our own decarbonisation, and how we could make this benefit bill-payers and businesses alike.

    We received the Committee’s response in May. The report is comprehensive and authoritative and the advice is clear: limiting climate change is achievable. But it will take a tremendous effort – across all sectors of the economy, in all corners of the country – to meet our goals. And a huge surge of innovation to ensure that we can continue to prosper through this transition.

    Recently, I’ve been making a series of speeches on our national R&D investment, and our plans to increase spending on innovation to 2.4% of GDP, rising to 3% in the longer term – an increase that will affect every area of our lives. We’re putting two-and-a-half billion pounds into our efforts to decarbonise across the board, giving us a great chance to be at the cutting edge of the technologies of the future.

    Many people say that we’re in the early years of a fourth Industrial Revolution, a change just as profound as the birth of the steam engine and mass production, or the dawning of the digital age. But my colleague the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Michael Gove, has rightly identified that we’re entering into an agricultural revolution too – how we use our land will have to change, just as everything else will.

    Farmers of course know this all too well, having been on the front-line last summer when temperatures were extraordinarily high, and food production became particularly challenging.

    It might be this understanding that has inspired our agricultural sectors to embrace innovation, whether that’s exploring vertical farming to reduce waste and preserve our soil, using AI to monitor the relationship between bees and their environment to keep both in better health, or adopting precision agriculture techniques to improve crop yields and reduce fertiliser use. We have even begun using robots to plant, grow and harvest crops – as successfully trialled by Harper Adams University with its ‘Hands-Free Hectare’ project, which has attracted global interest.

    I think that this gives us a glimpse into how we’ll be producing food in the future. These are all crucial developments, and each can make a major contribution to reducing our carbon footprint. But today, I want to focus in on another area where we could see real change: energy.

    Of course, you don’t have to look very hard to see that, over the years, there has been a great deal of change here.

    Go back 50 years or so and you’d find the landscape unrecognisable – literally so, for anyone who can remember the smog and soot of the mid-20th century. In fact, a hundred years ago, and just a few meters away from here, the Coal Drops – which are now being converted into a retail quarter – would have been filled with piles and piles of pitch-black coal, delivered from South Yorkshire and dispersed into London by narrowboat and horse-drawn cart.

    Nor is it just the fuel that’s changed. Back in the 1960s and 70s, electricity was provided by your local electricity board – and that was about all you knew. If more energy was required, someone would phone someone, who would in turn phone someone else, until, eventually, someone in a power station was tasked with increasing the flow of coal into the furnace.

    Coal was king, while solar power and offshore wind were considered curiosities – or even fantasies – if they were ever considered at all.

    But today, the story is entirely different. In 1970s and 80s – and even into 1990 – to power our nation we burned through 70 million tonnes of coal each year. Just last week we saw an 18-day run of coal-free days – something we haven’t seen since the dawning of the first industrial revolution. And this morning, none of our power was being generated by coal.

    This is a real testament to our flourishing renewables sector. In 2010 we had just under 10 gigawatts of renewable electricity. But at the end of last year, we’d more-than-quadrupled that. Last quarter, 54% of electricity generation was from low carbon sources, and on the 14 May this year a quarter of our power came from solar – these are the best results we’ve ever seen.

    In the wider green economy, we’re employing some 400,000 people in green jobs, and we’re aiming to see that number increase to as many as 2 million over the next decade.

    And these are jobs throughout the country:

    In Hull, Siemens Gamesa have employed over 1,000 people at their turbine blade factory

    On the Isle of Wight, MHI Vestas have installed a new blade mould in their factory, creating 1,100 jobs and adding more than £40 million to the local economy. While in Fawley the same company have turned a decommissioned oil-fired power plant into a state-of-the-art painting and logistics facility for their 80-meter turbine blades

    And in places like Grimsby and Barrow-in-Furness, people are seeing the economic benefits of new investment in operations and maintenance facilities for offshore wind.

    The Offshore Wind Sector Deal, launched on 7 March, has committed to looking at the technologies of the future, working across the R&D sector and institutions, which will provide the UK with significant export opportunities, including digital and robotic technologies for surveying and operations and maintenance, and next generation technologies contributing to cost reduction and grid integration.

    So not only are we decarbonising, we’re also diversifying – bringing these new technologies in, alongside natural gas and nuclear, to modernise our approach to energy. At the same time, we are building flexibility and reliability into a new, digitalised, decentralised system, through the rollout of smart meters and the deployment of technologies such as batteries and smart appliances, as outlined in our Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan.

    We are already seeing more generation located closer to people’s homes, an increase in energy demand as electric vehicles begin to take off, and a huge passion for climate-conscious policies and green products among the British people.

    Our citizens want to do the right thing, and to be trusted to make their own decisions – exactly what this government wants to see too. Crucial to this effort is empowering both individuals and businesses to take control of their energy use; ensuring that people have the means to do what works for them, and are rewarded for their efforts.

    So today, I’m really pleased to announce our new plan to develop small-scale, low-carbon electricity generation here in the UK. Supplier led and subsidy free, we’re calling it the Smart Export Guarantee, or SEG for short, and its legislation has been laid in Parliament today – meaning it will be implemented before this year is done.

    At its most basic, the SEG is a guarantee that those homes and businesses that supply their own low-carbon electricity – through solar panels on the roof, for example, or an anaerobic digestion plant on a farm – will have the chance to sell their excess electricity to the grid through a market mechanism. They’ll be known as ‘exporters.’ Most electricity suppliers – any with more than 150,000 UK customers – will be required offer at least one ‘export tariff’, which will be the means through which this low-carbon electricity is bought and sold.

    The precise details of the tariff – such as length and level – will be for suppliers to determine, but there are a few core conditions, not least that exporters must be paid for what they produce, even when market prices are negative.

    We expect to see these suppliers bidding competitively for electricity to give exporters their best market price, while providing the local grid with more clean, green energy. Indeed, since we first consulted on the SEG we are seeing great signs that the market is gearing up to rise to this challenge, with some suppliers, such as Bulb and Octopus, offering or trialling export tariffs to small-scale generators.

    As the Secretary of State has set out previously, it is now time to move away from deployment through subsidy – paid for through a levy on bills – and towards a more market-based approach. This will benefit consumers, and will spur the sector to take advantage of innovation in technology and processes to reduce costs.

    In line with our Industrial Strategy, our aim is to enable the small-scale low-carbon generation sector to fairly access the wider energy market and deliver clean, smart and flexible power. This will extend the benefits of a smarter energy system more widely, which will aid ambitions to further reduce emissions.

    And perhaps most exciting of all, the SEG will benefit from an overlap with other parts of the low carbon transition, from electric vehicles to home storage and smart tariffs.

    A key motivation for the SEG is enhancing the role that generators can play in driving forward a smarter energy system, using smart meters and time of use tariffs, which will allow more consumers to benefit from flexible electricity prices.

    Under the previous Feed-in Tariffs scheme, exported electricity was largely unmeasured, flowing back to the grid without metering. Under the SEG, exports will be metered, supporting the roll-out of smart meters and ensuring compatibility with the rise in use of both electric vehicles and storage batteries.

    So In the home of the future, customers could generate solar power, use that power to charge their car and go for a drive; then, when they came home, they could sell the power left in the car’s battery back to the grid at a time of peak demand – so at a better price for them, while taking some of the load burden off national generation.

    All of this will mean that there has never been a better time for innovative, low-carbon products and services to come to market. And with this legislation, we will ensure that we achieve that smart, green, flexible future we all want to see.

    This is an evolving field – one that is welcoming to any business or individual that is ready and willing to develop new ideas and new technology. As I often say to the young people I speak to – whether I’m wearing my University Minister hat or my Science Minister goggles – great ideas can come from anywhere.

    That’s why as well as talking to all of you, this London Tech Week I’m pleased to announce the winners of our Energy Entrepreneurs’ Fund.

    Since first running in 2012, the EEF has been one of the pillars of our Energy Innovation Programme. So far it’s supported 133 projects, leading to more than 300 new jobs being created, more than 100 patents being filed, and more than £100 million of private sector investment.

    And I’m delighted to say that we’re maintaining this excellent record, with today’s announcement of the 19 winners of Phase 7 of the fund.

    These winners, whose details we’ve published today, will be receiving a share of over £8 million to support the development of their technologies in energy efficiency, power generation, and storage – technologies which will, of course, be essential to the SEG, and to that home of the future.

    Maybe it’s because I’m coming to this portfolio with fairly fresh eyes, but it’s been a revelation for me to see the terrific progress we’re making, and the many, many reasons we have to be optimistic about green growth in this country.

    As I said back at the beginning of my speech, we all know that we’re facing down a huge challenge, but I’ve seen a tremendous level of engagement from businesses and individuals throughout the UK, and as much as I know the enthusiasm is there, I want to make sure it spreads to every single person in this country.

    It’s one of the reasons that we’re so keen to host COP26, which we’re negotiating at the moment. Of course there are other countries that have a great story to tell, and have every right to host, but I think what we’re doing here is truly exceptional, and is setting a precedent for the rest of the world to follow. After the success of Green GB Week, I have no doubt we’d do an excellent job with COP.

    But that’s something for the future. For the time being, I’m delighted by the Smart Export Guarantee, and I’m really excited to see the difference it will make in the years ahead. There are benefits in this for consumers, and plenty of opportunities for the sector and its suppliers too.

    We’ve seen the energy landscape change over the centuries, and I think we’re about to see it change again for the better. A cleaner, leaner system – with the British people at its heart – is on its way.

    So I hope you’ll take that optimism with you into the rest of this week, and I want to thank you all for listening today.

    Thank you.

  • Austin Mitchell – 1985 Speech on the Televising of the Commons

    Below is the text of the speech made by Austin Mitchell, the then Labour MP for Great Grimsby, in the House of Commons on 20 November 1985.

    The basic reason why the House should be televised is to bridge the gulf between us and the people. After all, we are the people’s Parliament. We are not a closed debating society. We are the representatives of the people. We are not speaking for ourselves. We are discussing the issues that matter to the people and making decisions that affect their lives. Therefore, we should be available to the people on the medium from which they now get the bulk of their information about news and current affairs. Lament it how some will, that is the fact. If we are not on that medium, we relegate ourselves to a backwater that is irrelevant to the people and their lives.

    Arcane abstractions have been dredged up from the 18th century via South Down, but we are not a ​ 19th-century debating Chamber. We are not influencing and persuading each other. We cannot control the Executive, because we cannot bring it down. We have a system of government by party in which the people choose the Executive, and the people alone can bring it down. In that situation, the House of Commons is the open part of the system, where decisions become public for debate. It is the forum of the nation where the issues are discussed. It is the stage for the battle of ideas where the case for and against what the Government are doing is put before the people. All that is done to inform and educate the people. Yet what a farce it is if we do not reach the people.

    The popular papers do not report us. The qualities give bald summaries for a small readership. The radio, which is a minority channel, carries noisy extracts of our debates, but television, the only genuine mass medium, carries only sound radio with still pictures. We are the weaker for that. We can be effective and reflect the public’s concerns only if we have firm roots outside. We should be involved in a two-way communication process with the people outside, because it is the people who are the root of our power.

    All the arguments against televising Parliament have one common characteristic—they are all defensive. There is a strange coalition of opponents. We have hon. Members who feel that their inadequacies in performance, or the lack of it, should not be exposed to the gaze of the public. We have hon. Members who feel that the House is so awful—

    Mr. Faulds

    Will my hon. Friend give way?

    Mr. Mitchell

    No.

    Mr. Faulds

    Will my hon. Friend give way?

    Mr. Mitchell

    No, I am sorry, I am not giving way.

    Mr. Faulds

    He is frightened of the argument.

    Mr. Mitchell

    Some hon. Members feel that the House is so awful that the public should not be allowed to see it. Some feel that the public are so stupid and ill-informed that they will not understand what we are doing. Over the past few days journalists, men of the written word, have been bitterly hostile to television coverage, which will cut down their importance, their job as self-appointed middle men mediating between us and the people at inordinate profit to themselves. Both the Charles Moore article in the Daily Telegraph and the Hugo Young article in yesterday’s edition of The Guardian showed contempt for politicians and television.

    In the Chamber, two fears are paramount. There is fear of change in the Chamber and fear of television itself. To those who fear change in the Chamber, I say that, with television, the lighting will be somewhat brighter than it is now, but the House can be unconscionably dim at times, can it not? If we bring in the cameras straight away, they will be operator cameras. If we wait until the start of the next Session in November, the broadcasting organisations will be able to supply wall-mounted remote-control cameras that are unobtrusive.

    It is up to us in the House to define the terms of the coverage. We could go for the Canadian style of coverage or that in the United States House of Representatives, where the Speaker is shown in mid-shot and there are no cutaways, no shots of disturbances, no shots of people rushing like lemmings to jump from the Gallery almost as fast as nationalised industries have been flogged off—no ​ sensationalism, just straight, neutral coverage. We could go for the same coverage as the House of Lords, which allows cutaways. The decision is for the Select Committee and the House, and it has to be taken predominantly in the light of what the House wants rather than what the television people want. That is the important thing. The decision is ours. When we are televised, what will come over is what is effective now—serious, straightforward Chamber debate.

    Mr. Faulds

    How gullible.

    Mr. Mitchell

    The speech of the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), unlike the interventions of my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds)—

    Mr. Faulds rose—

    Mr. Mitchell

    That speech would come over—

    Mr. Faulds

    If my hon. Friend has the guts to give way—

    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)

    Order.

    Mr. Mitchell

    I shall not give way.

    The speech by the right hon. Member for South Down would come over extremely well on television, wrong as it was, because it was compelling argument. That is the truth of the matter. It is not the histrionics of the demagogue or the subtle lying of the studio, but straightforward Chamber debating that comes over effectively. It is striking from the Hansard Society report on the House of Lords coverage how little the House of Lords has changed because of the advent of television.

    There are those who fear change. We have conducted ourselves like a closed debating society for many years. What good has that done us? What respect is there for the House of Commons? The public are increasingly alienated from parties, politicians and politics. They do not respect or hold hon. Members and the House of Commons in esteem. The public are not in awe—they are bored and alienated and believe that we are remote. We must reach out to the public, and we can do so through the media from which they get their news and information.

    In this closed debating society, for much of the day the Chamber is dying on its feet, which may be especially true when I am speaking. The Chamber is badly attended and uninspiring for large chunks of the day. The only way to remedy that is to make it once again the focus of attention by putting it on television and making it available to the people. Through television we have the chance to make the Chamber important and a focus of interest and concern once again. We should seize that chance.

    I never understand the fear of television—a fear that has been so manipulated tonight.

    Mr. Wilson rose—

    Mr. Mitchell

    Television is essentially a mirror of reality. It has faults, but reality has faults. If we object to reality—

    Mr. Wilson

    On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Can you enlighten me? Under which code of practice are we debating? Is it the pre-television one, when one gives way to interventions, or is this the post-television age when we do not?

    Mr. Deputy Speaker

    That is not a matter for me.

    ​Mr. Mitchell

    The interventions have been so repetitious and so absurd—

    Mr. Faulds

    My hon. Friend has not listened to them. I am so grateful that he has at last been overcome by embarrassment and is prepared to listen to a moment of contradiction of some of his arguments. I rose first—I made many attempts later—to make the point that my hon. Friend seemed to be basing his attack on some of us on the fact that we were defensive about television. I happen to like the medium. I am rather good on television. If, unfortunately, the cameras come in, I will probably benefit from it.

    Mr. Deputy Speaker

    Order. I hope that this is an intervention, not a speech.

    Mr. Faulds

    What I wanted to say to my hon. Friend when he refused to let me intervene is that we are not defensive about proper television coverage of this House. If there were a continuous programme, I would vote for it. What we are defensive about is the selective presentation that the media boys will give to televising the Chamber.

    Mr. Mitchell

    I thank my hon. Friend for making it clear why I did not give way in the first place. I did not want his speech to punctuate mine.

    The critics of television are getting it both ways. They say that the House is too dull to be covered, and that it will be reduced to a form of entertainment. They say that people will not be interested, but also that 10 million people will be watching for every flaw, every absentee Member and every aberration. If they are influenced by those fears, they can only suck it and see. The experiment gives us a chance to see whether the fears are realised. That is what an experiment is about.

    Mr. Faulds

    Jump off the cliff and see where you land.

    Mr. Mitchell

    It is no use listening to abstract fears of people who have not seen the proceedings on television and who are defensive about it. The best way is to watch the experiment and see how it works.

    The critics of television must not forget that we already appear on television and in the least appetising, most inadequate way—a voice-over radio broadcast with irrelevant pictures. Why should not the reality be shown through the television cameras? We should be clear that the coverage will be different for each level and channel. Television will have several forms of coverage of our proceedings. Eventually, we shall have full-time coverage on cable. Cable is coming. In Canada, there is full-time coverage by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the United States has such coverage on C-Span. They attract small but devoted, interested and involved audiences.

    There will occasionally be full debates on important issues, as there have been on the radio. There will be daily and weekly edited summaries of what has happened in Parliament on BBC 2 and on Channel 4. There will be extracts of speeches and statements in Parliament in the news and in the current affairs programmes. There will also be regional coverage by the regional companies of regional matters and Members of Parliament.

    Each channel will make its own decisions and choices. There is enough evidence that, within that range of choice, everyone will see something.

    However, those who wish to see more and to pay continual attention to the House will ​ be able to follow their interests, and why not? It could be a long debate, or simply a reminder on the news that Parliament exists. In contrast to the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton), some of my constituents have telephoned me in Grimsby during the week and, when told that I am in London, respond by saying, “What is he doing in London?” There is an amazing ignorance of Parliament.

    The fear of television is unrealistic. The debate has moved on more recently to an argument about which party will have the advantage, and whether Front-Bench or Back-Bench Members will benefit. The Prime Minister is reported to have changed her mind yet again. I hope that she is not, as The Guardian put it, “uncharacteristically dithering”. She has everything to gain by appearing on television, as does the leader of the Labour party. Both will come over brilliantly, because ability comes over well on television. That is what people will be looking for. If ability comes over well, it is not a matter of which party wins or loses. The whole Chamber will gain, because we shall have shown that we are doing a serious job. We shall allow the public to judge our ability, performance and how we get on in this testing ground. We shall not leave that judgment to the insiders—to the sketch writers who relay their views in their theatre criticisms, peddling small doses of what happens here, at inordinate profit to themselves.

    The experiment in the House of Lords has shown how successful television can be. It was not naturally the most exciting television, it was not naturally the most propitious experiment that could have been conducted, but at the end of the experiment, 81 per cent. of a representative sample of 200 peers wished the experiment to continue. In a sample of the public interviewed by BBC audience research, 72 per cent. believed that television gave them a good insight into what was happening in the House of Lords. Moreover, audiences were good. There was an average reach of 1·5 million for the afternoon and of 300,000 for the late night programmes.

    Indeed, when the ITN programme “Their Lordships’ House” went out late at night, the audiences were one fifth higher than they had been for the programmes in the preceding four weeks. That is the test. The consumers liked it, and those who participated liked it and wished it to continue. That 19th century institution down the corridor has shown us the way into the 20th century. It is a success story that should give us the confidence to take the plunge. If we do not, that House will continue to get the prestige of being on television.

    The House of Commons should go ahead on a similar basis. We could do so by voting today in principle and then allowing the Select Committee to agree the coverage that will be most acceptable to hon. Members. Then we should put it to the test of an experiment, preferably as long as possible and as late as possible, so that we can install remote-controlled, wall-mounted cameras, which are less obtrusive, and decide the matter on the basis of reality, not the hypothetical fears that have been projected today by those who are scared of television.

    Only when we have seen how it works will we have to take a final decision, and power will remain in our hands throughout that process. I hope we will decide not on fears, either of ourselves or of television, or on the kind of quibbles that have been paraded before us, but on what ​ is in the best interests of the people who have a growing desire to know, to see, and to be involved. All the evidence is that people want the House to be televised.

    Secondly, we must decide on the basis of what is in the best interests of this House. We are the last major Chamber to allow television in, and it is television alone that will enable us to do our real job, which is to put arguments before the people. We have dithered, delayed, hesitated and hovered. Enough is enough, and it is well past the time to reach out and talk directly to the people.

    We can do it through this experiment, and if we go ahead we shall be moving into the 20th century instead of cowering in fear of the world outside, pretending we are still living in the 19th century, doing a job that is dead in a Chamber that is half alive.

  • Philip Goodhart – 1985 Speech on the Televising of the Commons

    Below is the text of the speech made by Philip Goodhart, the then Conservative MP for Beckenham, in the House of Commons on 20 November 1985.

    My instinctive belief is that we should be cautious about letting the cameras into this debating Chamber. My view was powerfully reinforced on the evening before the House of Lords television experiment began when I watched a trailer for the next day’s debate. There were three scenes on the trailer.

    There was a picture of an American Congressman going mad. We moved from Washington to the Floor of the Bundestag in Bonn. We did not see a great speech by the German Chancellor. Instead, we saw a riot by the Green party. We moved from the Bundestag to the European Parliament. There was a picture of our own dear Les Huckfield, whose microphone had been cut off because he had breached a rule of European parliamentary etiquette—he had pulled out a loud hailer and was addressing Members of the European Parliament, who looked somewhat bemused. Clearly the television producer believed that those three scenes were good television, but they showed Parliaments at their worst.

    I fear that violence and bad behaviour will spread to this House if its proceedings are televised. My fears were not much assuaged when I watched the first serious debate from the House of Lords on the Second Reading of the Local Government Bill, whose purpose was to abolish the Greater London council and the metropolitan counties. I had reservations about that legislation, but my noble Friend Lord Elton made an admirable speech. When it came to televising the speech, the producers could not ​ allow a shot of longer than 30 seconds from one angle of a speaker at the Dispatch Box, so we had 30 seconds of Lord Elton’s left profile, 30 seconds of Lord Elton straight on, and 30 seconds of Lord Elton’s right profile. The television producers were clearly getting alarmed about how they would fill the next 30 minutes of his speech.

    Relief came in the shape of Lady Seear. The deputy leader of the Liberal party, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), claimed that the Liberals had only 40 seconds’ coverage in an important debate in the House of Lords. The Liberal party managed to get 40 seconds in the debate on the GLC because one of the straps of Lady Seear’s undergarments slipped over her left shoulder, and she spent the next 40 seconds or so trying to get it back by shrugging her shoulders. The television cameras zoomed in on her because that provided relief from going from one dull-looking Member to another.

    That underlines the fact that not only did the producers wish to trivialise the important debate that was taking place, but unfortunately that televising speeches from the Lords or the Commons will be very dull indeed, visually speaking. The producers and the audience will seek relief after a few seconds.

    If we must experiment—I am very doubtful whether we should, and I shall not vote for the motion—we would be well advised to follow the example of the United States Senate over the years. Although the cameras, under strict control, have gone into the House of Representatives in Washington, the Senate has always resisted having the cameras on its Floor. However, the Senate allows the cameras into the Senate Committees when the Chairman and Members of those Committees agree. Some of the televised hearings in the Committees have been historic. I was in Washington at the time of the hearings presided over by Senator Ervin, during the Watergate scandal. Undoubtedly those hearings helped to change the course of history.

    If we were to have cameras, we would be well advised to begin with the Select Committees rather than on the Floor of the House, because the cross-examination of witnesses, the courtroom scene in the Select Committee, is naturally good television. One does not have to fiddle around looking for odd gimmicks to make it real, attractive and interesting to the audience.
    If we pass the motion, I hope that the Select Committee will look with equal seriousness at the televising of Select Committees as at the televising of the House.

  • Gordon Wilson – 1985 Speech on the Televising of the Commons

    Below is the text of the speech made by Gordon Wilson, the then SNP MP for Dundee East, in the House of Commons on 20 November 1985.

    The hon. Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Lawler) lives in cloud-cuckoo-land if he believes that the public will receive his speech or mine at great length and watch them unadulterated and unedited. My impression is that there is not much demand for the televising of Parliament. People ​ will probably want to see snippets on the “9 o’clock News” or “News at Ten”, and that will be the end of it. I am not against the televising of Parliament, but we must be realistic about the coverage that will be achieved.

    I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should not treat the Chamber as if it were a sacred institution, with the idea that it would be sacrilege to alter it. I am only too well aware of the inadequacy of our procedures. Hon. Members must be frustrated by the lack of financial power we have in the House compared with many Parliaments in western Europe and beyond.

    We are in danger of taking the debate out of context. I was prepared to vote against the motion because it seemed to me wrong that we should vote for a principle without knowing the practicalities. According to the motion, which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) moved so well, we were apparently prepared to agree to an experiment in principle and then to have running sidesaddle with it, so to speak, a Select Committee charged with the job of implementing it but not with the consideration of whether it would be desirable.

    However, the Leader of the House has swayed some of my views, because, if we follow his advice and vote for the motion, we shall not be voting for what it describes. In other words, we shall have an opportunity to consider the principle and the detail when the Select Committee reports. It will then be possible to put the boot in to the proposal if it does not match up to what we expected.

    The House, through the Select Committee and the debate that we shall have in six months, can dictate to the broadcasters what it wants to put over. We could make many mistakes. We do not have to look far from sound broadcasting, which I think was one of the biggest gaffes the House has made for a long time. That is saying something considering some of the peculiar decisions that we have made.

    Broadcasters naturally look at the most entertaining and lively parts of our proceedings. That must of course mean Question Time. Question Time is entertainment. We should all stagger back in disbelief if we ever managed to obtain some information out of Question Time. It is there. It is prime time. The public desperately want tickets to get in and it is carried to its zenith—if I may use that description, probably incorrectly—at Prime Minister’s Question Time. We face each other in an adversarial, indeed gladiatorial, fashion and make a great deal of noise. If we want to get rid of the noise, we must alter the shape of the Chamber and call people to a rostrum to make speeches. We should soon all be preserved in aspic and the quality of many of our debates would decline.

    One of the dangers of introducing television to the House without considering our procedures is that their shape may change in a way that we have not determined. Right from the start, we must take on board the fact that we are moving towards television because television is the principal medium of communication. It is the medium for election fighting. It is anachronistic to go around knocking on doors and speaking to our constituents. With one television appearance, we can reach more constituents during an election than we can with all our knocking on doors. Leaflets through the door are not a useful way of imparting ideas. Television is the medium.

    I suspect that one of the reasons why we are discussing this issue tonight is that we are in the gravitational pull of a general election. Some people have been looking at their sums and are beginning to say, “We should have coverage ​ on television during the run-up to an election because we may put over our case more effectively.” If we introduce this experiment, we should not do it in the run-up to a general election. It would be far more effective to introduce it immediately after the election of a new Parliament.

    I have some doubt about what the practical effects of television coverage might be. I take up some of the points made by the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on the subject of Question Time. If Question Time gets the television slots, members of a minority party will want to be called, because Question Time receives the coverage. All hon. Members will have to change their priorities. It will not just be a matter for minority parties. There will be competition for a restricted time slot.

    Mr. Allen McKay (Barnsley, West and Penistone)

    Would it not be better, instead of coverage being slotted into programmes, to have a 24-hour channel so that people could switch on and off when they wished? That would prevent all the problems. It could cover the work of Select Committees and the Standing Committees which do most of the work.

    Mr. Wilson

    The hon. Gentleman has raised an interesting point. He must remember that the electorate might not want to watch a 24-hour channel. Heaven forbid that we move to a 24-hour day.

    My point is still valid; if we are talking of television we are talking of prime time. Prime Minister’s Question Time takes place at the right time of day for coverage in the news programmes. In general debates, if a Member is not called before 5 o’clock, his chances of being quoted in the television news have probably gone. The point has already been made about statements. We will have to re-adjust our individual, party and parliamentary priorities to meet the demand made by the new medium. Many of us may be disappointed and disillusioned by the experiment, and electors may reach a similar view.

    Practical problems must be considered. I want to make it clear on behalf of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party that we would not be happy to be represented on the Select Committee by a member of the SDP or the Liberal party. [HON. MEMBERS: “Where are they?”] They have vanished to do their plethora of television interviews. At one time we could have trusted members of those parties, because they wanted to further the interests of smaller parties. They now have ambitions beyond their stature. They are imperialist in the sense that they want to aggrandise themselves to get media coverage. That is legitimate, but I should not like to trust our parties to their care on the Select Committee.

    The Leader of the House will not be able to answer other specific points, but I wish to put them on the record on behalf of Plaid Cymru and the SNP. What facilities will be made available to broadcasters in Scotland and Wales? Will adequate editing facilities be available? The experiment should not be done purely on a metropolitan basis. Many hon. Members will want their local television stations to have access to coverage of their own speeches as frequently as possible.

    Important debates on housing and local government in Scotland and Wales often take place after 10.30 pm. Will the television cameras cover those proceedings in the wee small hours of the night? Those debates will affect our constituents more perhaps than grand debates on foreign ​ affairs. If the cameramen will be there at that time, who will pay them? Will it be the House, the BBC. ITN or the local companies? The local companies would not want to take on that expense.

    There are the proceedings of Select Committees, and of Standing Committees too, although heaven forbid that anyone should want to watch what we get up to there. What about the Scottish and the Welsh Grand Committees’? The Scottish Grand Committee deals with some Bills that might otherwise be taken on the Floor of the House. Is the Scottish Grand Committee to be covered? If not, we should insist that all Scottish Bills are dealt with in the House because of the possibility of television coverage.

    If the Scottish Grand Committee is covered, will its proceedings be televised when it meets in the Scottish Assembly building in Edinburgh? As the Leader of the House is no doubt aware, it meets in Edinburgh four or five times a year to deal with legislation and other important matters. Who will take the cameras there for occasional visits? Yet it would be wrong if important visits by Scottish Members to the Scottish Grand Committee in their own country were not covered. The gallery is not large enough to accommodate many members of the public, although I must put it on record that my experience of meetings in Edinburgh is that the general public are not keen to inflict on themselves the same masochistic damage that we inflict on ourselves.

    I support in principle the televising of the House, but I have reservations about how it may be put into effect. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I will support the motion because of the assurance given by the Leader of the House that the principle of coverage will be married to a detailed report from the Select Committee and that we will have another bite at the apple.

  • Jack Ashley – 1985 Speech on the Televising of the Commons

    Below is the text of the speech made by Jack Ashley, the then Labour MP for Stoke on Trent South, in the House of Commons on 20 November 1985.

    The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame Jill Knight) was talking nonsense when she said that the televising of proceedings in another place was a crashing bore. One of the reasons why many of us want the proceedings in this place to be televised is the success of the televising of another place, which has aroused a certain jealousy in the House.

    I declare a personal interest, because my daughter produces the programme which shows the proceedings in another place. That is a special reason for me to support the motion. Having made that declaration, I believe that most Members watch the proceedings in another place on ​ television and wish that the proceedings in this place were televised. That is one of the reasons why the motion has been advanced.

    The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), in a typically intellectual and elegant speech, gave me the impression that he was talking to a bunch of masons, as if we were a private elite and had nothing to do with those outside. He could not be more wrong. This is a public assembly and we address ourselves to the public outside the House.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) came out with one of his typical and characteristic horror stories. He suggested that every bad thing that takes place in the House should be televised. He seemed to be saying that speeches should not be televised, but that everything that his fevered imagination could dredge up should be. He was talking as much nonsense as the hon. Member for Edgbaston.

    We know that television producers—I was one for eight years—are extremely responsible people. They lean over backwards to ensure justice for Members of this place and for those in another place. I believe that they bend over too far. They are too responsible and respectful. They should let things go a bit. The charge that they would take the mickey out of us is absurd. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw probably appears on television more frequently than any other Member. He appears every night—sometimes five times a night. He knows full well that television producers will not disregard the conventions of the House.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw mentioned the Prime Minister’s conversion. If it is true that the Prime Minister is now in favour of televising our proceedings because she thinks that it will lead to a political advantage for her, she has bought a boomerang. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and shadow Ministers are twice as good as the Prime Minister and her Ministers. The longer this Parliament continues, the more obvious that will become. I hope that my hon. Friend will take that point on board.

    One of the main objections is that the exhibitionists and buffoons—some of those who have spoken, but not those who are in favour of the motion—will take over the show. I am sure that Mr. Speaker will not stand for that. He will continue to call hon. Members to contribute to debates as he does now. Like other assemblies, we have our buffoons and exhibitionists. They have not taken over in the United States, Australia, Canada or western European assemblies, and there is no reason for arguing that they will take over here.
    It is said that television will trivialise our proceedings. I cannot believe that this legislature will be turned into a comic show merely because we have television cameras in the Chamber. To argue that way is to disregard the function of the House and to insult hon. Members and the public.

    We must come to terms with the modern world. We must move with the times. We must stop fighting the battle that our ancestors fought by keeping the press out. Television is the modern press—

    Mr. Beaumont-Dark indicated dissent.

    Mr. Ashley

    Yes, it is. Television is the modern means of communication. Without it, we shall continue to cut ourselves adrift from public opinion. We shall become an ​ offshore legislature. We shall legislate for a tribe about whom we know nothing—the British people. We need television because it is the most important medium of communication; we need television to restore our link with the electorate who sent us here; we need television to put us back in the centre of the stage to ensure that we again become the prime forum for public debate; and we need television to restore the lifeblood of public interest.

    Ultimately, we are speaking not simply of the convenience of the House. Parliament is not about parliamentarians. The British people have the right to know and see what goes on. We have a duty to them to expose our proceedings and allow them to be televised. The sooner we do that, the better for all concerned.

  • John Gummer – 1985 Speech on Heat Treated Milk

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Gummer, the then Minister of State at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, in the House of Commons on 19 November 1985.

    I beg to move,

    That this House takes note of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food’s unnumbered explanatory memorandum dated 26th June 1985 on health and animal health problems affecting intra-community trade in heat-treated milk; endorses the view that trade in heat-treated milk should be subject to a Community regime in order to protect human and animal health; and therefore welcomes Council Directive No. 85/397/EEC of 5th August 1985 on health and animal health problems affecting intra-community trade in heat-treated milk.

    This evening’s debate is, in a sense, a repeat performance of the one that we had when heat-treated milk was discussed on 20 February 1975.
    It is the purpose of the United Kingdom to encourage the extension of the open market within the European Community so that we can compete with our products, not least agricultural products.

    In 1975, when we first discussed the issue, our agriculture was still adapting to the common agricultural policy—a process which is now complete. This has brought problems to the industry and, recently, to the dairy sector in particular, but there have also been opportunities for British agriculture and for the many people in Britain whose jobs depend on agriculture.

    When we entered the European Community, we looked forward—we accepted it at the time—to a long period in which we would be getting the technical arrangements right and so harmonise our agriculture that we could break down the technical barriers and be able to export to the rest of Europe. With milk, those changes have taken rather longer. As a result, national health and hygiene regimes have remained in force in the United Kingdom and in other member states. It is important that the health standards, which for so long have been a guarantee of the purity of British milk, should remain in force and that we should allow milk to be imported into this country only if its standard can be compared with out own.

    A number of legal proceedings were taken against member states, including Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland. The Commission took the United Kingdom to the European Court in 1981 on the subject of UHT milk. More recently, the Commission has initiated proceedings against the United Kingdom on pasteurised milk. In its UHT defence, and in correspondence relating to pasteurised milk, the United Kingdom argued that the problems posed by different national regimes should not be left to the courts, but should be solved by the establishment of Community-wide rules governing the production and processing of milk. This would ensure in particular that the trade did not threaten public or animal health in importing member states.

    We continue to believe that we should have the opportunity to compete with other nations in the European Community. However, that competition should be based on the same high standards for milk as we have pioneered in this country and of which we are proud. We want to have the opportunity to compete, but the competition must be within the health regulations that are so important to us.

    In 1983, therefore, the United Kingdom welcomed indications that work on a Community regime, which had ​ been in abeyance for five years, was to be resumed. Work proceeded under the Greek presidency, and subsequently under French, Irish and Italian chairmanship. Agreement was finally reached during the first month of the Luxembourg presidency, on 16 July 1985.
    Our objective throughout the negotiations was very simple. It was to ensure that imports under a Community regime would not undermine our high health and hygiene standards.

    Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley)

    The right hon. Gentleman is making a meal of it.

    Mr. Gummer

    It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to make jokes about the quality of milk in this country. He always reduces serious matters to jokes. I hope that his constituents will note that a joke of this kind about their health is part of his stock in trade. It was important, therefore, to ensure that the health of our population—

    Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North)

    I follow precisely my right hon. Friend’s point that the health of the people of this country is vital and that milk makes a very significant contribution to that. Is it, or is it not, true that the people of Paris have to boil their milk, pasteurised or not, before they drink it?

    Mr. Gummer

    My hon. Friend is not very keen on foreigners, but we have ensured by these provisions that milk will be allowed to be imported into this country only from those countries whose standards of health are similar to our own. That applies equally to imported meat. We have always been concerned about ensuring the health of the British people. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that I am the last person who would want to cause health difficulties for him or for his children over imported foods.

    Mr. Harry Ewing (Falkirk, East)

    The right hon. Gentleman has referred on a number of occasions to the health of the nation. As the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. MacKay), is sitting beside him, can he explain why the Scottish Office has introduced an amending regulation to remove two Scottish firms from the need to produce heat-treated milk? If the health of the nation is so important, including the health of the people of Scotland. why are they not being made to adhere to the heat-treated provisions which the Minister is seeking to introduce tonight?

    Mr. Gummer

    I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not like to be misinterpreted. He meant that the whole discussion was about cream. [HON. MEMBERS: “Oh!”] It is important to be accurate about these matters. The hon. Gentleman also knows that there is to be a debate on this issue. We are discussing a very serious matter, and it is odd that the Opposition should not be concerned about the health of the nation.

    Mr. Foulkes

    Get on with it.

    Mr. Gummer

    It has taken the Government a great deal of time to win this battle in the European Community and to get so satisfactory an answer. The least the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) can do is listen to us while we discuss the health of the people. It is interesting to note that he objects to the intervention of his colleague the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Ewing), for it is that hon. Gentleman, not this side of the House, who has held us up.

    ​ I should like to deal in some detail with the provisions of the directive. Its purpose is to lay down detailed public health and animal health requirements for the production and processing of heat-treated milk and the procedures that must apply when it is traded between member states. Although some of those matters are dealt with in individual articles, the most important provisions are in the chapters of annex A. These are the conditions that must be met on the production holding. They are similar in effect to our milk and dairy regulations which govern conditions on the farms in this country. Indeed, some of the wording of this chapter was provided by my Department.
    Part C refers to a code of hygiene governing milk practice. This has still to be drawn up, and we shall be active in ensuring that its provisions are acceptable to the United Kingdom. Our purpose throughout has been to ensure that there is fair competition between countries meeting the same type of health regulations.

    Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth)

    I hope that I am not interrupting the Minister ungraciously, but he appears to be skipping article 3A. Under “Originating herd”, chapter VI of the directive states:

    “The untreated milk must come from cows …

    (e) yielding at least two litres of milk a day”.

    Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that our dairy industry was prosperous until the Conservative party came to office? We would not normally assume that a cow in Britain would produce only two litres a day, except at the end of her milking career.

    Mr. Gummer

    I am sure the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that that would not normally be the measurement. We have laid down provisions which, if they are properly followed, will protect the health of our people. That is what we are about. It is odd that the hon. Gentleman objects to circumstances when a cow produces a small number of litres a day. What is important is not the number of litres, but whether that milk is healthy. The hon. Gentleman should not make that kind of point. No doubt other hon. Members will observe that chapters V and VI—I am happy for the hon. member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) to make a speech in which he can cover those matters—

    Mr. Hardy

    No.

    Mr. Gummer

    include columns headed “Step 1” and “Step 2”. This is the important point about this proposal. These provisions make a significant change in what might previously have been thought to be the type of regulations that were to be laid down.

    During the negotiations it became clear that the high standards that the United Kingdom wanted to see in the directive could not be achieved by all member states, and this threatened to deadlock the attempt to have a Europe-wide decision. We have achieved a major breakthrough. There will be two successive stages—step 1, incorporating standards that all member states could achieve, and step 2, incorporating standards achieved by a minority of member states, including the United Kingdom.

    When the directive comes into effect on 1 January 1989, step 1 standards will apply to begin with, but the higher step 2 standards will be progressively introduced ​ —first, in respect of milk for direct human consumption, on 1 April 1990, and then in respect of all milk, on I January 1993 or possibly 1 January 1995. I hope that the House will note that point. It means that we shall be able to have trade within the Community among those countries which have the higher standards, from the point at which they have them. It is Britain’s influence within the Community that will have raised the health and milk standards.

    Mr. Colin Shepherd (Hereford)

    How near is the United Kingdom’s industry to achieving step 2 standards? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is to the advantage of the United Kingdom’s industry to go to step 2 standards sooner rather than later, and not wait until the starting dates set out in article 16?

    Mr. Gummer

    Step 2 standards have already been achieved by a few states, including ourselves. Our industry will not have to make changes to meet those standards, but other countries will because they are not yet universal within the Community. That is one of the achievements that we have sought to bring about by our membership of the Community. We have sought to raise the European standards where they are higher in this country, and to provide fair competition. We should not be defensive about that. We should be proud that that is what we have achieved in the negotiations.

    That provision recognises our higher standards and obliges others to meet them in due course, but it would have left the United Kingdom exposed to imports of lower quality milk during the transitional period. Our prime objective was to ensure that that could not happen.

    At the meeting of Agriculture Ministers on 16 July this year, our partners finally accepted that member states already applying step 2 microbiological standards to their domestic products should be entitled to apply those standards to imports without any transitional period. We can therefore apply our standards to imports, and ultimately they will become the Community’s standards.

    Mr. Robert Hicks (Cornwall, South-East)

    Will my right hon. Friend clarify the position on double pasteurisation? As I understand it, that is prevented in inter-Community trade. That process is forbidden in Scotland and Ulster, but is allowed in England and Wales. Will he clarify the Government’s intentions?

    Mr. Gummer

    I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that the fact that double pasteurisation is allowed in England and Wales, but not in the north of Ireland and Scotland, shows that there is some argument about its precise purpose. Because we want to meet the needs of the industry, we have agreed that before making the final regulations under the directive we shall further consult the industry to decide whether double pasteurisation should be banned in the rest of the United Kingdom, or whether we should continue to allow it. Double pasteurisation is important. It is linked to some of the health problems that have been mentioned by the Milk Marketing Board.

    Mr. Foulkes

    Read on.

    Mr. Gummer

    I shall read as much as is necessary to clarify this important matter. Given the health standards, it was obviously a major concession to the United Kingdom for the rest of the Community to accept that we had a standard which the Community wished ultimately to impose upon the whole of the Community. We explained ​ that in a letter to the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee. That is why my right hon. Friend decided that, in the national interest, he had to agree to the directive, notwithstanding the recommendation that the draft should be debated. I hope that hon. Members, whatever view they have, will agree that it was clearly a successful negotiation. It was right for us to agree rather than to allow the matter to continue in abeyance.

    The directive takes effect on 1 January 1989. It provides for trade to be strictly controlled. Exporting member states will be required to certify that individual consignments comply with all the provisions of the directive. Certificates will be carefully checked on arrival in this country. If there are grounds for suspicion, individual consignments will be held for testing, and milk may be turned back if necessary. In case of disagreement, reference may be made to the Commission.

    Mr. Foulkes

    I am grateful for the fact that the Minister is now on the main subject. Which ports will be designated as entry ports? Clearly not every port will have the right facilities or the people qualified to deal with the work that he has been describing.

    Mr. Gummer

    The hon. Gentleman was perhaps wrong to suggest that the standards of health are not as important as the point to which he refers. Milk will be able to come through all those ports which are open to milk delivery. It will not be as for the UHT arrangements. There will be an open opportunity for milk to come in. If the amount of milk that comes in corresponds with the amount that comes in under the UHT arrangements, I doubt whether many ports will make much money out of it.

    After all the worries that were expressed when we talked about UHT, the actual amount of milk that ultimately came in was small. [Interruption.] It really is a miserable life for members of the Opposition. First of all, they complained before we did it that it would be disastrous, ghastly and awful. Then we did it and UHT accounts for just 0·03 of the liquid milk market. Then they say, “Of course, it will get worse.” It is terrible being a member of the Labour party, because things are always going to get worse. Given the fact of its history and experience, I understand why Opposition Members feel that way.

    The industry is happy about the proposals we have put forward. Of course, people would prefer not to have competition: that is the nature of any of us. The industry is happy with the proposals and feel that we are protecting the health of the nation in a proper way. The proposals will enable us to have the kind of competition and opportunities that we expect from the European Community.

    I accept that hon. Members are concerned about the economic implications—a concern expressed by the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley—of allowing imports of pasteurised milk, whether as a result of the directive or as a result of court proceedings. I recognise that there is special concern about doorstep deliveries. That is a service which is highly valued, both by the consumer and by the large number of people employed in it. No one is a greater supporter of that than I am. It is part of our national life and a system which we recognise. We feared or we were told we ought to fear that it would be undermined by the changes made earlier on. That has not been the case, and I do not believe it will be ​ the case. There is no question of undermining the doorstep delivery service. It will continue because the consumer likes it.

    It works because people want it and it will continue to work.

    I recall the fears expressed when arrangements were made some two years ago to allow the import of UHT and sterilised milk. Those fears have proved groundless. As I have mentioned, the total amount is 0·03 per cent. of the liquid market, and quite a lot of that is small catering packs of the kind that have nothing to do with doorstep deliveries. This is not going to be a worry. If that is not a worry with UHT one would not expect it to be a worry with pasteurised fresh milk which is liable to go off much more quickly than longlife milk.

    These factors will work in favour of the domestic product and will allow our industry to compete effectively against imports. Already we have had people requesting information about how they might use the opportunities to export to other members of the European Economic Community. We have consulted with great care the National Farmers Union, the Milk Marketing Board and the Dairy Trade Federation, and their opposite numbers in Scotland and Northern Ireland. They accepted that, faced with legal proceedings and with the position in the Community, our best course was to negotiate for a directive. In general, this directive has been widely accepted as meeting all the requirements. There is no major issue on which those bodies feel we have failed them in our negotiations.

    I hope that the House will feel that this motion is worth endorsing and that it is an opportunity rather than a threat for British trade. It is another example of how the European Economic Community can work for the benefit of us all.

  • Eddie Loyden – 1985 Speech on Liverpool

    Below is the text of the speech made by Eddie Loyden, the then Labour MP for Liverpool Garston, in the House of Commons  on 18 November 1985.

    A moment ago, I saw the Secretary of State for the Environment in the Chamber. I would have thought that he would have stayed to hear what I consider to be an important and urgent debate. I hope that he will return to hear it, because I wished to present my case to him. No doubt he will read with great interest much of what has been said today by my hon. Friends. I hope that, at the meeting tomorrow, he will begin to recognise the problems of Merseyside, and especially those of Liverpool.

    The problems of Liverpool in particular and Merseyside in general did not begin with the election of a Labour council in 1983. I was born in Liverpool in 1923 in the heart of the slums of that city. During all my life there I experienced, worked and lived with and went to school in abject poverty and misery. Throughout that period, Liverpool city council was in the hands of the Tories, and that remained the position until the late post-war period.

    The wealth of the city was built on the ports—on commerce, shipbuilding and ship repairing—and the merchant princes and shipowners built massive monuments to the prosperity that accrued to them. Those monuments are still to be seen in the form of Liverpool pierhead, William Brown street, the Walker art gallery and George’s hall. There are many monuments to the prosperity that was brought about by the working classes of Liverpool. Those buildings and monuments, beautiful though some of them are, overlooked—as they still overlook—some of the worst slums in western Europe.

    The people lived in the slums, in rat-infested properties, in cellars and in basements. Anybody who wants to learn the history of Liverpool need only read the reports of the medical officers of health for those years, with details of the infantile mortality rates, at one time the highest in the nation. One reads of the number of deaths between birth and fifteen, of the disease-ridden areas where children who survived had to be strong indeed. The weak went under. The hearse was a daily visitor through the cobbled streets of Liverpool taking away children who died from malnutrition and the diseases that were rampant in the city at that time.

    They were the worst possible conditions that human beings ever suffered, yet that was at the heart of great prosperity in a great port. The working class of Merseyside and Liverpool did not benefit from that greatness. There were large armies of unskilled casual labour in the docks, with 20,000–plus men going out every day trying to earn a living, working one day and being unemployed the next. In shipbuilding and ship repairing, the same state of affairs existed, with men working part-time, trying to feed their families on the pittance that they were paid.

    I was part of that. My first job on leaving school was in a boot warehouse in Scotland road. I received the princely sum of 6s 6d a week, which went towards the budget of my family. I was one of the many thousands of kids in Liverpool who were in the same position. When I went to sea at the age of 14½, I found an even worse world among the seamen. They were living in absolutely dreadful conditions, yet many Liverpool people had to find their living by going to sea.

    That is the backcloth to the city of Liverpool. Remember, I am talking not of a thousand years ago or even of the Victorian era. The slums were there long after the war. I recall the misery of the courts, with 12 people to a court, with one tap and one lavatory at the end of each court for that number of people. That was the extent of disregard that the Tory council and Tory Government had for the working class of that and many other cities.

    After the war, Liverpool had high hopes for the future as the slums began to be cleared and industries came to Liverpool and Merseyside. A new dawn had broken, in the view of the people of the city. But over the years, running into the 1970s, we saw the role played by the Liberal party, with an era of hung councils, Tory-Liberal administrations and one financial cut after another, all against a backcloth of poverty, misery and rising unemployment. They, too, have a clear responsibility for the situation in Merseyside, especially in Liverpool. Their targets, pitched so low were at fault. Not a single public sector house was built in the four years when the Liberal party was in office. The Liberal council had no regard for the misery and poverty of the people. It was rightly kicked out, to bring in a council that was prepared to do something.

    I am not suggesting that the whole post-war housing development was the fault of the Liberals. There were faults long before then. People were condemned to live in the misery of high-rise flats and houses unfit for families to be reared in. The then Government contributed to those conditions. In the 1970s, the Liberals saw even more clearly than the Tories that it was a case of cutting the rates in a city that needed more public and private investment. They disregarded that, and they paid the penalty.

    In 1983, the Labour party came to power. It was prepared to tackle those problems, many of them for the first time. Labour councillors began to tackle the problems of the housing estates and high-rise flats. They began to put parks in working-class areas where they were needed and where they had not been before. They built sports centres in working class areas where people had never seen such centres. Those acts are now judged criminal. The retention in work of people who are not prepared to be added to the lengthening dole queues in Liverpool is regarded as a criminal act.

    The leader of Liverpool city council, who is a Quaker and who would not offend the law under any circumstances, has been pressed by the Government’s actions into a position where he is called a criminal in the technical sense of the word. It is a scandal and a shame that honest and decent men in Liverpool fighting against the ongoing decline of the city and trying to push back the barriers of poverty and misery are condemned as criminals by the Government.

    The final push that moved Liverpool to the brink was made by the Government. They have the main responsibility. This country is still wealthy. The 500,000 people who live in Liverpool are British citizens—they are not an alien force. They are part of the United Kingdom and are therefore the Government’s responsibility. The Secretary of State and the Government cannot stand aside and see Liverpool swinging in the air waiting for someone to cut the rope so that it can drop. Neither can Liverpool be seen in isolation.

    The city is a microcosm of what is happening in all our major cities, especially the old ​ industrial cities in the northern regions. If no immediate action is taken, this country will reap a whirlwind that we have not seen in this or in previous centuries.

    Recent statements have been made in the Stonefrost report and by the Secretary of State. Usually, the Secretary of State conducts his dialogue about 240 miles away from Liverpool. He has never attempted to meet councillors around the table to discuss the problems. He has not attempted to recognise the enormity and seriousness of the crisis in the city.

    No Government have the right to disregard the plight of a major city and its population as this Government are doing. Whatever the council does—if it fiddles around with its budget and increases rates by 15 per cent. or, in reality 24 per cent.— commerce and industry are threatening that they will fold up their tents and go if rents rise in Liverpool. On numerous occasions they have said that the margin upon which they work will become intolerable and they will go away.

    Do the Government want to conduct a vendetta against the people on Liverpool city council, the majority of whom are not members of Militant Tendency but Labour party members? They are youthful and dynamic and want to tackle the city’s problems. Are the Government waiting for the city to surrender to them and to the Secretary of State because they do not like the faces or the behaviour of some of the people? That is infantile behaviour, which is not expected of a Secretary of State—even a Tory Secretary of State.

    The Secretary of State must recognise that the problem will not go away. The crisis will be there tomorrow and the next day unless the Government intervene and say that they will have discussions with the Labour-controlled city council to enable the city to continue the good work that it has been doing to ease tension where tension has been growing. It has done everything it can to relieve those tensions. We all say that we are worried about inner cities and about what we have seen over the past two years or longer. Tension arises from the conditions in which people live.

    The city has remained the same throughout two world wars. It has always had double the level of national unemployment. That is the story of Liverpool to which the Government and the Secretary of State must listen. No Government can disregard the need for intervention to put the city on its feet and enable the council to do its necessary job.

  • John Butcher – 1985 Speech on Public Telephone Boxes

    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 15 November 1985.

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle), as I know the House will be, for raising this important topic on the Adjournment of the House. I am sure that everything he said reflects the opinion of many people who are bewildered by this apparently mindless phenomenon which goes on in our midst. He has raised a subject of considerable interest. I am aware that he has taken a great interest in public call box services for a long time. I congratulate him on his pursuit of his campaign and his single-minded and highly-motivated approach.

    My hon. Friend will be aware that British Telecom operates under a licence issued by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Under the terms of the Telecommunications Act 1984, the licence obliges BT, among many other things, to provide public call box services throughout the country. I should emphasise that monitoring and enforcement of BT’s compliance with the terms of its licence is a matter for the Director-General of Telecommunications. The 1984 Act gives him substantial independent powers in that regard. Enforcement of the licence is not a matter for Ministers, and any remarks that I make in this debate must be said with that clearly in mind.

    I know that the Director-General of Telecommunications is keenly interested in the question of public call box services and maintains a close watch on the level and adequacy of the service provided by BT. I shall ensure that what my hon. Friend has had to say in this debate is brought to the Director-General’s attention.

    There are about 76,000 public payphones in the country. Those telephones provide a vital public service. That service is not only for the 23 per cent. of households which do not have the use of a telephone of their own, but for all of us when out and about. We all depend on public payphones. When they are out of order, it is always a matter of inconvenience, but sometimes it can be a matter of life and death. That is why the issue is of great public interest.

    I know that British Telecom takes its obligations to provide public call box services seriously. The company faces two major problems. One will soon, I hope, be overcome; the other is being tackled vigorously, but is much more deep-seated. I shall return to my hon. Friend’s remarks about that later. The problems are first, old equipment, and secondly, vandalism; or, to put it more bluntly, crime. That, I regret to say, is the fundamental issue. For example, last year in London alone there were 5,000 cases a month of damage to public payphones, affecting almost half the capital’s 10,650 payphones.

    Those two problems are being tackled as part of a major investment programme by British Telecom to modernise its telephone services. That will, when complete, make British Telecom’s public payphone service the most modern of its kind in the world. I understand that by March 1987 all existing equipment will have been replaced by new, push-button electronic equipment.

    Such installations are already a familiar sight in many places. The new telephones are more reliable and much more versatile. For example, they will all have automatic fault reporting so that if there is any trouble, repairs can be done swiftly. They also take a wider range of coins. There will be no ​ more frustration if we cannot find a 10p piece. That will have a considerable impact on the quality of the service provided.

    A key feature of the modernisation programme is the aim to “design out” all those features in the old style boxes which are prone to criminal damage or which make attack by vandals easier. Considerable research has gone into that. As hon. Members will surely have noticed, as well as new telephone equipment, new booths are beginning to be installed. Gradually they will replace the old ones, except where conservation for environmental reasons is necessary. They have many new features designed to minimise their vulnerability to crime and make it harder to put them out of service.

    My hon. Friend dealt with some of those features and expressed understandable cynicism. No matter how robust the new installations may be, someone will find some way of attacking and damaging them. I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that it is legitimate for British Telecom to seek to design out some of the more vulnerable features of the installations. However, if a vandal is prepared to apply a manic level of strength with the object of destroying something, of course damage can be done.

    The real deterrent to such acts is part and parcel of the wider issues to which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has recently drawn attention so eloquently—the reaffirmation of the traditional values of family, school and church, which teach young people to behave in a civilised manner. We must get the message across that criminal damage to public payphones is thoughtless, stupid behaviour which, at the very least, causes inconvenience to others, and at the worst, real danger. I am sure that my hon. Friend and, indeed, all hon. Members will endorse that.

    My hon. Friend has been pursuing his campaign in the northern part of the west midlands, and he mentioned another campaign being pursued by BT. He will agree that the campaign must be for every individual, if we are to get to the root of the problem.

    In response to my hon. Friend’s remarks, I wish to make observations, which in part must be questions. Why is this particular form of vandalism apparently unique to Britain? To the best of my knowledge it does not happen on anything like the same scale in the rest of the Western world. Why are British vandals so mindless that they will attack a public facility which they themselves may need one day? Even the most woolly-minded behavioural scientist would not attempt to depict a phone box as a symbol of authority or as an affront to those who suffer from deprivation. This form of behaviour is beyond comprehension. It is as incomprehensible as the physical attacks on St. John Ambulance nurses while they attended injured fans during a soccer riot at Birmingham. City football ground at the end of last Session. People who wish to destroy a public facility, through no other motive than a wish to wreck something, are beneath contempt.

    BT and the Director-General of Telecommunications unfortunately have to deal with another symptom of the growth of the propensity for mindless destruction among a small proportion of the population. My hon. Friend and I are agreed that it is up to each individual member of society to accept his or her responsibilities in changing the attitudes and levels of behaviour. In the long run, that is the only way in which to deal with this symptom of a broader and worrying phenomenon.

    My hon. Friend has done the House a great service. He has articulated a problem which arouses great anxiety throughout the country. I have noted what he said about the efforts to liaise between post offices, BT, the police force and local authorities, and the advice that he would seek to have handed to magistrates to ensure that fines are levied in a way which reflects the cost of making good the ​ damage inflicted. I assure him that the record will be distributed to the appropriate opinion formers. I have pleasure in congratulating him again on the timeliness of his intervention today.

  • John Heddle – 1985 Speech on Public Telephone Boxes

    Below is the text of the speech made by John Heddle, the then Conservative MP for Mid Staffordshire, on 15 November 1985.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a subject which affects the constituencies of all hon. Members. The Order Paper gives the title of the debate as “public call box services”, but really I wish to discuss the condition and unworkability of public phone boxes.

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for attending to hear what I have to say. He serves his west midlands constituency of Coventry, South-West as hard and effectively as I try to serve mine.

    Incidents of vandalism and unworkability of telephone boxes, even in rural Mid-Staffordshire, which encompasses a cathedral city and two small residential towns, are horrifyingly high. Between one in two and two in three public phone boxes on housing estates, in town centres and in villages do not work. The main causes are sheer, wanton vandalism and mindless, senseless hooliganism.

    Throughout the nation, there are 76,500 red telephone boxes. They are part of our national scene, yet, despite the fact that British Telecom provides a magnificent service to its customers and makes a welcome and healthy profit for its subscribers and shareholders, the public telephone service makes a loss of £77·4 million. Part of that loss must be attributable to the fact that the service is not adequately monitored.

    There are 10,600 public phone boxes in London. Last year, there were on average 5,000 acts of vandalism to public phone boxes each month and the cost of repairing phone boxes in London was £1 million. A survey carried out for the Daily Mail earlier this year showed that only 37 of 100 London phone boxes worked. In Newcastle, nine of 25 boxes worked, in Glasgow and Liverpool 10 of 25 boxes were in operation and even in Birmingham only 14 of the 25 phone boxes inspected—56 per cent.—were in operation.

    My anxiety is for people who live on housing estates and cannot afford private telephones. I think particularly of elderly people to whom the public phone box down the road may be a lifeline.

    When television came into our lives a few years ago, we used to see a picture of the mast at Sutton Coldfield round which we saw the sign:

    “Nation shall speak … unto nation.”

    For my elderly constituents, the public phone box enables family to speak unto family.

    How will an elderly person who wants to contact a doctor late at night be persuaded to go out and make an urgent call, perhaps even a 999 call? The chances are that such a person would not find a phone box that worked. Even if he or she did, the light would probably be smashed, the glass would probably be broken and the door would probably be off its hinges. If, by chance, the prospective caller does not know the number that he wants to dial, the chance of finding a directory in the phone box will be about one in a thousand.

    I know that British Telecom has done its best to encourage the public to take a responsible attitude. I shall quote from a magazine which Sir George Jefferson’s own ​ office sent me today. It sets out the initiative which British Telecom has introduced, which is known as “Watch a box”. One passage reads:

    “The Chairman, Sir George Jefferson, took the initiative when he decided to check out a payphone on his way to work each day—now everyone wants to join in. The entire management board in BTL North West has elected to watch a box, while in BTL South West staff at all levels are taking part in a scheme run in conjunction with their area newspaper Connection.

    Whether they are walking the dog or travelling to and from work, staff have been asked, through the newspaper, to drop in and check out a payphone.
    If the payphone is not working, has been damaged or the notices or lighting are defective, then they can ring in on a special number to report the problem.”

    I do not think that that goes to the heart of the problem. There must be a partnership between local offices of British Telecom, local councils and local police forces. The telephone boxes should be inspected regularly and monitored at irregular times of the day and night with a view to trying to catch the vandals red-handed in the red telephone boxes. When caught, they should be brought to account in the courts. The fines meted out to them by the justices should be realistic and should dissuade them from ever embarking on a career of vandalism which might lead to worse crime in future.

    I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State to use his influence with his ministerial colleagues. I suggest that he urges his ministerial colleagues in the Home Office to issue a directive to magistrates to ensure that when the vandals are caught the fines meted out to them by the magistrate bear a direct relationship to the cost of making good the wanton damage. The fine should be two, four or five times the cost of making good the damage. That will go some way to reducing the horrendous deficit of £77·4 million which the public part of British Telecom has to bear.

    It is no good British Telecom saying, “We have the problem under control.” I shall quote from an article which appeared in British Business on 2 August. Part of it read:

    “British Telecom claim that their new telephone kiosks will improve the situation. They point out that during 1984 there were more than 5,000 cases of damage to payphones every month in London alone, affecting almost half of London’s 10,650 payphone boxes, costing £1 million a year to repair. The new payphones are apparently much less vulnerable to vandalism. The extra degree of lighting will be a deterrent to vandals who are discouraged by high visibility.”

    I do not believe that to be so. A vandal will vandalise light or dark, day or night.

    The article continues:

    “The open-plan design and robust materials—stainless steel or anodised aluminium—will be difficult to damage.”

    If he is so minded, a vandal will damage. Even if he does not damage the telephone system itself, he will inflict damage on the casing or the red boxes.

    There is the idea that we should do away with the red boxes, which are so much part of our national life. Instead, we shall see installed a sort of Cape Canaveral cone into which my elderly constituents, for example, can make their calls after struggling down the street at the dead of night or in the heart of winter. The cones will not provide the shelter that the red boxes afford.

    I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for being in his place to answer the debate. I hope that he will take on board some of my comments, which I hope also will be considered to be constructive. If he does, I believe that his constituents and mine will be eternally grateful.
    ​