House of Commons Hansard Debates for 1 Mar 1990

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In the past five years the number of people at the top of their profession in terms of responsibility who are asking to leave early has virtually doubled. That shows a serious crisis in morale, for which we will pay, as our children and our constituents' children will not get the benefit of those experienced people.

The Under-Secretary of State, the Minister of State and, if he were here, the Secretary of State should realise what that means in South Glamorgan. I challenge the Minister who replies to the debate to tell the House, if not tonight, through his officials at a later date, the figures for the other counties in Wales. Are they also experiencing a doubling in the number of experienced teachers, including heads and deputy heads who want to leave the profession early because they have had enough?

The teachers tell me that they have had enough hassle, paper work, not being able to teach, not being able to talk to the children or the staff but having to fill in forms invented by the Government. That is the crisis in our schools that ordinary people in Wales have to attend. It is a crisis of morale when people at the top of the profession are asking to leave in droves.

Let me say a few words about the hospital service. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend spoke about some of the aspects of creeping privatisation and worse within the hospital service and the crisis that may well strike the pathology service in South Glamorgan if the £500,000 cut goes ahead. I am particularly worried about the tendency for hospitals to resort to financial measures which are the rocky road to ruin. In South Glamorgan there is a £7.5 million deficit in the financial year that starts in one month's time. It is selling a hospital to cover that revenue deficit. It is selling a capital asset not to fund a capital project but to fund a revenue deficit. How long can it continue doing that? What would the Prime Minister say if a Labour-controlled local authority attempted to do that?

In a panic, South Glamorgan has proposed that six hospitals should be closed in the coming financial year to cover a revenue deficit. That was a panic, last-minute decision. It was not planned six months ago when next year's budget was being calculated ; it has all appeared in the past month. That shows that inflation is far worse than the Government admit, and they will not make good the undershoot in last year's inflation in the way that they promised, although it has proved at least 2 or 3 per cent. higher than the figures for which the Government allowed. That caused South Glamorgan to budget in a panic for the coming financial year and therefore to close next year six hospitals that it had not planned to close. That cannot work.

Finally, I wish to refer to the Secretary of State's inspiring words about bringing Mr. Spath, the Prime Minister of

Baden-Wurttemberg, to Wales. I hope that the Secretary of State is well surrounded with press officers when Mr. Spath is taken around Wales. I hope that the Secretary of State does not have to tell him about industrial training in Wales. I understand that more people receive engineering apprenticeships in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg than in Great Britain. Baden-Wurttemberg has a population of only 6 million people compared with nearly 60 million in Britain, yet there are more engineering apprenticeships there than here. In

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Stuttgart, which has a population of only 600,000, there are many more engineering apprenticeships than in Wales, which has a population of 2.8 million. Is the Secretary of State going to tell Mr. Spath that as part of his image building for Wales to his worthy partner for Baden-Wurttemberg, the land of precision engineering in Germany?

Mr. Peter Walker : Five times as much is being spent on training now as in 1979.

Mr. Morgan : The Secretary of State may be talking about training including rehabilitative and probationary training, which was counted as just starting a job in 1979. If he is now about to tell the House that there are more apprenticeships and more recognised training leading to City and Guilds or other recognised training qualifications than there were in 1979, I shall gladly sit down and let him intervene again. Silence is sometimes golden. I hope that he will have something far more positive to say on the matter which relates to the reality of life in Wales and not to the image building in which he and the Western Mail indulge.

The Western Mail was provided with a £900,000 grant by the Welsh Office and the Secretary of State went to the wonderful opening ceremony with the editor. He has been richly rewarded for that in the pages of the Western Mail whenever he wants good publicity. Whenever there is bad news, such as the resignation of 18 councillors in West Oxfordshire, it is put on four lines on the side of page 1, whereas the visit by the Prince of Wales is given 6-inch-high headlines. That is his reward from the local newspaper to which he gave a grant of £900,000. We do not want to see such a Wales in the future.

9.30 pm

Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) : I want first to refer to the devastation in Clwyd, which has been referred to several times in the debate, partly because I grew up in a constituency there and partly because of the need for adequate aid which we have experienced in the past. Government quibbling in the early 1980s after the floods in Cardiff brought home the need for that aid to be given quickly, without reservation and without bureaucracy in the process.

The hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) raised the wider issue of the examination of sea defences generally, and I hope that that point will be answered. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State also look at the longer-term needs of environmental research, which has been undermined in Wales in recent years? I especially commend a rethink by the Government on the excellent environmental research station in Bangor, and on the future of Research Vessel Services in Barry and the extent of environmental research in Wales as a whole.

This evening, we have had a balanced and detailed debate in which my hon. Friends have spoken with authority and detail about a series of issues. I especially commend the economic analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Merthry Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), the detail on low pay from my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams), where the figures tell a devastating story which Ministers should take seriously, and the cameo of the Tory model for the Health Service which was exposed today by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths). That matter and the

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way in which he raised it should be taken seriously by Ministers, and should be subjected to an independent inquiry and a public report. I call on the Minister to promise that in winding up. The hon. Member for Kingswood (Mr. Hayward) was unwise to intervene in a debate with a speech which demonstrated his lack of knowledge of Wales and his lack of sensitivity to the serious issues raised by Opposition Members. I should take his remarks more seriously if he were still present at this hour and if he were to demonstrate mutual support by signing the early-day motion calling on the Post Office not to downgrade the parcels service in south Wales by turning it into a branch line of a Bristol-based service, which we have often come to fear.

In this debate, Conservative Members have been foolish and foolhardy in their defence of Government policies, especially in relation to the poll tax. It has taken 15 years from the Prime Minister's promise to do away with the rates system to come up with the total mess of the poll tax. I am confident that Labour's plans for a charge based on property value with a system of rebates to look after the poor and the elderly will be fair and practical. It will improve on the old rating system and will be infinitely preferable to the poll tax.

The poll tax is the issue today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) said, this is the day on which the news has broken that 18 Conservative councillors in West Oxfordshire, who are described by the Foreign Secretary as "good Tories," have resigned. If the Secretary of State for Wales will not listen to us, to his hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West or to the Association of District Councils, will he listen to them?

The Secretary of State tried to avoid the issue today. My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) rightly nailed him for his responsibility for bringing the poll tax to Wales. The Secretary of State also tried to avoid the challenge to say whether he would cap any local authority in Wales. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State would be wise to listen. He was wise, too, not to answer the question whether he would cap local authorities in Wales. I advise him to think carefully before taking that course. As a Cardiff Member myself, I am ashamed of the way in which the city's two Conservative Members have supported the poll tax and attacked both the local council and their own electors, its ratepayers. They are both now vulnerable when the general election comes. The hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Jones), in particular, appalled me when he failed to defend the council on which we have both served from an hysterical attack by the Secretary of State, and his gross caricature of the city's rate-making process repeated those distortions today. With the economic uncertainties and increased inflation--an attack on the people of Cardiff--they need more than a contingency fund.

The problems of the poll tax bear heavily on every community in Wales, but, as the Secretary of State chose to concentrate his recent vitriol on Cardiff, let me give the House the facts, confirmed not just by the political leader of that hung council but from the careful objective neutrality of the treasurer's office. As the hon. Member for Cardiff, North has not done his homework, let me tell the House why the city council's revenue spending this year is £32 million and why next year it has to be £40.6 million.

First, there is the legislation introducing the poll tax and so on, which increases the need for finance for the city council by £2.7 million. Then we have land appropriation

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legislation, which to begin with the Welsh Office itself did not understand, although I believe that it now does and which gives rise to an unavoidable cost of £2.1 million for the transfer of land. In addition, we have an adjustment for inflation of £2.1 million, which includes interest and assumes an interest rate of only 7.5 per cent.--although it is higher than that at the moment as a result of the Government's abuse of our economy. Without capital from revenue of £1.8 million, there would be delays in important schemes. That is a modest figure when one realises that the capital available to the council is now grossly reduced because of the Government's cuts--£23 million down on the previous year--and the limits on the use of capital receipts that the Government have introduced. Those are the reasons for the increase, and they do not take into account extra costs in dealing with homelessness and in discharging the obligations that the Government have piled on local authorities.

Cardiff and other councils in Wales are acting modestly and realistically, and the Secretary of State for Wales should accept what we have told him for a year, what the Association of District Councils in Wales told him six months ago in Newport and what many Conservatives have told him : he got the figures wrong, and it is his mess. Instead of attacking our councils and our councillors, the hon. Member for Cardiff, North should be keeping his head down and meeting the Secretary of State for Wales to tell him of Cardiff's needs, as well as the way in which his own seat and those of the few remaining Tories in Wales will be threatened by the poll tax. He should tell him to forget poll tax capping because neither our councils nor our people deserve the chaos that would follow such an unjust decision.

Mr. Gwilym Jones : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Michael : If the hon. Gentleman wants his intervention to be taken out of the Minister's time, of course I shall give way to him.

Mr. Jones : The hon. Gentleman has referred to Cardiff. Will he say why the Committee of Welsh District Councils says that the community charge in Cardiff should be £193 and not the ridiculous, crazy figure of £253?

Mr. Michael : The hon. Gentleman clearly has not appreciated all the facts that I have put to the House, which I now invite him to consider. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State would do better to consider them than to laugh.

The burden of the poll tax will be bad enough on its own--throughout Wales that burden will bear heavily--but it is far from being the only burden for which the Secretary of State is responsible. The list is horrifying. Improvement grants, of which the right hon. Gentleman boasted, are to be means-tested from 1 April, although he denied that the last time we debated the matter.

The uniform rate has been condemned by business men. The increase in interest rates, for which the Government are responsible, eats into people's pockets and affects their everyday lives, increasing mortgage repayments, undermining businesses, having a devastating effect on local government and increasing the prices that ordinary people have to pay. The increase in inflation caused by

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Government policies bears down most heavily on poorer employees, especially in the public sector, who are losing as a result of the Government's decisions.

Gas and electricity charges are at or above the level of inflation and the 12.2 per cent. increase in water charges--60 per cent. above the rate of inflation--has been caused directly by the Government's policy. Investment in the water industry is needed because of the Government's neglect over the past 10 years--because they cut investment in the water industry when they came to office. That burden of responsibility for investment is being spread away from the well-off in society to ordinary people and communities throughout Wales. I warn people in Wales and in the Chamber that that is a forerunner of a water poll tax that will be as unpopular as the poll tax, which figured so large in the debate.

Yesterday's devastating news about the trade figures underlines the Government's manifest failure to manage the economy properly. This is not, as the Secretary of State tried to suggest, a litany of despair. It is simply a list of problems and burdens which must be borne by our people and from which the Secretary of State has failed to protect the people of Wales. I should be happy to concentrate on the news that we have to tell about Wales. As my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney said, many of us have played our part in bringing about that good news. If only the Secretary of State would balance that by admitting to the problems created by the Government of which he is a member, and begin to talk to us seriously about tackling them.

Many other Tory policies are coming home to roost--such as the appalling student loans scheme, their failure to provide the education and training that would enable us to compete properly in the world, their determination to undermine local authorities which are trying to tackle that issue and, above all, their savage attack on the National Health Service. The National Health Service and Community Care Bill has emerged from Committee with its inconsistencies exposed. There is now no doubt about the serious attack on the NHS that it involves. The Vale of Glamorgan by-election will prove the first swallow of a Labour summer.

The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett), in a Thatcherite outburst of the sort that we experienced in Committee, tried to rewrite history. He cannot have listened to the way in which his right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health was demolished in debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) as recently as Tuesday. As time is short, I merely commend to him, to my hon. Friends and to the public, columns 1330 to 1334 in the report of Tuesday's Committee.

In my area of South Glamorgan, the Health Service is descending into chaos in advance of that crazy Bill becoming law. A cut of £7.5 million has to be found to keep within the funds that the Secretary of State has allowed. That problem is replicated throughout Wales. Every health authority is running around looking for money. Tomorrow I shall visit two hospitals in Gwynedd. They too are under attack. Among the drastic cost- cutting exercises recommended by officers is the temporary closure of Madoc memorial hospital in Portmadoc pending

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permanent closure, or a reduction of nine beds at Bron-y-Garth hospital at Penrhyndeudraeth. Welsh Office Ministers are responsible for that. It is no use referring it to health authorities. Ministers are responsible for providing inadequate funds for the Health Service and for undermining the health of our people of Wales.

There is no time to list the problems facing every authority in Wales, but the list is devastating. Morale among family doctors and others is low. Welsh Office Ministers are to blame now and have responsibility about which the Secretary of State for Wales has been as silent as he has about the poll tax and the Water Act 1989. Despite the twisting and turning of Ministers, their pleas to us to trust them and the lack of detail in a shell Bill, it is now clear not only that people mistrust the Government's plans, but that they are right to do so.

Without wasting time in Committee, Opposition Members staged a series of effective debates which exposed the confusion and accountant-led bureaucratic chaos into which our National Health Service is to be plunged. That will be taken a stage further on the Floor of the House in two weeks.

Tagged on to the NHS Bill at the last minute were the Government's half- baked plans for care in the community. It is not the concept outlined in the Griffiths report which is half-baked, but the Government's failure to plan properly for care in the community. Again, that was well exposed in Committee. It has been said that a civilised nation should be judged on the quality of its care for the elderly, sick and disabled. On those criteria, the Secretary of State and his Government are guilty of an attack on our claim to be regarded as a civilised society.

On the eve of the 1983 election, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, as he now is, issued a series of predictions and warnings of the price that we would pay for Conservative rule. All of them have come true but I shall mention only three. He said : "I warn you that you will have pain when healing and relief depend on payment."

The Health Service is not safe in their hands.

He said :

"I warn you that you will have ignorance when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right." But that is what the Conservatives are delivering to us now. My right hon. Friend also said :

"I warn you that you will have poverty when pensions slip and pensions are whittled away by a Government that won't pay in an economy that can't pay."

My right hon. Friend's words in 1983 correctly reflect the results of the Ministers' rule.

In the conclusion to his speech, my right hon. Friend warned : "If Margaret Thatcher were to win on that Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn, not to be young, I warn you not to be ill and I warn you not to get old."

Those predictions have a chilling sound now. Then they had the ring of prophecy, but it has taken the Conservatives to turn that prophecy into fact and truth today. For their part in that process of bringing those words into reality, the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker) and the Conservative Members representing Welsh constituencies stand condemned in this St. David's day debate, and they will be judged and sentenced at the next general election.

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9.45 pm

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. Wyn Roberts) : I am sure that we are all saddened by the fact that our Welsh day debate had been overshadowed by the flooding at Towyn in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) and that we all extend our sympathy to his constituents. I went up there on Tuesday and saw the terrible devastation that was caused by a combination of wind and sea.

I am sure that the House will be interested to know the latest situation there this evening. I am told that there is still a strong wind over the area and that the next high tide is due at 2.30 am. However, earlier today I was told that the tide levels are lower than earlier this week and that they are receding further each day. That will mean that the engineers who are working day and night to repair the wall will have access throughout, thus enabling them to accelerate the work. I hope that it will also mean that water will not flow regularly through the breach and that the flood water can be pumped out. That point was raised earlier. The process of pumping out will not be rapid because the main land drainage pumps have been put out of action by the floods and, although emergency pumps have been brought in and are in use, it will be some time before the others that are on the way can be set up. However, knowing the people who are there, I am sure that they are doing everything that they possibly can.

There has been a major programme of work to improve sea defences in north Wales. A £10 million programme was started in Prestatyn in 1985, of which £5.5 million has been spent. A scheme costing £2.6 million was completed in Aberconwy this year and other schemes are planned for Llandudno's west and north shores. At Colwyn Bay, schemes in excess of £1.7 million have been completed to protect Rhos-on-Sea and a £1.3 million scheme for Colwyn promenade is due to start this spring.

If further work is required as a result of the lessons learned from the present emergency, my Department will be ready to consider grant aid for that work in the usual way and under the appropriate legislation.

I am sad to note that the Opposition have been as negative as ever in this debate. I wonder if they ever realise just how damaging their gloom and doom is to the morale of the people of Wales, and especially to our young people. Of course, the Opposition have a vested interest in misery, but it never ceases to amaze me how they can ignore every item of good news.

Did the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) not see in today's Liverpool Daily Post the story headlined :

"Ten Million Pounds Vote of Confidence at the Sharp End", and another headline

"Tsuda Gets Bigger Ahead of Schedule"?

Both related to the expansion of Japanese companies in north-east Wales. Is he not aware of the increased prosperity in his own constituency?

Mr. Morgan : That £10 million investment is in Oxford.

Mr. Roberts : Of course, I know that, but there is a Sharp factory in north-east Wales and the research expenditure in Oxford will back up that plant's future.

The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside is also fortunate is having the Toyota plant coming to his

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constituency. He seems to have all the luck in the world but it does not do him any good. There are equally bullish stories in today's Western Mail. There is one headed, "Wales set to cash in on the 1990s Boom".

That expresses the views of David Kern, the chief economist at the National Westminister bank.

The hon. Gentleman muttered about the plight of small companies and businesses under the Government. Is he not aware that our stock of new businesses is up 16 per cent. since 1982 and stands at 82,000? Wales has had the highest growth in stocks of businesses in the United Kingdom. Its production industries were 59 per cent. up between 1979 and 1988. There have been 660 manufacturing plants set up since 1979, creating 44,000 jobs.

I say to the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), because both of us remember 1979 only too well, that the difference is that in 1979 Wales and Britain were running downhill and there was an enormous amount of hidden unemployment in the coal and steel industries. Even the right hon. Member had to face up to the necessity of closing uneconomic pits and making the steel industry viable by reducing capacity.

Much has been made today of wage rates in Wales. However, between 1988 and 1989, the increase in average adult weekly earnings in Wales was 9.9 per cent. above that for Great Britain as a whole, and the fourth highest regional percentage increase. I should have thought that that would cheer up Opposition Members. No fewer than six Welsh counties had increases slightly higher than the average for Great Britain.

Some industrial historical comparisons are also valid. I shall give hon. Members this one to think over. Between 1974 and 1979, average gross weekly earnings for full-time adults in Wales increased by 6.1 per cent. in real terms. Since 1984, the figure is 12.2 per cent. in real terms--exactly double the increase that the Labour Administration were able to achieve. I am sure that the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) will be delighted with that because it will add to the confidence that he has been talking about creating among the Welsh people.

Mr. Rowlands : The Secretary of State frequently quotes to me the success of manufacturing in my area and exemplifies it by the Bluebird company. Will he give the average weekly wage of the women who work in that factory, compared with the average so-called weekly wage of £234 that he keeps quoting?

Mr. Roberts : The hon. Gentleman picks on a particular. He knows only too well that to argue from the general to the particular just does not hold water.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have emphasised the importance of education and training. Of course, expenditure per pupil is 13.6 per cent. more in real terms for 1987-88 compared with 1979-80. The pupil-teacher ratio overall is now down to 17.1 : 1. We hear a lot about teacher morale and so on--the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) spoke about that--but it is a fact that the teacher-pupil ratio is as good now as it has almost ever been.

As for training, the Secretary of State said what was absolutely true of the last Labour Government. This year, we are spending five times as much on training as they were spending in 1979-80. The figure then was £31 million and this year it is £149 million.

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Hon. Members have spoken of skill centres. They have been transferred to Astra and will continue to provide training. That was the basis of the sale. The expertise of that management buy-out team, its proposals to development training provision and the advent of the training and enterprise councils should result in more responsive and effective training for the unemployed and employed in Wales. It is clear that we should not easily be prepared to take lessons from Opposition Members when we are spending so much more than they spent on training and are taking training much more seriously, especially as we have now established a complete training and enterprise council network in Wales.

The community charge was mentioned by virtually every hon. Member who took part in the debate. It is clear, if only from the speech of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, that Opposition Members support local authorities that are levying community charges higher than the Government believe are justified, and in spite of the 8.6 per cent. increase in aggregate external finance. That is the total of revenue support grant, national non-domestic rates and the most specific grants. Despite all of that being made available to local authorities-- [Interruption.] The excellent settlement achieved by my right hon. Friend put the authorities in a very good position. The increase in teachers' pay of 7.5 per cent. was fully allowed for, as were other burdens arising from legislation and other Government initiatives. I hope that electors will hold their councils accountable for their high spending, as the Government certainly will when we review local authority budgets and when my right hon. Friend considers whether to cap their spending to protect charge payers against unreasonable demands.

That we have heard so much about the community charge in Wales, where the percentage of Government grant is so much higher than in England that the charge should be about £100 less, suggests that it is the egalitarian principle that everyone should pay something towards the costs of their local authorities that is under attack. During the debate we came across two points put to the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside. He was asked to guarantee that in the event of Labour Members coming to office they would maintain the differential of grant between England and Wales. It is about 20 per cent. But he failed to give that assurance.

I must now press the hon. Gentleman extremely hard on that. Is he saying that the next Labour Government would not preserve that 20 per cent. differential? He knows

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that the rate of grant in Wales is 66 per cent. compared with 46 per cent. in England. I am now giving him every opportunity to say-- Mr. Michael rose --

Mr. Roberts : I am putting the question to the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside, who is a member of the shadow Cabinet. Will he tell the people of Wales whether that differential will be preserved? Yes or no?

Mr. Barry Jones : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me at 9.59 pm. I want to tell him in all sincerity that, whenever there is a Labour Government, they always give Wales a much better deal than do the Conservatives--

Mr. Roberts rose --

Mr. Jones : I can tell the hon. Gentleman without a shadow of doubt- -

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

PETITION

Local Government Finance (Basildon)

10 pm

Mr. David Amess (Basildon) : I ask leave to present a petition signed by a number of my constituents in Basildon. They draw to the attention of the House the fact that, last year, Socialist-controlled Basildon district council imposed the highest rate increase in the country- -57.2 per cent. My constituents are especially worried because, since the imposition of that increase, the council has continued to spend huge amounts of ratepayers' money.

My constituents are concerned about money that has been spent on area management and leisure facilities, and about the council's voting another £1.6 million to subsidise the Towngate theatre to prevent it going into liquidation.

Finally, my constituents are concerned about the money that has been spent on the new civic centre. Last week the council spent £46, 000 on sending every person in Basildon a Valentine card. The petition reads :

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House will urge the Secretary of State for the Environment to use his powers of influence to ensure that local authorities such as Basildon do not set excessively high rates of community charge, the average of which should be no more than £278, and if they do, that he should cap the community charge. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.

To lie upon the Table.

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Fostering

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. John. M. Taylor.]

10.2 pm

Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest) : I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to discuss the important subject of the adoption and fostering of black children, generally from the ethnic minorities, by white parents. This has been the subject of controversy and of some public interest. Last year it was connected with a great deal of apparent injustice and unhappiness, and I believe that the issue has an important influence on the way in which the country develops as an integrated, multiracial, assimilated and tolerant society.

I shall argue that Government policy on this matter needs clarifying, and that the advice that the Government give to social services departments and other fostering agencies, many of which are independent, should be more rigorous. Secondly, I shall argue that much of the advice behind present Government policy has been based on a view of racial identity that owes more to ideology and a divisive form of anti-racism than to reason or scientific evidence, particularly in connection with fostering. Thirdly, I shall argue that additional guidelines on fostering and adoption are required, particularly on monitoring adoption policies and the time limits appropriate to them.

I start by emphasising that 80,000 children in this country are in care or foster homes, one third of whom require placement in a given year. There is no doubt that the vast majority, whether placed through council social services departments or through specialist agencies, are put in good homes which are right for their future development.

In the last two or three years there have been two significant retrograde developments. The first is that a same-race fostering and adoption policy has taken hold in many adoption agencies and social services departments. The argument is that a child can only develop properly with foster parents or adoptive parents of the same ethnic or racial origin. That policy is being applied more rigidly throughout the country. Secondly, not only have there been the appalling cases that we saw last year, where black children were taken away from white foster parents, sometimes after nine years of living together effectively as a family, but there is evidence that because of the same-race fostering policy, young black children are having to wait longer for places.

Hilary Chambers, who is a founder of Parent to Parent Information on Adoption Services, says :

"Since 1987 the number of under five year old black children on the BMI parent register"--

a significant register--

"has quadrupled."

In 1987 she did a small survey. She found that only four of 22 children had been waiting for more than six months for placement with a family, and none longer than a year. Yet only two years later no fewer than 36 out of 75 young black children had been waiting for longer than six months ; 17 had been waiting longer than one year, and four had been waiting longer than two years for a foster placement which should be regarded as their right in a civilised society.

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More significantly, Mrs. Chambers thought that that was just the tip of the iceberg and that hundreds of black children were waiting for the right to a foster home, and were living in institutional care in the meantime. She said :

"Whatever the different views on same race placements it is terribly dangerous for a child to be shunted around short term foster parents or to be institutionalised in a council home."

Even more damaging and more distressing are the cases of black children who are taken from white foster parents largely because of the implementation of the same-race policy. In August last year in Croydon we had an example where a 17-month-old mixed race boy was taken from his white foster mother and placed with the black family who already had children but who wanted a boy. In the home counties a 14-year-old black boy was taken from a white family by the social services department, despite the fact that he had been living there for no less than eight years.

In Birmingham two white foster parents--reasonable and sensible foster parents--were told by the social services department that they would never be allowed to adopt the black children they were caring for. The Independent on 31 October last year reported the case of a two-year-old Asian girl in Birmingham :

"Social services officials want to place this girl with an Asian family.

Her foster mother said : She thinks everyone who comes to the door is going to take her away. She says she wants to stay here with her mummy and daddy.'

We're the only family she has ever known. We took her when she was just a six-day-old baby, and we've brought her up as our own. She is just so attached to us both, and we love her very much.' " All the social services department had to say was :

"We intend to find her another family. She is an Asian child and that is one of the criteria we use."

I can scarcely conceive a more inhuman approach to a social services problem than that exhibited by that department in the west midlands.

Again, even those cases may be just the tip of the iceberg. Children First, another group in this field, has estimated that there are 20 cases in which white foster parents are battling to keep their black children living with them. So far, in only three cases have they been successful. Although the circumstances of these cases are difficult to verify--very often they are sub judice or confidential, or reports are not publicly available--the fact is that this is a widespread problem which has been recognised by the Department of Health. Indeed, in January this year the Department felt it necessary to issue guidelines on this aspect of fostering policy, and the Commission for Racial Equality has done likewise.

It is my contention that the Government's guidelines, although well meaning, are not rigorous enough and that they allow social services departments to make rigid interpretations of same-race adoption policy and still feel that they are within the guidelines that have been laid down. Equally, I believe, interpretations are based on the sort of advice that has been given to the CRE and, indeed, has been coming from the CRE--advice that is anti-racist, divisive, segregationist and, therefore, wrong for race relations in this country in the long term.

On the face of it, the Department of Health guidelines are fairly anodyne. They say :

"Each case must be considered on its merits having regard to the needs of children requiring placement. Racial origin is an important factor in placements."

Then, more dubiously, they say :

"In the great majority of cases"--

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