House of Commons Hansard Debates for 23 May 1990

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : I want to take this opportunity to urge the Leader of the House not to allow the House to go into recess until we have debated three items. I shall be as brief as I can because several other hon. Members want to speak too--

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : That's enough, Bob.

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Mr. Cryer : I am surprised that my hon. Friend has interjected because he has raised my first item on the Floor of the House. I refer to Bradford under Labour control. Labour had a massive win at the last local elections, swept Pickles and his cronies from office and dumped them in the garbage can of history where they so rightly belong. The subject was raised at Question Time in the context of the Labour- controlled council's discussion of priorities. The Minister who holds the poisoned chalice of the poll tax, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo), said in reply to an intervention by a Tory Member that he had contacted the leader of the dwindling number of Tories on Bradford council--the discredited Eric Pickles.

What right has the Minister, in an official capacity, to contact the person who led the defeated group, who is no longer in office and who has been shown that the people of Bradford no longer want him as part of their administration? If Ministers have contacts to make with Bradford, they should surely be with the leader of the council or with the chairman of the appropriate committee on the council. Any contacts must be with the elected majority group ; otherwise, they are a deliberate snub to the massive majority in Bradford who got rid of the Tory majority and substituted a Labour majority. I am staggered that a Minister could say in the Chamber that he had contacted the discredited minority leader of Bradford in an official capacity.

If the Minister wants to go to Bradford as a Tory Member and try whistling in the wind for a few Tory voters, he is entitled to do that, but as a member of the Government he must perforce negotiate with the elected majority. I know that the Government want to get rid of local democracy and to trample the rights of local government into the dirt, but they have not managed to do that.

The people of Bradford have given a loud and clear message that they want a Labour-controlled council and Ministers must conduct negotiations with that council. The leadership on Bradford council has made it clear that by law the council must deliver certain services. Those services will not be prejudiced in any way, except of course through cuts by central Government. It is up to central Government to provide the money so that Bradford council under Labour control can deliver the services that are required by law. Because of the difficulties created by inheriting a Conservative budget, the council will inevitably discuss priorities and will try to reverse the cuts which Pickles and his cronies introduced in Bradford. The sacking of teachers and other local authority workers was in the pipeline. Bradford council wants to improve and maintain services and to restore education and housing after the ravages of Conservative control. I am surprised that any Minister can defy the democratic will of the people of Bradford, and I shall keep a close eye on the way in which the Government behave. I expect them to have negotiations in good faith with the Labour majority in Bradford and I hope that they will negotiate better poll tax support grants for the future.

Secondly, I draw to the attention of the Leader of the House some evidence that was published today by the Select Committee on Members' Interests. It is the minutes of evidence on parliamentary lobbying. One of the lobbying organisations in the study is a firm called Ian Greer Associates. Before I was on that Committee, Ian

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Greer gave evidence to the effect that he had nothing to do with Members of Parliament, that he did not pay them and that he kept them at arm's length. The evidence states :

"You are completely dissociated from them?

A. That is correct."

Subsequently, Mr. Andrew Roth produced some interesting evidence that, far from being dissociated as Mr. Greer claimed, five hon. Members introduced business to Mr. Greer and obtained a commission. Apparently only one of the five took the trouble to declare his interest in the matter. Several large sums are likely to be involved. For example, one of the accounts was with British Airways. We can assume that the amount involved is perhaps several hundred thousands a year. A commission of 5 per cent. of that is big money, and it was alleged that the commission was greater than 5 per cent.

A Select Committee was dealing with this matter, which means that it is an important constitutional issue. Select Committees have the power to call for persons and papers, and they expect people to give evidence in good faith. Mr. Greer told the Committee that he could not name the hon. Members to whom he had paid the money. He said that it was not his responsibility, and even said that he did not have any responsibility for advising them to register their interests. In reply to a question from me, Mr. Greer agreed that with hindsight he might in future advise hon. Members to register.

People who are called before a Select Committee should give the fullest possible evidence and should not deny information about payments that they have made to hon. Members. I spoke earlier about local authority interests. If payments had been made to members of a council, the House would have been outraged and would immediately have called for disclosure of those payments.

I hope that the Leader of the House can arrange for an early debate or that he will take into account the published evidence and issue a statement suggesting that all hon. Members should register all their interests, and that, if four hon. Members have omitted to do so, they should rectify that omission as quickly as possible. I am sure that you will agree, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it is important for hon. Members to follow the rules of the House. Those rules, set out in the reports of 1974-75, say that hon. Members should declare interests that affect their conduct as Members of Parliament or that might be thought to affect their conduct. That category exactly fits the situation that I have described.

I shall now continue the argument that I started in an Adjournment debate, which is that we should not go into recess until we have had a full-scale debate on the sell-off by the Government of the skill centres. I assure the House that this issue will not go away. I remind the House that the Government decided to sell 60 skill centres, asked for bids and issued a document through Deloitte Haskins and Sells. The document was handed over on the understanding that it was secret and had to be handed back.

If the Government invited bids for a business and then secretly informed one bidder that £11 million was to be made available, I am sure that Conservative Members would regard that as completely unfair. They would regard it as even more unfair if they learned that the three people who made the successful bid and received the £11 million were the three senior civil servants who were in charge of the skill centres in the first place. Moreover, the Minister

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has refused to reveal the price received for the sale of 27 skill centres to Astra Training Services, an organisation produced by the three civil servants.

There is a cloak of secrecy. Time and again, the Minister produced bland platitudes and he will not say how much taxpayers' land has been sold. He will not confirm that no other bidder received the £11 million, although the other bidders, several of whom I have contacted, have told me that they had received no information about the £11 million. The Motor Traders Training Association approached the Government and asked if any money was available to carry on training but it was told that no money was available. If the association was told that by a civil servant who was associated with the project, it looks not just casual or incompetent, but sinister.

The story from the bidders is that, when they went to the skill centres, they were not allowed to get the full information that they needed to make their bids. When they asked the Government and civil servants for information about trade union agreements--it was a condition of the sale that such agreements should be honoured--they were not given that information. If that is the case--and allegations have been made to me by bidders, none of whom was told about the £11 million, so all have a common cause of concern--it is more than incompetence. It is the deliberate obstruction of bids so that insider dealers, the civil servants, could purchase the skill centres. This is a matter of scandalous proportions.

The total value of the centres is about £130 million, including land and the assets on it. Those have been virtually given away, together with £11 million of taxpayers' money, and no prices have been revealed for the sale. In another case, £2 million has been handed to a training consortium, again without any acknowledgement of the arrangements that were involved. These matters must come before the House as soon as possible, so that we can have a full investigation and, hopefully, some remedial action. It is a seedy rip-off of the taxpayers by a clique of civil servants operating from the inside.

5.49 pm

Mr. Chris Butler (Warrington, South) : I am returning to the subject of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, not only because I failed to catch the eye of Madam Deputy Speaker on Monday but because I believe that it is important for the Government to restore public credibility before and during the recess and because the public need the Government to apply as much reassurance, frankness and caution as possible in this matter. BSE is leading people to think deeply about recycling animal proteins--sometimes even diseased animal proteins--back into the animal food chain, particularly for those animals which are naturally herbivores. This has already led to serious animal health problems. The drive for ever more efficient and cost effective ways to produce food has led to hidden costs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) will attest.

We think--we do not know--that BSE is caused by the same agent as scrapie. If it is, there may be parallels with the vertical transmission that we find in scrapie. The Southwood report referred to the placenta as "highly infectious" so it would not be surprising to find that BSE

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is vertically transmissible. If BSE is the same agent as scrapie, then this organism has passed not only the species barrier but the genus barrier. It has jumped a whole sub-family. That makes me feel very uneasy.

The Tyrrell intermediate consultation committee said :

"Experience with scrapie suggests that many species may be susceptible to BSE."

Therefore, I was disturbed when I received a written answer that said :

"there is no scientific reason why the offals should not be incorporated into feedstuffs for non-ruminant animals. It is up to countries importing protein material from the United Kingdom to determine the conditions under which such imports may take place in the full knowledge they have about the disease and its likely cause."--[ Official Report, 13 February 1990 ; Vol. 167, c. 197. ] We have no assurance that this disease may pass to animals other than ruminants. It could be that their lifespans are too short for them to develop the disease and show clinical signs. The Tyrrell committee said that pigs and chickens "may" act as sources of infection for man. It would be far better to incinerate all offal, so that the sub-virus reaches a dead end and is not passed around in an incestuous food chain, perhaps ending up on man's dinner plate. It shows a rather nonchalant attitude towards other countries, some of them Third-world countries, to say that they can take some of these tainted materials--it is up to them, it is their risk, they take it in full knowledge. That is rather like the debates that we had about sending waste to the Third world. We should not pass around these materials to other countries and we certainly should not try to make a profit out of them abroad when we do not make a profit out of them in this country. We know that these materials are dangerous, and we do not have full knowledge of what they may cause. Other countries may not have such developed systems of governance or developed veterinary systems, and we should not put them to the test in this way.

We know that spongiform encephalopathies are transmissible to man and that in man they may take up to 30 years to develop. Doctor H. C. Grant, MD, FRCP, a neuropathologist at the Charing Cross hospital, has put forward his expert view :

"The Southwood report claims that the risk of humans catching the disease is remote', but the truth is that we do not know if it is remote. Experts doubtless thought the likelihood of cattle catching the disease was remote when they first fed scrapie-infected material to cattle in 1981."

The Southwood report said :

"It may be a decade or more before complete reassurance can be given."

If we cannot give complete reassurance, we should approach the matter with the utmost caution. I welcome the Government's decision to review the method of stripping out brains and spinal material from carcases, because it could be that the splatter of this nervous material on to red meat will defy the purpose of performing the operation. There may be better ways to do it.

In the debate on whether carcases should be buried or burnt, there should be a preference for burning, because we know that that organism is highly resistant and can be destroyed only by burning or powerful corrosive acids. I noted that, in a reply to a question from the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies), who unfortunately is not here today, my hon. Friend the Minister said :

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"Spongiform encephalopathies have never been recorded in domestic pets. Moreover, the industry's policy is not to use these materials. There is thus no need for regulatory action."--[ Official Report, 2 February 1990 ; Vol. 166, c. 409 .]

On 14 February, in the First Standing Committee on European Documents, I called for a legislative ban on these materials being recycled into the pet food chain. There are responsible operators who will keep this material out of the petfood chain, but that does not allow for the irresponsible operators, who may be out to make a quick profit from recycling these materials.

The experts who had never recorded the transfer of spongiform encephalopathies have now recorded the transfer of them to domestic pets, strengthening my argument that there should be legislative action on this point. The Tyrrell committee called in June 1989 for a random survey of cattle brains at the point of slaughter. The Government should give this more urgency than that afforded to it by the committee. Not only would such a survey give a better fix on the incidence of this disease : it might give greater reassurance to the public that they are not receiving meat that has already been infected and that has developed the disease but is not yet showing clinical signs of it. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend agrees that it would not be right for humans to be fed such meat. Just because this policy has been espoused by the Labour party does not mean that it should not be adopted.

5.37 pm

Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) : Given his concluding remarks, the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler) should not be surprised when I say that my hon. Friends and I much agree with most of the points in his speech.

It would be useful, before we went into the recess, for the House to receive details about the appointment of the Secretary of State for Energy as the co-ordinator of Government information. The media were given the news by No. 10 Downing street, but the House was not. Can we table questions about this aspect of Government activity? If not, why not? Ministers are supposed to be accountable to the House. When I raised this matter yesterday on a point of order, Mr. Speaker said that he understood that it was an unofficial arrangement. What does that mean?

Why did the job go to the Secretary of State for Energy? Why did it not go to the most natural person--the Leader of the House? He always maintains that he has a close working arrangement with the Prime Minister, even if they meet only weekly at meetings and apparently can hardly bear to say much to each other. Surely the

responsibilities of the Leader of the House are not so heavy that he could not take on these added responsibilities for co-ordinating information.

If the Leader of the House is out of the picture, why did not the appointment go to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster? As we all know, he is the current chairman of the Conservative party and, unlike his immediate predecessor, the present Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is keen on a high-level profile. I should have thought that the job of co- ordinating Government information, or lying, whatever one wants to call it, was right up that right hon. Gentleman's street. Why was not the job given to him? Though after the farce of yesterday's "summer offensive," which came unstuck within a matter of hours, perhaps the Prime Minister was not altogether

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wrong, I must admit, in coming to the conclusion that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was not quite the right person for the job.

It appears that the political columnist of The Independent was told yesterday by an admirer of the Secretary of State for Energy, who has been given the job of co-ordinating Government information, that the latter has no ambitions, no thoughts of his own--that we can readily accept--and that his one desire and purpose in life is to anticipate the Prime Minister's every wish. The columnist added that this means that the Prime Minister has put herself in charge of winning the next general election. It is not for me to say whether that is good news for Tory Members.

In an article in today's Guardian the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow)--we can all agree that the hon. Gentleman is certainly no wet, and is as Stalinist a right-wing Tory as one could find--said that the chairman of the Tory party has stated loyally that we must not drop the pilot. The hon. Gentleman comments : "But he would, wouldn't he?"

In the same article the hon. Gentleman tells us that the "topic of the Tory leadership is never far from Tory MPs conversation--paternalist or Thatcherite, Backbencher, or junior Minister."

The hon. Gentleman adds :

"Sticking to the pilot we have got may not, however, provide a safe passage now that we are moving into new and uncharted waters." The hon. Gentleman then speculates on the change of leadership. Has he suddenly become an admirer of the pretender to the present throne, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine)?

There has been much in the press in the past two or three days of the possibility that there will be a general election in June 1991. It seems that the press has been fed a good deal of information that it could be next June. We shall see in due course. Downing street has been extremely busy I believe feeding the press with the possible date of next June to avoid a leadership election this autumn. If Tory Members are persuaded that the period before the next general election is limited, that they should not rock the boat and that the election will be as early as June 1991, they may be less willing to participate in a leadership campaign unlike last year.

As I said, I think that we are entitled to answers. We are entitled to know the precise duties and further responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Energy. We are also entitled to know whether he will answer our questions on the Floor of the House relating to Government information matters following our opportunity to table them. These are matters of concern that should be dealt with by the Leader of the House when he replies.

5.44 pm

Mr. John Carlisle (Luton, North) : Having sat on the Conservative Benches for about 11 years, I have heard several of the speeches of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), but never have I heard such nonsense and cynicism expressed in the Chamber as that which I so recently heard. The hon. Gentleman must begin to understand, even at his rather mature age and with his long experience in this place, that it will not do to present to the House spurious information which is of no interest to my right hon. and hon. Friends and of even less interest,

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if that is possible, to his own right hon. and hon. Friends. The hon. Gentleman is an embarrassment to his constituents and to his party.

I am about to disappoint the hon. Member for Walsall, North even more. He probably expected my few remarks to be related to South Africa, which is one of our favourite topics. I think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, with his vast experience of foreign affairs during his distinguished time as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, would also show an interest in South Africa. However, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister having correctly said yesterday that sanctions are no longer an issue and that the Government consider them to be irrelevant after the excellent and successful meeting with President de Klerk in South Africa, I feel that it is appropriate at this stage to rest my case.

I wish to bring to the attention of the House before the recess a matter which is attendant to a subject that the House has been discussing during the past few days in various degrees of hilarity and seriousness--local government expenditure. I shall refer especially to local expenditure in Bedfordshire and in Luton. Anyone from outside this place who had visited it in the past 24 hours might have gone away feeling somewhat confused as to the Opposition's position. Yesterday, the Social Democrats fantasised about a local income tax. I believe that one of their speakers claimed that it would counteract the community charge that the Government have introduced, which he claimed has intruded on people's private lives. If anything intruded on private lives, it would surely be town hall bureaucrats investigating our constituents' Inland Revenue affairs. Today the hilarity was produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton), who dealt admirably with the roof tax on which the Labour party seems to be hooked, although not even that is certain in these uncertain times for that party. The polls show that it is slipping further towards the level of popularity of the Conservative party. It seems that the Labour party is entirely confused as to what its policy should be.

What is not confusing to those of us in the real world is that the wrath which has been heaped upon my right hon. and hon. Friends in the past few months has not been the result of the Government's actions. Virtually all of it has been the result of high-spending local authorities, especially those controlled by the Labour party. In Bedfordshire, the Labour and Liberal hung councils took the opportunity, as they did in 1974, to impose upon the unwitting community charge payers--previously it was the ratepayers--massive increases in spending without any justification, knowing that they would not have to face the brunt of the anger that that would generate.

It is interesting that now that community charge bills have landed on doorsteps and people are beginning to pay--and those who thought that they would not enjoy rebates are enjoying them--the tone of correspondence has changed dramatically to my mind and in my experience. People are beginning to realise that it is not the Government's fault that in Bedfordshire, and in my constituency, there are community charge bills of more than £400 per person. They are beginning to understand that their bills are the result of the reckless spending of county authorities, and in some instances borough

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authorities, which have decided to spend other people's money without any thought of where further moneys will come from. The position in Bedfordshire is especially sad. Regrettably, it has always been a county of high-spending authorities. When the Conservative party lost control of the county council, good housekeeper that it was, people in monkey suits in Bedford county hall took control. They have taken no account of the ability of community charge payers, or of residents generally, to pay. To my mind, there is no doubt as to exactly where the blame lies. Over the years, the Labour-Liberal-controlled council has almost exceeded its wildest dreams in its excesses and in the burdens that it has placed upon us.

For example, some years ago, and following the spending of about £50,000, we became a nuclear-free zone. I am not sure whether the Bedfordshire ratepayers felt any better for that, but we were sore that such a sum was spent on their behalf changing signs. There was an attempt to twin with a black township in South Africa. That may seem creditable to Labour Members, but a great deal of money was spent on a political exercise which had no bearing on the well-being of the unfortunate citizens of the township or on the well-being of the ratepayers whom the authority purported to represent. Many a long hour in the council chamber has been spent debating freedom for Nicaragua, tropical rain forests, whether the BBC should move from Cambridge to Norwich--

Mr. Tony Banks : We should all be interested in rain forests.

Mr. Carlisle : I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the rain forests are important, but the council is prepared to spend time and money debating subjects which have little or nothing to do with the needs of the people whom it purports to represent. To cap it all, in its expenditure plans for 1990-91--which were vigorously opposed by the Conservative group on the county council--it has proposed and brought in a massive increase in spending, which is totally unjustified. The justification for such spending is questionable. That is not just my opinion, as someone with a political axe to grind, but the opinion of the independent Audit Commission, which has made extensive surveys on local authorities' financing and budgeting in the past, as many hon. Members will know.

The Audit Commission has consistently found that since Bedfordshire county council passed into Labour and Liberal control it has been a high-spending council and that in a majority of cases spending is excessively high and exceeds other comparable county councils--this year it is some £23 million. Bedfordshire is way above the family average in terms of spending on particular services.

Education is the greatest spender, and Bedfordshire spends some 14 per cent. more on the number of teachers and on teachers' salaries than other councils in the basket of comparable authorities. If Bedfordshire had the best education system, if parents could say that their children were getting better education than anyone else and that examination results, even in the difficult areas--some of which are in my constituency--are better than in comparable councils and that people regard it as worth moving to Bedfordshire for that education, I would not complain. In surveys conducted recently by Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools, however, Bedfordshire has consistently come near the bottom of the table for

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examination results and qualifications. That does not justify the enormous expenditure by an authority which is under political control. The Audit Commission rightly criticised the authority's organisation and management and said that spending on secondary education far exceeds what is required and that, in its analysis, the spending policy is basically flawed.

Part of the problem is that those who purport to represent the people of Bedfordshire in county hall will not bite the bullet and take the tough decisions to reduce the number of schools that a Tory council would have taken if it were in power. Item 14 of Bedfordshire county council's audit of accounts 1988-89 states :

"There are too many schools. Up to 30 per cent. of the places available are unfilled."

That is a disgrace and means that between 10 and 12 schools should be closed if the authority wants to make money available to improve services which need improvement--for example, special areas, provision for the young, and facilities for sixth forms. The authority could save money if it had the courage to take those political decisions, but it refuses to do so.

The Audit Commission goes on to say that something must be done "to reduce the present imbalance between school places and overall pupil numbers."

On that basis alone, some £5 million per annum--possibly more--would be saved.

Social service expenditure by Bedfordshire county council is some 15 per cent. above the average. If our old people's homes were the best in the country I would not say a word about it. If every child in care in Bedfordshire had better treatment than children elsewhere I would not complain, but regrettably there is gross inefficiency within the service, although people who work in those hard-pressed services try hard. Savings could be made and have been identified by the Audit Commission. The tragedy is that, while we have an authority in power whose business seems to be to spend other people's money, those savings will not be made.

This year, once again, despite the difficulties that we face--I acknowledge that the new legislative requirements that the Government have rightly put upon local authorities have created more--the council still refuses to make savings and consequently to improve services. As the years go by, the situation snowballs. If Bedfordshire continues to be run by virtual loonies from country hall who continue with the same policy, we shall be in severe difficulties. If my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House takes one message back to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and to the new Minister of State, it should be that any alterations made to the community charge--I am suspicious of any alterations--must not give more money to authorities such as Bedfordshire, which will only spend the money willy-nilly, without thought for our constituents.

Not long ago my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) made certain suggestions in The Times about changes in the structure of local authorities. Some of those ideas were taken up today in an excellent article by Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph, which I recommend to my hon. Friends. With more energy and virulence than my right hon. Friend the Member for

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Henley, Mr. Heffer says that it is about time that we abolished county councils. They represent a level of local government that has become unnecessary.

If a message came out of the local election results--particularly the wonderful results enjoyed by the Conservative party in Wandsworth and Westminster--it is that if small local authorities can control spending and their destiny, as Wandsworth and Westminster have done since the GLC disappeared, there is some chance that the community charge system will make those spending the money accountable. I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House will take that on board, and if he does not recommend that action be taken before the House rises for the spring recess, he should certainly recommend that it be a part of the manifesto for the next Conservative Government in the 1990s.

The county councils are a level of government over-burdened by bureaucrats. They are expensive and do not work. Many of my constituents in Luton long for the days when the borough controlled its own education and social services. The small size of such a committee is attractive and must appear so to most hon. Members. We felt that we could control our own destiny, and it would be on our own heads. Wandsworth and Westminster have proved that only on that basis have we any chance of controlling local government expenditure, which seems to go up and up, especially in counties which are Liberal or Labour-controlled.

I have some sympathy for the idea of my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley about an election each year. I believe there should be elections on a three-year basis, as happens in some local authorities now. We must abolish the larger tier of local government, which has become unwieldy and an excuse for representatives who are not fit to be in government for all sorts of reasons. We would then get representatives who are far closer to the electorate--the charge payers.

As the House rises for a short holiday at Whitsun, I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House will think of the people of Bedfordshire and the burden placed upon them by the Liberal-Labour- controlled council, and that he and his colleagues will come back to the House with radical proposals for the next Conservative Government which will make local authorities far more accountable and ensure that we never have such Liberal-Labour overspending again.

5.58 pm

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : I disagree with virtually every word uttered by the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle). That will not surprise him. At least I congratulate him on making a speech other than on South Africa. Given the speeches that he makes in this place, I was beginning to think that he represented Pretoria, North rather than Luton, North. He referred to a number of issues to which I am sure we shall return. The future of the shire counties is being debated within the Labour party. Their future will form part of our proposals when we come to power.

I intend to refer to an anniversary that has passed largely unnoticed this week ; it is an anniversary that I know the Prime Minister would prefer to forget. Nearly two years ago, she was present at a ceremony at Battersea power station. She went there for one of those ubiquitous photo opportunities that she gets. She was seen with Mr.

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John Broome, the developer. She described him as a man of enterprise and vision. His enterprise and vision was to turn Battersea power station into a pleasure dome.

The Prime Minister was there to give encouragement to Mr. Broome. She hailed him as one of the best examples of Thatcherism in practice. Mr. Broome, no doubt warming to the theme, having been encouraged by the Prime Minister in that way, gave an enormous hostage to fortune, as it turned out, by saying to the Prime Minister, "I shall invite you back on 21 May 1990 at 2.30 pm in order to unveil this great development. If you come at 2.33, Ma'am, you will have missed it." The Prime Minister was chuffed, as she often is by hearing words of that sort--bravura, bravado, call it what you will. However, the right hon. Lady still has a decade or so in which to wander down to Battersea, where she will find that she has missed nothing, given the present sad state of dereliction of that wonderful building.

The Prime Minister was right to say that the proposed development was a symbol of Thatcherism--of Flash Harrys with flash ideas, leading ultimately to failure. One could take it a stage further and say that Battersea power station as it exists at the moment is a symbol of the country--an empty shell, its grandeur and glory gone, decaying away due to inefficiency, neglect and lack of care. That symbol of dereliction, just a few miles down river at Battersea, is a symbol of the country. The power station is a derelict eyesore.

The Secretary of State will probably soon receive a request for Battersea power station's listed building status to be lifted so that the power station can be demolished. If the wind, the rain and the weather have not done that already for Mr. Broome, that is what the Government will be asked to agree to, and they will be as derelict as that building if they are prepared to allow that to happen. There ought to be shame on the Conservative Benches. Certainly there ought to be shame in No. 10 Downing street for having gone along with this carnival, this festival that has had such an unhappy ending, the problem still not having been resolved.

Battersea power station is a London landmark. Many of us have come to love that building. [Interruption.] The hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) laughs and thinks that that is a joke, but many Londoners look with great warmth and affection on that building. Previously they derived great warmth from it. To see it in its present bad state is no laughing matter.

The Government have been extremely casual with public assets. By means of their privatisation proposals, they have given them away. What Lady Porter did with the three Westminster cemeteries, the Government have done regularly with many public assets. They have given many of them away, together with sweeteners. Privatisation is nonsense in that respect, and we know it.

I want to compare briefly what happened to Battersea power station with what might happen to county hall. Proposals are now coming forward that are not entirely dissimilar to Mr. Broome's proposals for Battersea power station. The county hall proposals are for a luxury hotel, offices, a business centre, an amusement park and luxury flats--all the Flash Harry ideas that Mr. Broome had for Battersea power station. I disagree with the proposals. The Secretary of State is considering-- [Interruption.] I intend

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to say what I should like county hall to be used for. The hon. Member for Staffordshire, South-East (Mr. Lightbown) knows exactly what I intend to say.

The considerations arising from the public planning inquiry are now sitting on the Secretary of State's desk ; he will undoubtedly deliberate upon them, and he ought to bring them to the House so that they can be fully debated. The House has an interest in what is being proposed for a building on the other side of the river that is within our line of vision. We ought to decide whether we are happy with the proposals. I disagree fundamentally with them ; they involve the spending of a great deal of money.

The Secretary of State has to decide whether the new Flash Harrys on the south bank will have the resources to carry out their proposals. I have seen little evidence of their financial assets being sufficient to fund the proposed development. We do not want to end up with a Battersea power station problem immediately opposite us on the other side of the river-- county hall with its roof off and the builders walking off site because the money has run out. Despite the fact that I intensely dislike the proposals, I want the Secretary of State at least to ensure that the developers have the financial wherewithal to complete their development.

I despise the proposals. It is a political decision. The former Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), said on one occasion that he would like county hall to be demolished brick by brick. He could not demolish it, because it is a listed building. However, political symbolism makes the Tory Government want county hall to be used for a purpose that is totally outwith its previous function. County hall was built with inner-London ratepayers' money. It was built as a centre for London local government. It is a symbol of local democracy in London--the local democracy that this Government have done so much to undermine and destroy. We want couny hall to remain in its original form and to be used for its purpose--as the seat of London local government. I am delighted to know that among the welter of policy proposals that are about to be launched upon a grateful nation by the Labour party there is one that states that a Labour Government will restore London-wide local government. There will be a new London council. We must ensure that it is based in county hall. I want to extract from Opposition Front Bench spokesmen--not my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) who is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench now, so he need not worry too much about it--an undertaking that, if the Secretary of State for the Environment allows a hotel to be developed on the county hall site, a Labour Government will take it back by means of compulsory purchase.

Who would that upset? It would upset the developers, the Flash Harrys. I could not give a monkey's toss for them, nor would many Londoners. It may upset a few rich tourists. I am sorry for them, but there are plenty of luxury hotels for them in and around London. If the Labour party in opposition and then in government were to give such a pledge, most of the people of London would support them. It would be a politically popular move.

As long as I draw breath in this House, which I hope will be for some years to come, I shall strive to get county hall back into public ownership to act as the headquarters of London local government. I have great confidence that I shall succeed.

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6.9 pm

Sir John Stokes (Halesowen and Stourbridge) : Before we adjourn for the spring recess, I wish to discuss the teaching of history in our schools. The subject has been greatly ventilated in recent weeks and we have also received the final report of the history working group of the national curriculum.

A knowledge of history is absolutely essential if we are to retain our identity as a nation. It is most important that our children should understand what has made our country--its origins and its development through the centuries until the present time. It is essential that they should know how our small island on the edge of the continent of Europe was first colonised by Rome, passed through the so-called dark ages into the flowering of Anglo-Saxon civilisation followed by the Norman conquest and the feudal system, the wars of the roses when the aristocracy nearly destroyed itself, the reformation and the Tudor monarchy, the wars against France which we usually won, our own civil war, the growth and development of the British empire which at one time encompassed a quarter of the world- -and what happy days they were--the rise of democracy and the two great wars this century.

Some people are shy about dwelling too much on our island history for fear of upsetting the immigrants among us. That is a mistaken view. Immigrants, like everyone else, expect us to be true to ourselves and to our history and identity as a nation.

Children should be made to learn the dates of the great events of past centuries. That is not just dull learning by rote ; it will give them a framework in which to place all those unfolding events and to understand how they relate to one another. They will thus in due course begin to realise the remarkable continuity of the history of our small island. Incidentally, my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) recently remarked that what we are all about in this place is the continuity of history.

Children should know about kings, queens, statesmen and other leaders ; and about battles and other great events. But that does not mean that they should neglect social, domestic and occasionally local history. While for most people in the United Kingdom history tends to be mainly the history of England, that does not mean that events in Scotland, Wales and Ireland should be ignored.

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