House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Oct 1990

Sir Geoffrey Finsberg : Indeed, and I pay tribute to the Poles for the part that they played in that process. I am only sad that in the process of democratisation they are taking somewhat longer to have full and free elections than I had hoped. As a rapporteur for the Council of Europe, I visited Poland several times and I was saddened that the process has taken longer there than many of us had wanted. Over the next 12 months several eastern and central European countries will become members of the Council of Europe. I take slight issue with my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) who is the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. Before those countries can be admitted to the Community, we must be satisfied that they are democracies fully observing human rights. That is why the Council of Europe has been and is a far better bridge than the Community. Once they are inside the Council of Europe they can go forward a stage further. We must recognise that the Community is a Community of 12. The Council of Europe now has 23 members with six guest members and it will soon be a Council of 30. We cannot ignore what has happened in that institution over the past two years. I recognise how fortunate many of us have been to have taken part in the work of the Council of Europe and of the Western European Union, both of which are playing their part in pushing democracy forward.

Mr. David Howell : I do not dispute for a moment what my hon. Friend has said about the immensely important role of the Council of Europe and we should all recognise his substantial contribution to the Council's work and development. It is clearly more than a staging post. It is part of the process by which the construction and development of Europe will be carried forward. He was right to emphasise the human rights and democratisation

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aspects, which must progress still further in all those countries, and the Council of Europe plays a central role in that. I fully endorse what my hon. Friend said.

Mr. Dykes : I echo the tributes to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) for his work as head of the Council of Europe delegation from this country. I wholeheartedly agree with him that the Council of Europe is the ideal first bridge for those countries. Does he agree that that also helps the resolution of a possible dispute between the widening and deepening of the Community? It will take time for those countries to begin to become established parliamentary democracies and to show that they can continue to be such democracies without upsets, coups d'e tat or developing military regimes, which may occur because of their often very sad political histories in recent decades. Does my hon. Friend agree that there need be no built-in contradiction between the deepening of the Community, which so many members of the existing 12 now want to go ahead with political, economic and monetary union, starting from the December conferences, and the widening that will occur later? Inevitably, we must wait for those new fledgling democracies to prove their durability as democracies--and I do not say that in a spirit of condescension--and those countries will need long transitional periods because of the weakness of their economies.

Sir Geoffrey Finsberg : I should be wise not to enter the morass of widening and deepening and simply stick by what I have already said. Stage one must be full membership of the Council of Europe. Stages two and three may well follow, but I do not want to look that far ahead.

Today's debate is about Germany and I went there as chairman of the election observers of the Council of Europe. I want to relate some of my experiences because they throw into sharp relief what happened suddenly in the German Democratic Republic.

I went out to Germany on the Wednesday before election day. I drove in my taxi to the nearest crossing point to my hotel, but the taxi was sent back by the East German border guard. We were told that we could go only through checkpoint Charlie. We went through checkpoint Charlie and my money was entered on a form and my passport carefully scrutinsed by a very grim-faced guard and we eventually got through. I left on the Monday, having issued a press statement saying that we were satisfied that the elections were fully fair and free. We went back through checkpoint Charlie and a smiling East German guard wanted to see neither passport nor money form. That was a very sudden change. I hope that it reflected the fact that the guard was merely anticipating the orders that he was to be given by the new Government. That memory remains with me.

I also remember going to a polling station in a small country village about 60 miles outside east Berlin. I saw an old lady enter the polling station. She took a piece of paper and marked her ballot form. She came out in tears. I have only schoolboy German, so with the help of an interpreter I asked why she had burst into tears. I was told that she had come to vote freely for the first time since the early 1930s and that her husband had died the previous day, so had not had the chance to vote. That has made me realise how fortunate we are to be able to go to polling stations with no worries when elections are called.

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On the night of the election results I was in the Volkskammer. At the end of the evening I was asked to go on German television with a representative of the West German Christian Democrats. The commentator asked both of us, "How long do you think it will be before there is full unification?" I deferred to my West German colleague, who replied, "About 18 months or two years at the very earliest." I said that I could not argue with that, but that it would take some time to complete all the formalities. Nobody anticipated the speed with which unification would take place. As my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said, exchange rates and the economic situation forced an amazing change in speed. As we look back with the most valuable asset of politicians, hindsight, we might have realised that a sudden rush was inevitable. In those circumstances, we have made remarkable progress and everybody is to be congratulated on the speed and apparent smoothness with which we have seen unification take place.

Paragraph 12 of the Government's observations on the fourth report deals with the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and concludes :

"One of the CSCE's most important roles will be to allow the East Europeans a forum in which to discuss their security concerns. The report touches on the question of security guarantees for them. The CSCE could not provide these : it is a political, not a military organisation, and lacks the common purpose necessary to become the latter."

If it is a political institution, its one lack is a democratic wing. I pay enormous tribute to all that CSCE has done since its inception and the Helsinki agreement. Without the agreement I am not sure whether the logjam would suddenly have disappeared. The fact that the Soviets agreed to allow other countries to discuss human rights issues in the Soviet Union, focused the spotlight on what was happening. Much has flowed from that.

CSCE is operating successfully, but there is no political check on its work. Ministers meet and take decisions. Civil servants meet and take decisions--sometimes in anticipation of what their Ministers may want and at other times assuming delegated powers. There is not an institution composed of democratically elected Members of Parliament from the 35 CSCE nations where Ministers can be asked what they are doing, why they are doing it and be questioned on a wide variety of issues. I believe and the Council of Europe believes that it is necessary for such a democratic wing to be formed quickly. In September the Council of Europe took the initiative and devoted a day and a half to CSCE matters under its auspices, but as a separate legal entity.

Mr. Tony Banks : What has been the British Government's response to the discussions that took place in Strasbourg on the creation of a parliamentary wing of the CSCE process? For the record, can the hon. Gentleman justify how he believes that for the CSCE process, which is based on a wider Europe, we should have a parliamentary wing that also includes elected representatives from the United States of America and Canada?

Sir Geoffrey Finsberg : The hon. Gentleman, who is a valuable and valued colleague on the United Kingdom delegation to the Council of Europe, occasionally expresses his own views. The difference between this Parliament and the Council of Europe is that his superb

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sedentary interventions are never translated there. It is a pity that they do not have some sort of simultaneous translation from the seat.

The British Government are sympathetic to the need for some sort of democratic body. Mr. Gorbachev, and everybody else, recognises that there is a vital link with north America. He has said that he recognises that the common European house needs a north American input. As major contributors to the work of CSCE, it is right that the Americans and Canadians should participate fully in a parliamentary wing.

During the day and a half on CSCE we tried to invite all 35 countries to the Council of Europe. I was fortunate enough to be made chairman of the working party organising it. In the end we had every country except the United States. The President of the Council of Europe was told that the United States could not come because in September it was in the middle of budget discussions and having a difficult time.

The Canadian representative was also in difficulty because although he was personally in favour of the concept, he had not had an opportunity to discuss it with his colleagues. He abstained from what was otherwise an almost unanimous vote, passing the resolution calling for the creation of a parliamentary wing of CSCE and a set of guidelines. I know from my conversations with him that he was returning to Canada with the intention of selling the idea to the Canadians.

Mr. Tony Banks : The hon. Gentleman recounts how the Canadian representative could not vote because his Parliament had not discussed the matter. Will he say when we shall have an opportunity to discuss the proposal for a parliamentary wing of CSCE, so that we can decide whether we want to progress towards it?

Sir Geoffrey Finsberg : I can give the hon. Gentleman a two-part answer. First, I have never been part of the usual channels who are responsible for organising such debates. Secondly, I am certain that with his immense influence in the Labour party the hon. Gentleman can persuade his Chief Whip to devote an Opposition day to the matter. That is entirely up to him.

Many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall conclude. I am convinced that if we are to see democracies fully established in eastern and central Europe and to avoid coups d'e tat and the like, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) mentioned earlier--I see that he has temporarily left us--we must look at what is happening and see what support our political parties can provide. All parties can help their opposite numbers in those countries. We must try to show them not that it is fairly simple to have a party, which it is--at present there are some 78 parties in the Ukraine, one of the Soviet republics. Goodness knows how many parties there will be to fight the elections for the Polish lower House, but few of them will be recognisable parties in our scale of knowledge. In Poland, Solidarity encompassed everyone. Perhaps the greatest contribution, other than that of Mr. Gorbachev, who made it clear that no force would be used, came from the Churches, both Protestant and Catholic, under whose embrella it was possible to discuss human rights, whether in East Germany, Poland or Hungary. Poland's ambrella organisation, Solidarity, represented all from left to right. As Solidarity begins to wonder how to

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fight coming elections--the presidential election and the elections for the Sejm in April or May--a factionalism will begin to arise in that country. It will surely be then, if we can identify a party close to our own, that we can give it whatever guidance it seeks about how to build up the grassroots organisation that is needed. It is true that in Poland there have been fully fair and free municipal elections, but there have not been the sort of grassroots organisations that we know. We must help Poland to build up such organisations, as we must in Hungary and other countries. My hon. Friend the Minister of State was absolutely right when he said at the beginning of the debate that, following the unification of Germany, we have an opportunity to have a future that is secure for at least two generations to come. A new Germany, a democratic Germany, as part of a variety of communities--the Community, the Council of Europe, the Western European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation--provides opportunities for co-operation between the powers of the west and the east. It is not far-fetched to say that within a decade there may well be a security organisation encompassing both east and west. As we have seen in the Gulf, the real dangers against both east and west lie in unexpected quarters. We must watch carefully to ensure that we do not have a euphoria of disarmament that goes so far that it leaves us at the mercy of blackmailers from insignificant, fourth-world countries that may possess chemical or nuclear weapons. If we in the east and west get rid of those, we could be blackmailed and should have little choice in what we had to do. Let us not be too euphoric, but at the same time take the opportunities that arise from the unification of Germany to establish a firm working relationship with the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern and central Europe. In that way, we can enter the 21st century with a large degree of confidence. 11.43 am

Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow) : My speech will be much more parochial than that of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) , though not chauvinistic. My concern focuses on the economic and social implications of German unification for various maritime communities in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

When I served as a young national service man in the then British zone of West Germany, facing members of the Volkspolizei, a few yards across the border, I never dreamed that I would live to see a united Germany. I thought that there would always be some sort of iron curtain during my lifetime. As a young national service man, I visited Berlin about a year before the horrible wall was built. As a young man, trade unionist and socialist, I could not envisage that those awful barriers would be dismantled.

I welcome the unification of Germany, as wholeheartedly and warmly as any hon. Member, but that process could--I stress "could"--present formidable economic and social problems for a number of coastal communities scattered around the Scottish coastline and its islands. I shall comment on three matters related to German unification that are arousing considerable concern in

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Scotland. The first is the distribution of structural funds. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Curry), who is present has some knowledge of that subject. Secondly, I am concerned about our shipbuilding industry, or should I say the vestigial remnants of our once-glorious shipbuilding industry. Thirdly, and this worry will not surprise the Parliamentary Secretary, I am concerned about the need to defend our fishing industries and fishing communities. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary will support me in that.

Structural funds have played an important part in revitalising some badly run-down districts of the Strathclyde region in Scotland. As every hon. Member knows, Strathclyde regional council is about the biggest local authority in the European Community. My colleagues on that council are extremely skilful in obtaining funds under the social fund network for some of our deeply deprived communities. That also holds true for other communities as far north as Shetland. In the Shetland islands, the structural funds played an important part in maintaining communities that might have simply died away without such assistance. Therefore, there is a good deal of support in Scotland for the European Community, especially in relation to the distribution of structural funds.

However, I am a little concerned about what is written in the explanatory memorandum. On pages 6 and 7, the report of the Select Committee on European Legislation says of the structural funds that the Department of Trade and Industry

"recalls that the Community is proposing that new commitment appropriations of 3 thousand million ECU be allocated to the EC Structural Funds for the period 1991-1993 for East Germany following unification."

No one would dispute that. There are communities in what I would now call eastern Germany that are badly in need of such aid. The report of the Committee, which was chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), and in which I had some hand, continues :

"This does not affect the United Kingdom's entitlements under the Structural Funds during this period. However, from 1994, survey information could be used to identify areas within East Germany which are to receive aid from the Structural Funds and this could have an effect on the future distribution of aid between Member States. The Department has also pointed out that it is too early to say at this stage what effect this might have for future United Kingdom receipts for the structural funds."

Many Scottish voluntary associations, local authorities and other interested bodies genuinely believe that if the financial assistance from the structural fund is to go to communities in eastern Germany, it must follow that there will be a reduction in the distribution of the fund to communities in Scotland. I do not think that that is a selfish or greedy concern. Certain areas of Scotland still suffer massive unemployment. My constituency is traditionally a shipbuilding, marine engineering and other maritime industrial community, and it still has one of the worst unemployment rates in the whole of the United Kingdom. It is in about seventh or eighth position in the dreadful league of unemployment. When I speak to Tory Members from the south-east, I sometimes think that I would give my right arm to have the unemployment rates in their constituencies. My remarks also hold good for constituencies in Glasgow, Ayr and further north.

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By all means, let every assistance be given to equally beleaguered communities in eastern Germany, but Scottish communities, which are bedevilled by such disgracefully high levels of unemployment, must continue to receive support from Brussels. I was especially anxious to make that point this morning, although I do not wish to take up the time of the House. I always make brief interventions. The Clyde is now but a remnant of what was once a major industry and employer. I recently had the good fortune to visit the QE2 when she berthed in Greenock as part of the celebrations of the Cunard company. It was a remarkable moment when she slipped away from the terminal to head down the Firth of Clyde. She is a magnificent example of Clyde shipbuilding and marine engineering skills. I regret that today, we do not have a shipyard that could build a successor to the QE2.

Yarrows, a famous naval shipyard on the upper Clyde, may face serious problems because of what we call the peace dividend and because of the decision of the Ministry of Defence to cut the surface fleet to 40. Some 5,000 jobs depend directly or indirectly on Yarrows. There is a direct labour force of 3,392, and indirect employment and suppliers account for another 1,500 jobs. A firm such as Yarrows must be given assistance to meet the changing circumstances of the so-called peace dividend, which I welcome. Also on the upper Clyde is the famous Govan yard, which is now owned by the Norwegian firm Kvaerner. That provides several thousand jobs in my constituency, directly and indirectly. There is a small yard, Fergusons, in my constituency, which employs fewer than 100 highly-skilled people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) mentioned a day or two ago, that constituency's shipyard is under threat of closure. We must give those yards the sort of support that the European Commission envisages being given to shipyards in eastern Germany.

The explanatory memorandum from the Department of Trade and Industry states :

"Under the terms of the EEC Commission's legislative proposals to deal with German unification, the provisions of the proposed Seventh Directive"--

currently, there is a sixth directive that expires on 31 December-- "will be directly applied to restructuring aid provided to East German shipyards. Under the terms of a special clause which will be added to the proposals for the Seventh Directive, East German shipyards will be permitted a higher level of operating aid than the level allowed for other Member States during the period of restructuring."

I am not at all happy with that proposal. Why should yards in eastern Germany be given more aid than yards on the Clyde and the Mersey?

I want to ask the Minister a question, although I appreciate that it does not fall within his responsibilities. I hope that he will convey it to his counterpart in the Department of Trade and Industry. Are east German yards to be given unfair advantages over other European yards under the Commission's regulation on procurement? I understand that procurement has to be fair and equal throughout the European Community. If so, is not it likely that yards given those unfair advantages could conceivably win orders from the United Kingdom that would otherwise have been placed with our shipyards? That is an important point.

I shall give the House an example. Soon, Caledonian MacBrayne, whose passenger ferry fleet serves all the

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islands of Scotland and provides an essential link with the mainland for those island communities, will be ordering a new vessel to replace the Suilven, which sails between Ullapool on the mainland and Stornoway in the Western Isles. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that I hope that the order for that vessel will be given to Fergusons in Port Glasgow--I did warn the House that I would be parochial--which would produce a first-class ship. I keep badgering the Secretary of State for Scotland to ensure that the order is given to the lower Clyde. However, it is conceivable that an east German yard, with its additional aid, could win the order because, under the regulation on procurement, it would have the right to bid for a vessel that will provide such an essential service between the mainland and the outer Hebrides. That is an important point for Scotland.

Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley) : Will not another factor be the lower wage levels in eastern Germany, at least until the period of transition has ended, which will put competitors there in a more favourable position?

Dr. Godman : I am grateful for my hon. Friend's powerful intervention. He is absolutely right. I am an ex-shipwright, though it is a long time since I worked in a shipyard, thank heaven, so I know that the cost of constructing a ship is determined to a considerable extent by labour costs. One of the reasons why the gap between the cost of building a ship in a European Community yard and in Japan or South Korea is beginning to diminish is the increase in wage levels in south-east Asia. That is particularly true of South Korea, where massive civil disturbances have in some cases focused on the large shipyards of Hyundai and Daewoo. The aim of the intervention fund is to provide Community yards with funds, so that they can come near to bridging the gap between the cost of a ship in Europe and in a south-east Asian yard.

Deep concern is felt by my constituents and all shipyard workers that they may suffer as a consequence of the advantages enjoyed by their counterparts in eastern Germany. I know of no shipyard worker in my constituency who wants to see any harm done to the interests of their counterparts in eastern Germany, but British shipyard workers should not be forced on to the dole queues because of the clause that is to be added to the seventh directive. If such a provision is to be made, a further clause should be included to provide additional assistance to shipyards in constituencies such as mine that suffer high unemployment.

There is also an important strategic reason to be taken into consideration. Apart from the Kvaerner yard at Govan, which is largely concerned with the construction of liquid petroleum gas carriers for that company's own fleet, and Harland and Wolff at Belfast, Britain does not possess the merchant ship building capability for large vessels such as very large or ultra- large crude carriers. That is to some extent shown by the problems in maritime transport that have arisen in transporting military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

By all means let us help the shipbuilding communities of eastern Germany, but at the same time we must arrest the dreadful decline in the United Kingdom's merchant shipbuilding capacity. To do that, and to generate valuable employment on the Clyde, Yarrows should be given assistance to diversify in the types of vessel that it can

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build. I should also like to see Scott Lithgow in my constituency allowed to acquire what I would term European Community shipbuilding intervention fund status. Scott Lithgow has the biggest merchant shipbuilding facility in the United Kingdom. Nothing else like it exists anywhere in the United Kingdom. Recently, a British tanker firm, keen to have its ships built in the United Kingdom, approached Scott Lithgow for a provisional price for constructing four VLCCs. Scott Lithgow had to say that it could not submit a realistic tender because it did not have access to the intervention fund, which currently provides 20 per cent. of the cost of constructing a vessel.

If Scotland's interests are ignored in respect of its shipbuilding and fishing industries, I must tell the House, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), who cannot be present for very good reasons, that more and more Scots may start listening to the seductive blandishments of the Scottish National party and to its arguments for an independent Scotland within the framework of the European Community.

Recent opinion polls strongly indicate that more and more Scots are viewing the nationalists' seductive but empty arguments with considerable favour. Those polls suggest that as many as 40 per cent. of Scots are not frightened of the prospect of independence within Europe. That should be borne in mind as we see Scotland's shipbuilding and fishing industries apparently being ignored by the House, and is why I asked the Leader of the House yesterday for a debate on our maritime industries.

I turn finally to the problems of the fishing industry, in which, I am pleased to say, the Parliamentary Secretary has a fair degree of knowledge and expertise. I may not always agree with what he tells our fishermen, but the Minister is, as they say in that industry, a knowledgeable lad.

The United Kingdom fishing industry is small in the numbers that it employs directly and indirectly, and in its share of the country's gross domestic product. Nevertheless, it is an extremely important industry to many small coastal communities throughout the United Kingdom's mainland and islands. That is true of Cornwall as much as of Northern Ireland, and the industry is a major source of employment in Scotland.

I have the pleasure of serving as one of the honorary presidents of the Clyde Fishermans Association, which is known to the Minister, as do several other right hon. and hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie)--who ought to be contributing to this debate--and my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes). All would say that it is essential to defend the Scottish fishing industry with the utmost vigour. I also have a commitment to the English fishing industry. My brother is working as a mate on a big freezer trawler, fishing for cod off the west coast of Greenland, so I am not being too parochial. I am worried about the new Germany's fishing fleet, and its impact on the European Community's fleets. I am not being alarmist when I say that many people in the United Kingdom industry are worried about this new fleet.

The East German fishing fleet is ancient. Hon. Members would never catch me going on board some of

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their ships, even if they were just crossing the Clyde, the Mersey or the Humber. I certainly would not go up into the Arctic in one of those lumbering old ladies. The best thing that the Minister could do is urge his German counterparts to scrap the entire fleet, because ships that are ancient can be a danger to their crews in bad weather.

Returning to the fine report produced by the Select Committee, it states on page 11 that :

"The Commission reiterates that the capacity of the existing Community fleet is already disproportionately high compared to the limited resources available and so integration of the fishing fleet of the former GDR (whose overall capacity is 3.8 per cent of the Community fleet) poses political problems"--

not merely political problems but dangers for our fishermen-- "It is also suggested that in the case of Community resources not subject to TACs"--

total allowable catches--

"and quotas, access by the former GDR fleet to areas such as the North Sea, the west of Scotland, the Irish sea and the Bay of Biscay could result in disturbance to stocks"--

that is an understatement--

"There could also be problems of principle for Spain and Portugal whose fleets, unlike that of a unified Germany, do not enjoy the same rights of access. The Commission makes it clear that it will be watching carefully how the activities of the new fleet develop and, where appropriate, will take this into account in the revision of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) planned for 1991."

The Commissioners need to do much more than watch this carefully. This development has to be policed in the same way that our excellent fisheries protection service polices our waters--nothing less will do.

I want an assurance, or a reassurance, today from the Minister that there will be no access to the North sea or the west of Scotland. Some of us in the west of Scotland are saying that we should not allow fishing vessels from the north-east of Scotland to come round the corner and put down their multi-trawls. The Minister never listens to me when I talk about banning such gear. We are worried about trawlers from the north-east of Scotland-- that will not win me many brownie points up there--let alone vessels lumbering through the Pentland Firth from eastern Germany. Such developments have to be policed very carefully.

Mr. Spearing : I was afraid to interrupt such a fascinating account, but if my hon. Friend is demonstrating--through his personal knowledge and constituency interests--the impact on fishing and shipbuilding of these arrangements, which may last for a couple of years or even longer, what impact might the arrangements have in other areas? The document contains at least 25 other areas of interest. Was not it perhaps a little optimistic for the Minister to say in his introduction to the debate that most of these arrangements are broadly satisfactory to the United Kingdom? Judging by what my hon. Friend is saying, is not it likely that there could be some nasty surprises in store?

Dr. Godman : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of what the Minister said in the introduction to his otherwise fine speech. Where shipbuilding, the fishing industry and the structural fund are concerned these arrangements are certainly not satisfactory to many people. If the Minister is talking about the Government's point of view, that is one thing, but for many people in my constituency and in Scotland these are far from

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satisfactory matters and my constituents are deeply worried. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.

Two or three years ago I sought an assurance from the Prime Minister that the review of the common fisheries policy would not lead to any diminution in the rights quite properly given to the United Kingdom's fishing fleet. At that time my eyes were fixed firmly on the huge Spanish fishing fleet which was slowly steaming over the horizon. I never thought that I would need to look towards the east.

I have great affection for the Spanish people, especially those in Andalusia, but I cannot abide Spanish fishing interests. They are the worst poachers in the European Community fishing industry, and one cannot trust them--they swap licences around. In Vigo they have a club ; if a skipper is caught and fined, his fine is paid by an informal insurance system. I know that that is the case because one of my cousins was a skipper on one of those ships, so I have first-hand knowledge.

When I sought an assurance from the Prime Minister--which the right hon. Lady readily gave--she said that she would defend the interests of our fishermen with the utmost vigour. I was satisfied with her assurance, but when the Minister winds up the debate I shall be looking for a similar assurance from him about our fishermen's interests.

I said that I was going to be parochial and I have focused on three issues : the distribution of certain structural funds, which is important to many Scottish communities, and two maritime industries, shipbuilding and fishing. While I warmly welcome the unification of Germany, the assistance given to the fishing and shipbuilding industries there should not exceed that given to people employed in those industries in Britain--assistance to which they are legitimately entitled.

I have one final question for the Minister--is the aid, or part of it, that is to be given to the eastern German shipbuilding communities to be used for assisting with training or retraining of redundant shipyard workers? There are many thousands of shipyard workers in eastern Germany. Will part of the financial package be given to workers who are keen to set up small community businesses and community-based co-operatives? That is the kind of assistance that they should be given. The assistance that they are given should not enable them, by means of unfair competition, to close down yards in Scotland and in the other countries of the United Kingdom. 12.19 pm

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent) : It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman). He has given the House details. That is appropriate in terms of the documents that we are discussing. He has filled me with knowledge. Until today I had no idea that our inability to build a successor to the QE2 was due to the large-scale migration of Scottish shipwrights to the Palace of Westminster. He has also told me about a new species of bird--a Spanish-speaking, fish-eating vulture. I shall not give so many details in my speech and I shall make no prediction about the length of my speech. It is clear from experience that speakers cannot accurately predict how long their speeches will last.

We are debating the most tangible result, so far, of the break-up of the Russian empire. Like most hon. Members,

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if not all, in the House, with one manifest exception, I am part of one of the luckiest generations ever to have been born. I was too young to take part in the second world war. I have lived all my life in a country where it has been possible to enjoy a level of prosperity that had never been reached before. I have more spare time, a higher disposable income and a better quality of life than that enjoyed by any previous generation.

It is important for my generation to remember that it forms part of the 15 per cent. of the world's population that uses up 85 per cent. of the world's energy resources and that we owe a great deal of that prosperity to two major factors. First, we owe it to the extraordinary generosity of the United States in 1945, which perceived that there was a clear altruistic interest and self-interest in making it possible for the war-ravaged economies of Europe to rebuild themselves on the back of American money. Secondly, a substantial part of Europe was locked in by a tyranny unexampled in history. More people have been killed, tortured and imprisoned in the Soviet empire than in any other empire in history. To the people who have began to emerge from under that tyrannical ice we owe a great deal of support and practical assistance, of the same kind--albeit delivered by different mechanisms--as that which the Americans offered to us after the second world war.

I believe that certain hon. Members, most of whom are on the other side of the House, but not entirely, perhaps, believe, as does the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), that any involvement with the European mainland is fraught with danger, enormously expensive and totally misguided. They have no clear perception of recent history. The truth is that, with only short bursts of isolationism, this country has been involved with mainland Europe throughout the whole of this century and for many centuries before.

Dr. Godman : The apparent detest for continental Europe, expressed so forcefully by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), is surely shared by many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues.

Mr. Rowe : I said that I did not feel that that belief was held wholly and exclusively by Opposition Members. It is unfortunate that the hon. Member for Bolsover's assaults on my hon. Friend the Minister gain spurious clarity and effectiveness from the fact that, as so often, he did not stay to listen to the debate of which the Minister's speech was a part.

I believe firmly that we have been involved in Europe in the least constructive way possible. Time and again we have gone into Europe to fight great wars, or to clear up the mess of the great wars that we have had to fight and win. That is by far the least effective way to spend resources. It is destructive of life and peace. I am delighted that once again we have an opportunity to put an end to that for ever. To suggest that it is better to have large armed forces, paid for out of the national budget, sitting in Europe in order to keep the peace rather than getting ourselves properly involved in Europe, whereby we could ensure that war does not break out again, is a perversion of the truth.

I had the privilege to listen recently to a leading member of the Christian Democrats in West Germany speaking about recent developments. He used an example that I

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shall shamelessly steal from him. He said that there is no alternative to moving very fast indeed and that there are strong humanitarian reasons, apart from any other reasons, for moving quickly towards unification. He used as an example the Trabant car factory. Many of us saw Trabant cars for the first time as they came through the hole in the Berlin wall from east to west. The factory, he said, employs 65,000 people to make 12,000 cars that sell for DM15,000. The day that the wall came down, East Germans had access to Volkswagen Golfs. They sell for DM12,000 and are made by 7,000 workers. Not surprisingly, since the wall came down not a single Trabant car has been sold. The effect of that--it is almost funny at one level--is that 65,000 workers in East Germany have nothing useful to do and the plant in which they were employed is valueless. It cannot be changed, modified or used, so it will be destroyed.

Mr. Tony Banks : As an owner of a C5, perhaps I am not the best person to talk about Trabants. There is some worth in the concept of having a car that is exactly the same in all respects. I cannot think of anything more wasteful than the development money and the money that is poured into creating more models on the internal combustion engine principle with four wheels and four seats attached to them. The idea of producing one car that is standard throughout is quite good. I do not think that the East Germans were altogether wrong, and the hon. Gentleman should be fairer to the Trabant.

Mr. Rowe : I made no comment whatever on the quality or design of the Trabant. However, if 65,000 workers are required to build the same number of cars a year as are built elsewhere by 7,000 workers, there is little chance of that manufacturer surviving.

Some two thirds of the East German bureaucracy will no longer be necessary. If there had not been an urgent unification of the two Germanys, there would have been no social security system for those people. For humanitarian reasons, it was necessary to move rapidly. The same is true of the Russian soldiers in East Germany. When the deutschmark was linked, Russian soldiers in East Germany were unable to buy anything. It is still commonplace to see them begging in the streets and selling their equipment, cap badges and everything else. The Germans have made a practical and generous settlement with the Russians : they will not only supply DM4 billion a year until the troops return home but, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), will build them the flats that they require to return home to, which must be unprecedented. The costs of German unification have only just begun to emerge--DM100 billion to DM120 billion of Government expenditure alone. No one can foretell how much it will cost the private banking system and private companies to regenerate East German industry, but the cost will be enormous. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, that will give Britain an opportunity to take advantage of 16 million new consumers, many of whom have considerable resources because they were unable to spend their money on goods and have been saving it. I understand that one of the problems for the Bundesbank is how to allow that money to start circulating without causing considerable inflation. That must be an

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opportunity for British industry, and I very much hope that it will overcome its lack of German-speaking skill, get in there and create a market.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford said that if there had not been rapid reunification, there would have been rapid movements of population. The break-up of the Russian empire presents western Europe with one of the biggest potential problems that it has had to face. Realistic estimates of the number of people who may leave the Soviet Union run as high as 23 million. Where will they go? With the exception of the Jews, they will travel west if they can. In many cases, they will travel to countries that are already struggling to emerge from under the Soviet yoke, which have no resources of their own and which are looking to join the European Community. For that reason, if not for humanitarian reasons, it must pay western Europe to work out a way of financing those people to stay in their own countries. It will not be easy, because, goodness knows, the Soviet Union is on the point of break-up. Regardless of whether the republics finally sign the treaty of union that is being painfully hammered out in Moscow, in real terms central control from Moscow will soon cease to be a reality in most of the Soviet republics. We must take seriously the movement of population. The idea that if we shut our eyes to it, we can stand aloof from what is happening in eastern Europe is a chimera of the most dangerous kind. It has been calculated that the Russian Jews moving into Israel are likely to boost Israel's GNP by about 13 per cent. for the next four years. Where will those people live? I am sure that I am not the only Member who has the uneasy feeling that they will be put in the country that is claimed by the Palestinians. That will create a vast international problem of which we must take cognisance.

It must be right to encourage people to stay where they are. That will be done by a guarantee that their human rights will be observed. Many of these people would stay where they are, despite the financial attractions of moving, if they were sure that they would not be persecuted and their places of worship closed and if they were allowed freedom to exercise their human rights. That is why the Helsinki process has been so important. It is why the Council of Europe spends so much of its time trying to make sure that the countries that want to belong to the Council as new members have a secure human rights mechanism. That is why it is important that effective means are found of making sure that the Stasi, the Securitate, the secret police of all these countries--which had vast numbers and have almost disappeared from view--are not given the opportunity or the desire to organise themselves as a counterbalance to the legitimate democracies.

We must also take account of the large enclaves of people of different races, languages and religions who come from other countries. In Czechoslovakia, it is encouraging to find not only that the Slovaks and Czechs are determined to make their federation work but that the Hungarian minority has no intention of breaking away. The people are working extremely hard in the face of great difficulty to create federal and republic constitutions that will guarantee basic rights to the Hungarians. That is one reason why national frontiers in Europe generally must be of decreasing importance as the years go by.

All of us must have been reassured when it was agreed that the boundaries of the German Republic would be

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inviolate and would stay as they were. In the end, the guarantee that some troublemaker in the future will not use these minorities in the way that Hitler used minorities to stir up trouble, giving the pretext for armed intervention, will come when national frontiers cease to be of prime importance. It is clear that, so far, many workers in East Germany show no interest in construction work or manual work of any kind. They want to get on to the white collar ladder. If manual work is to be done, it will probably be done by people from Poland. It is essential that those people are welcomed into the Council of Europe as soon as possible and eventually into an enlarged European Community, although that will take some time. Another pressure making the anxiety and understandable caution about losing a part of some national characteristic in the wider whole so irrelevant is the enormous compulsion of environmental protection. It is bizarre to imagine that we can protect the environment on the basis of historical national fronters. The announcement this week that the Elbe is to be the first of the great European rivers to be subjected to a multinational agreement to try to clean it up and to protect it is one of the developments that has given me more encouragement than anything else this week. The great European rivers are destroying not only themselves, but the North sea, and must be looked after by all the riparian owner countries through which the rivers flow working together.

One of the least encouraging features of my recent life was when I addressed in Strasbourg a group of young people, many of whom came from eastern European countries. No sooner were they given the chance to ask questions than they going for one another because of the pollution that each was causing to the others. The Czechs were going at the Poles and the Poles at the Hungarians. It was an appalling scene, with young people with the whole of their lives in front of them and who were just emerging from one of the worst tyrannies that the world has seen attacking each other instead of trying to work together.

In our generation, we have the finest opportunity ever to create a new European order in which national boundaries will gradually cease to be of anything like their importance hitherto. I want to be parochial for a moment, and to pay tribute to Kent county council and to some of the district councils in Kent that have taken the initiative and signed agreements with the Nord-Pas de Calais. They are engaged in training, educational and commercial exchanges, and they are hoping for industrial exchanges because they have realised that once the channel tunnel is built, the channel will be a meaningless division between the Nord-Pas de Calais and Kent. I admire and respect those councils for that. Their agreements, in their parochial way, are a model that I fervently hope that the House and Parliament will follow gladly. That will give our young people the best possible opportunity of enjoying the prosperity that our generation has had the luck to enjoy.

12.42 pm

Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : The hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) made some good points in his characteristically fair-minded way. I am glad that he has now joined the Council of Europe delegation, as he will be able to bring a further dimension to our deliberations in Strasbourg.

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The hon. Gentleman referred to the people of the east--especially those in the dissolving Soviet empire--staying where they are. He said that human rights are probably central to their decisions about location, but I believe that economic benefits and welfare are of equal importance. The British Government could do far more now to assist Mr. Gorbachev economically with the enormous problems facing the Soviet empire. One of our great fears is that the Soviet Union itself will fall asunder, giving rise to enormous instability throughout Europe when we are poised to gain great benefits from Mr. Gorbachev's achievements. There are great political dangers not only for him, but for all of us if we stand aside and say that these are merely the problems of the system and that we shall see how they resolve themselves. We cannot afford to do that and it would be an idle luxury on our part which could drag us down. I hope that Conservative Members will listen carefully to the hon. Member for Mid-Kent and that we shall see more initiatives from the Government in the weeks and months ahead.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to population movement. Many countries in the east will be looking to the united Germany for their own future economic welfare. It has been established that the united Germany has a negative population growth rate ; it is also true that the average age there is just under 47. There is obviously a clear capacity for the country to absorb large numbers of eastern European workers, who will be able to share in what will clearly be one of the great economic success stories in the decade ahead. For my part, I have no doubt that a united Germany will succeed economically ; but I shall develop that point later.

As the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office made clear when he opened the debate, the unification of Germany has been a remarkable event in what can only be described as a politically most remarkable year. One almost runs out of adjectives to describe the current developments in Europe, and I am sure that we all wish to join the Minister in paying tribute to Mr. Gorbachev for what he has done. His historic role cannot be overestimated.

Marx would have said that it is impossible to judge the political and historical implications of an age when one happens to be living in it ; my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) is fond of quoting Chairman Mao, who, when asked what he thought were the implications of the French revolution, replied that it was too early to say. However, even now we can see that Mr. Gorbachev's contribution to the historic process that we are witnessing in Europe is vast and cannot possibly be overestimated.

It is also remarkable that so few people, in this country and elsewhere, anticipated German unification. As politicians we have all been blessed with the benefit of hindsight, and we always employ it shamelessly. Only 12 months ago I was fortunate enough to be on a delegation to the United Nations, and I remember discussing the possibility of German unification with the Soviet ambassador. He said, "Oh no, that is not on ; it would not be allowed." I remember asking him, "What if people vote with their feet? You cannot put the tanks in and roll it all back." The process started by Mr. Gorbachev had already gone too far, and there was nothing that the Soviets could do other than accept the developments in the GDR with the greatest grace that they could muster.

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