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Mr. Douglas : With respect, Mr. Speaker--
Mr. Speaker : Order. This statement concerns England.
Mr. Douglas : I know that it is about England. Let me tell right hon. and hon. Members that if they had paid attention to legislation that passes through the House that
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will affect Scotland, it would not have been necessary for the Secretary of State to make his statement this afternoon.As for the balance of local government expenditure, am I right in saying that the Secretary of State now expects a third of local government revenue to come form the poll tax? If the right hon. Gentleman is thinking about yielding to temptation, he should understand that people are not yielding to temptation when it comes to non-payment. Instead they are yielding to the temptation of having to feed their bairns and look after their old, rather than pay a hated tax.
Mr. Patten : Many of the definitions that we shall use for the standard charge are in tax law. If the hon. Gentleman wants more information about that, I should be happy to let him have it.
Mr. Douglas : Will the police be included?
Mr. Patten : Hold on a moment. These are categories that we shall have to consider in relation to existing tax law. I have mentioned some categories and some individuals who will be affected. The hon. Gentleman asked an extensive question and I am trying to answer it. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman asked about the proportion of local government spending that would be paid for by the community charge. Taking account of contributions for transitional relief and community charge benefit, that which is met by the community charge payer will be just over 25 per cent. There will be variations from one part of the country to another. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that when he studies the comparisons between Scotland, England and Wales.
Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North) : Is my right hon. Friend aware that the new Conservative-controlled Ealing council will certainly reduce the wickedly wasteful spending of its Labour predecessor, and with it the community charge? Does he know--
Mr. Gould : What about services?
Mr. Greenway : Services will be improved at the same time. Is he aware that business is being attracted back into Ealing because we have a good, sensible Conservative council? Will he ensure that the people of Ealing and its council benefit from the additional business rate that will be generated by business being attracted back to Ealing?
Mr. Patten : I am sure that a Conservative council in Ealing will encourage economic development through several of its activities. I am sure, for example, that it will be able to provide good-quality services at a reasonable cost, which will encourage several commercial sectors, and that it will encourage local residents such as the Leader of the Opposition, who I am sure must be grateful to have such a good local authority.
May I return to a question that I was asked earlier by the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas)? I said that we would be using definitions that are familiar in tax law. [Interruption.] Let me continue. I said that we were talking about people such as clergymen, service men and teachers. If a policeman has to live on the job, as it were, but has another home, he will qualify, too.
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) : I thank my right hon. Friend for what appear to be substantial increases in the SSAs for North Yorkshire and North Yorkshire districts.
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As he will know, those increases are based on a target community charge of £380, which is £102 higher than this year's charge. Is not it clear that authorities that set community charges at or about the target for this year will have to spend less than the SSA for next year, or there will be large rises in community charge bills?Mr. Patten : Yes, that is certainly the case. I very much hope that local authorities will take account of that when considering their responsibilities to their community charge payers.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Gedling) : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that for constituencies such as mine, which has a low-spending, effective and efficient Conservative-controlled borough council, but which suffers under a high-spending and profligate socialist county council, his new, improved, restyled Bill, when issued next year, will make clear who is responsible for overspending?
Mr. Patten : I very much hope that that will be so. It will make clear what proportion of the bill is the responsibility of the county council.
Mr. Michael Stern (Bristol, North-West) : Is my right hon. Friend aware that the stringent criteria that he has set out this afternoon for maximum spending by councils will be particularly welcome to hard-pressed community charge payers in areas such as the Labour and parrot-controlled county of Avon? Does he agree that it is to be hoped that one effect of the criteria that he has announced will be that instead of making just financial adjustments councils will, for the first time, consider their spending levels?
Mr. Patten : I agree with my hon. Friend, not least in relation to Avon, in which I also have an interest.
Mr. Tony Favell (Stockport) : More grant for town halls means more taxes. Will my right hon. Friend take an early opportunity to find out from the Opposition's spokesman whether he is in favour of more grant for town halls? I am sure that the shadow Treasury team would like to know. If not, could we not have gone home an hour and a half ago and taken the dog for a walk?
Mr. Patten : The Opposition are opaque on that issue. When the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer is here they are in favour of fiscal prudence, but when their other Front-Bench spokesmen are here they are in favour of spending more money.
Mr. Ian Bruce (Dorset, South) : I welcome widely the three changes in tourism grant, education and police, which are part of the submission by Dorset county council and the district councils to my right hon. Friend, but, before the final settlement is reached, will the Government reconsider the cost adjustment factor? The Government say that, in logic, certain counties will have to pay more because of the cost of living in an area, but drawing a line around the south-east and excluding counties such as Dorset, Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire and Avon will cost us much money. Hampshire is receiving an extra 4.5 per cent. That would be another £18 million on our grant, which would take it from £28 million to £46 million. It makes a great deal of difference. Dorset county council overspent its SSA by 4 per cent. It would have been below its SSA if we had had that money last year.
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Mr. Patten : At present, we have a satisfactory way of calculating differences in costs only on a regional basis, but I continue to be prepared to consider other suggested formulae.Mr. Michael Jack (Fylde) : My right hon. Friend may be aware that in the past three years Lancashire county council has spent £2,400 million of the public's money but posted efficiency savings of only some £22 million. That is a pathetic performance. The people of the Fylde coast, while welcoming his excellent announcement on tourism and the money that that will bring, will worry that the inefficiency of Lancashire county council will remove the benefits that he has conferred on them. To that end, so that they may judge its efficiency, will he publish figures of best practice in local government so that they can keep a close eye on the robber barons in county hall?
Mr. Patten : My hon. Friend will know of the part that the Audit Commission plays in encouraging best practice in local government. He has always been interested in greater energy efficiency. The Audit Commission demonstrated not long ago that local authorities could save £100 million a year by best practice in energy efficiency.
Mr. Jacques Arnold (Gravesham) : May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on switching his population analysis from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys figures, which unfairly underestimated the population of some boroughs, notably Gravesham, to the numbers on the community charge register, which will favour efficient registering authorities? May I also express my disappointment at the continuing failure to classify the borough of Gravesham as being among the fringe boroughs? It continues to be the only district so close to London that is not classified as a fringe borough.
Mr. Patten : I am afraid that I have not quite done what my hon. Friend thought in the first part of his question that I had done, but I shall nevertheless look into that issue and into the second point that he made and perhaps write to him on both.
Mr. Chris Butler (Warrington, South) : Does my right hon. Friend think that it is fair for councillors to continue to collect allowances that are paid for the community when those councillors do not pay their community charges, or that itinerants who use community services so easily continue to escape their liability?
Mr. Patten : Other people's consciences continually amaze me. I cannot understand how Labour councillors can conceivably collect allowances and refuse to pay their community charge, while expecting other people to pay their charges and taxes to pay for their allowances.
Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside) : Has the Secretary of State examined his conscience about the impact of poll tax capping on children in schools, on the elderly receiving social services and on those in need? Will he confirm that if we take the settlement for this year with the one that has been announced this afternoon for next year, we find that the contribution from central Government to local spending has decreased from 38.6 to 35 per cent., and that the amount from the poll tax is predicted to increase from 28.6 to 32.3 per cent.? As a consequence, we see not an increase of 7.6 per cent. in the
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amount of central Government grant but a revenue support grant increase, year on year, of 1.9 per cent., which is nothing like what has been suggested.Will the right hon. Gentleman also confirm that, in the major change in the assessment of the other services bloc for tourism, which was welcomed by Conservative Back Benchers as though it were a major change, he took into account the feelings of his constituents in Bath, such as Mr. Troop, who on the "World at One" today, speaking as a business man, said that Thatcherite sustained growth, theme park Britain will not be able to feed or clothe itself in the future? He said that at that rate--I think that he was talking about the national business rate--we will be eating novelties and postcards.
Does the right hon. Gentleman have any comfort for those in hard-pressed industrial areas who want unemployment taken into account in standard spending assessments and want the safety net retained rather than phased out because of the effect on services in the real world where this rate matters, not the postcard world of those in Eastbourne and elsewhere who have praised the Government this afternoon?
Mr. Patten : Mr. Troop is one of my constituents, although not one whose views are shared by the Bath Association of Retailers or the Bath chamber of commerce. I am sure that, in the light of what he apparently said on radio, he will be delighted by the fact that manufacturing industry outside inner London will pay less in rates than under the old system. That seems to me to be precisely the sort of issue that Mr. Troop--who, incidentally, is in retailing--would very much welcome.
On the adjustments that we have made to SSAs, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is pleased that we have listened to the
representations that we received from Sheffield about heavy goods vehicles and have taken them into account in the adjustments. As for support for local authorities, the most important figure is the AEF figure, which I have given several times a 12.8 per cent. increase. The hon. Gentleman overlooks the scale of the specific grants and special grants that we are paying. Overall, the increase in grants is 7.65 per cent. I do not expect the hon. Gentleman to blazon that argument, because it does not appear to suit his own. What the hon. Gentleman conveniently ignores in the other figures that he gave is the contribution that we make to community charge payers through the transitional relief scheme, community charge benefits and so on.
On the hon. Gentleman's first point about spending on education, I draw his attention to a letter this morning in The Independent by the director of the South Bank polytechnic, pointing out the inspectorate's work in Labour boroughs which spend a great deal of money on education but which were badly letting down their pupils in the past. Thank heavens we are starting to get away from that.
Mr. Speaker : I have been pleased to be able to call every hon. Member who wished to put a question to the Secretary of State because today there have been exceptional circumstances. I now understand that it is not necessary for me to call on the Government Front Bench to move motion No. 2 on the Order Paper. I would not wish my actions this afternoon to be taken as a precedent.
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I wish that it were always possible to call all hon. Members who wish to put questions, as I was able to do today. I think that the Secretary of State now deserves a cup of tea.Column 1018
Points of Order
5.32 pm
Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your help and assistance. It is noticeable that for two hours and one minute the Secretary of State for the Environment stood at the Dispatch Box, making a long complex statement and then fielding at length many questions from right hon. and hon. Members on the important matter of the poll tax. May I ask you, Sir, to help right hon. and hon. Members from Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales has run away from the House. He has made no statement in the House, but in Cardiff he made a complex one. He has not submitted himself to any questioning and has treated Welsh Members with discourtesy. We ask whether you can bring him to the House to answer questions on an important matter. The people of Wales dislike the poll tax and have rejected it in all elections. The Secretary of State for Wales has run away. He has chickened out. He has not seen fit to show that he takes the House seriously.
Mr. Speaker : The hon. Member knows that that is not within my competence, but I am sure that what he said was heard by the Government Front Bench.
Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Today's Order Paper contains a motion tabled by the Leader of the House--
"That this House do meet on Thursday 1st November at half-past Nine o'clock."
That motion is for prorogation. I seek information about parliamentary questions. I have asked two questions, requesting information about the proposed west end development scheme in Bradford. The answer--
"it is not our practice, for reasons of commercial confidentiality, to reveal details of development proposals"
could be interpreted by the Table Office as a blocking answer. Will you confirm, Mr. Speaker, that after prorogation when parliamentary business falls, blocking answers also fall? This means that questions about matters of great concern to the people of Bradford can be tabled after 7 November.
Mr. Speaker : I understand that after prorogation questions can be tabled afresh.
Mr. Dick Douglas (Dunfermline, West) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the pleasantries that have been exchanged in the House today in relation to Scotland, may I have some clarification from you about your attitude when a statement is made which could have an effect on all the nations of the United Kingdom? Will you take the view that Scottish Question Time is a uniquely Scottish occasion and that English Back-Bench Tory Members should not transgress it, or will you take the view that this is a United Kingdom Parliament and that if Members keep within order they are entitled to put their questions to any Secretary of State who makes a statement from the Dispatch Box?
Mr. Speaker : The hon. Member knows the answer without asking the question. He well knows, because I regularly say it, that this is a United Kingdom Parliament. That is why he was called today. When he spoke to me at the Chair, I explained to him that this statement had no direct relevance to Scotland but that I would call him at the end. I did that. The hon. Member then began to ask a
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question about Scotland, and it was on that point that I pulled him up. This is indeed a United Kingdom Parliament, and I shall continue to act as I have always done in treating all Members equally and fairly.Column 1020
Vagrancy Acts (Repeals and Amendment)
5.36 pm
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme) : I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to abolish the crime of vagrancy and to repeal and amend certain statutory provisions in respect of homeless persons ; and for other purposes.
The purpose of the Bill is to abolish the Vagrancy Act 1824, which was introduced to deal with specific problems of vagrancy following the Napoleonic wars. We do not need this vagrancy law. It can give a criminal record to homeless people, making it even more difficult for them to climb literally out of the gutter.
The Act makes it a crime to sleep on the street and to beg. It makes it a crime to be homeless or destitute. Until recently, the Vagrancy Act had hardly been used and, indeed, it was abolished in Scotland by the Civil Government (Scotland) Act 1982. In recent years, however, as the number of homeless persons has increased, prosecutions under the Act have started to show a dramatic increase. In 1988, in England and Wales, some 573 people were prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act. In 1989 there were 1,396 prosecutions, according to a survey of only four central London magistrates courts. What happened to those people? In most cases, they were fined if they had any money on them, or imprisoned overnight if they did not, and then they went back out on to the streets, still homeless, still without money, but now with a criminal record. What a waste of police and court time.
All hon. Members know that the number of people, particularly young people, sleeping in shop doorways, under bridges, in cardboard boxes, in graveyards or in any rough shelter they can find has increased dramatically. There are now sleeping on our streets mentally disturbed people discharged from our mental hospitals without support, youngsters barred from making claims under our social security system, people who have left home because of the strains on family life, youngsters who leave home as the answer to abuse and young people who leave care without proper support--many people with a variety of reasons who are vulnerable not only because of their background or age but because they are homeless and penniless, and, because of that, they can acquire a criminal record.
Consider the case of a youngster who leaves home--perhaps no longer able to cope because of the many strains of teenage life. He or she may arrive in London frightened, with little money and nowhere to go, bewildered and lost in the vastness of the city, cold, hungry and not knowing what to do. Such youngsters can turn to petty crime or they can beg. They can sleep on the street or they can break into an unoccupied house for shelter. Whichever choice they make, they are criminals. In having nowhere to sleep but the streets, in being desperately thirsty and hungry and in asking a passer-by for a few shillings, a youngster commits a criminal act and, if caught, can acquire a criminal record, which will put a black mark against any future job opportunities. Where is the sense in that?
Homelessness and being without money are not criminal problems. They are problems with which the House should deal. It is our failing and our lack of a sense of priority that punish the poor and defenceless in our society.
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Some people say that the repeal of the Vagrancy Act would encourage people to sleep rough. Have those people ever tried sleeping rough on the streets of our big towns, night after night, in all weathers, alone and vulnerable? I have heard it said that the repeal of the Act would lead to intimidation by beggars and that the police would have no control over that. But alternative laws already exist to cover intimidation. Section 4 of the Public Order Act 1986 covers the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. The obstruction of free passage of the highway is covered by the Highways Act 1980. Making an unwarranted demand with menaces is covered by section 14 of the Theft Act 1968.It is being said that unscrupulous people are behaving like latter-day Fagins, using youngsters to beg, and that section 3 of the Vagrancy Act makes it an offence to cause or procure or encourage a child to beg. But that, too, is an offence under section 4 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933.
Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act states :
"Every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building and not giving a good account of himself"--
where an unlawful purpose is involved--
"shall be deemed a rogue and a vagabond"
and that
"It shall be lawful for any justice of the peace to commit such offender for any time not exceeding three calendar months." But being on enclosed premises for an unlawful purpose is already covered by section 7 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. When the homeless and beggars commit real crimes they can be charged with real offences.
In February this year, the Minister of State, Home Office wrote to me :
"It is important to stress, however, that a person may not be prosecuted for sleeping rough unless he or she has previously been directed to a reasonably accessible place of shelter and failed to apply for, or refused accommodation there ; or he or she persistently wanders abroad notwithstanding that a place of shelter is reasonably accessible".
The Government admit that the lack of sufficient accommodation available for the homeless is a real problem. It should not be the job of our overworked police force to check that beds are available or that accommodation has been refused. It should not be for our
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over-full courts to make a judgment on whether homeless people applied or did not apply to get into a hostel before declaring them rogues and vagabonds.The Minister of State also wrote that sleeping rough or begging are not arrestable offences under section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. If that is the Government's position, why do we need to retain the Vagrancy Act, which clearly states :
"Every person wandering abroad, or placing himself or herself in any public place, street, highway, court or passage, to beg or gather alms shall be deemed an idle and disorderly person within the true intent and meaning of this Act ; and it shall be lawful for any justice of the peace to commit each offender for any time not exceeding one calendar month."
The Secretary of State cannot have it both ways. Either the Vagrancy Act is being used to make criminals of homeless and hungry people or it is not. If it is not in use, it should be repealed. If it is being used, the Home Secretary should say quite clearly that the Government consider that it is a criminal offence to be homeless and hungry.
My hon. Friends and I believe that homelessness is a great social problem which only far-reaching policy initiatives can address. Sleeping out and begging are often the result of homlessness. It ought not to be the role of the criminal law to punish those most vulnerable groups in society who have been reduced to a life on the streets.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mrs. Llin Golding, Mr. John P. Smith, Mr. Frank Field, Mr. Peter Archer, Miss Kate Hoey, Mr. Dennis Turner, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, Mr. Tom Cox, Sir Charles Irving, Mr. Barry Sheerman, Mr. Robin Squire and Mr. Dave Nellist.
VAGRANCY ACTS (REPEALS AND AMENDMENT)
Mrs. Llin Golding accordingly presented a Bill to abolish the crime of vagrancy and to repeal and amend certain statutory provisions in respect of homeless persons ; and for other purposes : And the same was read the First time ; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill No. 211].
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered,
That this House do meet on Thursday 1st November at half-past Nine o'clock. -- [Sir Geoffrey Howe.]
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Noise Abatement and the Environment
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Neil Hamilton.]
5.46 pm
The Minister for the Environment and Countryside (Mr. David Trippier) : I am sure that all hon. Members will welcome the opportunity to talk about a form of environmental pollution which, although it cannot be seen, has the capacity, if not controlled, to be an insidious, all-pervading cause of enormous stress.
I am sure that there is not one hon. Member who has not received heart- rending stories from constituents about the invasion of their lives by noise. Indeed, today's debate is most timely as there is no doubt that the profile of noise as a source of major nuisance has been raised over the past few months as a result of the culmination of several major Government initiatives.
First, the Environmental Protection Bill contains a number of improvements in environmental noise control. Secondly, the Government's recently published White Paper on the environment devotes a whole chapter to noise and explains what action is under way and what we plan for the future. Thirdly, the findings and recommendations of the independent noise review working party--set up by the Government at the beginning of this year to look at the adequacy of noise controls--have recently been published.
Let me explain in greater detail. The main aim of part III of the Environmental Protection Bill is to align the regime for dealing with statutory nuisances such as smells and dust with that of the more streamlined system that already exists for dealing with noise nuisance. We did not intend the Bill to be used as a tool to introduce fundamental changes to noise legislation, as we wanted to have the opportunity to consider fully what the noise review working party had to say on the many facets of noise in the environment. However, the opportunity has been taken to make a few worthwhile changes.
Firstly, the maximum penalty that can be incurred by industries, trades or businesses for breaching a nuisance abatement notice will rise from £2,000 to £20,000. Secondly, the definition of statutory nuisance has been widened to include noise that is prejudicial to health and not just a nuisance. Thirdly, the duty of a local authority to investigate complaints has been clarified. Existing legislation already gives local authorities a duty to cause their area to be inspected from time to time to detect any noise nuisance. Of course, one would expect local authorities to take reasonable steps to investigate complaints made to them about noise and most authorities interpret the existing duty in that way. It has been suggested, however, that the wording of the existing duty is unduly obscure, and the noise review working party has recommended that action should be taken to clarify the duty on local authorities. The Bill therefore makes it clear that local authorities are not only under a duty to inspect their area from time to time to detect statutory nuisances but must take such steps as are reasonably practicable to investigate complaints.
I should now like to refer to the White Paper on the environment and the report of the noise review working party, both of which have just been published.
Sir Alan Glyn (Windsor and Maidenhead) : Will the provisions apply to small airfields--a subject on which I
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have written to the Minister--which give rise to real difficulties? In my constituency, for instance, the flight path to and from an airfield goes right over people's houses.Mr. Trippier : If my hon. Friend will be patient, I will devote quite a substantial chunk of my speech to that problem.
The two factors to which I had referred before my hon. Friend's intervention are closely related and it may be useful if I explain first the background to the setting up of the noise review working party. The Government announced last December that the review was to take place and last February we announced that it would be taken forward by an independent working party chaired by Mr. James Batho, one-time secretary of the Noise Advisory Council.
The chairman was asked to complete the review in sufficient time so that the recommendations could, as far as practicable, be taken into account by the Government when drafting the White Paper. The working party included representatives of local authorities, research establishments and people with special knowledge of the problems of environmental noise. The Government are most grateful for all the time and hard work that the chairman and the working party members put into that report. At this point, I want to echo the chairman's appreciation of the late Charlie Bayne, who was the secretary to the working party. He tragically died a few days after the group's final meeting. He was held in high regard for his tenacity and application by members of the working party and his colleagues in the Department. I am sure that all hon. Members would want to join me in expressing sympathy to Mr. Bayne's family.
The breadth of expertise and experience represented has resulted in a report that will play a most important part in influencing future development in noise policy. Indeed the noise section of the White Paper owes much to the emerging deliberation of the working party as its work progressed.
Having set the scene, I should now like to talk about existing and proposed new measures for dealing with noise. These comprise the reduction of noise at source ; reducing exposure to noise ; and the controlling of noise.
Much is being done to reduce noise at source. For example, the Government are constantly seeking ways of reducing noise from road vehicles. Tighter standards have reduced noise levels considerably over the past 10 years and it should be technically possible to reduce noise levels further for both cars and lorries. The Government are pressing for such significant reductions to be introduced across the EEC. The United Kingdom also took a leading role in new tighter EC standards for motor cycles and will follow that with new regulations to control the quality of silencers on the market. It is important to make sure that vehicles continue to meet noise standards throughout their lifetime. It is already an offence to alter a silencer to make it louder, or to use a vehicle in a way that creates excessive noise. The Government are now examining the practicalities of introducing metered noise testing as part of the annual test and when inspecting vehicles at the road side.
Sir Philip Goodhart (Beckenham) : In the coming Session it is expected that at least two Bills will deal with
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