House of Commons Hansard Debates for 19 Dec 1990

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to wires and cables, which weigh 10 times more and five times more than the weight at which they can remain attached to their poles. This was an uncanny reminder of that ghastly period in the history of the North sea trawler industry about 15 years ago when trawlers were affected in the same way. They became top heavy as ice attached to their superstructure, the centre of gravity would suddenly become affected and they would turn turtle without warning, with substantial loss of life. Ice accretion is rare but not unknown. We in Britain perhaps experience it more than elsewhere because our country is windier and wetter than others where much lower temperatures are recorded. It is something for which we should be prepared, but because it does not happen more than once every 20 years we attempt to muddle through. We then have to face conditions that amounted, recently, to a major catastrophe for the east midlands, and one that perhaps did not receive the attention that it properly deserved for the reasons that my hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire, North-East and for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) and the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) have set out. East Midlands Electricity said :

"The extent of the damage, with poles and miles of wire on the ground, is similar to that experienced during the 1987 hurricane in the South of England."

I think that we would all agree that it did not get the same attention as the 1987 hurricane in the national press. That hurricane was thought to be a national problem, whereas the damage in the east midlands was viewed as a regional problem affecting those unfortunates living north of Watford gap. It was not the subject of dinner table conversation in Hampstead ; it was not the subject of leaders in The Times ; it was not thought to be on a par with the hurricane which happened shortly after the general election that brought me and other hon. Members to the House. The Secretary of State for the Environment made a statement about the hurricane on the Monday that the House reassembled after the summer recess. The hurricane remained a major talking point for months because we could all see evidence of it in the trees that had fallen down in Hyde park and elsewhere.

Those of us who are not from the east midlands have not seen the devastation there. However, to get some idea of the measure of it, I can tell the House that 800,000 customers were without power on 8 December. The figure gradually reduced--500,000 by midnight that day ; 300,000 by midnight on Sunday ; 190,000 by midnight on Monday ; 90, 000 by midnight on Tuesday ; 55,000 by midnight on Wednesday ; 30,000 by midnight on Thursday ; and 14,500 by midnight on Friday. The figures came down, but six days after the event there were still 14, 500 customers without power.

My latest information from East Midlands Electricity is that there are still hundreds of consumers without power in the more remote parts of the east midlands, yet it is now 12 days and a couple hours since the event. It is a major dislocation of electricity supplies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield said, many people now depend on electricity in all- electric homes and institutions. They no longer have coal fires and supplies of candles and other alternatives. The more dependent we are on electricty, the more essential it is that we are better prepared for the occasional weather disaster.

I am told by East Midlands Electricity that the damage in the telecommunications service is even greater than that

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in the electricity service. The number of telecommunications cables that have come down, and are still down, is greater than the number of electricity cables. They are the non- weatherproof part of our public utilities. Water and gas pipes run underground, but electricity--other than in large cities--and telecommunications cables are above ground. They are prone to exposure to high winds, especially when they combine with snow, sleet and ice, as happened on 8 December in the east midlands.

We are trying to measure how good performance was and what needs to be done to improve it. Reference has rightly been made to the need for mature reflection. East Midlands Electricity will be producing a report, and I hope that we will have access to it in the Library or in another forum here where we can debate it. Hon. Members who represent other parts of the country will want to determine what lessons can be learnt from a weather disaster that resulted in 800, 000 customers being left without electricity for some time, and 500, 000 customers being left without electricity for 24 hours or more. Britain is proud of its electricity industry. It is far from being a lame duck. It has an exceptionally good record, comparable with Germany and among the best in the world, on security of supply. It has a record superior to that of the United States, Japan and France on the avoidance of blackouts and brownouts. Therefore, when the supply to a large part of the country is knocked out, it merits close examination to discover what went wrong, whether it could have been avoided and whether it can be avoided in future.

We are also proud of the efforts of the company's management and work force and of the staff who were borrowed from other companies and shipped in from other countries as well. That was done fairly rapidly, but not instantaneously. That would have meant travelling along the M6, M69, M42 and M1, which was not possible on the first day.

When the matter was discussed in the House on a private notice question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), hon. Members tended to recount their experiences in the snow rather than what happened to the east midlands region. They regaled us with stories about how long they had had to spend in their cars on the M6, almost boasting about their experiences. There was only a limited discussion of the regional electricity and other infrastructure problems. They dealt largely with how inconvenient it was for Members of Parliament, attempting to fulfil engagements, not to be able to travel up the M6 without let or hindrance. That is an important point, but it is not the most important point.

This is the first opportunity that we have had, admittedly before a limited audience, to discuss the regional problems in north Derbyshire and the surrounding areas ; looking at the matter not just as the blocking of four motorways by snow, but to see what lessons can be learnt for the electricty supply system and whether we could or should have done better in getting supplies reconnected. It is true that the blocking of the motorway vitiated early attempts to ship in large numbers of linesmen to reconnect supplies. The company could not even use its helicopter in the early stages. It could not get it airborne. But gradually, by the middle of the week, it was able to assemble something like General Schwarzkopf's task force in Saudi Arabia. The men, materials and supplies had to

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be put together in the right place--it is no good having men without materials, or vice versa--and that took three or four days. For large numbers of people to be without electricity for three or four days creates a colossal problem. Our ability to make do and mend is not as great as it was. To that extent, society is much less flexible and resourceful than it was. One cannot avoid mentioning the fact that some local market traders and shopkeepers exploited the situation. We are told that on Monday, when people in Mansfield were desperately looking for candles, they were on sale at £2.50 each. I am glad to say that, to counter that boil on the surface of the enterprise culture, the company managed to acquire 50,000 candles which were then distributed free by Age Concern by Wednesday evening.

That was a useful countervailing force. It may have been done four or five days after the start of the disaster, but it prevented gross exploitation of the situation with people trying to make a bomb out of the fact that candle supplies were limited just when people were desperate for any means of lighting their way to bed or finding the toilet in the middle of the night, or for whatever other reason they might have needed candles.

All that illustrates the extent of the crisis, and just how dislocated a society such as ours, which is so dependent on modern conveniences, becomes when the source of power for those modern conveniences is suddenly unavailable.

By an extraordinary coincidence, those events occurred just at the moment when the button was about to be pushed, and the champagne about to be poured, at the celebrations to mark the flotation of the 12 electricity companies. They all arranged champagne parties for 11 December, with the exception of East Midlands Electricity--which was sensible enough to cancel its celebrations. It was successfully floated on the stock exchange, but its management realised that it would have been most inappropriate to hold a champagne party on a day when 100,000 of that company's customers were without electricity. Incidentally, that coincidence might be viewed by some of a more religious bent as the wrath of God being visited on the Secretary of State for Energy for daring to privatise the industry, but I do not go in for such extremist theories. So I shall not invoke the image of the four horsemen of the apocalypse being glimpsed in the darkness, riding through north Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

What is the most important aspect of the electricity industry? Is it the same as that of the water companies, a year after their flotation, which is to increase their dividend by the greatest percentage? I am told by people in the financial world that that is the current priority of the 10 water and sewage companies. If the same thing happens over the next year in respect of the 12 electricity companies, they will have thrown away the industry's crown jewels. Its crown jewels were displayed last week when, as part of the public service ethic, people were willing to work through the night in the frozen wastes of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to restore services and meet the needs of customers for a continuous supply. Will there be a clash in future between the companies' clear fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximise profits and the need that everyone in Britain has--except those of a hermit-like persuasion--for electricity to flow whenever we throw the switch? That public utility mentality must be retained even by the privatised companies, or they will be unable to

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persuade staff to turn out at the dead of night, ship in help from other regions, or secure a commitment from another company even if it does not know where the money is to come from. In the past, one board could ring another and ask to borrow 100 of its linesmen, and leave the financial arrangements to be sorted out later. That staff had to be paid for, but there was no haggling over price when they were needed most--in the same way as the benefiting company would not haggle five years later, when Yorkshire or south-west England were affected.

That tradition has been built up during the period that the industry has been in public ownership. It is essential that that remains the overriding ethic of the industry, even if it has been floated in the private sector.

If the linesmen are infected by the gold digger psychology--like the people who were selling candles for £2.50 each in Mansfield that Monday night --they will start to think, "They need us. It is supply and demand. We want treble time and a full lodging allowance, as if we were staying in a five- star hotel." They will say that if Kleinwort Benson has made a fortune out of the privatisation of the industry, they will make a fortune out of it, too.

If we lose the willingness to turn out at dead of night because it is a tradition in the industry, and that is what one is supposed to do because society has become so dependent on continuity of electricity supply, the industry will be on the slippery slope. When we finally receive a proper report, after mature reflection, when all the facts are known and consumers are finally reconnected, Opposition Ministers will want to know about the degree to which the public service ethic remains fully effective, despite the financial euphoria that was beginning to overcome parts of the industry as the magic day of 11 December approached. We shall want to know what guarantees the Government will be able to offer us that--privatisation, or no privatisation--the public service ethic, the willingness to turn out and to work double shifts until every consumer who has lost supply is reconnected, will remain, regardless of who owns the industry, whether it is private shareholders or the state, through the Secretary of State for Energy.

6.13 am

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory) : We have heard graphic descriptions of the inconvenience and hardship suffered by people in the east midlands due to the severe weather over the weekend of 8 and 9 December. Despite the hour, this morning's debate has seen contributions not only from the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), who instigated the debate, but from the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes), whose constituency was also affected. On the Conservative Benches, we have had a contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) and I also know that my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) was affected personally, as were his constituents, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), on the Treasury Bench, also represents a midlands seat and therefore has an interest in the debate.

I should like to join my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling and other hon. Members in extending sympathy to those who were without electricity supplies for many

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days--in some cases for well over a week. People were affected not only in their homes, but also at work. Water supplies were also affected and there were interruptions in the electricity supply to a number of important businesses and industries in the area. I know that a number of British Coal collieries were affected, as were Rolls- Royce at Derby, Courtaulds Acetate, and a number of British Gypsum's mines, and that Severn Trent Water lost supply to 13 of its 15 water treatment plants. So a very wide area was affected. At times, the supply to more than half a million electricity customers was interrupted. The storm was forecast and East Midlands Electricity began to put staff and materials in position at an early stage, before the storm hit. Its 13 emergency centres were manned and engineers and line gangs were on standby. When the storm hit the area, however, they found it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get the men and materials to the stricken areas. Snow cover affected movement, and blizzard conditions made it impossible to repair damage immediately.

The phenomenon known as ice accretion arises from wet snow falling on the line at around freezing point, and then refreezing owing to the cooling effect of the wind. The build-up of ice on one side of the line causes the wire to rotate, opening another area to the wind. Ice up to 12 ins thick was deposited on some of the line connectors, which adds approximately 15 lb a yard to the weight of the line. It is not surprising that, in such conditions, lines fell down or broke and wooden poles collapsed ; indeed, even some of the large 132kv steel pylons were damaged. As a result, by the evening of Saturday 8 December about half a million customers were without supplies. The normal standard of design allows a 132kv system to withstand half an inch of ice in a 50 mph wind, with a safety factor of two. A build- up of ice of up to 12 ins on some of the lines was clearly well beyond the design capability of even the best systems. All the voltage lines were affected in one way or another. Obviously repairs had to start on the high- voltage lines, because only when they were repaired was it possible to identify problems in the lower-voltage systems. Some customers may not have understood that that sequence of events was necessary, and understandably felt frustrated because their local, lower-voltage line was not tackled first.

East Midlands Electricity made every effort to keep customers informed. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East paid tribute to that effort, and to the local radio stations which played such an important part in keeping customers and local people informed. In addition, the company worked with local authorities and with voluntary agencies--as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan).

I stress that no system in the world could have been built to withstand such an onslaught. Weather conditions in the area were the worst for 20 years. The alternative--placing all lines underground--is attractive but expensive ; it costs up to 10 times as much to put a line underground as it does to send it overground. A massive capital investment of around £4 billion would be required over about 30 years to complete the "undergrounding" of all lines in the areas, and in view of the infrequency of such severe weather we do not consider that that level of investment could be justified.

Mr. Harry Barnes : If such an incident were to be repeated, the costs would be excessive. Comparisons have

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been made with the original cost of providing cables, either overground or underground. When a system breaks down, emergency expenditure at great cost is involved. People have to be drafted in from Scotland, Northern Ireland and other regions. I hope that the report to be produced by East Midlands Electricity will be debated so that we can investigate the matter fully and decide what the most cost- effective arrangement would be.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory : The assessment that I have given will be reconsidered in the light of experience. The east midlands area alone has about 63,000 km of line, about 60 per cent. of which--mostly low-voltage line--is underground. If it were thought appropriate to put underground an even higher percentage of the low-voltage lines and further sections of the high-voltage lines, that would be considered.

I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to the tremendous efforts mounted by the staff and management of East Midlands Electricity and to all who gave assistance in extremely difficult and uncomfortable conditions. In all, help was received from some 1,200 staff from outside the area, in addition to the management, staff, engineers and linesmen in the east midlands area. Help was also received from Northern Ireland and from the Irish Republic, as well as from the Army and specialist contractors. The co -operation between the regional electricity companies was particularly impressive and continued the tradition of mutual assistance within the industry. There is no evidence of any lack of co-ordination among those concerned. It is certainly completely untrue to suggest that the successful flotation of the regional electricity companies was connected in any way with the response from my Department. The situation was monitored throughout by the Department of Energy and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was kept informed. What was required was not words or declarations of emergency by the Government, but the early restoration of supplies to those affected. That is why the primary responsibility and work fell upon the regional electricity companies and the grid companies, and I am very pleased at the way in which they responded.

Mr. Harry Barnes : Why was no statment made in the House? Did not the seriousness of the disruption to supplies call for a statement from the Department of Energy or the Home Office? Ought not something to have been said about the Bellwin scheme, so that people could know where they stood and could take effective action without having to worry about money?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory : Hon. Members were kept informed. As for the Bellwin scheme, Ministers said that in principle the scheme could operate if the criteria were met. So far as I know, no requests for assistance under the Bellwin scheme have been received from the authorities concerned.

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Mr. Harry Barnes : We know that appeals for assistance were made after the gales in the south of England. The Minister's letter, from which I quoted, was written five days after the disaster. It made the point that has been made today--that no applications had been received. Yet a statement was made in the House five days after the gales in the south of England, saying that money would be made available. The authorities were asked on that occasion to send in the details. Why was that problem dealt with in one way and this one in another?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory : In the gales, several primary duties fell to local authorities, but it was made known that the Bellwin scheme could operate and applications were made and processed in the normal way. The Government stand ready to consider any requests from local authorities in the areas concerned, but to my knowledge none has been received so far.

The flotation of the regional electricity companies, which proceeded at about the same time as the storm, did not affect the response of the electricity companies or of the Department. I stress that the electricity supply regulations apply equally whether companies are in the private or the public sector. They regulate public safety and the quality of electric supply, and they are blind to whether the operating company is in the public or the private sector. The regulations are enforced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

The Director General of Electricity Supply has written to all the regional electricity companies suggesting a review of the lessons to be learnt. The company most directly affected--East Midlands Electricity--is carrying out a review of events, and the Department's engineering inspectors will be keeping closely in touch with it. It is clear that a storm of almost unprecedented ferocity hit the area on 8 and 9 December. Great damage and disruption was caused, but I was impressed and pleased at the way in which the electricity companies reacted. Of course there may be lessons to be learnt. If it is clear that additional precautionary measures should be put in place, we shall consider them when the information has been received, and we shall take into account the constructive suggestions of hon. Members.

I am pleased that the electricity supply of most customers has been reconnected, but I do not underestimate the hardship suffered by some members of the public. In general, they worked impressively to restore supplies or were patient and understanding in the light of this natural disaster. I do not feel that the Department has been negligent in keeping hon. Members informed or in ensuring that the electricity industry reacts in its traditional way of offering a service to the public of which we can all be proud.

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Casualty Facilities (Stockport)

6.28 am

Mr. Tony Favell (Stockport) : This morning, I have the opportunity of drawing the House's attention to an issue which has concerned me since I was elected to represent Stockport in 1983, and on which I have compaigned ever since. I regard it as the single most pressing problem for my constituents. I refer to the split-site nature of acute hospital services.

There are approximately 30,000 in-patient admissions a year in Stockport. That is considerably more than for well-known teaching hospitals nearby such as Withington and Manchester royal infirmary. Yet the medical staff at Stockport face an enormous problem in trying to provide a modern and efficient acute service on sites that are three miles apart.

Three departments are located at Stockport infirmary : the orthopaedic department, the ear, nose and throat department, and the accident and emergency department. All other acute services are dealt with three miles away at Stepping Hill. That situation is intolerable and the patience of the staff is now exhausted. Despite that, excellent service is given at Stockport, and in league tables drawn up by the regional health authority the Stockport infirmary and Stepping Hill often come top. The staff would have caused the Government serious embarrassment long ago but for their dedicated, hard-working nature.

Stockport infirmary is a fine building that has just celebrated its centenary, but it is totally unsuited to be a modern hospital. It is situated in the middle of town opposite the town hall and the parking facilities are suited to the mid-19th century. Ambulances have enormous difficulties even getting to the hospital and an emergency case arriving by car cannot get anywhere near the entrance. Yet the infirmary houses one of the busiest casualty departments in the north-west. Last year almost 60,000 new patients were treated in that department.

I visit the infirmary regularly and I regret to report that, on many occasions, the atmosphere has been little short of pandemonium inside and outside the hospital simply because of the physical nature of the building. The staff are extraordinarily hard working, but they work under Victorian conditions that would have upset Florence Nightingale.

On my first visit to the accident and emergency department, soon after my election in 1983, Mr. Tony Redmond, then the consultant in charge of the department, showed me the conditions in which he and other staff worked. He pointed out to me the dangers created by the acute services being on a split site. I do not exaggerate when I describe the situation as dangerous. It is an extraordinarily busy casualty department and the major accident- receiving centre serving a population of 300,000, but there are no intensive facilities on site--they are three miles down the road at Stepping Hill. The blood bank is also situated there. Unless a seriously ill patient is fortunate enough to have problems requiring an orthopaedic surgeon or a complaint affecting his ear, nose or throat, he must be put back in the ambulance and taken down the A6, the busiest non-dual carriageway in the north, to Stepping Hill. Alternatively, he must wait for a taxi to bring a consultant from Stepping Hill to the infirmary.

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Mr. Alistair Gray, the consultant now in charge of the accident and emergency department, wrote to me last year saying that there was no doubt that patient lives were put at risk each time there was a transfer to Stepping Hill. Lives have been lost, and will continue to be lost until something is done about the situation, which I deplore. It is a disgrace that a patient, having reached the apparently safe haven of the casualty department, should find limited facilities awaiting him.

Since Mr. Redmond first brought the matter to my attention seven years ago, I have bombarded the district and regional health authorities, the then Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Health with demands that something should be done. Not many Members of Parliament are happy to campaign for a hospital to be closed, but that is what must be done to give a decent service to the people of Stockport. I have brought-- probably dragged--two Ministers to the House on the matter : first, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton) when he was Minister for Health and recently my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman) when he was a Minister at the Department. I asked them to consider the position in Stockport.

There have been delegations to Ministers here in London, including one to the present Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), when he was at the Department. The proposal to close the infirmary has the support of all the staff and the unions and, indeed, the whole of Stockport, apart from some members of the Labour party who seek some short-term advantage out of campaigning for it to remain open. All the staff support the hospital's closure because those dedicated health workers are determined to provide the best for Stockport and so am I. But we have been thwarted at every turn.

The proposal to move the accident and emergency department to Stepping Hill has been on the books for almost 10 years. During that time there has not been a single major capital project in Stockport. Yet last year Stockport was not included in the region's health capital programme up to 1992-93. I and the district health authority had been led to believe that Stockport had an overwhelming case for inclusion in the region's three-year £166 million capital programme. Its failure to be included in that programme was a devastating blow to the morale of the medical profession in Stockport.

It is clear that with the reform of the health service there is to be greater competition between NHS hospitals. The medical profession in Stockport is ready to accept that. But how can it compete with the nearby Manchester royal infirmary, Wythenshawe hospital and Withington hospital if it has the appalling split-site problem ? Next month Stockport has a further chance to be included in the capital programme. I cannot emphasise how important it is that the bid should be successful. In March this year the north-west regional medical committee pointed out that the Department of Health had accepted the recommendation of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Casualty Surgeons Association that it is unacceptable for major accident and emergency departments to be located away from the full back-up facilities of a main district general hospital. That point was taken by the regional medical officer, who stated that it was a fundamental principle of the region's service and capital planning developments.

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I have been led to believe that some mix-up resulted in Stockport not being included in the capital programme last year. It would be a shattering blow if next month it were not included. I beg my hon. Friend the Minister to do all in his power to ensure that it is included. If he gives me that assurance, I and all of Stockport will wish him a very happy Christmas.

6.38 am

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell) : As my hon. Friend said, he has been a consistent supporteof this project ever since the day he was elected to the House in 1983. He made it clear that he was an early convert to the unacceptability of the present arrangements for the treatment of accident and emergency and other patients on the split-site basis of the Stockport hospital. He has been an effective--I might even say relentless--campaigner for action to resolve the problem since he first arrived in the House. I am conscious that I am the latest of a long line of Ministers, most of whom are now much more distinguished and eminent than I, who have been the recipients of my hon. Friend's representations on behalf of his constituents.

I am sure that they will agree with me that the argument that my hon. Friend has presented to us and to the House is a powerful one and I am confident that it will ultimately succeed, not least because of the power of my hon. Friend's advocacy. The House has witnessed his advocacy on behalf of his constituents twice this week. Today, he has had the opportunity to present the argument at some length. Yesterday, he presented it at Question Time--not at such great length, but perhaps at more length than is usual on such occasions. It is extraordinary that an argument which is so widely supported in the Stockport area and which has been recognised to be powerful by many in the health service, including Health Ministers, should have elicited such a hostile reception yesterday from the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett). It is odd that an argument based clearly on the principle that the proposals that my hon. Friend supports would produce a major advance in the quality of care provided to patients in that area should be the subject of opposition from a member of a party which prides itself on its espousal of the cause of the national health service. I am sure that my hon. Friend will lose no opportunity to give the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish a chance to explain his point of view more widely in the Stockport area.

My hon. Friend has made it clear to the House that Stockport infirmary is an aging hospital. Although it is distinguished, the building is perhaps better equipped to stand opposite the town hall and perform some distinguished function in the centre of Stockport than to house a hospital. Certainly, the building is widely recognised not to be adequate for the use to which it is currently put.

As my hon. Friend explained, the infirmary has one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in the north-west, treating almost 60,000 new patients each year. It is not the 60,000 new patients, however, who pose a problem in the provision of accident and emergency facilities in Stockport- -it is the fact that 2,500 of those patients have to be transferred during their treatment from Stockport infirmary to Stepping Hill hospital, three miles down the A6, which is one of the busiest roads in the

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north-west. I have good reason to know that, because at a point further south in its course it passes through my constituency. My hon. Friend may be interested to know that in Leicestershire we have been able to obtain finance for dualling the A6 and taking it round some villages, precisely because the road is so heavily used.

Mr. Flavell : That is my second most important campaign.

Mr. Dorrell : My hon. Friend will know that, although, for constituency reasons, I may wish to join him in that campaign, I cannot deal with it in detail now.

The transfer of patients during their treatment between two acute hospitals carries with it significant risks, especially as the journey can take 30 minutes or more at times of peak traffic. It is a matter not of speculation but of fact that cardiac arrests have taken place in ambulances between those two hospitals. Not only does the transfer present avoidable and unnecessary risks for patients ; it is a waste of resources because every patient transferred between the two hospital sites has to be accompanied by medical and nursing staff. It is an absurd waste of the time of front-line, highly trained, expensive, dedicated staff to have them stewarding patients between two hospital sites, especially when it is in the patients' interests that that transfer should not take place.

It is a powerful case. One does not have to be an expert in every detail of the circumstances of the Stockport area to understand the inadequacies of the present level of provision. As my hon. Friend has said, this is not merely a lay assessment of the position on the two sites. The case that he has espoused has been argued strongly by, among others, Mr. Redmond, and by all the consultants involved in acute medicine in Stockport, by the North Western regional medical committee, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Casualty Surgeons Association, which have all said that it is unacceptable to have accident and emergency provision divorced from general acute provision within a district general hospital. The expert opinion merely reinforces what most of us would regard as common sense. If we are admitted to hospital through an accident and emergency department, our hope would be that our acute condition could be treated by whatever specialist treatment and back-up was necessary within the hospital to which we were admitted.

In Stockport at present there is clearly a wasteful duplication of resources. The infirmary offers less effective medical care to the patient and has been described as unacceptable by those with a lay interest, and general management and professional opinion in the health service. Furthermore, precisely because it is recognised to be unacceptable, no one is surprised that the College of Anaesthetists has temporarily refused to recognise Stockport infirmary as a training centre for junior anaesthetist posts, and the ear, nose and throat hospital recognition committee has demonstrated its concern about the level of provision in the district by granting only temporary recognition for junior ENT posts in the hospital. All this is profoundly unsatisfactory. However, the situation is a tribute to the dedicated staff of the two hospitals, in this context particularly those at Stockport hospital, who have put so much effort into making an avowedly unsatisfactory state of affairs work in the best

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way possible in the circumstances. The health service relies on a dedicated caring staff, and nowhere more so than in my hon. Friend's constituency.

Mr. Favell : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, as he is talking about the dedicated way in which staff at Stockport infirmary behave. In many parts of the country, there would have been shroud waving by now. It is only because the Stockport staff are decent, hard-working, capable people who have gone on in their quiet way that the situation has been allowed to continue. If the same circumstances had applied in central Birmingham, all hell would have been let loose. The decency, hard work and dedication of the Stockport staff should be recognised.

Mr. Dorrell : I recognise the decency and hard work of the staff in the district. Without that, the system could not have been made to work. It is up to us not to take advantage of that, and my hon. Friend is anxious that we should not do so. The dedication, hard work and quiet getting on with the job by his constituents is matched only by the noise that he generates in trying to change the situation. One of the arguments against my hon. Friend's proposals--the concentration of accident and emergency care on one site at Stepping Hill--is the implications of that for patients coming from the northern part of the Stockport health district. That concern is entirely misplaced and that argument does not tell, as it is alleged to do, against my hon. Friend's conclusions. The argument is wrong because it devalues and fails to take into account the service offered by the Stockport ambulance service and its ability to take patients in need of acute hospital care quickly and effectively from the northern part of the health district to Stepping Hill hospital. All the ambulance staff in the Stockport service have either completed modular training courses in paramedic skills in some specialties or have qualified on the full NHS training authority paramedic course and are therefore fully equipped to ensure that patients are taken safely to Stepping Hill hospital if they need emergency care.

Furthermore, every emergency vehicle in the service is already equipped with defibrillators, which should be of some comfort to people in the northern part of the area who may be concerned at the entirely wrong idea that their interests are not served by concentrating accident and emergency services at Stepping Hill. Residents in the northern part of the area need to remember that the Greater Manchester ambulance service has standing instructions to take every accident and emergency case to the nearest accident and emergency department. If provision in Stockport moves to Stepping Hill, more patients will be taken from accident and emergency services in the northern part of the district to hospitals in south and north Manchester. There is nothing new in that ; the decisions will just be taken across slightly new boundaries.

It would be absurd to take too seriously the arbitrary boundaries between health districts and not to take account of the fact that what is important is that patients in need of emergency care should be put in well-equipped ambulances with well-qualified staff and taken to the

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nearest emergency department, which may not be within the arbitrary administrative boundaries of the health district.

I wish to draw attention to some of the benefits that would flow from the unified service for which my hon. Friend has argued. It would not only provide better quality accident and emergency care ; it would enable the district to achieve an integrated paediatric unit on one site. That would provide a single environment geared for children's needs, including a mother and baby unit, a child isolation unit, an ear, nose and throat department, and ophthalmology--all paediatric care in one unit. That would be a major benefit of the scheme that my hon. Friend supports.

Secondly, the orthopaedic services would be concentrated on two sites instead of three and there would be separate provision for traumatic and elective work, so that the one was less prone to interfere with the other.

Thirdly, this would allow more effective use of operating theatres. The health service attaches greater importance to that than it once did, and rightly so, because fully staffed operating theatres not operating on patients are a crass waste of resources, and the chance to plan their effective use would be a major benefit of a unified system.

The money saved through the greater productivity which would result from implementation of the scheme would amount to £860,000 a year in the single district in my hon. Friend's constituency. Of that, £152, 000 would come not from more efficient use of medical manpower but from savings on energy and maintenance. The present set-up cannot be allowed to endure too long, given that so much money is being wasted in that way.

I hope that I have made it clear that the argument espoused by my hon. Friend finds a ready ear in the Department of Health and in the administration of the health service generally.

Mr. Favell : I thank my hon. Friend for the careful and receptive way in which he has heard my argument. On behalf of the people of Stockport, I wish him a happy Christmas.

Mr Dorrell : I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I hope that what I am about to say will not lead him to withdraw his good wishes. The proposal that my hon. Friend espouses has a ready audience in the Department and, in one form or another, it will be implemented by the NHS in his area in the not too distant future. He will understand, however, that the administration of the health service and decisions on investment proposals are quite properly matters for the management of the NHS. It is not for me but for regions and districts to decide.

As my hon. Friend has said, in the next month or six weeks the North Western regional health authority will decide its three-year capital programme to 1993-94 and no doubt Stockport health authority will argue strongly for the proposal in the context of the capital programme. The decision whether to go ahead with the proposal in that capital programme properly belongs to the regional health authority, which will have to decide in the context of its capital budget-setting process. It would be wrong for me to pre-empt that decision, and I shall not do so.

The clear argument that my hon. Friend has advanced is widely accepted not only by the Department but by the NHS in the north-west. I am confident that my hon.

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Friend's powers of advocacy will ensure that the unacceptable standard of provision for accidents and emergencies in his constituency will soon be improved.

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Middle East

6.56 am

Mr. Dave Nellist (Coventry, South-East) : At the end of a long parliamentary day, I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for returning to the Chair for what is likely to be the last scheduled debate on the middle east and the Gulf before the expiry of the deadline set by the western powers of midnight, 15 January 1991, for Iraq to leave Kuwait.

I do not claim to speak in the debate on behalf of the parliamentary Labour party. However, 49 Labour Members either voted against or sponsored motions against the Government's support for the possible use of force, and therefore a substantial minority in the parliamentary Labour party is against the use of force. In the Labour party outside we are a bigger factor, and possibly even form a majority.

An opinion poll in The Independent about six days ago showed that 41 per cent. of Labour voters questioned about their attitude to a possible war in the Gulf insisted on the complete withdrawal of Iraq, even if that meant war. However, 49 per cent. opposed war. In the most recent polls conducted by the New York Times and CBS, 45 per cent. were in favour of war and 48 per cent. wanted more time for sanctions. The number of people opposed to war will increase, especially in America where people had the experience of Vietnam. War would result in horrific death and disfigurement. I shall deal with that later.

In the past few days the pendulum has swung between war and peace. Western hostages have been released--we were especially pleased to see the release of British hostages--but on the other hand there have been bellicose statements from leaders in America. It is ironic that on almost the last parliamentary day before Christmas and at this time of the year we should be considering what could be the most serious military conflict since the second world war.

In a number of meetings that I have had since 2 October, opposing the Government's support of possible war, I have begun each of those meetings as I begin my speech this morning, with a condemnation of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the taking of hostages. I should have thought that that would go without question. However, the speeches that I have heard from leaders from all sorts of countries have the stench of hypocrisy. I think that it was Disraeli who said that a Tory Government was organised hypocrisy, so I suppose that I should not be too surprised.

We are now told that Iraq is in a direct line from Hitler. It went into a war in Iran. It invaded part of Iran and during the 1980s it received backing from those powers that today criticise its invasion of Kuwait. There were differences then. Iraq was seen as a moderating influence against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism after the Iranian revolution at the end of the 1970s. Because of that, in the 1970s and 1980s, France supplied $25,000 million worth of weapons to Iraq. America gave free intelligence from satellites, $5 billion worth of food subsidies and $2.5 billon of export guarantees. The Soviet Union provided huge amounts of armaments, as did Germany, Switzerland and others. Latterly, Britain was keen to have trade, including trade in weapons.

Therefore, the arms that allowed Iraq to build itself up to the point at which it could invade Kuwait, threaten to invade Saudi Arabia, and be in a stand-off against the

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army of the greatest military power that the world has ever seen--America--were largely built up by the western powers that today criticise Iraq.

I hope that those of my hon. Friends who are here, or who may read the report of the debate, will consider my next point. One of the tasks of the next Labour Government will be to stem the export of arms throughout the world. The middle east has been the most lucrative market for arms sales in recent decades. Half the oil revenues from all the Arab countries has been spent on battlefields in the past 40 or 50 years. That should stop. The Labour party should be considering closing the defence sales organisation. I speak as a Member of Parliament who represents a city--Coventry--which, with Bristol, has the highest number of factories dependent on arms jobs. My party should be considering public ownership of those firms and changing them to produce socially useful items instead of arms, which will end up on battlefields and, as we shall no doubt find all too soon, can be turned even against our young men and women. In such a big change, jobs must be guaranteed.

No doubt the Minister will repeat the points made earlier in the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), in which he said that Saddam Hussein is a dictator. I am astonished by the Government's seeming surprise at the Iraqi regime in Kuwait. The savagery of that regime has been known for many years, as has its treatment of its people, particularly the Kurdish minority. On 17 March 1988, Iraq bombed the Kurdish village of Halabja, and 5,000 people were killed. That was not unknown to the Government. When 10,000 died later in the year, in the villages north of Basra, which were bombed with chemical weapons, that was not unknown.

The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), now the Secretary of State for Health, was then a junior Minister in the Foreign Office. He said that the Government were annoyed and upset and would be taking action. It was on 27 October 1988 that the Minister made a statement in which he said, for example, that the Government were against the use of chemical weapons. Ten days later, on 8 November, doors opened for increased trade with Iraq. A press statement was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry stating that the Government were offering an extra £400 million-worth of credits to British firms to increase trade with a regime that had so recently been condemned by the Foreign Office for the way in which it treated its citizens.

Yesterday, along with many other hon. Members, no doubt, I received material from the Free Kuwait campaign. One of the quotes in the material was from an Iraqi army captain who had deserted. He was interviewed on 14 November in Turkey, and he described the actions of the Iraqi troops in Kuwait. He said :

"It is like a butcher's shop."

I do not doubt that statement from the Iraqi captain or those made by the Free Kuwait campaign. I do not doubt what the Minister may quote when replying to the debate. The Amnesty International report of 19 December states that thousands have been killed or tortured, including over 300 premature babies. The same report tells us that while the brutality of the Iraqi forces has shocked many in Kuwait,

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"such abuses have been the norm for people in Iraq for more than a decade."

We are not dealing with a regime that suddenly changed its spots on 2 August. It is a regime that has treated its citizens brutally within its own borders, and that has been known for many years. I and several other hon. Friends and hon. Members representing other Opposition parties have tried to do our bit to support the campaign against repression and for democracy in Iraq--CARDI. In May 1989, 91 Members from six political parties tabled a motion that opposed Government financial support for 17 British firms at the Baghdad arms fair. We opposed that support because the firms were engaged in selling arms to a regime with an appalling human rights record. Not one Tory Member signed the motion, yet there is almost unanimity now among Tory Members on the human rights record of the Iraqi regime. The regime is not new ; it is not something that has suddenly dropped out of the sky.

I still fear that there will be a war in the early part of the new year. It will not be a war about democracy. It will do the Government no good to refer, as the Minister probably will this morning, to the three main aims of the United Nations. One of the aims--the release of hostages--has been realised in recent days. The second is the complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait, and the third is the restoration of the "legitimate" Government of Kuwait.

I do not regard the as-Sabah dynasty as particularly legitimate. Even before the invasion, there was precious little real democracy in Kuwait. Only 8.5 per cent. of the male population of Kuwait was entitled to a vote. That entitlement was restricted to those who could trace their lineage back to males who lived in Kuwait before 1920. They amounted to only 60,000 of the three quarters of a million Kuwaitis. That is besides the hundreds of thousands who originate from other countries who have lived in Kuwait all their lives. They include up to 1 million from Egypt. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. There are many from the Philippines. There are about 75,000 Sri Lankan housemaids. These people had no democratic or civil rights. Women did not have the vote in Kuwait. Even if 8.5 per cent. of the male Kuwaitis had the vote, that did not do much good. The emir abolished the national assembly in 1986 and it has not met since. Many thousands of people in Kuwait were slaves. The migrant workers had no real rights. Kuwait was one of the richest countries in the world with a notional $13,000 per head of population. There are 41 countries with per capita wealth of less than $300. I speak from memory, but I think that Mozambique is at the bottom of the list with $150. A country with a notional $13,000 per head is enormously rich. It was concentrated in a relatively small number of feudal families, rather than being distributed evenly among the population.

I know that the Minister will not like the repetition, but the crisis is not about democracy ; it is about the strategic importance of oil and about the control by western powers--American and British--of the oil supplies. It is not just me saying that. The former American assistant secretary for defence, Lawrence Korb, said :

"What it amounts to is the great powers settling their interests. If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn!"

That is the truth.

The New York Times says that America is interested in "cheap oil and stable monarchies."

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