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Mr. Squire : My hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable on these matters, made a number of telling points. He might also have pointed out that local authorities could also emulate the example of Wandsworth council in its collection record for the community charge. Hackney, in particular, has a poor collection performance : in the past two years, it was 53 per cent. and 57 per cent. ; in the current year, it expects to collect only 91 per cent.
Mr. Hardy : Does the Minister accept that although he and his hon. Friends may wish to concentrate on a few examples of local authorities in London, the people who are informed about local government and councillors of all persuasions in urban areas of England outside London are convinced that the Government's disregard for unemployment and economic reality in their calculation of grants to local authorities is little better than corrupt?
Mr. Squire : I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman spoilt his question in the last part of it. As he knows, the Government are carefully reviewing the standard spending assessments and we are receiving submissions from councils of all political parties. We are carefully considering those submissions and meeting councillors as well. There is no question of the current system being corrupt. It is trying to do what is arguably absolutely impossible, which is to deliver a distribution mechanism that is approved by all local authorities. We seek to make
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it recapture the inevitable expense faced by authorities. The system does that at present, and if it can do it even better in future, I shall be very pleased.Construction Industry
10. Mr. Nicholas Winterton : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to announce the results of the current review of his Department's role as sponsoring Department for the construction industry.
Mr. Howard : The review is due to be completed next month and I expect to announce the results shortly thereafter.
Mr. Winterton : Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that trade associations and the many hon. Members who support the objectives of the Manufacturing and Construction Industries Alliance look to his Department not just to regulate the construction industry but to encourage it? Does he accept that his Department could act positively by removing administrative burdens, abolishing the archaic stamp duty on the sale of new houses and investing substantially in the improvement and modernisation of our housing stock and in major development projects?
Mr. Howard : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his
characteristically modest shopping list. I entirely accept that part of my Department's duty is to encourage the construction industry. We are certainly doing that and I am sure that my hon. Friend will join me in welcoming today's extremely encouraging news that total construction orders in the first quarter of this year were 22 per cent. up on the previous quarter.
Mr. Morley : If the Minister wants to support the construction industry, why has he not removed the completely insane rules that prevent local councils from spending capital receipts from council house sales on building and renovating much-needed homes? In Glanford and Scunthorpe, which are not regarded as high-stress areas, investment by housing associations is very low. Both those councils, one of them Tory controlled, could advantageously use their capital receipts to provide decent homes and building jobs and provide support for the construction industry.
Mr. Howard : I am astonished by the hon. Gentleman's question because, of course, from this year councils can use all their capital receipts for the purposes to which he referred. The councils that complained most in the past about their inability to spend capital receipts almost always did not take advantage of the extent to which they were permitted, even under the old rules, to spend those receipts. The hon. Gentleman should have had regard to the facts before he put his question.
Mr. Brazier : Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is important that local construction and building companies in areas such as mine should have a fair opportunity to compete for council work? I welcome the Department's current review of Canterbury city council and nine others to discover why their direct labour organisations are making such enormous losses. I refer my right hon. and learned Friend to the fact that 15 of the last 19 major contracts were given to the DLO, although in not one of them did the DLO offer the best tender.
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Mr. Howard : My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to these matters. We are reviewing them and shall do so carefully to make sure that the people of Canterbury do not lose as a consequence of any failure by the city council to follow the rules.
Housing Estates
11. Mr. Michael : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to provide local authorities with additional resources for the refurbishment and redesign of housing estates.
Mr. Baldry : We provide substantial resources to local authorities every year for capital spending on housing. The housing investment programme for this year is £1.75 billion, and a further £356 million is provided for the estate action programme and £87 million for housing action trusts. Local authorities may also draw on almost all capital receipts generated before the end of this year, which provides them with a major opportunity for additional spending on housing projects.
Mr. Michael : Will the Minister admit that he is involved in the ridiculous business of giving with one hand and taking away with the other? An excellent local authority that I visited recently had a scheme to develop an estate, not least with a view to preventing crime, for which some money for phase 1 has been obtained from the Government. A cut in the authority's capital budget brought about by the Department meant that it has lost even more than it had gained from the grant. What would the Minister say to that authority? Is not that a ridiculous Government recycling operation that constrains councils and prevents them from doing what is needed in their communities?
Mr. Baldry : What the hon. Gentleman says does not accord with the facts. This year, 167 new estate action schemes will be started. There are 225 existing schemes, many of which involve extensive estate refurbishment over a number of years. The regeneration of those estates will cost millions of pounds. We are investing in many of the worst run-down estates in the country. We are determined to ensure that every housing estate is brought up to a very good standard.
Sir Donald Thompson : I congratulate my hon. Friend on the estate action schemes that he has initiated in my constituency--in Brighouse, Elland and Todmorden. Many of those initiatives will stop estates from declining to the stage that has been reached in other parts of the country.
Mr. Baldry : My hon. Friend makes a good point. Estate action schemes also enable tenants to become much more involved in the running of their estates. The means and the resources that we are providing ensure that tenants have a much greater influence over the homes and the areas in which they live.
Mr. Pike : Does the Minister not accept that the reality is that many excellent estate action schemes have been put in jeopardy because insufficient capital resources have been provided to enable local authority grant applications to be met in full? In many cases, central Government assumptions about anticipated capital receipts led to grants being made that were far below what local
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authorities had hoped to get. In housing partnership schemes, bids totalled £142 million, but grants amounted to only 20.71 per cent. of that total. Does the Minister not accept that estate action schemes cannot be carried out if local authorities do not have the money?Mr. Baldry : Last year, Burnley had an estate action scheme for the Bardon estate. This year, Burnley has had money for an estate action scheme for the Trafalgar Gardens estate. The reality is that this year 167 new estate action schemes will be started and we are investing £356 million in those schemes. About £1 billion has been invested in recent years in estate action, which has enabled estate action schemes to be carried out on no fewer than 1,000 estates.
Local Authorities (Powers)
12. Mr. Barry Jones : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he next plans to meet representatives of the Association of County Councils to discuss the powers of local authorities.
Mr. Howard : The ACC has not asked for such a discussion. The next of my regular informal two-monthly meetings with the chairmen of the three local authority associations will take place on 7 June, and the ACC is at liberty to raise this or any other issue it wishes at that meeting.
Mr. Jones : Have not the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his Government set out deliberately to undermine county government? Why did the Government not listen to the warnings from the counties that the poll tax-- the right hon. and learned Gentleman's biggest mistake--would end in tears? Why does he not take this opportunity--his last appearance at the Dispatch Box as Secretary of State for the Environment--to acknowledge that he was wrong on the poll tax? As a Llanelli boy, born and bred, would he not say that he is in some small danger of exchanging his present post with that of the Secretary of State for Wales?
Mr. Howard : I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has to go back to the community charge because he finds so little in contemporary policies of which he can complain. When the Opposition go back to the community charge, we know that they are absolutely bereft of contemporary issues that they can raise.
Mr. Anthony Coombs : When considering the powers of local authorities, will my right hon. and learned Friend give some thought to the needs of people who live in areas such as Hackney and Lambeth, which are bywords for inefficiency and incompetence and, often, for corruption? Given the fact that Lambeth-- [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman is not in order. If he relates his question to the Association of County Councils and the powers of local authorities, he must be heard, but questions must be in order.
Mr. Coombs : When discussing the matter with the Association of County Councils, will my right hon. and learned Friend place much stronger emphasis on the possibility of bringing in special commissioners to deal with councils where the ratepayer is not properly protected from the depredations of councils such as Lambeth and Hackney?
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Mr. Howard : As my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing, Planning and Construction pointed out a few moments ago, voters in the areas to which my hon. Friend has referred will have their opportunity within months to make it clear at the ballot box that they want no more of the disreputable government from which they suffered at Labour's hands.
Mr. Vaz : The Secretary of State may be about to lose his voice, but I hope that he has not lost his memory. Does he not remember what happened on 6 May? Does he not agree that Labour's stunning success in the recent county council elections and the humiliating defeat of the Conservatives represent a powerful message from the electors of Britain, who do not want local government to be kicked around by the present Administration?
Will the Secretary of State give the House an undertaking in regard to the Government's crude attempt to undermine local democracy and weaken the process of local accountability? He knows that, since 1979, 145 Acts of Parliament have been passed to curtail the powers of democratically elected local councils. Is not the true message of 6 May that power must be handed back to the people and taken away from the bureaucracy of central Government?
Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman knows full well that, far from undermining local government, we have given it new powers and responsibilities. Far from imposing new controls on local government, one of the first things that the Government did in 1980 was sweep away 300 detailed controls on local government. Things may be different in Leicester, but I have never heard this issue raised on the doorstep.
Mr. Gallie : When considering the affairs of local authorities with the Association of County Councils, will my right hon. and learned Friend ascertain whether it has ever discussed local authorities' input with regard to security in prisons in their areas? Is he aware that yesterday five prisoners--serious offenders--escaped from Saughton prison-- [Interruption.]
Madam Speaker : Order. The House is obviously demob-happy ; it had better pull itself together. Let us move on to a question from another Scot.
Ozone Layer
13. Mr. Kirkwood : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what further steps Her Majesty's Government proposes to take to combat the depletion of the ozone layer ; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Maclean : These Scots get everywhere.
The Government are committed to phasing out ozone-depleting substances as quickly as possible. I will be arguing strongly for tighter controls of hydrochlorofluorocarbons and methyl bromide within the European Community than those in the Montreal protocol.
Mr. Kirkwood : What the Government have done today is, of course, welcome. Is the Minister aware, however, that, despite the diplomatic and political moves that have been made, the scientific community is still extremely concerned about whether we are moving far and fast enough to deal with the degradation of the ozone layer? Will he consider working with his opposite numbers at the
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Department of Trade and Industry in trying to take practical steps, such as encouraging the manufacture of propane refrigerators in this country? Many such refrigerators are manufactured in Germany, and they will be imported in great numbers if we do not wake up to the opportunities available in this country.Mr. Maclean : I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks about our diplomatic and ministerial progress in negotiations. The Copenhagen agreement, which we reached last November, had a phase-out date of 2030 for HCFCs ; I shall be arguing for an ultimate phase-out date of 2015, at the latest.
The hon. Gentleman is right : we should urge manufacturers to look at the size of the green market. The DTI and the Department of the Environment have jointly set up JEMU--the joint environmental markets unit. The unit, which is staffed by civil servants from the two Departments, is looking for market opportunities for a new green technology, both overseas and in this country.
I am well aware of the existence of German propane refrigerators and, in speeches, I have taken every opportunity to urge our manufacturers to beware of the threat of such technology and to beat our competitors.
Sir Giles Shaw : Will my hon. Friend note that in many other countries--for example, the United States and Japan--legislation is passed to create markets that industrialists can then follow, such as catalytic converters for cars, in which Johnson Matthey had a world lead? Britain has nothing so persuasive as the legislation in the United States or Japan ; if it did, that would help to increase our domestic technology.
Mr. Maclean : I accept that in certain circumstances creating a high target or objective, or even introducing regulation, can lead the market in a particular direction. However, I am much more concerned to point out to British industry that we expect the size of the global market in environmental goods and technology to rise to $300 billion by the turn of the century. That is larger than the world's global aerospace market.
The opportunities are immense and I should prefer British industry to get there through persuasion. From the conferences I have attended and the discussions that I have had with representatives of British industry, I believe that they recognise the size of that market. It is better to liberate industry to capture that market than to smother it in regulation.
Ms Short : Will the Minister confirm that depletion of the ozone layer led to a 40 per cent. increase in skin cancer in Britain between 1979 and 1991? Are not there now 28,000 cases a year, with the numbers rising? As well as supporting the most stringent conditions in the forthcoming EC directive, will the hon. Gentleman institute a programme of public education so that the public are aware of the need to protect themselves and their children from the growing risk of skin cancer caused by depletion of the ozone layer?
Mr. Maclean : I am glad that someone has raised the shibboleth of skin cancer in the northern hemisphere as a consequence of depletion of the ozone layer. The fact is that depletion of the ozone layer in the northern hemisphere occurs only in winter and spring--February, March and into April. Because at that time of the year the
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angle of the sun is so low on the horizon, there is very little extra ultraviolet radiation coming through. The danger arises for those who take holidays in very sunny climates.I have researched a statistic which I think the House will appreciate and which we can all understand. To get the
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same dose of radiation and sunburn, a person would need to spend only one hour around the pool on the Costa Brava, while in Britain in February that person would need to spend 10 hours nude sunbathing in Birmingham.
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