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12.25 am
Mr. Thomas McAvoy (Glasgow, Rutherglen): I want to express my appreciation of the gesture by all our colleagues from Northern Ireland to make time available for two other hon. Members. Northern Ireland Members do not get that much time on the Floor of the House, so I appreciate their courtesy in sharing it.
As to the Department of Economic Development's vote 1 in respect of the Industrial Development Board, I want to express my admiration for the board's centres world wide. Members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee visited South Korea and were most impressed by the IDB's representative, Mr. Kim. Using local people has certainly paid off, and I hope that the Minister will maintain that cost-effective policy.
I noted from the IDB's report that the board made visits throughout Northern Ireland, to try to ensure that each area feels that it is included in the board's activities. However, there are concerns in South Down and Fermanagh--in common with any area outside Belfast and other big centres--that they are not getting their fair share. I ask the Minister to remain vigilant, to ensure that all areas of Northern Ireland enjoy a fair share of the limited opportunities to attract industrial activity to the Province.
Earlier, the Minister made reference to block payments, saying that if one section benefited more, cuts would have to be made in another. Life is about comparisons. The Northern Ireland Office could certainly learn from the Scottish Office, and ensure that any new incumbent as Secretary of State does not spend a fortune on public relations activities, in hiring right-wing journalists all over the place purely and simply for publicity-seeking purposes. If the Northern Ireland Office does not go down that road, that will save a fair amount of money.
The Industrial Research and Technology Unit's report states that the promotion of engineering and science as a career for girls was given particular attention in 1994-95, which also merits praise. The IRTU is represented on the WISE committee--the Women in Science and Engineering committee--which aims at changing the attitude of young people, parents and teachers in respect of career opportunities for men and women in science and engineering. That excellent IRTU initiative is praiseworthy, as is the unit's inaugural Irish innovation lecture.
At the Anglo-Irish intergovernmental conference in July 1993, Ministers agreed that Northern Ireland and the Republic would collaborate in launching a series of Irish innovation lectures, aiming to publicise the importance of innovation in wealth creation. Without going into any border or constitutional issues, that was an example of
sensible co-operation between two neighbouring administrations to address the issue of wealth--the basis of providing all other services in the island of Ireland.
I now move on to the Department of the Environment and particularly the responsibility for planning. Recently, the Department of the Environment launched a consultation paper on the Belfast city region and invited comments on that document which dealt with planning for the entire region. Although it was a consultation paper, not one outside influence was involved in compiling it. Although the Department was prepared to listen to any point of view, the parameters and the agenda that were set did not encourage a whole range of submissions to the paper. That brings me to the specific spending commitment.
A number of organisations need to be fostered and encouraged in relation to planning in Northern Ireland to compensate for the well-known and well-expressed democratic deficit in the Province. Local councillors do not have as much say and influence as they should in planning matters. I understand that we need an internal settlement in Northern Ireland before we can address that democratic deficit, however, surely there is a need to ensure proper funding for organisations that can help community groups formulate submissions to planning documents such as that for the Belfast city region. I was certainly impressed by three organisations: Community Technical Aid, the Rural Development Council and the Rural Community Network. If those organisations are to help the community address the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland, they need financial support.
In Britain, the importance of community participation was highlighted in the 1994 Department of the Environment research department report entitled: "Community Involvement in Planning and Development Processes". It stated that
That is exactly right for England, Scotland and Wales; it is also exactly right for Northern Ireland, where there is also a democratic deficit. I hope that the Minister will be able to maintain and, if possible, increase support to those organisations that serve the community.
I now move on to the votes on the Northern Ireland Audit Office and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, which cover one or two matters that are worthy of support. One is the relationship between ombudsmen. Informal meetings of public sector ombudsmen are held three times a year, when the ombudsman meets the local government ombudsmen for England, for Wales and for Scotland and Mr. Kevin Murphy, the Northern Ireland ombudsman. That illustrates that there is proper co-operation that can be only for the good of Northern Ireland.
Planning and DSS were the two most frequent sources of complaints to the ombudsman. One case involved the review of formal investigations regarding planning and concerned the Department of the Environment. The ombudsman's report stated:
I maintain that that type of fault in the planning service is directly related to the lack of democratic oversight of the work of the Department in question. It is high time that the Department found a way of ensuring that local communities can monitor its work and have some input in to it. They should not just have the chance to complain; that just puts them on the back foot. There must be a specific place for electoral involvement in the planning service in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire):
Why is the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire rising to speak at 12.35 am in an appropriation debate on Northern Ireland? He will get no coverage in his local media, but he does think it important.
Appropriation debates are probably the nearest we come to Northern Ireland Budget debates, when important matters relating to Northern Ireland's economy can be considered. This is our opportunity to talk about the economic and social regeneration of the Province, and the requisite approaches to that.
The economic and social regeneration of Northern Ireland helps perhaps more than anything else to undermine terrorism in the end. I know that blocking terrorism also helps regeneration, as has happened recently--although we currently face a considerable setback.
There are all sorts of headings under which these matters can be discussed. I want to pick up remarks made by other hon. Members today. It was noticeable that there was hardly a breath of sectarianism in the debate. Indeed, there was a great deal of common ground between the representatives of four political parties. Many of them were advancing constituency concerns and looking for more assistance, but there seemed to be a great deal of common ground when it came to expenditure and the means of obtaining it.
In several Northern Ireland debates that I have attended I have found great cross-party agreement about various items. I remember our debates on student loans. Throughout Northern Ireland there was opposition to the Government's proposals. In Committee, electricity privatisation was also the subject of common conclusions, although the arguments varied. A subject of a great deal of unity this evening has been the ACE schemes.
People often fail to understand, in short, how much unity there is in Northern Ireland politics. That is because of the key divisions about its constitutional future.
I should like to know more about the economic and social programmes of the various parties to these debates. I would like the SDLP, the DUP, the Ulster Unionists and the Independent Unionists to spell out their programmes a little more fully. Do those programmes tie in with the speeches that are being made? The only person this evening who seemed to tie in his analysis with a more general economic outlook was the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir J. Molyneaux). It turns out that his analysis was different from everyone else's.
The right hon. Member started by saying that his argument should be seen within the context of a unitary taxation system that existed throughout the United Kingdom, and that it could be extended only from ideas
that were being produced about what should be done in Northern Ireland constituencies. If extrapolated, that would lead to bankruptcy and, therefore, we must be careful about expenditure. The right hon. Member then elaborated his overall objectives, including no fixed exchange rates, the repayment of national debt and low inflation. Some of those objectives are shared by the Government. Other ideas that were raised had much more flavour of Labourism, even if that was good old Labourism rather than new Labourism.
The appropriation debates should be used as an opportunity to discuss what needs to be done about economic and social problems in Northern Ireland, because it has massive problems quite apart from the conflict. Those other problems include high unemployment. Northern Ireland has many of the difficulties that exist in British constituencies in the health service and other provision, but to the nth degree. We need to take an overall approach. I know that that is difficult because Northern Ireland politicians, in the end, are out-groups in the United Kingdom Parliament. They provide support for Government or opposition to Government, but they never share power, unless--as might rarely happen--they hold the balance of power. Therefore, it is easier in most circumstances to behave more like a Back Bencher who is not necessarily always in line with his Front Benchers and to argue for constituency concerns.
I welcomed much of the debate. It has been very different from appropriation debates that I have come across in the past. The Ministers who introduced past debates usually made free enterprise arguments about the Northern Ireland economy. On this occasion, we had a rather dry, accountant's speech that did not offer any reasons for the order. Perhaps the debate will be enlivened by the Minister's response. The Opposition Front Benchers often make collectivist proposals, but on this occasion my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Dowd) questioned and probed the Government's position.
"rather than being an additional hurdle or barrier to development, involvement can be a way to speed processes and generate more acceptable proposals".
"The Department's records of its investigation and pursuit of the breach of planning approval were completely inadequate. Rarely have I come across such a history of inefficiency and poor administrative practice. Time and again my investigation was hampered by the absence of documentary evidence of telephone calls, site inspections, internal instructions".
19 Feb 1996 : Column 141
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