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Mr. Winnick: Although I do not expect the Minister for one moment to speak on behalf of the Prime Minister or in any way depart from his brief--I am not criticising him in any way--will he promise that today's debate will be brought to the Prime Minister's attention so that he understands the strong feelings on this issue on both sides of the House? There is no division whatever between hon. Members and it would be useful if the Prime Minister were made aware of Parliament's very strong feelings.
Mr. Hanley: I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has asked for a copy of the debate. Putting aside any partisan feelings, the House must recognise the personal interest that my right hon. Friend has shown in the matter.
I mentioned that the Japanese Ministers to whom we have spoken have said that they will not yet go further than the measures that I have already mentioned, but we intend to continue our discussions with them. As right hon. and hon. Members have said, there are extremely
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Mr. MacShane:
Does the Minister accept that Japanese companies that were involved in the war have a role to play, since in Japan, unlike Europe, prisoners of war and internees were directly used as forced or slave labour? Today's Japanese companies could play some role in helping to solve the problem.
Mr. Hanley:
I would willingly encourage any new initiative to encourage Japanese companies to help in that way.
Japan has changed. Its remarkable economic success has thrust it on to the world stage. It is the largest bilateral aid donor, the second largest contributor to the United Nations, a Group of Seven partner of the United Kingdom, and a country with which we have shared many interests and perspectives. We have benefited and continue to benefit from the very highly successful inward investment that we receive from Japan, which produces many tens of thousands of jobs in the United Kingdom. Our modern relationship is different from what it was. The matter is not just one of economics. It depends on the values that, over the years, we have come to share.
I do not believe that there is any serious risk that Japan will revert to the path of its wartime militarism. Its post-war development has carried it on to a new, more productive route. I believe that Japan is trying to put the issue behind it. Japanese children are trying to live up to their past. They no longer avoid the issues of Japanese war-time behaviour in Asia and harsh treatments of prisoners of war. We must remember that the terrible crimes in relation to comfort women, which was mentioned earlier, has only recently been acknowledged and admitted.
The issues are sensitive and difficult and it has taken time for new attitudes to emerge. It is never easy to overcome the bitterness and shame of war, especially among those directly involved. But it is fair to say that the British Government have provided greater political support to our former prisoners than any of the other allied Governments have to theirs. As I have explained, we have been constrained by the legal position under the San Francisco treaty, but we have had a series of discussions with the Japanese Government at all levels, in an effort to establish what might be done to help the former prisoners and give them satisfaction. We have not done that out of vindictiveness or a desire to punish the Japanese for past crimes. On the contrary, we have acted out of a profound sense of sympathy for the former prisoners who endured such abominable treatment and out of a belief that it is only through confronting the facts of history that we can learn from them.
We have not achieved all that the former prisoners would like to see, but I believe that, thanks to our efforts and the efforts of many others in Britain and Japan, progress has been made and greater understanding achieved as a result. Our efforts will continue.
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Mr. Tim Yeo (South Suffolk):
I am delighted to have this opportunity to introduce a brief debate on sustainable development. On anything other than a short-term view, the challenge of sustainable development--a hitherto unobtainable and, until recently, unsought goal--is the supreme issue for politicians all over the world. Unfortunately, democracies are better at responding to urgent problems that are likely to come to a head before the next election, usually a maximum of four or five years away. That is understandable, but disappointing, because the aim of sustainability is very real for all of us with children and grandchildren who will suffer if it is not achieved. A hundred years from now, when the small print of the Maastricht treaty will long have been forgotten, the happiness and health of billions of people will have been decided by the action or inaction of Governments today around the world on sustainability.
The importance of sustainable development is easy to understand. One does not need to be a scientist to realise that, if Britain continues to use countryside for new buildings and roads at the rate of almost 17,000 acres a year, we will concrete over the equivalent of the whole of Suffolk in 50 years. We are urbanising the countryside at an unsustainable rate. If we continue to prefer cars to other forms of transport, the level of traffic using British roads will double in 50 years--another unsustainable trend. If carbon dioxide emissions worldwide continue to grow at their present rate, thereby increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, significant and possibly damaging changes in the world's climate will occur before the end of the next century.
From the comfortable perspective of a rich western country, the tensions caused by unsustainable growth may seem remote, but it is precisely because in Britain, in Europe, in North America and in parts of the Asia-Pacific region we do not have to confront daily the problems of starvation and disease--and because we are no longer preoccupied with securing the basic essentials of life--that we should take the lead in examining where present patterns of consumption are leading. It is up to us to demonstrate how the world can convert its present obsession with economic growth, as defined in today's narrow terms, into a commitment to sustainable development which represents the only way to secure prosperity and a decent quality of life for the human race in the long term.
I should emphasise that I approach the subject in a spirit of optimism. I am confident that the urgency of the problem will soon be widely recognised, certainly within the next generation. Once that recognition has occurred, human ingenuity and resourcefulness are such that the real issues will be addressed and solutions found. I am also acutely aware of the danger of describing the issues in excessively apocalyptic terms. The remedies do not all necessarily lie in sudden, dramatic or costly changes of policy. Greater care in the use of irreplaceable resources is one absolute prerequisite. More co-operation between Governments and countries on global issues is another. Both those aims are justified in themselves, regardless of their role in securing sustainability.
We also need a better understanding and better measurements of the environmental consequences of economic activity. All those requirements can be met. We
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Sadly, the issues are not likely to feature prominently in the general election in the spring. Indeed, there is little evidence that the Labour party has thought about them at all, but they are of great relevance to our constituents and to the welfare of those future generations of British people with whom the House should be concerned.
As it happens, next year is the fifth anniversary of the Rio Earth summit. The United Nations is marking that with another Earth summit, two months after the Commission on Sustainable Development meets in New York. Britain should be in the lead, as it was under Margaret Thatcher, in taking forward environmental initiatives and in influencing international policy. There is now a real opportunity for the House to generate ideas, to engage the attention of the public and the media and to devise solutions to problems that affect all parts of the globe.
I shall consider first land use here in the United Kingdom. I welcome last week's Green Paper, "Household Growth," as a worthwhile document which deserved a better response than it received from the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) who, I regret to say, displayed his usual ignorance and shallowness. Only a party leader as utterly uninterested in the environment as the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) could entrust such a crucial portfolio to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras.
I especially welcomed the acknowledgement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, in response to my intervention last Monday, that the present rate at which rural land is converted for urban use is unsustainable. An average of 17,000 acres of rural land has been urbanised annually since 1981. The challenge is to stop that gradual but unacceptable transformation of our much cherished countryside without completely freezing the evolutionary process that historically has created such a rich tapestry in villages and towns alike. A limited degree of new development in the countryside is an integral component of any thriving rural economy, but it can all too easily expand to the point at which it inflicts serious environmental damage.
The Government's target of meeting half of all new housing needs by building on land that was previously developed is excessively modest, not least because that ratio has already nearly been achieved. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State suggested raising that target to 60 per cent. I urge him to set a goal of meeting three quarters of all new housing need from recycled land--brown-field sites--within four years. No doubt that would cause some concern to the building industry, whose preference for green-field sites on grounds of cost, convenience and saleability is well known, but the potential to use more brown-field sites exists. Derelict land can be made good. Outdated, empty offices are ripe for conversion to residential occupation,
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