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The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Sir Nicholas Bonsor): I do not want to bring this into my closing remarks, so I should like to deal with it immediately. I very much regret what happened to Mrs. Cairns-Wicks, but by the time the matter had been brought to our attention, her job had been filled. She has been told that she can reapply for any future vacancy, but I believe that she is living on Ascension and has no intention of taking up that offer. The Government regret that she suffered from a failure of the law that we rectified as soon as we found it.
Dr. Marek: I am pleased to hear that. The case should never have happened. I hope that if Mrs. Cairns-Wicks applies for another job, she will be given every consideration.
Sir David Mitchell (North-West Hampshire): I speak as secretary of the all-party group on St. Helena and dependencies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) on securing the debate. St. Helena is a British dependent territory; its culture is British and its only language is English. There are fewer than 6,000 people on the island. Those people are our responsibility and it is right that we should debate them in Parliament.
I concur with much of what was said by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek). The House will have sympathy for Saints, as St. Helenians are called. They are almost marooned on an island 700 miles from Ascension and six days' steaming from Cape Town. Inevitably and necessarily, its economy depends on financial support from Britain of between £6 million and £8 million a year. That is a large sum and the Government naturally want to restrain it. However, I shall show that Government policy militates against success in that respect.
Government policy is to persuade the islanders to move towards standing on their own feet. The unhealthy 75 per cent. of jobs in Government employment is being reduced. That is all very well, but as there are only a small number of private sector jobs on the island, the policy has pushed up unemployment to 17 per cent. The Government have responded by advocating self-help, but that is where the British Government have to open doors to enable it to become a realistic opportunity.
There are several matters on which the Government should act. The first is employment opportunities. I know that I am not the only hon. Member who did not realise when we passed the British Nationality Act 1981 that we
were closing off the route for St. Helenians to come to work in the UK. I recognise that this is not the appropriate time to press for St. Helena to join Gibraltar and the Falklands in having a general right to seek employment in UK. That should not be done until the Hong Kong issue is out of the way. I should be surprised if the Minister and candidates of all parties at the general election were not approached by Saints in their prospective constituencies and asked for a commitment on that after the election and after the Hong Kong problem is out of the way.
Meanwhile, there are three steps that the Government could take without creating a precedent or other problems, and I urge them on the Minister. First, we could restore the pre-1994 domestic work scheme, under which some 50 permits for Saints to work in the United Kingdom were issued. Secondly, that scheme was replaced by a training and work experience scheme, but it ends at age 35. It would be practical and useful to extend it to 40 or 45. That scheme provides only temporary access to the United Kingdom and only 30 people in St. Helena are currently able to take it up. Making it easier should increase numbers and help tackle unemployment on the island.
Thirdly, general work permits for entry to the United Kingdom from anywhere in the world are issued in respect of specialist skills not available in the UK. Only one Saint has been able to qualify under that scheme. The Government should relax the severe criteria to enable more Saints to qualify and should perhaps place a limit on the number of years that someone can be here--say, seven years. So my first message to my hon. Friend the Minister is that self-help needs opportunity. I urge him to create that opportunity, in a way that will cost him no money and which will help the economy of the island and perhaps make it possible in a minor way to reduce the Government's commitment.
Tourism is a swift route to job creation in any economy, but its development requires an improvement in communications. The only regular access on and off the island is RMS St. Helena. I praise the recent change in its sailing schedules. It now operates more frequently to Cape Town and Ascension island and less frequently on the long, slow journey to the United Kingdom. If tourism is to prosper, we need quicker and easier access from Europe. There is a way in which that can be achieved. The Royal Air Force currently provides a military service to Ascension island as a staging post on the way to the Falklands. We need the Government to put the service personnel flights out to commercial tender and allow tourists to be carried as far as Ascension, with its superb, untarnished beaches. That would reduce from 15 days to four the travel time from Europe to St. Helena and give a tremendous boost to the tourist trade. Self-help needs that opportunity.
As commercial flights to Ascension island are clearly the key, I recently raised the possibility with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. He noted what I said and agreed to come back to me in due course. I look forward, as I am sure many on the island do, to hearing what he can say on that score.
So far, so good, but I have to say that the islanders must be encouraged to create the accommodation and services on the island that modern-day tourists expect. In the past, there has been far too much licensing and far too many restrictions--undoubtedly designed to protect the fragile market of existing providers--but the island needs
to be more open and welcoming to competition, which is, after all, the customer's best friend and the best way to raise the standard of tourist facilities.
Before I leave tourism, I have to say that it is not helped when cruise liners visit the island and are unable to land their passengers because there is no mole or decent-sized jetty. Last year, five major tourist vessels were unable to land a single passenger. Indeed, a cruise ship called earlier this month and could not land tourists. That represented a serious loss of potential revenue to the island. So if self-help is to succeed for tourism and local industry, the Government must put in that essential piece of infrastructure.
I illustrate the point in relation to the local tuna fishing industry. The island's boats and its fishing industry have been held back by strict quotas--my hon. Friend the Minister will know about this. The limits are not for conservation reasons, as one might have thought, but are because of the lack of processing capacity for fish when it has been landed. Happily, as a result of the help and encouragement of my hon. Friend the Minister, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the island's Government, Argus Helena Ltd. will open a new processing plant, probably in September this year, and the restrictions will then go. It will then be possible for St. Helenians themselves to build up their fishing industry. However, once the tuna has been landed, gutted and frozen, it needs safe anchorage for dispatch to markets in Japan and Italy. I praise the FCO and the Government for the encouragement that they have given, but a quay, jetty or protective mole is needed. Self-help needs a bit of investment.
I have a question for my hon. Friend the Minister about an inward investment proposal, which would provide some 50 jobs. It has already been referred to by the hon. Member for Wrexham, who, like me, no doubt received a fax from a Swedish company, Swegame, which wants to set up an international lottery, using the world wide web and the Internet. The Internet is spreading like wildfire, as my hon. Friend the Minister will know. It is an immense growth industry. An international lottery on the Internet can expect explosive growth. I understand that the Government are minded to refuse consent. I have also received the fax that the hon. Member for Wrexham received, signed by 21 Members of LegCo. I will not quote it because the hon. Gentleman has done so already. My hon. Friend the Minister should explain the Government's attitude and assure us that he will take into account the views of LegCo. If something is a legal and proper international operation--whatever his reservations, I should like to hear them--and if Gibraltar is allowed to have such an operation and there is nothing to stop it there, why should not St. Helenians be allowed to do so?
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