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Mr. Dalyell: I was in Bosnia with one of the Scottish regiments at Whit. They need a good deal more resources if they are to do the job as effectively as they would wish.
Mr. Foulkes: I shall take account of my hon. Friend's comments.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) raised the subject of Indonesia. I congratulate her on her diligence in pursuing Indonesian issues tirelessly both inside and outside the House. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in reply to a question in the House, we are currently reviewing both the level and focus of our development co-operation with Indonesia, as elsewhere. The issues of poverty and human rights will be central factors in shaping our future development relationship with that country. I hope that my comments will have reassured my hon. Friend.
The right hon. Member for Eddisbury, the hon. Member for Westbury and others mentioned the important role of non-governmental organisations. I bow to no one in my admiration for NGOs. I used to work for one, albeit not in this area, and I think that charities and voluntary organisations do a great deal of good. They have become major players in international development, with important roles both as aid deliverers overseas and, here in the United Kingdom, as advocates for development, which is most helpful from our point of view. We recognise them as important partners in development, whose work is complementary to that of our Department and whose experience can contribute to the design and delivery of our own programmes. We are strongly supportive of the role of organisations such as Population Concern, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), who has an intimate knowledge of the issue.
Something that astonishes me after 18 years in this House--like you, Mr. Deputy Speaker--is that I am still surprised by the bare-faced cheek of the Tories. They presided over a halving of development aid, yet, after eight weeks, they come along and ask why Labour does
not immediately set a timetable for increasing our bilateral aid. During the election, we made it clear that we are committed to working within the existing budget ceiling for the first two years, with the aim of then obtaining extra resources in the third year of the Labour Government.
Mr. Foulkes:
Because the quality of aid is just as important as the quantity and we want to get that right. We want to make sure that aid is spent according to Labour priorities--our priorities--to help the poorest of the poor. We want to ensure that money is switched away from the sort of projects that the Conservatives supported and the National Audit Office criticised--projects such as the state propaganda radio station in Indonesia and the Pergau dam--to small-scale projects in sectors such as education, health and clean water. Only after that has been achieved can we go with confidence to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and ask for more money.
I remind Conservative Members that, when Labour left office in 1979, the aid budget stood at 0.51 per cent. of gross national product and rising; but when we took over from the discredited Conservative Government, it was 0.27 per cent. of GNP and falling. Let us hear no more lectures from Conservative Members.
Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Richmond Park and--[Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. There can be only one contribution at a time.
Mr. Foulkes:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not actually too bothered by them, but I am grateful to you.
I shall add to what I said about UNESCO in an intervention, because some people did not seem to hear what was being said. Like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, I am becoming frustrated by people not listening--[Interruption.]--and I, too, find the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) very irritating. The cost this year of rejoining UNESCO is only £5 million and, as I told the hon. Member for Richmond Park, it will be met from the contingency reserve. More important, UNESCO has agreed to target our priority of primary education--especially for girls--so that that money will be spent in the most developmentally sound way possible. We had already anticipated points raised by Opposition Members.
I cannot address all the points raised during the debate, but we shall take account of all of them during production of our White Paper. However, I shall make a few remarks on the Commonwealth, a matter that was raised by the right hon. Member for Eddisbury. The Government attach the highest priority to the Commonwealth, its role and its principles. I am glad to say that the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting will be held in Edinburgh--the city in which I received much of my education, or at least in which I was taught. The meeting will be held in October and will provide a timely opportunity for us to take a lead on a diverse range of important Commonwealth activities.
The main theme of the Edinburgh meeting will be "Trade, Investment and Development: the Road to Commonwealth Prosperity" and our discussion on that key subject will provide an opportunity to demonstrate that the Commonwealth can and does make a difference.
As I said at the beginning, this has been the most comprehensive and constructive debate about international development that we have had for a long time. I believe that it was so helpful because it followed the great boost given to the subject by our stunning victory on 1 May. That victory gave new hope to the people of the developing world, just as it gave new hope to the people of Britain. One of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's first actions was to fulfil our manifesto pledge to put international development at the heart of government, and to appoint a Cabinet Minister to be responsible for it. For all the tributes that have been paid to Lady Chalker--I, too, pay tribute to her--the last Government never put her in the Cabinet.
Not only is the subject important in itself; we now have a Select Committee--
It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Pope.]
Mr. Alan Johnson (Hull, West and Hessle):
As this is my maiden speech, before I come to the subject of the debate, I shall follow the tradition of the House by paying tribute to my predecessor, Stuart Randall, who represented Kingston upon Hull, West for 14 years. Although he began his working life as an apprentice electrician, it does credit to his hard work, determination and foresight that he developed an expertise in information technology that few have matched.
Stuart was working with computers in the early 1960s, and his subsequent experience as a manager and consultant in the banking, steel and motor industries proved an invaluable asset to the work of the House. Despite his deep knowledge of what is still an esoteric subject, he could not be accused of being the proverbial anorak. He is an open and friendly man, who earned the trust and respect of his constituents--many of whom have written to the local press recently to record their deep appreciation of his work as a dedicated constituency Member.
I do not have time to pay tribute to all my other predecessors, but a mark of the eminence of my city is that other Hull Members include the poet Andrew Marvell, who pleaded to his coy mistress by the tide of Humber. His couplet
I am proud to represent the people of Hull, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara). We form a utilitarian trio: the seafarer, the teacher and the postman. The phrase "workers by hand or by brain" comes to mind--only to be quickly suppressed. We are all enjoying the full fruits of our industry.
I am equally proud to represent the town of Hessle, which was formerly part of the constituency of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Cran). When my predecessor made his maiden speech, he said that the Humber bridge, which connects with the north bank of the river at Hessle, was not in his constituency. Rectifying that involved either moving the bridge or extending the constituency. I am delighted that the latter option was taken.
Although Hull is rightly famous for its splendid university, its rugby league football team, its publicly owned telephone company--local calls of unlimited duration cost 4p--and its magnificent 13th-century Holy Trinity church, to most people it is synonymous with seafaring. Fishing gave Hull its spirit, its character and, in the main, its livelihood. Of only four distant water ports in this country, Hull was the largest, and was unique in that its boats fished nowhere other than in distant Arctic waters.
Distant water fishing is the most arduous and hazardous of occupations. Working most commonly on three-week trips, with 36 hours in port before they set off again, the men were on deck, exposed to temperatures as low as minus 40 deg throughout their 18-hour shifts. In winter, they were constantly involved in struggles to prevent their vessels from icing up. Too much top ice, which could form within minutes, would capsize a trawler. The accident mortality rate was 14 times that of coal mining. In the 150 years from 1835 to 1987, some 900 Hull boats were lost at sea. Few crew members survived.
There is no distant water fishing industry worth speaking of any more. The 3,000 men who carried out that desperately hard and dangerous work lost their jobs, primarily as a direct result of the previous Government's decision not to accept the generous quotas that were offered when Iceland extended its fishing limit to 200 miles 21 years ago. They are the true casualties of the so-called cod wars.
I appreciate that the House is not the place for hyperbole, but I must say that I have never come across a worse case of industrial injustice than the way in which trawlermen, their families and communities were subsequently treated. The issue has been raised countless times in the House by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister when he was in opposition, by my predecessor, Stuart Randall, by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), and by Opposition Members, because this is not a party political issue.
Both Government and Opposition have had a hand in creating the trawlermen's plight. However, until now a Labour Government have not had an opportunity to resolve it. The Conservative Government made an attempt to solve the problem, but, for reasons which I shall explain later, it was insufficient and inadequate. First, I need to complete the background. Although the trawler owners received generous payments and decommissioning grants, the trawlermen received nothing. There were no assistance programmes, no retraining initiatives and no redundancy compensation.
With nothing but broken promises and expressions of sympathy by the Government and various agencies, the burden of correcting the injustice has fallen to the fishermen themselves, who set up the British Fishermen's Association for that purpose. The Minister will be aware of how this small organisation, financed and run entirely by the men, has doggedly pursued their cause. He will know how they won their case at an industrial tribunal in 1987 on the issue of redundancy pay, only to lose on appeal, and how, in 1993, a further judgment from the Court of Appeal on a different case finally supported the trawlermen's contention that they were not and never had been casual workers.
In response, the Conservative Government established an ex gratia scheme which could belatedly have provided, if not a generous, at least an honourable settlement of the issue. However, that Government insisted that, first, the scheme applied to those who had been misdirected by departmental officials and as a result did not pursue their cases to an industrial tribunal, and, secondly, that payments were based on the necessity of having worked for the same employer for two years.
The first criterion excluded those few fishermen, 17 in total, who had pursued their case to a tribunal and lost before the Court of Appeal ruling in 1993. The second criterion failed to recognise the unique nature of the industry and the way that ships were crewed. Trawlermen worked in what was called "the scheme", which was operated by the shipowners and the then Department of Employment, and one of its objectives was to ensure that there was an adequate number of qualified fishermen readily available for all companies participating in the scheme.
When a trawler was tied up, perhaps for a refit, the trawlermen were entitled to dole money and would remain in the scheme. However, if the Department of Employment decided, in conjunction with a participating company, that it would be appropriate for a trawlerman to cover a vacancy on a trawler that belonged to a different company, the trawlerman was compelled to accept or had his benefit stopped. For that and many other reasons relating to the industry, discontinuity of employer was a fact of life.
Those criteria have denied many trawlermen any compensation. For others, the payments have been derisory. For example, one ex-trawlerman who wrote to the previous Prime Minister explained that he had spent 35 years at sea as a distant water trawlerman. However, because of the few occasions in that time that he had worked continuously for two years for the same company, his payment was £450.
There is no legal redress, but there is a political solution. The ex gratia payment scheme can be reopened and reconstituted on a basis that recognises natural justice and the realities of that perilous occupation. The scheme was not inadequate because available finances were limited. The Department of Employment confirmed in a letter to the BFA that there was
10 pm
"But at my back I always hear
should be a maxim for speakers in the Chamber. William Wilberforce was another predecessor of mine, who was born in Hull.
Time's winged chariot hurrying near"
"no limit on the number of payments or on the total cash available."
In any case, although I recognise and support the prudent approach of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whom we will all listen with interest tomorrow, the amount of money needed to rectify the problem would not even register in the decimal roundings of the Red Book.
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