| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Lord Donoughue: My Lords, this is an important and complex matter. I wish to thank the Minister. He is always helpful and his reply was very full. However, it lacked the figures for which I asked. How much is currently committed firmly by the private sector? Secondly, since he mentioned the very important factor of the extension of the remit of the Millennium Commission, is he aware that we on this side of the House--possibly a future government--are in no way committed to supporting that?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I do not have any figures to hand as to how much money has been committed in legal terms as opposed to pledged. On the noble Lord's second question, he was in a position to give your Lordships the information rather than I.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, does the cost quoted include the cost of disposing of 80,000 square metres of disposable pre-coated polyester over the Millennium dome at the end of 10 or 15 years, with its possible dangers of carcinogenic toxins and hormone disrupting chemicals?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I understand that the use to which the dome might be put at the end of the period of the exhibition--I remind your Lordships that the planning consent that is being sought is for a temporary use that will expire at the end of the year 2000--has not yet been determined. So no one is in a position to answer the noble Lord's question.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that before the millennium site at Greenwich was chosen an immense amount of care and thought was given to alternative sites? This is a very well chosen site and it is unthinkable that any replacement of the millennium project could take place. Will the Government give full support to its completion?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, my noble friend is right about the considerable care that went into the selection of the site. I can reiterate that the Government are confident that the project will proceed and are giving it all their support.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, did I understand the Minister to say in answering the very first Question from my noble friend that the Government are to meet the full cost of the reclamation of the site? If he did say that, it is not the answer he gave me last week when he told me that British Gas would be responsible.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right to recall the reply which I gave to her last week. An agreement was reached with Port Greenwich, which is a subsidiary of British Gas, to sell the site to English Partnerships. The statutorily required decontamination work which is necessary before it can be sold has been or is being carried out by Port Greenwich, which is paying for it. In addition to that work, before the site can be put to any long-term beneficial use--it is much bigger than the site required for the Greenwich millennium exhibition--a substantial amount of extra work of additional decontamination, reclamation and the installation of infrastructure and services is required.
Lord Elton: My Lords, as a considerable amount of public money is going into this project, will the Government require of the developers that the exhibition shall contain some obvious indication of what the millennium is celebrating, which is the 2000th anniversary of the birth of our Saviour?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the whole focus of the exhibition is to be the millennium and its significance for us. My noble friend is absolutely right about its very nature.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, is it not the case that the Minister has twice failed to answer my noble friend's precise question about how much private money has been contractually committed? Does not that question follow directly from my noble friend's original Question about the immense amount estimated to be
contributed from respective funding sources? If so, should the Minister not have been able to answer that question, which concerns an issue of fact?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I have given a reply to the noble Lord. It was one which the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, did not find satisfactory. I explained that this project was predicated on the basis that there would be £150 million of sponsorship which would be made available for the exhibition. I explained that I was not in a position now to give an exact figure for the amount of money that has been contracted rather than pledged.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, does the ownership of the land revert to English Partnerships at the end of the day? If so, if English Partnerships sells it at a profit, will the Government get back the £200 million of taxpayers' money that will have been spent on it?
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, the owner of most, but not all, of the 300 acre or so site at Port Greenwich is English Partnerships. If and when English Partnerships sells the site it will receive the receipts less 7.5 per cent. of the gross proceeds, which will go to British Gas. That was one of the terms agreed when the site was acquired from Port Greenwich by English Partnerships.
EU: "Better off Out" Publication
3.19 p.m.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch asked Her Majesty's Government:
- Whether they accept the findings of Better off Out?, recently published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, and, if they do not, whether they will commission a cost-benefit analysis of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union.
The Minister of State, Department of Social Security (Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish): My Lords, we believe that the United Kingdom must remain a member of the European Union. The European Union has been the basis of western European economic and political organisation in the second half of this century. As the Government said in their White Paper A Partnership of Nations earlier this year, the United Kingdom's role as a leading member of the EU is vital to our national interests. We do not therefore intend to commission a cost-benefit analysis.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. Since this highly respectable publication finds that the United Kingdom might be better off outside the European Union altogether, would not the Government at least be wise to analyse the benefits that we may receive from our access to the single market and set them against the calamities we suffer from our imprisonment within the Treaty of Rome? Without such an analysis, are not the Government like a foolish businessman who negotiates
at the IGC the future of his company with a deceitful predator, not knowing the moment when he should get up and leave the table?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, at least my noble friend suggested that the Government might be like a foolish businessman and not a foolish anything else, which rather worried some of us on the Front Bench. As I have said on a number of occasions, this is a difficult Question to deal with in the short time available at Question Time. Perhaps I may recommend to my noble friend that he looks at page 21 of the document he has asked me about. He will there see, as regards the costs and benefits, this passage:
- "Some of these, such as net budget contributions and the cost of tariffs saved are, at least in principle, quantifiable. Other costs and benefits are real and substantial but difficult to quantify. In this category are the intangible (but real) benefits of having a harmonised single market, as against the costs of the regulation which goes hand-in-hand with the harmonised market under the European system. These categories of cost and benefit do not admit of ready quantification".
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the book in question is a very well-documented piece of work and that it certainly merits a specific answer from the Government, even though they may not wish to circulate it among their own officials? Is the noble Lord further aware that the content of this excellent work is fully justified in its historical context by the work of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, a distinguished historian, whose book Britain and the European Union should also be read in conjunction with the book mentioned in the Question?
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, it is indeed an interesting book. As I have quoted a small part of it, I believe that your Lordships can see that it illustrates the difficulty of coming to a clear, bottom-line answer because set against the economic points I have made are points about political stability in Europe. Very few in your Lordships' House would find it easy to quantify the value of the political stability which the European Union has brought to western Europe.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords--
Lord Taverne: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that it is evident from this Question and many similar ones asked in this House and in another place that the real drive against progress towards monetary union comes from those who want us to leave the European Union altogether? Can the Minister convey to the Prime Minister that it is futile to make continual concessions to those who oppose closer co-operation and union because every single concession will be gobbled up and more will be asked for?
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page