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11.55 am
Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber): I shall follow up some of the points that the hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir D. Mitchell) made, in a constructive speech. It was a pleasure to listen to the speech of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson). I congratulate him, as others have done, on raising the situation in St. Helena. His descriptions were as fascinating as his arguments were persuasive. Unlike him, I have not visited the island--the isolation and the time required have prevented me--but I have visited the Falkland Islands. As a result, and because I have been for a long time associated with the Falkland Isles parliamentary group, I have gained a reasonable amount of knowledge over the years of the islands of the south Atlantic. My noble Friend Lord Beaumont has told me about the visit which the hon. Gentleman described. I should like to make only a short speech, so I will follow the structure that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks chose.
We have had a pretty bad record in recent years on the citizenship question. Several hon. Members have referred to Hong Kong. The treatment there of the ethnic minority is potentially a scandal. With respect to the hon. Member for North-West Hampshire, I do not see why St. Helena has to be put in a box until Hong Kong is sorted out. We are talking about fewer than 6,000 people, not a great flood of immigrants. As the hon. Member for Sevenoaks said, those people had British citizenship until 1981 and know of no other loyalty. I should have thought that we had a responsibility to them.
As for communications, I am sure that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks is right about the airstrip. Several hon. Members and my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) said that it was possible. I should like to know how much it would cost, if the Minister is able to say roughly.
Sir David Mitchell:
I know that time is short, but there is a problem. If some potential tourist traffic is creamed off on to air landing, the viability of RMS St. Helena will be reduced and the demand for subsidy of its operation will be increased.
Sir Russell Johnston:
That is a fair point. Of course, if resources are limited and the number of people using the transport mode is limited, one may have to decide between one and the other. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Certainly, everyone seems to be saying that the improvement of landing facilities is of pre-eminent importance. It was bad to hear the hon. Member for North-West Hampshire say that five cruise ships visited the island and had to go away without landing one tourist. That must have represented a large loss of potential income.
On the Government's commitment and the constitution, the hon. Member for North-West Hampshire was talking about self-help and saying that the Government should do this and that, but it is difficult for Governments who are pledged, as an article of faith, to non-intervention where possible to be terribly good at self-starting all those things.
We are talking about regional development on an island in the south Atlantic. Everyone has been careful to say that they know that Overseas Development Administration officials are well intentioned and so forth.
There has been a "but" at the end of the sentence, however. I suppose it comes back to the fact that unless one motivates people to motivate themselves one will not succeed through some sort of paternalistic activity, as the hon. Member for North-West Hampshire said.
I want the Minister briefly to say something about medical services. I presume that any airstrip would have short lift-off capacity. I do not know what the hospital facilities are. If someone is in a severe medical condition on St. Helena, what does one do?
Courtesy of the questions asked by the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) in March, I have been thinking about education. The information in the answers to the questions is pretty awful. The hon. Gentleman asked:
Most things have been said about development. Unemployment of 18 per cent. in a small community is obviously bad and there is a concentration on tourism and fishing. Obviously, St. Helena is a fascinating place and it attracts spasmodic attention because of it. Books on Napoleon are produced every so often, for instance. However, we have a debt to the place and we have a responsibility that we are not fulfilling as we should.
As I have said before--no one agrees, but I will say it again--I have long admired the French system of dealing with their remaining dependent territories. St. Pierre and Miquelon, the two islands off the Canadian coast, are not as isolated as St. Helena, but they have a smaller population--2,500 to 3,000, I think--and they are well treated and backed by the French, as are Martinique, Guadeloupe and all the other French territories. Through France, they also have access to European Union funding. That is a good solution for our remaining dependent territories and not one that should be dismissed simply by saying, "We do not do that--the French do."
I found the speech of the hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) very concerning, not least because, as anyone who knows him realises, he is not given to sensation and exaggeration. He said,
Mr. Tony Lloyd (Stretford):
On these occasions, it is customary to pay tribute to the initiator of the debate and I do so with more sincerity than usual this morning, as the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) has done some service to the people of St. Helena and to the House by raising this matter.
To pick up on the remarks of the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston), there can be no doubt that our commitment--whether that of this Government or of a future Labour Government--to the island and its dependent territories is legal and historical, but it is also a moral commitment and we cannot avoid that. The question, therefore, is how we discharge that commitment, rather than whether it exists; I think that all hon. Members would take that view.
I must own up to my relative ignorance about St. Helena. Possibly the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber, the Minister and I are the only ones present who have not had detailed exposure to the islands and their people. I must thank my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke), who attended the recent Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit and took the trouble to tell me of his observations and to pass on those of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks, whose written comments and his speech this morning were interesting and important.
I do not want to make a partisan or party-political point, but some of the responses of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when island issues have been raised have smacked of complacency. That might be an unfair charge, but I wanted to put it on the record and the Minister can deal with it in whatever way he chooses.
An article on St. Helena appeared in The Sunday Telegraph after the invasion of the governor's office and the assault, albeit a minor assault, upon his person. The issue is serious and the Minister's answer in Hansard tended to play it down considerably, playing down the underlying and clear unhappiness of the people on the island. In the article, the governor is quoted as saying that although "dumbstruck" by the events he also found them understandable. He said:
To an extent I am repeating remarks that have already been made this morning, but if we recognise that two thirds of the jobs on the island depend directly on British Government subvention--the hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir D. Mitchell) said that it was 75 per cent., I think--that the direct bilateral aid budget is more than £8 million but was £11.7 million at the beginning of the decade and that that decrease has paralleled an increase in unemployment from a little under 8 per cent. to the present 17.5 per cent., we must also accept that the worries and fears of the islanders are legitimate. While we are not talking of a third world economy, nevertheless it is not an economy in which people are individually or collectively well off.
While I took considerable comfort in the comments about the progress of the fishing industry, which is clearly to be welcomed, that industry is a relatively modest employer. Even if we envisage great change, it will probably still remain a modest employer for some time to come. The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) asked a question about the number of businesses since 1984 that had taken advantage of the taxation breaks available on the island. The answer shows that in the two years for
which figures are available, one cabinet maker and one coffee producer had done so. Business formation at that rate will not resolve the problems.
That brings us to the issue of what the islanders want, what the ODA wants, and what the Foreign Office wants. We recognise that economic development will depend on significant input from Britain--however we engage the private sector, the commitment of the public sector will be needed. Will the Minister comment on the strategic review and the country policy plan which either has arrived or is due arrive on his desk this month? We need to know what are the implications for bilateral aid. The need for consistency of aid has already been emphasised; people need an element of certainty in order to operate successfully. That is a legitimate demand, to which I add my voice.
Will the Minister comment on what is known about likely future flows of inward investment? It is clear that inward investment of some sort will be needed--whatever self-help can do, there is neither the level of capital nor the potential for formation of capital on the island to make the necessary investment without outside intervention. What estimates have been made of the potential for investment? In addition, will the Minister comment on what assessment has been made of the viability and growth of traditional industries such as fishing, which has already been mentioned, agriculture and forestry? They have some potential, but one would not want to overestimate their likely impact.
The industry that all hon. Members who have spoken today have mentioned is tourism. When I returned from the Falklands recently and passed through Ascension island, I was lobbied during my brief sojourn on the issue of tourism and on the need to examine both the viability of tourism on Ascension in the interests of Saints who have given many years of service to Britain and to the British Crown, and the possibility of having a two-centre approach. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks mentioned that his report to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association referred to the opportunity to link the futures of Ascension and St. Helena in a little tourism matrix, as a unique niche form of tourism.
That would depend on transportation links and hon. Members have said that there is a trade-off to be made between the potential arising from air links being opened up and the impact--possibly damaging--on the existing sea route. There must be a strong case--indeed, the Minister may confirm that it is already being done--for carrying out a serious feasibility study into the linkage between the different transportation systems and the development of a tourism industry that could allow the islanders, in a guided way, to exploit the island's resources.
I want to pick up one of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire. It seems ridiculous that, not only potential, but real demand for tourism is being turned away because of the lack of facilities that would probably require only a relatively modest investment. I urge the Minister to take that matter seriously as part of his consideration of developments that could be achieved in the short term.
In my remarks on the economy of the island, I hope that I have demonstrated that the commitment of any Government of this country to the island must be genuine.
I shall now return to the four Cs raised by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks. I have already touched on communication in my comments on transportation links, but there is another aspect to that. I am aware that the island currently receives Cable News Network, courtesy of Cable and Wireless. It might be out of the question, but in view of my personal enthusiasm for the service I want to ask the Minister about the role of the BBC World Service, both radio and television. St. Helena is not only an English-speaking community, but a British community. From my visits to South America, I know of the demand that Britain should have a presence there and that BBC television should be made available. I should have thought that the possibility of extending the BBC service to St. Helena at reasonable cost to the islanders should at least be considered.
All that I can say in respect of citizenship is that I recognise that from the bishops commission--now the citizenship commission--onward there have been demands for citizenship and that will continue. There is no easy answer that I can offer on behalf of a future Labour Government and I shall not pretend otherwise, because that would be dishonest. I shall listen with interest to the Minister's comments.
On the issue of constitutional arrangements, I was concerned by the comments of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks on the legal framework--whether it was adequate and whether it could change quickly enough to respond to the needs of the islanders. That might have an impact on constitutional matters, for example, whether the constitutional settlement is such that the pace of legal change can be rapid enough to respond to the need to welcome business investment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) has a detailed knowledge of these matters and I was interested in his remarks about the case of the school teacher. I accept and understand the Minister's explanation, but hon. Members must ask themselves whether issues should have to be raised with a Minister in Britain when they might be resolvable at local level. I am sure that the case raised by my hon. Friend would have been resolved in everybody's interests at local level had the local authorities had the necessary powers. That case calls into question whether the current constitutional settlement is one that we would want to promote in the modern world.
We are not talking about a colonial regime of times gone by, but about people who should be given the maximum encouragement to help themselves. That self-help should extend not only to economic matters, but to issues such as local control and self-government where that is appropriate. I ask the Minister to tell us about the various constitutional reviews that have taken place, including the CPA review, and where they fit into the framework. I urge him to consider carefully whether the time has now come for a proper examination of the island's legal capacity and of the potential for local control.
"how many (a) female and (b) males normally resident in St. Helena had commenced higher education courses (i) on the island and (ii) overseas".--[Official Report, 25 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 417.]
A list was provided in the answer. Last year, out of the population of just under 6,000--that would perhaps mean 1,500 to 2,000 young people--there were two males and five females. In 1994-95, the previous year, it was one male and nine females. If the community is not educated--through no fault of its own--it will not be a progressive community and that is the plain fact of the matter.
"Something is not right on the island."
Sadly, that seems to be true. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will at least tell us that the Government are aware of those shortcomings and of the needs and will respond.
"The islanders are fearful of their future. They worry about what will happen to them--and their anger was taken out not at me personally but at the institution I represent."
The House and the Government have to accept that collectively we are the institution against which that anger was vented. That is important. We have to take seriously the uncertainties and fears of people on the islands.
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