Mr President, I wholeheartedly commend the motion for a resolution from the Committee on Civil Liberties and Internal Affairs to this Parliament, and I particularly wish to draw attention to recital C which refers to the positive benefits of a multi-cultural society.

We have just heard from Mr Vanhecke that a multi-cultural society does not exist. Oh yes it does, Mr Vanhecke, it exists in my constituency in West London where a third of the population is of non-English origin - and we live together pretty happily by and large and in an enriched society. Our whole society is enriched by the diversity of cultures living in that community. I number amongst my own neighbours Chinese, Indians, Afro-Caribbeans and many others. I love to live in that kind of multi-racial society. I am privileged to represent it and I believe that it is the way forward for humanity.

Five years ago Parliament set up a special Committee of Inquiry into Racism and Xenophobia. Sad to say, although we have made much progress, many of our recommendations have not been implemented because of the reluctance of certain governments in the Community to endorse them. We cannot have a society in Europe in which more than 10 million of our residents are subjected to second-class status. I refer to those 10 million or more people who are not citizens but are long-term residents, I am not talking about people who have come for a few weeks' holiday. In my view we cannot tolerate a situation where people who have lived most of their lives in our own European cities have no more rights today than when they arrived 30 years ago.

We called for free movement of all peoples within Europe. All those people legally resident in our Community should be free to travel around, and that is being denied them at the moment - though, fortunately, this Parliament is challenging that matter in the European Court. We called for them to have voting rights too; we said that everybody who has five years' residence in an area should be able to vote in all elections simply on the basis that they live there and are part of the community in which they reside. We also said that they must have free access to employment in the public sector. None of these things has been fully achieved as yet.

In the United Kingdom - and there are many things wrong about the way things go on there: we have our own share of racial violence and harassment and all the other evils - because of the accident of Commonwealth citizenship the vast majority of our ethnic minority groups of Afro-Caribbean, Asian and other origins are British citizens. They are playing an increasingly full part in the political and public life of our society. The fact that they have voting rights does not solve all the problems - there is still racial violence and discrimination - but the fact that there are 30 or 40 constituencies in the British Parliament where representatives cannot be elected without the votes of these people is an enormous shot in the arm to guaranteeing equality of treatment.

I commend this resolution. It does not go quite as far as I wish, but it is a valuable contribution to combating the evil of racism which is rearing its ugly head yet again in our society.

(Applause)