HL Deb 12 November 1985 vol 468 cc142-52

Debate resumed on the Motion moved on Wednesday last by the Lord Middleton—namely, That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

"Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament".

3.3 p.m.

Lord Glenarthur

My Lords, perhaps I may begin my remarks by adding my congratulations to my noble friends Lord Middleton and Lady Lane-Fox who so ably moved and seconded the Motion which we continue to debate today. I well remember how nervous I was—and that is something of an understatement—when I was privileged to perform the task which this year fell to my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox. I remember also the hazards of wearing a sword, but then I did not have to do more than stand in my place. I can only express my admiration for the assured and confident way in which both my noble friends delivered their excellent and thoughtful speeches.

By tradition my speech should outline our legislative programme for the new Session, concentrating as I shall be on home and environmental affairs and giving a flavour of what will be our business in the months ahead. By tradition noble Lords opposite then attack that programme, ably supported in a non-controversial way by the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, to which we all look forward, while my noble friends behind me merely query items in it. Finally, tradition demands that my noble friend Lord Elton answers all the points raised by our noble friends, and defeats with consummate ease the sallies made by noble Lords opposite. Tradition is one of our nation's greatest assets. Your Lordships will be happy to hear that my noble friend and I will uphold our tradition today, although we will quite understand if noble Lords opposite feel that they should break with theirs.

The subject matter I have to cover is broad, but perhaps I can best start by relating a success story which no one can deny. Since we took office in 1979, 800,000 houses and flats have been sold to their tenants by local authorities, new towns and housing associations. We shall build on this success. We propose in our Housing and Planning Bill to shorten the period during which the discount of the original sale price has to be repaid if the property is resold, and to improve the discount of flats. We shall improve the regulation of service charges and also promote the transfer of council estates to private management.

Our White Paper Lifting the Burden, published in July, put forward several proposals designed to meet the objectives of encouraging development in the right places, safeguarding the environment and removing unnecessary burdens on developers. We intend to give those ideas life.

The reform of parts of local government occupied our minds for much of the last Session—I doubt that any of us, particularly my noble friend Lord Elton, will forget that in a hurry. But we shall be introducing another Bill on local government, to deal with two important matters of local authority practice which have given rise to increasing public concern. First, the Bill will seek to clarify the present law governing local authority publicity, as the Widdicombe inquiry has recommended, so that authorities are expressly prohibited from issuing publicity that might promote the interests of a political party. The Bill will also provide for a statutory duty on all rating authorities to make their rate by 1st April each year. This is in the light of experience this year, when a number of authorities delayed rating for some months as part of a political campaign that in no way benefited ratepayers, nor improved the management of the authorities concerned.

My noble friend Lord Middleton, with his expert knowledge of the subject, referred in his speech to the Agriculture Bill, now introduced in another place. It will provide a framework for a developing partnership between the Government and agriculture and its associated industries. The Bill will help activities such as agricultural research and advisory services to become more sensitive to the needs of users. In addition it will enable us to implement the important new European initiative, to which my right honourable friend the Minister contributed, on environmentally sensitive areas and make provision for agreements with farmers on the use of methods of agriculture in such areas which serve environmental objectives. I am sure that this is one measure which will be welcomed on all sides of your Lordships' House.

I see that we shall soon be debating the future of the National Health Service and social security on the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. Perhaps I may therefore be permitted to limit my remarks on this topic, and so not steal any of the thunder of my noble friend Lady Trumpington. Your Lordships will however wish to be aware that we intend to publish a White Paper in the next month or so preparatory to introducing legislation to reform social security, as promised in the gracious Speech.

One theme within that speech, which has captured the imagination of the press, and presumably the public at large, is the emphasis it places on aspects of law and order. It is to that important subject I now turn. Public order (or lack of it) is, unfortunately, one of the most pressing problems of our time. Fifty years have elapsed since the Public Order Act 1936 was passed to deal with the threat to freedom posed by the fascist use of violence and intimidation in the streets of London. Since then different problems have come to the fore, and our citizens need protection from many different kinds of threat. But our underlying approach remains the same: the rights of peaceful protest and assembly are among our most fundamental freedoms. We are determined that any limitations on those freedoms should be the minimum necessary to preserve order and to protect the rights and freedoms of others. That is the fundamental principle which has guided us throughout our review of public order; and the Public Order Bill will show no derogation from it.

The review has a long history. It began in 1979, following that year's disorders in Southall. It has considered a number of helpful reports: from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, on the Brixton riots; from the Home Affairs Committee of another place; and from the Law Commission on the public order offences. It has also taken account of the lessons to be learned from the major disorders of recent years—the inner city riots of 1981 and this year; the mass pickets at Grunwick, at Warrington and during the miners' strike; the growing menace of football hooliganism; and the continuing public order problems connected with demonstrations of all kinds. The review was no instant response to any single event; it was a distillation of the lessons to be learned from all of them, and from the many helpful comments the Government received both on the Green Paper published in 1980 and on the White Paper published earlier this year.

The Bill which your Lordships will be invited to consider will be based on the proposals in that White Paper. It will extend the preventive powers of the police to control demonstrations presently contained in the Public Order Act 1936; revise and codify the common law offences of riot, unlawful assembly and affray; tighten the offence of incitement to racial hatred; and introduce further measures against football hooliganism. The Government believe the Bill will provide a balanced legal framework to give the police the necessary powers to prevent and deal with disorder. It will in no way inhibit freedom of speech. The right of protest will be safeguarded. So when we come to debate this very important measure, I shall look to the party opposite to affirm unequivocally their support for the police; I shall look for their avowed rejection of those who foment disturbance by intemperate language, and clear acknowledgement from them that individual rights must be exercised reasonably and responsibly and that they must be balanced against the rights of society as a whole.

Your Lordships have frequently and rightly expressed grave concern about the danger to our society posed by drugs and suggested ways in which their spread can be halted. Those who traffick in drugs and make a profit from the misery of their fellow men are thoroughly evil. At all costs this trade must be stopped. Your Lordships approved a Bill last Session which increased the maximum penalty for trafficking in Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine to life imprisonment. Parole for drug traffickers sentenced to more than five years' imprisonment has also been severely restricted. But even the prospect of a long sentence may not be a sufficient deterrent, if the trafficker can look forward ultimately to enjoying the proceeds of his vile crimes when he is released from prison. For this reason we will introduce legislation to provide the police, the customs and the courts with wide-ranging new powers for tracing, freezing and confiscating the proceeds of drug trafficking.

Central to our proposals will be the new concept of a confiscatory fine. This will provide the Crown Court with a flexible and effective means of stripping drug traffickers of the whole of their proceeds. It will be possible for the courts to regard all assets of a drug trafficker as representing the proceeds of drug trafficking, except to the extent that the judge is satisfied to the contrary. In effect, in an appropriate case the onus will be placed on a convicted trafficker to show which, if any, of his assets were legitimately acquired. I am aware that some may feel that this goes too far and that it should be for the prosecution to prove that the assets were illegally acquired. While acknowledging the sincerity of those who hold this view, we believe that our proposal is in these cases a very necessary one if the objective of confiscating the proceeds of such crimes is to be achieved. But perhaps I should emphasise that there is no question of changing in any way the burden of proof for the purposes of obtaining a conviction.

Once a confiscatory fine has been imposed, any of the offender's assets will be subject to immediate confiscation and disposal to secure payment of the fine in full. Thus, if the proceeds of drug trafficking have been spent or salted away outside the jurisdiction of the court, the judge will have power to deprive the offender of other legitimate assets in order to satisfy the fine.

If we are serious about attacking the proceeds of drug trafficking it is clearly essential to obtain information at an early stage about the movement or disposal of assets by the suspect. We will propose new powers for the police or customs to apply to a circuit judge for an order requiring banks or others to disclose information about assets held by a person who is suspected on reasonable grounds of being involved in drug trafficking. In addition, the High Court will have power to make orders freezing the assets of a person accused of drug trafficking, at or just before the time of arrest, to ensure that such assets are available to satisfy any confiscatory fine subsequently imposed.

The legislation will also create a new offence of handling the proceeds of drug trafficking. This is intended to catch those who assist the trafficker and benefit from his crimes by laundering the money.

There will be power for the Government to enter into reciprocal agreements with other countries, so that orders made by British courts following a conviction for a drug trafficking offence can be enforced against assets held overseas and vice-versa. Only by securing really effective international co-operation can we ensure that there will be no safe havens for the trafficker or his assets anywhere in the world.

These are undoubtedly strong measures; but I felt it right to dwell on them today because they are designed to address one of the most serious threats facing society. It is intolerable that convicted traffickers are able to enjoy the proceeds of their crimes after release, or use them to finance further trafficking activities at a later date. Our thrust will attack the major incentive which leads people into this horrible trade, and is an essential element in our strategy for combating drugs misuse.

I am lucky enough to have lived in Scotland for most of my life. Scotland's history shows many examples of forward-looking and enterprising attitudes. But changes to achieve these have not meant the sweeping away of customs and ideals which have stood the test of time. They still hold good.

Throughout the United Kingdom many social changes since the early part of the century have meant that people's domestic lives have become quite different. Perhaps one way in which this is exemplified is that people now want and need to be able to organise their shopping differently. Whilst weekday shopping hours restrictions have been maintained there, Scotland has been more liberal on Sundays. We propose to build on that by allowing freedom of choice—freedom for the consumer to shop at the most convenient time, and freedom for the shopkeeper to open his shop to meet that demand.

We propose to introduce legislation to remove all statutory restrictions on shopping hours North and South of the Border. It has long been recognised that the 1950 Shops Act is anomalous, impossible to enforce in a fair and efficient way, and does not reflect the needs and wishes of people today. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox gave us some examples of today's needs in her speech, and the House will be aware of the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lady Trumpington in 1981 and passed by your Lordships. The Auld Report stated that a growing number of stores trade outside permitted hours and that the law is widely being broken with impunity. I think there is a consensus that the law must be reformed. The question is as to what should be done, not whether legislation is needed.

The demand for Sunday shopping has consistently grown. It can no longer be ignored. It is against this background that we propose to change the law. Some people do not wish to shop on Sunday, or to undertake any other Sunday activities. We respect that view. But we do not see why it should be imposed on those who do not share it.

Providing freedom of choice does not mean compulsion. But unnecessarily restrictive regulations should be removed. At the same time, we recognise the concern on the part of some existing shopworkers that they might be required to work on Sundays against their wishes and we propose to provide protection for them to prevent this.

Those who claim that the special nature of Sunday will be disturbed have only to look North of the Border to learn that this is no more likely to be true in England and Wales than it has been proved to be in Scotland. There can be fewer better examples of church attendance than in Scotland or better examples, taken in the round, of a more reverently observed Sunday. Any system of regulation will lead to problems of credibility and therefore to enforcement; that is why the only sensible course open to us is the course which Mr. Robin Auld and his team thought right—one of total deregulation.

Lord Graham of Edmonton

My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister, in indicating to the House that the Government have accepted the recommendations of the Auld Committee, also bear in mind that they were in two parts: one was in respect of the hours and the other was in respect of the wages councils? Would the Minister care to tell the House how the Government intend to act to protect the interests of shop workers in respect of wages councils?

Lord Glenarthur

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord had better await the arrival of the Bill.

One subject which usually engenders more concern even than Sunday trading is animals. A legitimate concern it is; and that is why, as we foreshadowed in our manifesto of 1979, we shall introduce a Bill to provide for an entirely new system of controls over the use of living animals in scientific procedures. It will ensure the best possible protection for animals while allowing necessary and valuable research to continue. It will enable us to ratify the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals used for experimental or other scientific procedures, in whose preparation we have played a leading part.

For over a century the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876 has operated to prevent animals in our laboratories from being subjected to avoidable, unnecessary or excessive suffering. Since then, the development of the biomedical sciences has been truly astonishing. The 1876 Act has proved extremely adaptable to these changes. But it is now widely recognised that the time has come to start afresh. We must achieve and set out in 20th century law the right balance between the legitimate requirements of science and industry and the protection of animals from all avoidable suffering. Our proposals, set out in the two White Papers published in 1983 and earlier this year, have received a very wide measure of support.

I shall not go into great detail on the provisions of a Bill that we hope will be before your Lordships quite soon, but the key to the proposed new system of controls is the introduction of a new, dual licensing system. The personal licence will ensure the competence of individual operators. That licence will allow nothing to be done without the authority of a separate project licence, setting out in detail for each individual programme of work what may be done to which types of animal and under what detailed conditions. The innovation of licensing individual projects will provide the key to the stricter control of pain and suffering which lies at the heart of our proposals. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will be required to weigh the likely effect of the procedures on the animals concerned against the likely benefit of the work.

Other provisions of the Bill will include the extension of the controls to procedures not regarded as within the scope of the 1876 Act, such as the production of sera, the maintenance of tumours in animals and the breeding of animals with inherited defects. There will also be controls for the first time on the source and supply of animals to laboratories. An important feature will be the requirement on all establishments, whether breeding, supplying or using laboratory animals, to appoint a person with day-to day responsibility for the welfare of animals and a veterinary surgeon whose duties will be set out in the statute. Detailed guidance explaining how the controls under the new legislation will work in practice will be published and will be available to your Lordships when we debate this measure.

I hope and believe that the introduction of this Bill will be widely welcomed. The proposals contained in it have achieved an unusually wide measure of agreement from the scientific community, from the veterinary profession and from animal welfare bodies. They have received much support in their work from that fervent and tireless campaigner for animals, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. I hope that your Lordships will support the Bill and ensure its speedy passage.

A substantial and radical programme has called for a rather substantial speech. There will inevitably be aspects of that programme which I have not had time to cover, but to which I am sure my noble friend Lord Elton will refer when he winds up. But throughout our term of office this Government have amply demonstrated their resolve to make Britain a strong, secure, decent and fair society. I look forward keenly to our debates on the measures from my own department in this Session to carry forward this very proper aim, an aim which is shared by the overwhelming body of opinion in this country.

3.25 p.m.

Lord Mishcon

My Lords after thanking the noble Lord the Minister for a lucid speech in which he included some self-comforting and very selective references to the procedure of your Lordships' House, perhaps I may make a few preliminary comments. The first is that I should like to join with the noble Lord the Minister in saying how glad we are that my noble friend Lord Mellish, with his extensive parliamentary career and very long and distinguished public life, will be participating in this debate with his maiden speech. Reference was also made by the Minister to the social security measures, the reform of which is heralded in the gracious Speech. Like him, I too anticipate that the sensible thing to do is to leave any debate upon that matter until 20th November, when a very full debate will be taking place, initiated by my noble friend Lord Ennals. My only other preliminary comment is to say that my noble friend Lord Underhill, when he winds up this debate for the Opposition, will be dealing with affairs relating to the environment and transport.

Very correctly, the Minister referred to the fact that there is grave public concern in regard to crime and law and order. Indeed, it is in the forefront of the public mind. It would be surprising if this were not so. The Conservative Party has put itself forward as the party which was able to reduce crime and to see to it that there was security in our land. It has signally failed to do so. Over the past six years, recorded crimes have gone up by 40 per cent. and violent crimes by 20 per cent. But to put this grave national matter into its correct and frightening perspective, may I quote to your Lordships the account of a lecture that was given by Sir Brian Cubbon, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, as reported in the issue of The Times for 31 st October.

I could not believe what was in it, and the quotations that I am going to give to your Lordships I found incredible; so that I thought, as a matter of courtesy and care, that I ought to telephone the office of that very distinguished civil servant and ask whether in fact The Times has correctly reported the contents of that lecture. I was told it was thought that it had, but that I would be telephoned back in 10 minutes' time if the report was in any way inaccurate. I received no such telephone call, so I can proceed upon the basis that this is an accurate report. It states: Sir Brian said in London that two-thirds of convicted offenders are aged under 28. Home Office studies had shown that of all males born in 1953 nearly a third had been convicted of a criminal offence by their twenty-eighth birthday". I was horrified by that statement, and I had three reactions. The first was, "My God! How dreadful it must be to be born under a Conservative Government"—as it was in 1953. Secondly, I thanked providence that none of my children had been born in 1953. My third reaction was to look at the headline in The Times of the report of that lecture: Home Office hopes of crime curb". Therefore I hoped there would be policy statements on behalf of the Government to see that that statistic was never repeated again—instead of which the only comfort that was given was in the first paragraph: A chance before the year 2000 to reverse rising crime and curb public misbehaviour was foreseen yesterday by Sir Brian Cubbon, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office. He sees hope lying with a huge projected reduction in the postware 'bulge' in young adults". The only hope, presumably, referred to in the lecture for a reduction of crime, so far as this Government are concerned, is that we will have fewer young people to commit crimes in the future. My Lords, what a prospect!

There is nothing in the gracious Speech which deals with this question—the reduction of crime and the bringing about of more law and order—other than increasing some police powers and bringing forward certain legislation which will codify offences and add another offence. Is this the Government of law and order? Are we to look forward to a third of our youth, year by year, creating population for overcrowded prisons?

Of course there are many factors that might be leading to these terrible figures. I am not pretending that these are the only factors, but can anybody deny that youth unemployment, the condition of housing and the deprived centres of our cities have a major role in producing this melancholy aspect that we face? If we talk of law and order, have we not to see that there is order in law itself and in the enforcement of the law? Here the Government have provided a smokescreen by this brief reference in the gracious Speech to what they intend to do; and your Lordships will have heard the speech eloquently given by the noble Lord the Minister, which merely produced grand phrases and no policy at all.

The first thing one looks at when one talks about order in law is what is happening to encourage those who have fallen foul of the law, to see to it that they become good citizens and do not add to those dreadful criminal statistics. In that respect, perhaps I may read to your Lordships an excerpt from a letter in the Guardian of 4th November. I deal with our children first, before I deal with our adults. Let me quote from this letter: The disclosure that 52 children are held in adult prisons, together with hundreds of older teenagers, because of the excessive use of youth custody sentences, is a reminder of the effects of overcrowding in prison department establishments. Those children are held in Dickensian conditions of deprivation and squalor. It is a scandal which the Home Secretary should end immediately. That is not a letter that comes from an officer of NACRO, or from a truly progressive letter writer—and that means progressive politically—but it is a letter signed by Maurice Logan-Salton, Monday Club Law and Order Committee.

Then one looks at the state of law and order and its enforcement when one looks at the population figures of our prisons. This time last year we were frightened of the figure of 43,100. It is now 47,000. We, I suppose, would hope that the Minister, when introducing a home affairs debate, would talk about the future and say that there are bound to be fewer prisoners in the future, again because of Government policy. I hope I am not wearying your Lordships, but I am only reading excerpts from newspapers of a few weeks ago. I have limited myself to that in order that they may be currently appropriate to quote.

I am reading from The Times of 6th November, from an article headed "Doubts on fewer prisoners". It states: Mr. Douglas Hurd, Home Secretary, yesterday said that the Government's aim of ending prison overcrowding by the end of the decade might have to be revised. He told prison governors that, unless the jail numbers returned to their projected path, matching decent places in jails to population 'may take longer to achieve than had been hoped'. Behind the change is this summer's sharp increase in population to 48,000 and 'prudent planning' on the assumption it could reach that again in the coming months or go even higher". That is again a sombre picture. When I refer again, if I may, to the question of order in law, your Lordships will remember the debates which took place in your Lordships' House on the Prosecution of Offenders Bill, when we were promised that in order to counteract additional police powers, in order to see to it that prosecutions were not brought needlessly and in order to see that there was a strong and independent service, there would be a separate prosecution service set up. We all thought that the Government were taking these things very seriously, especially because of the very important advice that this new prosecution service was going to give to the police in respect of prosecutions generally.

What has happened? What has happened is this: there is a general outcry about the way in which the Government have handled the setting up of this service. Again I quote from The Times of 6th November. The heading is: Police solicitors join prosecution critics". The article reads: Metropolitan Police solicitors have joined the growing chorus of protest about pay and career prospects proposed for the Government's new crown prosecution service. The poor levels of pay will not only fail to attract enough lawyers into the new service, due to start next year, they will cause and are causing prosecutors to leave the public sector, the solicitors say. Their concern is expressed in a letter to the Law Society's Gazette from Mr. R. M. Thorne, chairman of the Metropolitan Police branch of the First Division of Civil Servants. 'It is difficult to understand how offering less money to do a harder job with longer hours can be anything but detrimental to the prosecution service as a whole', he says. Mr. Thorne says it is unlikely that by October 1986 the Government will have succeeded in recruiting its target of 300 competent lawyers in the three crown prosecution areas of London, and of those who do join, many will be inexperienced, he says. The Government conceived the new service under its 'law and order' banner, but was 'either strangling or deforming it at birth', while at the same time 'striking hammer blows at the confidence of those in the existing service'.", and that is repeated throughout the country by the association that represents prosecuting solicitors.

What have they done on the 24-hour duty system? There are supposed to be two tiers—this safeguard for the civilian population which was spoken of with such pride by the then Home Secretary in another place. He talked in a sentence which was not elegant, but meaningful. He said that he would see to it that his money was where his mouth was. What has happened there is that two tiers have been set up and the inclusion in the first tier is all too deficient. But I shall not go into that at this stage in your Lordships' proceedings, because I know that some regulations are to be brought before Parliament and, possibly, we shall have to deal with it then.

So one feels on the question of law and order that there is no point in issuing challenges to the Opposition Front Bench—"Are you behind the police?" Of course we are behind the police. We always have been behind the police. That does not mean that it is not the duty of Parliament to see that people are protected against the misuse of authority by the police, if and when that occurs. But our general theme is of praise for the police and encouragement of the police in the very difficult duty that they do.

So I fling back the challenge and say: Answer this. Answer the overcrowding of the prisons, and what is happening to some of the children and the young people who are being taught crime as a result of the wretched conditions in which so many of them are being placed in prison. See to it that when you make promises to Parliament about an adequate prosecution service, so that the wheels of justice move properly, your promises are kept. They are not being kept at the moment.

Just as grave as the matters to which I have referred is the concern in the public mind, when we talk about justice, as to how it is that huge frauds are being perpetrated, which do the greatest amount of discredit to our very fine name in the insurance world and elsewhere, and in regard to which, for some reason or other, no prosecution is brought. I am not saying that there is anything sinister in this. I am merely saying that something is wrong with the system, if that be so.

So I turn briefly to other matters. First, may I say immediately that in regard to the drug legislation—I am sure that the Minister realised it from all the questions we have asked from this side of the House—we are completely behind him and behind the Government, and so are we in regard to animal welfare. I am so glad that he referred in the very deserved terms he did to my noble friend Lord Houghton. I have previously called him not Lord Houghton of Sowerby but Lord Houghton of Assisi, which is really the title he deserves.

I turn finally to the shop legislation. It is a matter upon which people can perfectly sincerely hold divergent views. There are matters which affect the sincere religious beliefs of many people. There is the very proper demand that we live, so it is said, in 1985 and that we ought to have conditions which apply to 1985. There are also references to what happens North of the Border. Let me make perfectly clear the position of the party that I have the honour to represent at the Dispatch Box at this moment. We think it proper that at the Second Reading of such a Bill there should be a free vote. I look to the Government, and I ask that the Minister who is to wind-up will be frank with the House and will say whether the Government will let their people have a free vote. I shall look forward to the answer.

Having said that, let me make it abundantly clear that in regard to all stages of the Bill, if it is granted a Second Reading, the Opposition will be looking with the greatest care at those provisions which, as my noble friend Lord Graham mentioned, affect the employees in the shop industry and will be seeing that their rights are very strongly defended.

I end with these words. When we are looking at home affairs and environmental affairs, as we are, we are looking at the very principles upon which our social fabric is built. Those principles, if we are to continue to be a great nation and a liberty-loving nation, rest upon fair play and justice, as the Minister said. They also rely upon there being one nation and not a divided nation. Any Government failing to achieve the unity of this nation are attacking the very social fabrics upon which we depend. The Conservative Government have failed to achieve the essential unity of our people. It is my fervent belief that a Labour Government will.