Lords Sitting of 21 June 1949

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers

  APPOINTMENTS TO HIGH COMMISSIONERS' STAFFS
  2.36 p.m.
  LORD CLYDESMUIR: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
  [The Question was as follows:
  To ask His Majesty's Government whether posts on the staffs of High Commissioners representing the United Kingdom in Commonwealth countries are reserved for the Home Civil Service, or whether applications will be considered from suitable candidates whose employment with the Indian Civil Service, Indian Police and similar services has terminated owing to political changes.]
  THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, it is considered essential that the majority of administrative posts on the staffs of United Kingdom High Commissioners in Commonwealth countries should be filled by established officers of the Home Civil Service on the staff of the Commonwealth Relations Office, or in some instances by members of the Foreign Service or by established civil servants from other
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  United Kingdom Government Departments, seconded to the Commonwealth Relations Office for the purpose.
  A number of former members of the Indian Services have been absorbed into the United Kingdom Home Civil Service and the Foreign Service since the transfer of responsibility in India, and some of these officers are now serving in United Kingdom High Commissioners' offices on normal tours of duty.
  LORD CLYDESMUIR: My Lords, do I understand from what the noble Viscount has said that unless the officer is absorbed into the Home Civil Service, his chances of obtaining a post with a High Commissioner's staff overseas are very slight?
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: That does not necessarily apply to all officers. The position is somewhat different as regards non-administrative posts on the staffs of United Kingdom High Commissioners. In those cases—for example, in the offices of the High Commissioners in India and Pakistan—a number of such posts are now filled by persons who were formerly members of the various Indian Services other than the Secretary of State's Services and were recruited locally for the purpose.
  LORD CLYDESMUIR: My Lords, are His Majesty's Government aware that there are a number of good men—a relatively small number, I agree—still without employment, and that there is a high obligation to help these men to find employment due to the fact that their work was terminated owing to political changes over which they had no control?
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, I am sure the Government are well aware of those facts, but for the particular class of officers to whom the noble Lord referred we must have men with a certain amount of Service experience.
  LORD HAWKE: My Lords, do I understand the noble Viscount to say it is considered essential that these offices should be staffed with civil servants with a certain amount of experience? May I inquire why that is so?
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: Because to fill offices of this kind we must have people who have had responsibility in the Service.
  LORD CLYDESMUIR: The noble Viscount said it was considered essential in "the majority of cases." I take it that there is opportunity for special consideration in certain cases.
  VISCOUNT ADDISON: There are quite a number of offices which have been filled in that way.

LANDS TRIBUNAL BILL
2.40 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the Commons Reason for disagreeing to one of the Lords Amendments.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT JOWITT): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to one of the Lords Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Reason for disagreeing to one of the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT
[The References are to Bill No. 68]
Page 3, line 21, at end insert the following new clause—
Power to determine Appeal against Development Charge
". Any person aggrieved by the determination of a development charge by the Central Land Board under section seventy of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, may within twenty-eight days of the receipt by him of the notification of the development charge, appeal against such determination to the Lands Tribunal and the Lands Tribunal shall have jurisdiction to hear any such appeal
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and shall make such determination as it may think fit and section three of this Act shall apply to an appeal under this section."
The Commons disagreed to this Amendment for the following Reason:
Because they consider that the Amendment raises questions not relevant to this Bill.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist upon this Amendment. I cannot help feeling that when this Amendment was moved and carried there was in regard to the existing legal position some misapprehension for which I am responsible, in that I should have attempted to clear it up. It is always rather consoling to find that a Homer is nodding, and there were occasions when both the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon, and the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, were in slight error as to the existing position owing, no doubt, to my failure to point it out.
Your Lordships will remember that the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, contains two material provisions: one in Section 60 which relates to claims against the £300,000,000 Fund, and the other in Section 70 which relates to the assessment of the development charge. Under the existing law (of course, I am disregarding this Bill, which is not the law of the land and may never become the law of the land) the position is this, and it is the result of either the section of the Act or of regulations to which this House has assented, made under the Act—if any noble Lord wants chapter and verse, I will gladly give it. Under Section 60, claims have to be sent to the Central Land Board and the assessment is made by the Central Land Board. If anybody is dissatisfied with the assessment so made by the Central Land Board, he can appeal to the official arbitrator. That is the existing law, and the only effect of this Bill would be to substitute the Lands Tribunal for the official arbitrator; that is to say, it gave no right of appeal where a right of appeal had not existed before, but merely said that the appellate tribunal, instead of being, as heretofore, the official arbitrator, was in future to be the Lands Tribunal. That is all.
There was undoubtedly some misapprehension about this. May I refer for a moment to what the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, said on this matter? I am reading from the bottom

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of Column 362 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, where the noble Viscount said:
"But it is not only a question of having second thoughts; a wholly new situation has arisen. When the proposal that there should be an appeal tribunal under Section 70 was previously before your Lordships, the whole structure of the Bill was to the effect that there was to be no appeal under Section 60. But the Government have now come forward with an amending Bill in order to give an appeal under Section 60."
I want to point out—and I am sure that the noble Viscount will appreciate it—that this is a misapprehension. There was an appeal under Section 60; it was an appeal to the official arbitrator. All we have done is to provide that that existing right of appeal, instead of being an appeal to the official arbitrator, shall be an appeal to the Lands Tribunal.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I admit that I made a mistake of fact, but I am sure the noble and learned Viscount will agree that all that followed in my speech as to the reasons why an appeal should be given are unaffected by that mistake of fact.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am not seeking to tie down the noble Viscount. He did argue that there ought to be an appeal on the broad general question. All I want to do is to correct that error; it was an error for which I feel myself partly responsible, since I could not have made the matter sufficiently clear at the time.
There is provided a most elaborate code. Heaven forbid that I should read it to your Lordships! The code is to be found in Sections 60, 61 and 62; and those sections incorporate the Acquisition of Land Act, 1919, in many of its material provisions. There you have an elaborate code which tells the Central Land Board what they are to do and on what basis they are to assess claims on the £300,000,000; and, of course, the Lands Tribunal (as it will be) will have regard to the same code. Now observe for a moment the wholly different structure of Section 70. The position with regard to Section 70 is that there was not, and is not contemplated, any appeal from the Central Land Board; and none was intended to be provided by this Bill. I think that for several reasons that could not be, when you compare the language of Section 70, leaving this assessment to the Central Land Board, with the wholly
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different language of Section 60 which provides that precise code.
Take the regulations made under Section 70, about which we had some discussion in this House, and which were affirmatively passed. The governing principle is this—and it is the principle in accordance with which the Central Land Board have to do their duty. They have to secure, so far as practicable, that land can be freely and readily bought and sold, or otherwise disposed of in the open market, at a price neither greater nor less than its existing use value.. That is the governing principle by which the Board are to be guided in determining development charge. But it is vague and indefinite. The second rule is this: that development charge
"shall not be more than the amount which, to the satisfaction of thee Central Land Board represents the additional value due to planning permission."
The third section is to the effect that development charge shall not be less than the amount referred to in the second paragraph unless in the opinion of the Board the charge ought properly to be less. The fourth section says that in any special case of land referred to in Part VIII the governing principle shall apply, subject to such modification as in the opinion of the Board is appropriate. Therefore, unless you are prepared to have some code under Section 70 which is more or less equivalent to the codes under Section 60, this matter is necessarily and inevitably left to the opinion of the Central Land Board. There cannot be an appeal from a body if, at the same time, a charge is to be levied by that body in their discretion to do what they think right. The only question is, Have the Board exercised their discretion? And that is really not the subject of appeal at all.
There are other reasons why I think we should find ourselves in great trouble if we were to attempt to add words which would make substantive alterations in the law. Consider the case of Scotland. By this Amendment we are proposing to grant an appeal. If it is right to grant it in the case of England, how can we justify not granting it to Scotland? If I had suggested such a clause, very many of your Lordships who are concerned with Scotland would have said to me at once "If this is right in the case of England, how

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in the name of justice can you deny the same rare and refreshing fruit to Scotland?" Yet the fact remains that by passing this Amendment we should be passing an Amendment which relates only to England and not to Scotland. That is one of the difficulties which arise when one tries to tack on to mere machinery in a Bill substantive alterations in the law. For these reasons I suggest that we should not insist on this Amendment.
I have gone into the question of the specific cases to which reference was made in the debate in your Lordships' House. I do not want to say more about that than this. There are two attacks on the Central Land Board, working, as they do, through their district valuers. It has been said that the valuers do not offer to discuss or do not disclose the process by which they have made their valuation. I have had no illustration of that. If that be the fact, I should welcome some illustration of it, because it is entirely opposed to the instructions upon which these valuers should work. All the illustrations which have been given in your Lordships' House are cases where they did discuss. Let me take one. First of all, there is the case of the Union Club. I really think this is rather hard. The Union Club proposed to acquire premises—whether on lease or freehold or for what term I do not know—in Grosvenor Square. They rang up the district valuer and asked him to give them a purely provisional figure as to what he thought the valuation should be, in order that they might negotiate with their landlord about the price. The more you are going to pay for a development charge, the less you are inclined to pay to your landlord, and many people wanting to know what price they should offer, want, first of all, some indication of what the development charge is likely to be.
At that time, they told the district valuer that they were contemplating purchasing the interest in these premises for the sum of £100,000. The district valuer said "Well, the valuation which I propose is"—the figure which has been given. He gave that on the telephone, without having any figures put before him, simply because they requested it. They wanted a purely provisional figure, to know the sort of thing he had in mind. When he went into the figures afterwards and realised how much it was going to cost to convert those private houses and make
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I them suitable for the purpose for which they were going to be used, he came down to the final figure of which your Lordships are aware. So much for that case. It was one where, if the district valuer is to be blamed at all, he is to be blamed for being too forthcoming, for trying to help people by giving an approximate figure without having gone into the facts at all, in order that they might negotiate.
I come next to the case of the nursing home at Bath. As the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, the first valuation worked out at £1,943. The capitalised sum represents a difference in the hypothetical rents. This was a case of a most worthy lady and a most worthy cause, and the Central Land Board were anxious to help. They looked at the figures again and came to the conclusion that they had not allowed enough for the cost of conversion of the premises. They said, "We think that there will be more cost than has been allowed for; therefore we will make the valuation £1,000." The lady was not able or willing to pay £1,000; therefore, in order to help her, the Central Land Board said: "If you cannot do that, we suggest that you do this. Get a limited concession in point of time—for instance, five years—and if at the end of five years you want it extended you can get it extended and make it permanent. That will be a cheaper way of doing it." There is nothing Machiavellian about it. They wanted to help what they conceived to be a worthy case, and they did it in the manner which I have indicated, and which was quite within their rights.
The only other case mentioned in your Lordships' House was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, who drew a distinction between a house at Selby and the conversion of a barn into a house at Paignton. I should here point out to your Lordships—it is quite an elementary point; no doubt you have it in mind—that the cost of the work which has to be done before conversion affects the value of the development charge. For instance, if I am going to build a house upon a bog or a swamp, where I have to put in piles and incur much expense, obviously I should pay little for development rights. If, on the other hand, there is a good hard high road, with sewerage and water already laid on, then I should pay much more. It is difficult to compare these two premises. The Selby

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house was of a suburban type with three bedrooms and two living rooms, on a made-up road where all the services were available. The district valuers suggested the sum of £144 and that was, so far as I know, accepted by the developer as being a reasonable sum, and the purchase was made.
It is difficult to compare the Paignton case with the other. It was a proposal to convert a barn and fodder store into two dwelling houses, one of three bedrooms and two living rooms, the other of four bedrooms, two living rooms, a kitchen and dairy. The amount of charge was, I think, £750 or thereabouts. That also was accepted as a reasonable charge. It is quite impossible to compare one case with another unless one knows all the relevant circumstances. So far as I know, the charge the Central Land Board made in these two oases was a reasonable charge. I repeat again—although I can assure the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton that my mail, which is very heavy, is by no means a fan mail—it is the fact that I have not received a single complaint about the way in which the Central Land Board are doing their work. Even after the publicity given to this topic in the debate in your Lordships' House, I have not received one complaint. From an interjection in another place, I notice that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Town and Country 'Planning said virtually the same thing. So far as I am concerned, I can give your Lordships only my own limited experience. I see nothing whatever wrong in the three cases which have been aired in your Lordships' House, and I will not trouble to deal with the two extra cases which were mentioned in another place. I have not received a single complaint, and that is substantially true of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning. I think the present system is working well.
Like the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, I am not a person who never changes his mind, and it may hereafter be desirable to have a more precise code under Section 70, a counterpart of the code we have today under Section 60. In that event, it may be desirable to put in some sort of appeal. But if we are to do that, we must do it by some substantive alteration of the law itself, and not by trying to tack the alteration on to a mere procedure Bill which is designed to substitute one tribunal for another. There must be some
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substantive alteration of the law. Therefore, I think there has been some misapprehension in this matter, for the reasons I have given. I think, further, that we should leave Section 70 and the regulations made under Section 70 which have been approved in this House, as they are, leaving the whole matter substantially to the discretion of the Central Land Board. It is impossible to think that you can have am thing like a judicial tribunal in such circumstances. I beg to move that this House do not insist on the said Amendment.
Moved, That this House do not insist on the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.0 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, the Lord Chancellor is evidently very well content with the situation as it stands. Whether everybody who is called upon to pay a development charge is equally satisfied, it will be for others to ascertain. I confess that such information as has come to me—and I do not claim it to be specially extensive—does not indicate that everybody thinks that this present system is working so well or that those who endeavour to improve it are plainly following the wrong path. As the noble and learned Viscount knows very well, I, too, am perfectly willing to admit to my mistakes. If there were any in the speech I made previously, I am very willing to have them corrected, though I did not observe that the noble and learned Viscount had any correction to address to me. Since he thinks that the Amendment was moved under a misapprehension, however, perhaps in my turn I may state what my understanding of the matter is. It is a complicated matter, and in any event it will be an advantage, perhaps, if the situation is presented as some of us believe it to be.
The Amendment which was made to this Bill by this House last month, which the Commons have now rejected and which my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack asks us to concede should be rejected, would have provided for an appeal to the Lands Tribunal (which this Bill very wisely sets up) from the determination of a development charge by the Central Land Board. As my noble friend has pointed out, the Central Land Board fixes the amount in each case. He might have added that when the amount is fixed

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and collected, it is paid into the Exchequer. It becomes part of the public funds of the country, just like any other payment that goes into the Exchequer and is received from the pocket of a citizen.
Under the Act of 1947 the Central Land Board, over which an experienced King's Counsel, an authority on land valuation, presides, has two duties in connection with the development of land. One is under Section 60, the other under Section 70. Under Section 60 what is determined is development value. Under Section 70 what is determined is development charge, a charge which has to be paid before the land can be developed by its owner. The Lord Chancellor has just been contrasting the two cases. Consider for a moment how they compare. Both are highly complicated and technical questions, and in both cases the answer requires a subtraction of what is the value of the land when restricted to its present use from its greater value when it is free to be developed. That is true of both Section 60 and Section 70. Therefore the two sections deal with closely comparable problems and in both cases it is the Central Land Board which has the duty of working out the result. As' your Lordships have just been reminded, under Section 60 there is an appeal from the decision of the Central Land Board to the official arbitrator; and this Bill, very properly in my view, substitutes for that an appeal to the new Lands Tribunal, which will be a tribunal drawn from a panel consisting partly of lawyers and partly of persons experienced in the valuing of land.
If we are to criticise one another on small points—though it is a difficult and complicated matter with which we are concerned—I do not think the Lord Chancellor was quite accurate just now when he said that the only effect of the Bill is to substitute the new Tribunal for the official arbitrator. I know what he meant but that is what he said, and what he said was not accurate, because the new Tribunal is also going to be substituted for the present body of appeal in rating cases and in some other cases. But of course he was talking about this subject. As things stand, however, in cases of development charge, the amount a person has to pay as a development charge is fixed by the Central Land Board without
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appeal. There may be what I think on a previous occasion the Lord Chancellor called "higgling." Whether it is a good practice to higgle the people who require you to pay money to go into the Exchequer, I do not know. It is quite true there may be higgling, but when there is higgling it is between the Central Land Board, which has the right to tell you what you must do, and the subject, who at best is endeavouring only to persuade the Land Board that they ought not to ask for so much. It does not seem a very good example of higgling on equal terms.
However, when the higgling is over one has to pay what the Board tells one to pay or give up development. As I have said, the money goes into the Exchequer and becomes part of Sir Stafford Cripps' surplus, and that is the end of it. Not only is that so, but in practice it is the district valuer of the particular area who fixes the amount, though no doubt the Central Land Board in a proper case would intervene to correct it. A district valuer necessarily operates in a limited area and so there is the risk at least of a different sort of estimate and demand being made in one area from that which may be made in a similar case in another.
I hope that up to the present I have not stated anything which calls for correction. I have endeavoured to state it accurately and, assuming that up to the present I am correct, what I wish to point out to your Lordships is this: that the Amendment which this House adopted on May 5 last and which the Government now wish to reject, is one which would have enabled a person who considers himself to be aggrieved by the determination of the development charge to appeal to the new Lands Tribunal and in case of need have the proper figures determined by that Tribunal according to law.
As noble Lords may remember when this Amendment was proposed last month it was strongly supported by a number of your Lordships, some of whom mentioned instances of which they knew. I must confess I thought that when Lord Hylton spoke he gave a striking example of the need for some change of system. He showed how a lady who had bought a private house at a price of £4,700 in order to turn it into a nursing home was told that the development charge she would have to

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pay was nearly £2,000. There are a good many citizens in this country, men as well as women, who, when they get a demand from those who collect money which goes into the Exchequer, imagine that they must accept it, and the less instructed and poorer members of the community are the very people who find it most difficult to challenge what they may feel is a grossly excessive claim. But this particular lady had the pluck or the persistence to challenge it. It took six months—the Lord Chancellor did not mention that—and at the end of six months of protest the amount demanded was reduced by the Central Land Board to £1,000. There was a certain man in the Bible who at a certain moment said:
"Sit down quickly and write fifty,"
and the Central Land Board—though I would be far from calling the Central Land Board by any opprobrious name—found that the amount claimed was exactly twice what it ought to be. That was one of the cases quoted, which the Lord Chancellor thinks do not raise any point of criticism at, all.
The noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, pointed out that there is no guarantee of equal treatment by different district valuers. That is perfectly true. I do not recollect that the Lord Chancellor said anything about that in the speech which he has just delivered. Then the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, gave some instances—with which he may deal further, if he pleases—and pointed out, apart from the case of the Union Club, another case in which it appeared from his information that in two different parts of the country there had been an unequal application of the law. Whether or not it is true in that case, it is plain that it might be so.
The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who as your Lordships know is a prominent and emphatic supporter of the whole system of town and country planning in this country, warned the Government—speaking, I am certain, from experience—that unless this grievance was seriously tackled the success of our town and country planning legislation would be jeopardised. The present arrangements, he said, were profoundly unsatisfactory. It is a great thing now for the Lord Chancellor to be able to say that there is not a whisper of complaint known to him or to the Under-Secretary. What a patient
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country we live in! But in the opinion of some noble Lords of standing and great authority the fact seems to be that there are a great many people who do not consider the present situation satisfactory. I do not believe that there is the slightest doubt that there is strong feeling about this matter in some quarters. I should not be surprised to find that it existed even in members of your Lordships' House!
What is the Government's answer to these complaints—some of which, surely, cannot be regarded as entirely ill-founded—which, some people tell me, could be multiplied from different parts of the country, the complaints of the unequal and the apparently arbitrary way in which development charge is being fixed? I need not say that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has offered some plausible excuses, and, so far as I can see, the answer really comes down to two points. The first is that this Bill is confined to substituting a new tribunal of appeal for an existing tribunal of appeal; and that in the case of the fixing of development charge there is at present no appeal and therefore, nothing can be done in this Bill. Your Lordships will judge whether that is a very complete answer or not. It is not suggested that it is beyond the general scope of the Bill. The Bill is actually creating this highly expert Tribunal for the very purpose of arriving more accurately at calculations which compare the value of land under its present use with the greater value it would have if there was authority to develop it. It seems to me that, inasmuch as we are engaged in constituting a well-equipped tribunal to be called the Lands Tribunal, specially selected and specially appointed in order that it may deal and decide these difficult questions of land valuation and decide on the comparison between restricted and unrestricted value, there is very good reason for placing upon this new body jurisdiction to hear appeals from Section 70 decisions no less than appeals from Section 60 decisions. That, at any rate, is the submission which I respectfully make.
I remember, and I am sure your Lordships will also, that the Lord Chancellor lost no time at all when this Amendment was brought forward. He jumped up immediately and told us that sooner than

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accept it he would drop the Bill altogether. That was the answer which he immediately gave. He was saying, in effect: "Lay your hands on this particular little Ark which I have constructed, dare to touch it, and I will drop the whole Bill." It seems to me rather a pity for, after all, ordinary people to-day, when they are required to pay substantial sums as development charge without appeal, have no means of knowing whether the charge is just or of proving that the calculation is wrong. It seems to me rather a pity, when the opportunity exists to provide for the use of machinery which might meet a widespread feeling of bewilderment, if not of injustice, that the opportunity should be refused under threat that if it is insisted upon there will be no Bill at all.
That is one reason. The second reason which appears to lie at the back of the Government's objection is, I agree, more subtle and more important and is worth a little examination. Of course, if the development charge were rightly regarded as a tax—as I have pointed out, it is exacted from the subject and paid into the Exchequer—it would be intolerable that it should be exacted from the taxpayer without any machinery for testing whether the tax was correctly calculated. No one would dream of such a thing. No one doubts the good faith and expert knowledge of the Central Land Board, but no one doubts the good faith and expert knowledge of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue either. Would anyone tolerate for a moment that the Commissioners of Inland Revenue should fix income tax without there being any right of appeal? Therefore if this charge is analagous to a tax, the present situation is clearly one that ought to be reconsidered. Taxes ought to be certain in amount and openly calculated, and they ought to apply equally all over the country to everyone in the same circumstances.
But, it may be said—and this is a subtle but, I dare say, legitimate distinction—that really this is not a tax. The excuse—or I would rather say the explanation, for I do not want to quarrel at all—for the view taken is the suggestion that the district valuer is not really fixing a tax but is fixing a payment which the Government require to be made as
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the price of something they have to sell. It is like a shop. If you do not want to pay the price which is attached to an article you wish to buy, then you need not buy it. What they have to sell is development right. If that is the argument against having the calculation fixed according to the law by a tribunal which has the duty of examining whether the law has been applied, then the argument is surely fallacious. Under the Act of 1947, development rights in land have become a Government monopoly. If one wants to buy from the Government any development rights, one has to pay for them, and the money goes into the Exchequer; and the Act and the regulations made under it lay down with precision the rules according to which the price is to be calculated.
I think ordinary people, therefore, will ask, "Are we not entitled to request that the price should be correctly calculated in accordance with the rules laid down?" And if the price is not correctly calculated, surely one ought to be given the opportunity of satisfying a tribunal of appeal that the calculation is not according to the law. I recollect from our previous debate on the Bill of 1947 that it was suggested that the amount under Clause 70 would be reduced according to the discretion of the Central Land Board, if in certain cases they thought it proper. That was the argument against the Amendment which your Lordships wished originally to put into the Bill. That is all very well, but how does it work out? In fact, the regulations issued under Section 70 of the Act amount to this: that the 100 per cent. figure is to be the amount to be paid in all cases, unless in the opinion of the Central Land Board it is right to reduce the charge so that in accordance with the Governing Principle the land will pass in open market at its existing, use value.
What does that mean? It means, first of all, that by law there is a maximum, and if anybody demands from me more than that maximum he is breaking the law; but I am to have no redress. The maximum fixed by the law is fixed, I agree, with a discretion to reduce it. But there are limits within which the exercise of discretion can be reviewed. I am familiar with the conception which the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor put before the House

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just now, that where discretion rests with such a body, cases cannot be interfered with by appeal. There are also cases where it can. It depends on whether the discretion has been exercised on proper principles. It seems to me that on principle there is a great deal to be said for having the opportunity of an appeal to an expert body which must hear in public what the estimates are, and not to rely on some "higgling" in private, and come to a conclusion whether or not the decision is one that should stand. On that view, development charge ought to be capable of challenge on the ground that the prescriptions of the law have not been complied with in calculating the charge.
I suggest, with great respect, that at present if in fact the net amount demanded by the Central Land Board in a given case exceeds a maximum which can be attained by subtracting one of the two figures from the other, none the less the taxpayer has to pay more than the maximum which the law requires him to pay and to refuse an appeal in those circumstances seems to be more consonant which a totalitarian régime—with which, of course, the Government will have nothing whatever to do—than with a system of Parliamentary government which claims to maintain the rule of law.
I apologise for detaining your Lordships, but I thought it well to set out as clearly as I could the reasons why we press that an Amendment of this sort should be passed. I should be sorry indeed if the valuable proposal of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, to set up a Land Tribunal, were not persisted in. In any event, when it is set up and, as I anticipate, is found to work well in other compartments of its duties, I trust the day will not be distant before, either by means of an appeal to this tribunal from the determinations of development charge or by other Amendments to the Town and Country Planning Act which appear to me to be urgently needed, Parliament will do something effective to meet the grievance which many people feel that under the present Government they are required to make payments the size of which they cannot check and which have all the appearance of arbitrary demands, without any right to obtain a public judicial decision whether the amount is
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correctly calculated in accordance with the law, and also without any security that they are not being charged at a different rate from that charged to other people in the same position in other parts of the country. That is the case for this Amendment. At any rate, I hope I have satisfied some of your Lordships that there is matter here which is well worthy of consideration and that we are not in the happy position where existing legislation and regulations are so perfect that anybody who suggests the opposite must be guilty of what I think is called "misapprehension."
One of the explanations given by the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor surprised me extremely. It appears that the Central Land Board was kind enough to intervene to reduce what would otherwise have been a charge because they thought they would want to help in "an eminently worthy case." What sort of exaction is this, in which an official body, when they think a case is "eminently worthy," say, "Well, you need not pay 100 per cent"? That does not seem to me the way in which we have hitherto managed our affairs. I am glad to know from the noble and learned Viscount that the system as a whole is working well, but I submit to him and to the House that there is a great deal of good sense in this Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, obviously the noble and learned Viscount is upset by the suggestion that he has made an error. I am not suggesting. If the noble and learned Viscount will turn to page 345 of Hansard of May 5 he will find there repeated what he said on April 5. He said:
"By this Bill, that jurisdiction of the Central Land Board is—very properly, I think—transferred to the new Lands Tribunal."
That was the error he made on April 5. I hope he will forgive my pointing this out. In a complicated matter of this kind, even Homer sometimes nods.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Is it correct to say that jurisdiction is transferred from the Central Land Board to the new Tribunal?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The jurisdiction of the Central Land Board remains where it was. It is the jurisdiction of the official arbitrator which is affected.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Then let me gratefully accept the correction that when I said the Central Land Board I should have said the official arbitrator. The rest of my argument still holds good.
3.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, I rise not for the purpose of making a speech but merely to ask a question. It is this. If the Government are not prepared to have the appeal, or if they do not consider there is room for appeal, would they consider laying before Parliament a White Paper containing the general principles on which the Central Land Board are going to work? That would at least ensure that Parliament could discuss the matter, and presumably it would have some binding effect on the Central Land Board. If there is to be no appeal, and if there is to be no Parliamentary discussion, the Central Land Board will be using these enormous powers to make or mar any new enterprise, either private or public (and we have had very little reference to municipal activities—private streets works, and so forth), and will be able to exercise them entirely at their own sweet will. I have the greatest possible respect for Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve and his colleagues. I have no case to bring forward, and no comment to make on the Practice Notes which have been issued, except that they can be withdrawn at any time. But I do complain that we have had so little Parliamentary discussion. All we have had is a short regulation—short, that is, in comparison to others in these days—which it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand. I agree that it would be inappropriate to develop this argument further, other than on the question of appeal. I ask the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack to consider the suggestion that I have made, in order to avoid the only alternative, as I see it—namely, a discussion in Parliament of a whole series of individual cases.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It would probably be convenient that I should answer the noble Viscount at once. As the noble Viscount knows, there are Practice Notes, and they have been published. I should not have the slightest objection to showing precisely the principles on which the Central Land Board are trying to work out what is a very
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difficult jurisdiction. I certainly want Parliament to keep this whole machinery under review, and I will certainly see that any further information that can be given from time to time is made available.
VISCOUNT GAGE: I understand that these Practice Notes are issued by the Central Land Board, and can be withdrawn by them at any time; they have no binding effect.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The regulations are binding, but the Practice Notes are merely what their title suggests. However, they show the principles on which the Central Land Board are acting. If there are any alterations in those principles, I should certainly be willing to bring them to the notice of the House.
3.33 p.m.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack has referred to some of the remarks I made on the previous occasion when this matter was before your Lordships. Frankly, I do not find myself very satisfied with the Lord Chancellor's explanation of what happened in regard to the houses in Grosvenor Square. A responsible firm of solicitors got in touch with the district valuer, who told them that a development charge of £60,000 would be payable for them to be allowed to change the user from two private houses to a club. District valuers do not give haphazard answers like, "Oh, it will be £60,000," over the telephone without making some previous inquiry. Indeed, the Lord Chancellor's account, if I may say so, showed the district valuer to be rather more irresponsible than I, at any rate, would have said he was. It was only after pressure by the firm of solicitors that the original charge of £60,000 was reduced to £35,000. As I pointed out on the previous occasion, the difference in the two estimates of £25,000 is a considerable amount of money. My facts have not been disputed by the Government; indeed, they cannot be, because, as your Lordships will realise, I obtained them from a very reliable source.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord, because here is a question of fact, on which again I do not like to quarrel, and the position of the district valuer is in some way concerned. My instructions are that the

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district valuer was asked for a rough, informal assessment, and in response to that request he gave a rough, informal assessment over the telephone and he gave that without making any formal valuation, and without going into any figures. He did that at the request of the solicitors in order that they might negotiate with the landlord.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I will take it from the Lord Chancellor that perhaps that is what happened. However, I still think that to give an assessment of £60,000, without going into any figures or considering the matter at all, is a most irresponsible thing for any district valuer to do. But let us all realise that he was doing it as the agent of the Central Land Board. I think I was justified in drawing attention to that fact, and also in saying that it is a wrong thing to do. It shows how irresponsibly some of these actions are taken, solely and simply, I believe, because there is no appeal to any court which can keep these people straight. With regard to Grosvenor Court, there is only one other comment which perhaps I may be allowed to make. This matter seems to have passed into new channels. The dispute, I gather, is now at an end, because the Government appear to have requisitioned these two houses for the use of the Americans in connection with Marshall Aid. And of course we all want these officials to have good office accommodation. I assume that there is no development charge now for the change of user from private houses to offices for the Americans in connection with Marshall Aid. At any rate, the Government cannot themselves he charged; they have requisitioned these houses and, therefore, the Exchequer have lost £60,000 or 05,000, or whatever was to have been the ultimate sum for development charge on these two houses.
With regard to the other cases that I quoted, I did not say that there was any complaint by the householder in Selby, Yorkshire, about the £144 development charge for building a house on a main road, with full services. I was comparing that case with the two houses which were built from the conversion of a barn in Paignton, Devon. There were a farmhouse and a farm cottage, on which there was a development charge of £375 each—and that in spite of the fact that they were similar-sized houses to the one at Selby,
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on which there was a development charge of £144. I said that the houses at Paignton were over-assessed; I did not make any comment about over-assessment in regard to the house in Selby.
Perhaps I may quote one other instance that has come to my notice in regard to these development charges. Just outside Luton there are about nine and a half acres of land, at present part of a farm holding, which a commercial firm want to take over as a recreation ground. It means putting up a few goal posts, and allowing the work-people to have this recreation ground. It converts a piece of land, from being part of a farm, into a playing field for work-people, which of course brings in no profit. It is not one of those grounds which is to be enclosed with public matches played upon it and entrance fees charged. It is simply a place for the work-people to use on Saturday afternoons or Sundays for the purpose of a little healthy recreation. The charge for the change of user from this piece of land bringing in a profit to a piece of land bringing in no profit was assessed at £600. Something is wrong, and what is really wrong is that the Party opposite—if I may say it with all good humour—have become a reactionary Party. They are going hack to the old monopolies of the Stuart Kings, against which the independent citizens of this country fought, and fought successfully. By not allowing any possible appeal from a charge like that imposed by the Central Land Board they are going back once more to something very akin to the Star Chamber of those times. The Government would be well advised to accept an Amendment of this sort, and try to free themselves from the reactionary label which they are inevitably attaching to their necks.
3.42 p.m.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, may I at once thank the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack for going so thoroughly into the case of the nursing home at Bath? He has taken great pains to cover all the facts, but to my mind the result still seems to have the opposite effect to that which has impressed itself on the mind of the noble and learned Viscount. The Lord Chancellor said that because it was a worthy case, and for other reasons, the original development charge of £2,000, was in six months brought down to £1,000. That is so, but it must prove

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that the original assessment was perfectly wrong. There can be no doubt on this question.
What is the effect of the system upon the ordinary person who wishes to develop? He receives a development charge or assessment; and perhaps he thinks it is too high. So he at once has to secure the services of his own valuer, at great expense to himself. Those of your Lordships who have had to employ valuers know that it is no cheap operation. These additional costs of higgling with the district valuer are all added to the eventual development charge: if the man gets no reduction, he has to pay more than he would have paid if he had accepted the original assessment. Your Lordships may think he was very foolish not to do so, but in my experience—and, I think, in the experience of many noble Lords—the only way to get a district valuer to reduce his assessment is to employ an equally skilled artist (we have been told that valuation is an art) to argue the facts with him. Only a valuer knows the keys which open ways to reduction in original assessments. I think all your Lordships are agreed on that point.
I am quite convinced that all district valuers are a hard-working and extremely able body of men. I myself have had many dealings with district valuers and have had only too happy relations. In that respect I would like to take this opportunity of withdrawing a phrase I used when this Bill was last before your Lordships' House, when I described the state of affairs which might arise from too much higgling. I do so with great pleasure, because I do not wish any reflection of anything that I might have said to rest on district valuers as a body. But the fact remains that they are, and always will be, the servants of the Government. Therefore they must try to make the best bargain they can for their employers, the State; and, as my noble friend Lord Llewellin has just pointed out, the acquisition of the whole of the development rights in this country has created an absolute monopoly. Noble Lords who look at the top of the first page of Practice Notes issued by the Central Land Board will see that they have something to sell; and, of course, they want the highest price. You cannot
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get a reduction in this development charge except by very difficult means—by being a better bargainer than the district valuer. That, I feel, is not a burden which should be placed upon the ordinary citizen who wishes to develop, and in fact not one in a hundred of ordinary developers can possibly enter into these negotiations with a district valuer. In spite of what the noble and learned Viscount has said, it still seems to me that to deny the ordinary citizen a right of appeal in this case is very deplorable.
3.48 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, speaker after speaker in this debate has brought out clearly the point that the initial valuation by the Central Land Board of development rights is very commonly too high. We have had instances of substantial reductions in the original estimates. I could give your Lordships figures of even more substantial reductions than that. I was recently concerned in a small piece of development when I turned my stables into a little bungalow cottage. I can assure your Lordships that the difference between the original estimate of the sum which was to be taken by the Central Land Board and the sum which I actually paid was greater than the 50 per cent. of which we have heard to-day. Now I am not at all dissatisfied with my bargain. I am prepared to accept the estimate finally reached as a fair and proper one, and although I am sensible of the kindness of the noble and learned Viscount in offering to review any case which is brought to him, I shall not trouble him, because all has ended happily so far as I am concerned. I would, however, make this point: that when I was originally told of the very large sum which was likely to be demanded I nearly abandoned the whole scheme. I had no expectation whatever that I should be able to obtain as substantial a reduction in the valuation as I did, in fact, obtain through the very reasonable attitude of the surveyor whom I saw myself.
But what I would suggest as a subject of inquiry on the part of the noble and learned Viscount—or of the Minister, if he reads the report of this debate—would be whether any large number of schemes of development were altogether abandoned when the original

25
figure was received. When they learn what a large sum is involved, many people feel that it is not worth their while to proceed. It is certainly not worth while for the ordinary small man to employ agents; and he is likely to say to himself that there is no money in his particular scheme, and that he may as well throw away the plans. I beg that this matter may be examined. I know that there is a theoretical remedy. When the surveyor came to see me about the development charge I said to him, "Of course, the answer lies in your hands; the Central Land Board can take over my tiny bit of garden and develop it themselves if they like." But they would never trouble to do that in the case of a small estate. Living, as I do, in a small country village, I know the desperate need and the small opportunity for such small pieces of development as that in which I have been engaged, and I would earnestly beg that no obstacles should be placed in the way of such small-scale enterprises.
3.54 p.m.
LORD QUIBELL: My Lords, I should like to respond to the invitation given by the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor. He has invited us to give details of cases that have arisen in which difficulty has been caused. Quite recently I have been approached by a co-operative society. I met their representative yesterday morning with reference to the siting of land which I should have thought would have been worth, at a fair price, something like 10s. per yard. The land, which has an area of about half an acre, has been used by a small firm for the purposes of joinery manufacture. It is now for sale, and this particular society approached the owner and asked the price. The price asked was in the neighbourhood of £1 per yard. That was for the site itself. I should have thought that the price asked would include any development charge, but the society thought we had better get in touch with the district valuer. I should add that the society were proposing to use the land as a coalyard, there being a siding near at hand.
I cannot understand there being any development charge on a piece of land like that, but the district valuer said that there would be a development
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charge if the society were to alter the use of the land in the way suggested. The amount of the charge, I understand (I am not prepared to commit myself), would be round about £1,400, bringing the price of the land up to something of the order of £1 12s. 0d. or £1 13s. 0d. a yard. And that land is in a side road where there is no possibility of any other kind of development. But that is not all. The society were warned that in one corner of the land the existing owner had a small pigsty and a chicken run; the rest of the land was used for machine shops. The society were told that development charge would arise because of the proposed change of use from pigsty and chicken runs to coalyard. I cannot understand this kind of thing. I sometimes wonder if it is I who am wrong; I feel that somebody ought to be in the asylum, and I am not sure whether it is myself or the other fellow. But, seriously, this sort of thing beggars description. No one can afford to buy land at the sort of price I have mentioned, and pay development charge. Moreover, a purchaser would never know what liability he was undertaking.
The case I have quoted is by no means a rare one in my experience. Moreover, it is difficult to obtain definite rulings from the officials: they do not know whether land is ripe, or whether it will or will not be ripe. And this sort of thing, after all, is preventing development. Such land is not likely to find perchasers—particularly as potential purchasers do not know to what liabilities they will be subjected. I have a good deal of faith in these valuers, but they are not always right. Some time ago I bought fourteen acres of land for an agricultural society for half the price that somebody else paid for a piece of land on the other side of the road. I think there should be some means and opportunities for those who feel aggrieved about this kind of inequality to put their case to someone.
3.59 p.m.
THE EARL OF RADNOR: My Lords, I should like to reinforce the argument of the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, regarding the effect of there being no appeal from the Central Land Board development charge assessment upon the smaller people in the community. I know for certain of four cases in which development—and very desirable development—has been

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dropped because the charge imposed upon the individual was too great. People of this kind do not employ professionals. If they are proposing to go in for a small development they employ a builder who usually knows little or nothing about the Town and Country Planning Act—except that it gets in his way at almost every turn—and they just drop what they had thought of doing because they cannot afford development charge and do not know how to get at the person who decides the development charge in order to see whether he will change his mind.
As the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack has asked for details of cases where there are excessive development charges, may I also quote this case of my own? A plot of land suitable for building was to be sold for building purposes. The purchaser was there, and it was a case of a willing seller and a willing buyer. I followed the practice as laid down by the Central Land Board—namely, to put a price on the land for its existing user value and then to apply to the Central Land Board to find out the probable development charge for the purpose for which the land was to be sold. The district valuer, of course, had to do the valuation. In point of fact, when he told my agent what the development charge would be, it proved to be a figure approximately 20 per cent. higher than I would have charged for the whole land, including its development value. I could have let it go at that and made a good case of it. Fortunately, my agent has my interests at heart; he knows that he has to work with the district valuer, and he went round to see the valuer and told him what sort of a fool he was likely to make of himself. The district valuer said: "What are you charging for the existing user value? What would you charge?" He was told the figures, and he did a small sum. He subtracted the existing user value from my figure of the total value of the land, and the difference he assessed as the development charge on the land.
I quote that example only as showing the difficulties under which district valuers labour to-day. I think that any competent valuer will tell you that at least 50 per cent. of his work is guesswork. It is guesswork largely based upon competent knowledge, and in these cases the district valuers have very little to go
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upon. In the result, there may be one level of charges here, another level of charges there, and yet another level elsewhere. It is very desirable, therefore, that there should be some form of appeal against these development charges to enable evidence from other parts of the country to be brought forward in order to ensure some sort of uniformity throughout the country in development charges.
4.4 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, whatever may be said about the merits of this Amendment, those of your Lordships, including the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, who have heard this debate will be forced to agree that the whole situation is far from satisfactory. It cannot be left where it is. Our whole object is to secure uniformity, fair dealing and equal dealing. In the cases that have been cited the very fact that a valuation has been reduced by one-third, one-half or even more than one-half, does show the hopeless lack of uniformity between the original assessment and the final settlement. The existence of those cases which have been on appeal to the Central Land Tribunal, or higgled out with the district valuer—those very cases which are cited by the Lord Chancellor as instances in which an individual has been fairly, and indeed in one case generously, treated—seems to me the best argument for some sort of appeal. I have admitted to my mistake in fact; and, what is much more serious, the ex-Lord Chancellor has been convicted of a much less grave mistake! But when all is said and done, and we have admitted those heresies, on which side do the fundamentals of belief and sound judgment rest? Undoubtedly on the side of those who are proposing that there should be some form of appeal.
I will not argue at length whether this development charge—as it is called—is a tax or a levy, or a price to be exacted for something that is sold. It is called a development charge, and I think everybody who has to pay it regards it as a charge. I should have thought it was assessed, in fact, as a charge. But let us give the Lord Chancellor the benefit of the doubt; and let us assume that this is not a charge, but that it is a purchase price which is exacted by the Government monopolist for something which he has to sell—in fact, a development right. Is that any

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reason for giving the Government, the sole monopolist, the right arbitrarily to fix the price which is to be charged? That is not the way in which the Government act when they come into the market to buy in order to create a monopoly. What is fair in one case is surely fair in the other.
When we have nationalisation Bills brought before us, what would be said if I or some of my colleagues said, "The reasonable thing to do when you are buying is to let the vendor fix the price." We are not allowed even to have what is a fair price as between a willing buyer and a willing seller. When it comes to the Government buying, the last person who is to be heard in fixing a price is the seller. I should have thought that in this case the fair thing was that, even treating it as a sale, there should be an independent tribunal to which appeal could be made and which would lay down the principles upon which the purchase was to be made. What is the charge? Is it not in fact—I hope the Lord Chancellor will answer this—100 per cent? We were told originally—I think I am right in saying this, but I speak subject to correction—that it would not necessarily be 100 per cent. The Lord Chancellor himself said that there would be some higgling.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Under this Bill, it was always proposed to be 100 per cent., but I always said that the question of the amount would he subject to some higgling. We did not take 80 per cent., as under the old proposal.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: That was under the original Act?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Then 100 per cent. of what? It may be that it is 100 per cent., and not 80 per cent. But then you reduce the value of which it is 100 per cent. Let me test this and see how it is assessed. In fact, if not in form, is not the instruction given to these district valuers: "Exact 100 per cent."?—which really means "as much as you can get." And that is what is being done. We have had evidence to-day that the district valuers, quite reasonably, have said: "Well, we are told to get as much as we can."—that is, 100 per cent. of some sort of mathematical formula. It
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may look all right in the Practice Notes. There may be some remarkable formula in that, but when the district valuers all over the country come to work it out, what is their principle? It is: "How much can I get?"
Look at the example which the noble Earl cited just now, where the authorities tried to exact from him far more than he would have exacted from the most willing buyer if he had been able to sell, development charge and value as well, if this Act had never gone through. That is a practical example and shows what is being exacted—namely, as much as can be obtained. I think the Lord Chancellor himself admitted that (I shall be corrected if I am wrong), and he said that in such a case of course you have to take into account how much the alteration is to cost. Obviously, if you are going to work things on the basis of a monopolist selling on a scarcity value, you cannot exact more than the man can afford to pay. When you have added to the agricultural value of the land the maximum 100 per cent. which the valuer can exact, and then the cost of the property, if the total sum is more than the figure at which you can let the land or the building, or for which, if you are a speculative builder, you can sell it when you have built it, obviously you do not go in for the transaction.
Let me put this case. We all hope that building costs are coming down. One thing which is being pressed, quite rightly, by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is that the only way to salvation in this country is to bring clown costs, including costs of production. One of those is building costs, and we all have our views on how building costs can be brought down. I would like the noble Lord, Lord Quibell, to have a much freer hand in this respect than he has to-day. But suppose the Government for once take the advice of Lord Quibell, instead of taking the advice of the "brains trust," the Fabian Society, about hew to get building costs down, I ask the Lord Chancellor, what is going to happen? If building Costs come down 10 per cent., will not the development charge, when that happens, go up 10 per cent? What is the district valuer going to exact? He is going to exact as Mach as he can get, and, as building costs come down, I venture to prophesy that he development charge or the sale price, whichever I am

31
to call it, will go up. If that is the position, it is a perfectly hopeless argument for ever getting our building costs down at all.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: May I intervene? In the old days the lower the building costs the higher the value of the land. That always has been so under the old system. But there is no direct relation between the immediate amount of the deduction in the one case with regard to the building. It is quite obvious that a a man can afford to pay more for land if he can build a house for £100 than he can afford to pay for the land if the house is going to cost £1,000. There is a tendency that way, but nothing more than a tendency.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I am obliged to the noble and learned Viscount. The Lord Chancellor has really let the cat out of the bag, I think. I do not differ from him; in fact we agree that the person who is not going to exact that extra cost is the landlord himself because he is only to get the agricultural value which is not affected by whether building costs go up or down. As the noble and learned Viscount says, it is a tendency which cannot be avoided, although, indeed, I did think that in the "brave new world" which Socialism was bringing us all this "old Adam" was to be expelled. But, not at all! It is not. Who, then, is to get the benefit of this tendency of the rise in the price of land as the cost of building comes down? It is the district valuer, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who all the time is going to exact this charge. I am very much obliged to the Lord Chancellor. Our economic views we share, however much we disapprove of some, and we differ only in that in the old days the wicked landlord got something whereas now it is to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer who gets it. But the one thing that is not going to happen is that the ultimate cost of the building, the price of the finished article (which is what matters) will come down.
Certainly other developments will be held up. Surely development is being held up to-day. The problem with which we are faced and which this debate, following upon the other, has brought out very clearly, goes far deeper than even this Amendment. I am perfectly certain
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that there are all over the country numerous cases—and very often small cases, although Lord Balfour of Burleigh assured us on one occasion that there were also very big ones—where developments are held up to-day because it is not worth while to carry them out. That is the result of a planning and developing Act! Many of us were sceptical, not about the general idea but about the details of the Act, and gave warning about it. What is happening? I do not believe that a great sum is being collected to-day in development charges. It would be interesting to know what is being collected. I venture to say that it is far less than the Government anticipated they would collect. That may be a disappointment to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but what is a much greater disappointment is that it means that development is not going forward. I believe that, sooner or later, we shall have to undertake a review of the whole system and tackle it on a much wider basis.
My Lords, what can we do to-day to deal practically with this Amendment? I think it would be a good Amendment. I think it has been justified again in the arguments advanced to-day. But if the choice which is offered to us by the Government is either to lose the Bill and to have no Tribunal at all or to accept the Bill without this Amendment, then I have no doubt at all what is the wise thing to do—namely, to take what we can get and to have this Tribunal set up for the purposes of Section 60. I am fairly certain that sooner or later (and probably sooner than later) the Government and their chief advisers on this matter will say the right of appeal ought to be granted, or, what is more likely, a much larger reform will have to be produced.
My Lords, may I close with one other remark? However much we may differ on the details of this Bill and, in particular, on this Amendment, there is one matter on which we shall all be agreed, and that is in tendering the congratulations of this House to the noble Viscount the Leader of the House who is 80 years old and growing younger and younger. We hope he may for the residue of the time which is accorded to this Government reside upon that plane, and then I hope that for many years afterwards he will lead the Opposition from this Bench.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Before the Lord Chancellor replies may I say that he intervened when my noble friend was speaking to say that the development charge under the Act was 100 per cent. and that the Act did not provide for variations. I venture to think that perhaps at that moment he had not in mind the provisions of subsection (3) of Section 70, although I am sure he knows it. Subsection (3) provides that:
"… regulations made under this Act … may prescribe general principles to be followed by the Central Land Board in determining … whether any and if so what development charge is to be paid …"
Then it goes on to say
"and without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing provision, such regulations may in particular provide for securing that the amount of the said charge shall be determined on different principles in relation to operations or uses of different classes, or in relation to operations or uses carried out or begun at different periods."
My impression was—I am speaking subject to correction—that when the Bill was passed this was one of the principal reasons given why there should not be an appeal. It was said "How can you have an appeal when there is this possibility of variation—of varying the general principle?" What has happened, unless I am mistaken, is that by the regulations which have been made (in particular, Regulation 1189 of 1948) that scheme has been abandoned, and the new regulation is one which says that the general principle is to govern all things. The only instance in which the Central Land Board may vary the result of the subtraction is in cases where they feel that the general principle would not be fulfilled. That surely is quite a different scheme, and the general principle is the invariable rule.
4.10 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The noble and learned Viscount is right to point out a mistake if he thinks I have made one. I often make mistakes, but I never mind people saying that they think I have done so. But I do not think I was wrong in what I said in answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton. I do not recall that in this Bill at any stage there was anything analagous to the Bill which we had in Coalition days. My recollection is that we always intended throughout this Bill to take the full 100 per cent.
May I add this? I have to leave, but I do not, of course, want to bring this
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debate to an end before your Lordships are ready. I realise the difficulties and problems which your Lordships have pointed out. I have never concealed from myself that there are these difficulties. You are entrusting this body with very great powers, and when you entrust such a body with great powers you must review its working very carefully in order to make sure that the powers are not abused. As at present advised, I do not believe that you will safeguard that by providing for an appeal. I believe it is wise that the Central Land Board should have a very wide discretion. In the ultimate result the great majority of these cases are settled. I would be sorry to see the discretion taken away from the Central Land Board. If you are going to give discretion to the Board I do not believe you can cope with the situation by way of appeal. If of course, you were going to have a fixed aid final code, as in the case of income tax, then clearly you could have an appeal.
I concede—and I will have the observations made by your Lordships conveyed to the proper quarters—that the matter is one which needs very careful consideration. We must consider it carefully to see whether or not we have now found the best formula. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, I claim the right to have second thoughts. I feel it would be quite inappropriate to do what is suggested in a procedure Bill. I think we may have to introduce some modification in the light of experience of the working of this Bill. In the course of a few months all sorts of difficulties may appear, in which case I shall not hesitate to come to your Lordships and tell you of those difficulties, and I shall not be ashamed in the least, if anyone says to me, "You have thought a second time about this."
4.14 p.m.
VISCOUNT PORTMAN: My Lords, I feel that I cannot allow this debate to come to an end before putting to the Lord Chancellor one question. In the debate on May 5 he gave the House this assurance. He said
"I feel that the present tribunal presided over by Sir Malcolm Eve, consisting as it does of lawyers and surveyors is the best that we can devise …"

35
When the noble and learned Viscount spoke of the "present tribunal" he referred to the Central Land Board. Being closely connected with matters pertaining to the land in town and country I at once began to think "Of whom does this tribunal consist?"—or, rather, "Of whom does this Central Land Board consist?" I have taken the trouble to go very carefully into its composition, bearing in mind the powers it holds, the matters it is called upon to weigh, and upon which it has to pass judgment. I have to tell the Lord Chancellor that in the course of my investigations I found that the Board includes two members of the legal profession—one of them Sir Malcolm Eve—but I cannot find that there is a single member of the surveyors' profession. I hope that I have not misunderstood the Lord Chancellor, but having regard to his words on May 5, I do not feel that we are getting the finest authority—in view of what I have discovered—to deal with matters of taxation so weighty as those which are being brought up every day.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Was not my observation dealing with the composition of the tribunal?
VISCOUNT PORTMAN: No, with the Central Land Board. It appears in Hansard for May 5, at the bottom of column 358 and the top of column 359.
I would like at this juncture, if your Lordships consider it in order, to give you the names and professions of the Government-constituted Central Land Board. The Chairman, as your Lordships know, Sir Malcolm Eve. Next on the list is Dame Myra Curtis, the principal of Newnham College, who is not in the list of surveyors. Then comes Sir Luke Fawcett, general Secretary of the Building Employees' Trade Union. The noble Lord, Lord Quibell, will probably correct me, if I am wrong, but I believe that Sir Luke is not a surveyor. Next is Sir Basil Gibson, one-time Town Clerk of Sheffield. Again the Institute of Chartered Surveyors have failed to find his name as one of their members. After him on the list, come Mr. J. R. Phillip, K.C., who is, of course, a member of the legal profession, and then Mr. A. Macdonald, one-time general manager of an insurance company. He is probably good at fire insurance values, but not perhaps at land
36
values. Finally, there is Mr. J. R. Rutherford who has spent his life in Scottish local government. I ask: Where are these surveyors, valuers and land agents of whom we have heard so much?
I regret that the Government have seen fit in the light of existing circumstances to refuse so peremptorily the right of appeal. I can assure the Government that the whole Town and Country Planning Act is fast falling apart. Development will slow down, and when it is learned who are guiding our interests and the interests of the country, with so much authority but with so little knowledge, I am afraid that it will fall apart faster still.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

NURSES BILL [H.L.]
4.18 p.m.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
Clause 4 [Expenditure of Nurse-Training and Hospital Management Committees, &c.]:
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved to leave out Clause 4 and to insert the following new clause:
Expenditure on nurse-training by Hospital Management Committees, &c.
"4.—(1) Where a standing nurse-training committee is constituted under this Act for a hospital area, expenditure by a Hospital Management Committee appointed by the Regional Hospital Board for the area or by the Board of Governors of a teaching hospital situated in the area, being expenditure—

(a) wholly or mainly for the purposes of, or in connection with, the training of nurses; and

(b) of such description as the Minister may specify for the purposes of this subsection;

shall, so far as it is incurred in accordance with estimates approved by the standing nurse-training committee, instead of being defrayed in accordance with section fifty-four of the National Health Service Act, 1946, be defrayed by that committee.
(2) Any question arising under the foregoing subsection whether expenditure is such as is mentioned in paragraph (a) thereof shall be determined by the Minister."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, when this Bill came up for its Second Reading it met with a chorus of approval from all sections of your Lordships' House. It was not only generally welcomed but it was believed to be a non-party measure. Notwithstanding one diversion and one Division, I think that those terms could

37
be applied to the Bill at this stage. Good feeling has been maintained, co-operation has been the order of the day, and we all believe now that we have an agreed measure which we can send to another place.
In moving the first Amendment, namely, for the abolition of Clause 4 as it now is, and the substitution of the original clause, I think it would be as well if I made a brief statement. The original clause provided that the expenses of hospital management committees and boards of governors for the training of nurses should be met by the standing nurse-training committees out of money provided by the General Nursing Council, who in their turn derived their money from Government sources. The purpose the Government had in mind was to some extent to separate the responsibility of training, at any rate in so far as money was concerned, from the employment of nurses. Secondly, the purpose of putting money through that line was to strengthen the hands of the General Nursing Council and, by the provision of standing nurse-training committees, to provide them with machinery whereby they could keep closely in touch with management committees and boards of governors.
For some time there has been a growing feeling that it was essential, in the interests of nurses and of training, that some independent organisation should be mainly responsible for the training schemes and for the approval which followed from them. However, when Clause 4 came before your Lordships' House in Committee, an Amendment was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Luke, to delete the clause, and to introduce a new clause which had for its purpose the taking away of the authority of the General Nursing Council and the standing nurse-training committees for expenditure and transferring that authority to a new independent body, on lines similar to those which we have in the university field. Your Lordships approved the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Luke, and, on a Division, carried his Amendment. The Government, or at any rate the representatives of the Government in this House, had to decide what course they should follow after a Division of that kind, creating, as it did, a great change in the Bill. Ministers took the view that it would be better to try to reach
38
an accommodation during the remaining stages of the Bill, so that we could send the Bill to another place as an agreed measure, rather than burke the issue now and allow the Minister to give advice in another place as to the course that should be followed. I think we may congratulate ourselves on the fact that the action taken by Ministers has met with success. General agreement has been established, and a number of Amendments are to come before your Lordships to-day arising out of the discussions.
On this issue, this is the line your Lordships are now recommended to take: first to delete the present Clause 4 and put hack the original clause, and then, to meet the views of the noble Lord, Lord Luke, and those who supported him, by creating in the General Nursing Council a statutory committee for the purpose of administering funds for the training of nurses. We have gone even further than that. We have now provided that when disputes arise in the standing nurse-training committees on matters of finance, and indeed on matters generally, there shall be an appeal by those who feel aggrieved to the General Nursing Council, with whom the final word will rest. In coming to this arrangement we think we have strengthened the General Nursing Council and certainly that we have strengthened the standing nurse-training committees. We believe that we now possess the means by which the 600 separate schools for training nurses which exist to-day can he brought into intimate contact, through the standing nurse-training committees, with the General Nursing Council. We are confident that if these Amendments are accepted in another place, we shall have a Bill of first-rate importance to our credit.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 4 and insert the said new clause.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for dealing with this matter so comprehensively. I think he was right in not confining himself to the Amendment which we are now discussing and informing your Lordships of the situation in regard to the other Amendments. During the Committee stage many of us thought that the standing nurse-training committees were not the appropriate bodies to

39
deal with grants, especially those to the large teaching hospitals, which have always set the pace and standard in regard to the training of both medical students and nurses. We sought for a body akin to that which deals with grants to universities, as the noble Lord has said. That was the purpose of the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Luke, which I supported and which, on a Division, we put into the Bill.
As always, we found the noble Viscount the Leader of the House, who on this occasion was accompanied by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, very reasonable. It is no secret that we have had talks on the matter. As a result the Order Paper now contains an Amendment setting up a finance committee of the General Nursing Council, to which all financial matters will be referred, and a further Amendment providing that if either a management committee or board of governors of a teaching hospital are aggrieved by any decisions made by a standing nurse training committee, they have a right of appeal to the General Nursing Council. An appeal on matters of finance will automatically be referred to the finance committee. So far as I am concerned, I think this is a better method than the Amendment which we previously inserted in the Bill. I will he frank about it. It was very difficult to find out exactly how a hospital grants committee should be formed, and who should he on it. I hope that when the General Nursing Council set up their finance committee they will take advantage of the proposal under the First Schedule whereby the Minister is to appoint to the Council three persons with knowledge of hospital administration and finance, and that the Council will make use of these members on their finance committee.
I would join with the noble Lord. Lord Shepherd, in advising your Lordships to go back on the decision that we previously made, to accept the very good compromise that has been worked out in the meantime between us, and so send this Bill forward to another place as a measure on which there is no outstanding disagreement in your Lordships' House. For that reason I would recommend to the House the course just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd.
LORD WEBB-JOHNSON: My Lords, I would like to make the comment that the Amendment carried in your Lordships' House on the Committee stage was carried because of the anxiety expressed in regard to the position of the teaching hospitals. This anxiety is now largely removed, and I feel that in practice it will be entirely removed, by the Amendments which stand in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. Therefore, I would like to express contentment, not only with the Amendment with which we are now dealing but with those which are contingent on its passing, because they all hang together. At the same time, I would like to express my thanks to the noble Viscount the Leader of the House, and to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, for the sympathetic consideration they have given to the anxiety expressed, and for their serious endeavour to find a solution which is not only acceptable in this House but which stands a good prospect of being accepted in another place.
LORD LUKE: My Lords, I would just like to add my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and to thank him for what he has said about this. Perhaps I should add something that he could not say—namely, that it would have been better if we had had consulation before and not after the event. However, that is past history. I, too, with the noble Lords, Lord Llewellin, and Lord Webb-Johnson, feel that the three matters now put into the Bill—namely, the appeal, as it were, the new clause setting up the finance committee and the three representatives on the General Nursing Council, will make a great difference. For my part, I am satisfied that the grants committee has now passed into limbo.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5 [Contributions towards expenses of other persons in respect of nurse-training]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the next two Amendments are consequential. Perhaps in moving them I may be permitted to express thanks on behalf of my noble Leader and myself for the very kind words that have been uttered. It would, however, be wrong to convey the impression that all the good work has been done on this side of the House. The noble Lords, Lord Cunliffe, Lord Luke

41
and Lord Webb-Johnson have been helpful in the extreme; and, as it were, presiding over what were formerly two hostile forces we have had the independent and sympathetic guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 27, leave out ("Hospital Grants Committee") and insert ("standing nurse-training committee for a hospital area").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 28, after ("engaged") insert ("in the area").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 7 [Expenses of Hospital Grants Committee]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment proposing to delete Clause 7 is in consequence of our reintroduction of Clause 4. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 7.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved, after Clause 7 to insert the following new Clause:
Reference of disputes to the Council
". Any question arising between a standing nurse-training committee for a hospital area and a Hospital Management Committee appointed by the Regional Hospital Board for the area or the Board of Governors of a teaching hospital situated in the area, being a question relating to the exercise by the first-mentioned committee of their functions under this Act, shall, in default of agreement, be determined by the Council."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I indicated that one of the things for which we endeavour to provide in case of dispute locally, is the right of appeal of certain bodies to the General Nursing Council. That is the purpose of this Amendment. It will be noted that the appeal is to the General Nursing Council. I mention that particularly because there was a suggestion that the appeal was to the finance committee. It may of course be to the finance committee ultimately, because when an appeal on finance goes to the General Nursing Council the item will stand referred to the finance committee. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 7, insert the said new Clause.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for having had the Amendment drafted in this way, and to those responsible for the drafting for the speed with which they have accomplished it. That has enabled the matter to be dealt with satisfactorily on the Report stage of the Bill. I suppose there will be disputes, both financial and otherwise, which will come under the clause we are now discussing, but only the financial disputes will automatically be referred to the finance committee. The other disputes will be dealt with by the General Nursing Council. I mention that because the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, omitted to say anything about the one class of appeal. Before I sit down, I would like to thank the noble Lord for his kindly reference to myself.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved, after Cause 7, to insert the following new clause:
The finance committee
".—(1) The Council shall appoint a finance committee consisting of members of the Council.
(2) The number of members of the finance committee and their term of office shall be such as may be prescribed by rules made by the Council under subsection (1) of section three of the Act of 1919.
(3) Any matter relating to the discharge by the Council of their functions with respect to the defraying of expenses incurred by standing nurse-training committees shall stand referred to the finance committee and any other matter may be referred by the Council to that committee; and the committee shall consider the matter and report upon it to the Council, and the Council, before taking any action on the matter shall, unless in the opinion of the Council the matter is urgent, receive and consider the report of the committee.
(4) The power of the Council under paragraph (f) of subsection (1) of section three of the Act of 1919 to make rules for authorising the delegation to committees of the powers of the Council and for regulating the proceedings (including quorum) of committees shall be exercisable in relation to the finance committee."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this new clause is to create the statutory committee of the General Nursing Council to deal with financial matters. I do not think it is necessary for me to discuss it further, because its terms are plain. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 7, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
4.50 p.m.
Clause 8:
The Mental Nurses Committee
(3) The Council may pay to the members of the Mental Nurses Committee sums (to be calculated in accordance with directions to be given by the Minister) in respect of any loss of remunerative time and in respect of travelling and subsistence expenses.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, had an Amendment down to this clause to make it clear that the training of mental nurses should be a matter for the consideration of this committee. We are accepting his Amendment in principle, but we have drafted our own Amendments which, from the draftsman's point of view, are more suitable. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 1, at beginning, insert ("The following matters, namely.—
(a)").—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, although this particular Amendment does not deal with my point, as is obvious from the drafting, the succeeding Amendment, to which the noble Lord Lord Shepherd was obviously addressing himself, fully meets the point which I raised and still have on the Order Paper. I thank the noble Lord for putting down this Amendment, and in consequence I will not move the next Amendment which stands in my name.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 4, after ("question)") insert ("and
(b) any matter relating to the training of persons for admission to the supplementary part of the register containing the names of nurses trained in the nursing and care of persons suffering from mental diseases;").(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment is also consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 5, after ("question") insert ("as aforesaid").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 14, after ("Committee") insert ("on behalf of the Council").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, during the Committee stage a number of appeals were made to us about the expenses which were to be paid to persons who were attending committees on nurse-training business. We have given consideration to those matters, and we have thought it wise to bring the Bill into line with the provisions of the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill. I think that will satisfy those who were in doubt as to whether we were covering the whole of the legitimate expenses. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 21, leave out from first ("of") to end of line 22, and insert ("earnings they would otherwise have made or any additional expenses (including travelling and subsistence expenses) to which they would not otherwise have been subject, being loss or expenses necessarily suffered or incurred by them for the purpose of enabling them to perform duties as members of the Mental Nurses Committee").—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, in my view it is quite right that the Nurses Bill should follow the same lines as the National Health Service Bill. I am glad that these Amendments have been put down in order to meet this point, and bring the two matters completely in line.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9:
Registration of Nurses trained abroad
9.—(1) A person who proves to the satisfaction of the Council that he has been trained either generally as a nurse or as a nurse of some special class in a country or territory outside the United Kingdom in accordance with a scheme of training recognised by the Council as being satisfactory for the purposes of this subsection, that he underwent his training in an institution so recognised and that he is of good character shall, on making an application in the prescribed manner and on payment of such fee, if any, as may be prescribed, be entitled to be registered in the part of the register appearing to the Council to be appropriate to his case.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, there are several Amendments to Clause 9. The intention is to ensure that nurses trained abroad who are admitted to the Register

45
shall have passed any examinations forming part of their training. The Amendment has been made at the request of the General Nursing Council to make it abundantly clear that no nurse trained abroad who has failed to pass an examination forming part of her training, shall have any title to be admitted to the Register. It may be that in some countries there are forms of training which the General Nursing Council would regard as satisfactory but which do not involve the taking of an examination. The Amendment would not preclude the admission of nurses who had completed training of this kind. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 28, leave out from ("that") to ("in") in line 30, and insert (", in a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, he successfully completed his training either generally as a nurse or as a nurse of some special class").—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, I think these are better words than those we had before. They seem to me to meet the case which one used to hear—and perhaps one hears of it to-day—where, as one of their qualifications, certain Indian students who had been to one of the universities used to put "failed B.A., Oxford" This Amendment means that if there is an examination which has to be taken nurses will have had to pass it, and will not he able to rely upon that old recommendation of failing to pass.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 39, leave out ("has been trained") and insert ("successfully completed his training")—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 42, leave out ("he has been so trained") and insert ("his training was")(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the next two Amendments are drafting. They are merely to change the order of the words as they appear in the clause. I beg to move.
Amendment move6—
Page 6, line 2, leave out ("if they are satisfied that he is of good character")—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 3, after ("may") insert (", if they are satisfied that he is of good character,")—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 10 [Closing of parts of the register]:
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved, after subsection (2) to insert:
"(3) No request undo, the last foregoing subsection shall be made by the Council with respect to the supplementary part of the register containing the names of nurses trained in the nursing and care of persons suffering from mental diseases unless the Council are satisfied that means exist whereby members of the public can readily ascertain whether a registered nurse has been so trained and no such request shall be so made with respect to the supplementary part of the register containing the names of nurses trained in the nursing of sick children unless the Council are satisfied that means exist whereby members of the public can readily ascertain whether a registered nurse has been so trained."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, during the debate on the Committee stage fears were expressed, chiefly, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Webb-Johnson, about the position of specialised training. As your Lordships will remember, the Bill provides for a general training with certain specialised training, and it also provides that at some time if the Council think proper, portions of the register for specially trained nurses would cease. We have gone closely into the matter, and have produced this new subsection which we hope will meet the difficulties which were then expressed. We desire, in particular, to make it clear that the training of sick children's nurses is not to he discontinued.
I would also draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that there is nothing in this Bill which will prevent the General Nursing Council, in the keeping of its Register, attaching to the names of the registered nurses the special qualifications which they earn. Moreover, the General Nursing Council will have amongst its members representative; of the specialised trained nurses, and they will watch closely that the General Nursing Council will not go wrong in dealing with these matters. If the General Nursing Council desire to

47
close a part of the Register because it is no longer required they must satisfy themselves that there will be means of identification of the registered nurses afterwards. We can take it for granted that the specialist nurses on the Council will see that that is done. Further, the General Nursing Council, even though they may take action having themselves been satisfied, must then satisfy the Minister; and I presume that the Minister of Health, like all good Ministers, will cause some inquiry to be made before he comes to a decision. I hope, therefore, that the new subsection will meet the difficulties that have been expressed. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 23, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD WEBB-JOHNSON: My Lords, your Lordships will remember that in the Committee stage I moved an Amendment which, by your leave, I withdrew, setting out in detail the proposals of the General Nursing Council in regard to post-graduate specialist training. It was obvious from the discussion that there were certain difficulties in this matter, and certain anxieties in regard to people hunting for a row of letters after their names. I am therefore very relieved that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is moving this new subsection to Clause 10, because I think it safeguards the position of the General Nursing Council. It is only on the initiative of the General Nursing Council that any supplementary part of the Register can be closed, and if they are not satisfied that satisfactory means exist for the public to ascertain whether an individual nurse has specialised training they need not make any move in the matter at all. I am grateful to Lord Shepherd for the sympathetic attention that has been given to this matter, and I am content with this clause as it will now stand.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 11 [Provisions relating to the approval of training institutions]:
LORD LLEWELLIN LORD LLEWELLIN had given notice to move, in subsection (2) after "Chancellor" (where that word first occurs) to insert:
"of which a copy shall at the same time be served on the Council."
48
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a small matter. I put down my Amendment to ensure that if there was an appeal a copy of the notice should be served on the Council, as well as on the Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor. The noble Lord has put down an Amendment in words which are perhaps more appropriate than my own. I thank him for putting down that Amendment, and wish to inform the House that I do not intend to move mine.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved to add to subsection (2):
"It shall be the duty of a person who serves a notice under this subsection upon the Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor to serve at the same time a copy thereof on the Council."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in view of the remarks just made by the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, it is hardly necessary for me to say anything. I therefore beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 21, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 13 [Admission to the list of persons whose due admission was prevented by war circumstances]:
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved to leave out Clause 13, and insert the following new clause:
Admission to the register of persons included in the list, &c.
".—(1) The Council shall make rules providing for the admission to the register, on payment of such fees (if any) as may be prescribed, of—

(a) persons whose names are included in the list; and

(b) persons other than as aforesaid who hold certificates issued by institutions which appear to the Council to be satisfactory for the purposes of this provision stating that they completed before the beginning of July, nineteen hundred and twenty-five, a course of training in nursing in the institution and who satisfy the Council that they are of good character and have adequate knowledge and experience of nursing.

(2) A person whose name is included in the list shall, on being admitted to the register, cease to be included in the list, and it shall be the duty of the Council to make the requisite alterations therein."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, during the Committee stage there was some discussion, initiated by the noble Lord,

49
Lord Webb-Johnson, on this clause, concerning persons who, although they had had training prior to a given date, had failed to make the necessary application in time for enlistment. A suggestion was made that we should reopen the lists to give these nurses a further opportunity to get on to them, so that they could take their proper place in the nursing profession once more. We have given consideration to the points put forward and in this Amendment we are going a little further than requested. We are going to provide opportunities whereby nurses who are on the list, or would have been on the list if they had made their applications soon enough, can now become registered, if they make their applications and satisfy the authorities. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 13 and insert the said new clause.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD WEBB-JOHNSON: My Lords, it looks again as if we are going to part in complete amity. I should like to reiterate my thanks, not only to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd but to those who have agreed to this Amendment; and not only for covering the point which I raised but for adding lavish generosity to the gift.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 14 [Registration, &c., fees]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the Amendment standing in my name on this clause is consequential on the new clause. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 36, leave out subsection (3).—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 16 [Allowances to members of the Council and the Assistant Nurses Committee]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is an Amendment that has already been accepted in principle in an earlier part of the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 18, leave out from second ("of") to end of line 19, and insert ("earnings they would otherwise have made or any additional expenses (including travelling and subsistence expenses) to which they would not otherwise have been subject, being loss or expenses necessarily suffered or incurred by them for
50
the purpose of enabling them to perform duties as members of the Council or of the Assistant Nurses Committee, as the case may be").(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
5.8 p.m.
Clause 20 [Interpretation]:
LORD LLEWELLIN LORD LLEWELLIN moved to add to the definition of "registered mental nurse"
"and includes registered mental deficiency nurses."
The noble Lord said: Your Lordships will see that in Clause 20 there is a definition of registered mental nurses. Some people are anxious whether the term "registered mental nurse" includes a registered mental deficiency nurse. I think it should. If the definition does in fact include registered mental deficiency nurses, I should like to have an assurance from the noble Lord that it is so. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 5, at end insert the said words.—(LordLlewellin.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment is unnecessary—for this reason. The object of the Amendment is to ensure that the definition of registered mental nurse includes registered mental deficiency nurses. The Parliamentary draftsman advises me that they are so included as the Bill stands. The principal Act provide; for one supplementary part of the Register only for all nurses trained in nursing mental diseases; and both mental nurses and mental deficiency nurses are registered in this part. The definition, therefore, covers both types of nurse. There has been a good deal of misapprehension on this point, and I desire to take this opportunity of snaking it clear so that that misapprehension need not arise in the future.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, in view of that clear explanation from the noble Lord, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
First Schedule [The General Nursing Council for England and Wales]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, in paragraph 2 (1) of the First Schedule, there is a provision for the election of nurses to the General Nursing Council, nominated from the fourteen areas into which the country is to be divided. As

51
the paragraph stands, although the nominations will come from the areas, the election will be by the nurses in the country as a whole. There has been a feeling that in the future, with the development of the standing nurse-training committees and therefore the building up of regional feeling, there will be a desire that the nurses now to be nominated regionally shall be elected regionally. We have been confronted with some difficulty, however, because there is no machinery at present existing for the purpose. Moreover, there are so many difficulties to be met, the end of which we cannot at present see. The Minister has therefore agreed to submit Amendments the first of which terms the nurses who will elect on the national basis "general electors." Then, to paragraph 4 of the Supplementary Provisions to the Schedule, there is an Amendment to provide that if in future the General Nursing Council find it possible and desirable to change the basis of election they can do so under the powers given to them. I beg to move the first Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 12, line 20, at end insert ("(which persons are hereinafter referred to as" general electors")").—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, if I may say so, we have no objection to any of these Amendments. They have been well described to us by the noble Lord, and I think they are an improvement.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I beg to move this Amendment which, coupled with the next one, provides that three persons skilled in finance and hospital administration shall be added to the General Nursing Council. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 6, leave out ("and").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 14, at end insert ("and
(e) three shall be persons appearing to him to have had experience of the control and management of hospitals").—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, perhaps I might say a word here, because this Amendment adds to the Council three persons who appear to the Minister "to have had experience of the control and management of hospitals." We think that it will be a considerable improvement to this measure to have these persons statutorily included, as they now will be. As I have said before, we very much hope that the General Nursing Council will take advantage of having these experienced people and will admit them as members of the finance committee of the Council.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved to add to paragraph 4:
(", and the said scheme may provide that the system in accordance with which the election of the fourteen nurses mentioned in head (a) of sub-paragraph (1) of paragraph 2 of this Schedule shall he conducted shall be either—

(a) by way of assigning to each of the general electors one vote in respect of each of the areas into which England and Wales is divided under sub-paragraph (2) of that paragraph; or

(b) by way of assigning to each general elector a single vote in respect of that one of those areas that is determined in accordance with the scheme to be, in his case, the area at the election wherefor of a member of the Council it is appropriate for him to vote.").

The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is the further Amendment to which I have just referred, providing for regional elections if in the opinion of the General Nursing Council they appear desirable. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 18, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD CROOK: My Lords, on Second Reading I drew attention to some of the difficulties which I anticipated in this regard. I should like to thank the noble Lord for the Amendment he has moved, and to express my support of it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the purpose of this Amendment is to make sure that when a casual vacancy occurs in the membership of the General Nursing Council the person appointed to succeed shall come from the same area or be under the same dispensation as the one who has departed. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 13, line 27, at end insert—
("(2) A person appointed to fill a vacancy occurring in the place of a member that was originally filled by a nurse elected for one of the areas into which England and Wales is divided under sub-paragraph (2) of paragraph 2 of this Schedule shall be a person who would be qualified for election for that area if an election were to take place on the date on which he is appointed, and a person appointed to fill any other vacancy shall, if the place vacant was originally filled by a person required by the foregoing provisions of this Schedule to be a person of a particular class, himself be a person of that class.")—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD CROOK: My Lords, on Second Reading I directed attention to the fact that the Bill as then drafted did not contain the provision as in the 1919 Act. I asked the Government to look into the matter. I should like to thank the noble Lord for the consideration he has given to this matter, and for putting this Amendment down on the Order Paper. May I add that I have not risen upon earlier Amendments or during Committee stage to do what I should like to do now?—namely, to thank the noble Lord for his courtesy and co-operation in accepting so many of these points which are now embodied in these provisions of the Bill.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Second Schedule [Standing Nurse-Training Committees]:
LORD LLEWELLIN LORD LLEWELLIN moved to add to the list of members to be appointed to a standing nurse-training committee:
"(h) persons appointed by the Minister after consultation with the Queen's Institute of District Nursing."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, as your Lordships will see, the Second Schedule deals with the constitution of standing nurse-training committees. There are persons to be appointed by the Regional Hospital Board for the area; persons appointed by boards of governors of teaching hospitals situated in the area; persons appointed by the Council; persons appointed by the Central Midwives Board; persons appointed by the Minister after consultation with the local health authorities in the area (which will, of course, partly cover the point I am raising); persons appointed by the Minister after consultation with the local education authorities in the area; and persons appointed by the Minister after
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consultation with such universities as he thinks fit.
The purpose of my Amendment is to suggest that persons should be appointed by the Minister after consultation with the Queen's Institute of District Nursing. I think that everybody who has anything to do with hospitals and nursing realises what a great work the Queen's Institute have done in training district nurses. I appreciate the difficulty of including the Institute in this measure under such a designation because, although they have been doing this good work for a long time, there is no guarantee that the Queen's Institute will continue for ever. So perhaps it is rather difficult to include them. They have done extremely valuable work in the training of district nurses. I hope that, if not in this form in some other form, that very valuable body of persons, the district nurses, may have some membership of, and in the same way have some say on, these standing nurse-training committees. I do not know what the country districts and also many of the town districts would do without their district nurses. They probably teal with more people, and perhaps help to prevent more illness, than many other nurses, despite the great work that those nurses always do.
I would like to ask the noble Lord his intentions with regard to giving district nurses some sort of say or representation on these standing nurse-training committees, and to inquire whether it would not be useful, without including them in the Statute, to ensure that the Queen's Institute, which have clone such valuable work, are consulted. I hope the Ministry will take occasion to use their services for consultation as well as rely upon them to train these nurses for the common good. For those reasons I beg to move my Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 14, line 18 at end insert ("( ) persons appointed by the Minister after consultation with the Queen's Institute of District Nursing.")—(Lord Llewellin.)
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I should like to support the noble Lord, either in the Amendment which he has moved or in extracting from the Government some statement as to the way in which they can utilise the services of this magnificent Institute. On other occasions I have spoken

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of the difficulties through which they have been passing, owing to the takeover on July 5 last, and also of our lack of knowledge in regard to their future. It may be that the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd will tell us that it is not easy to make this addition to the Statute, but I hope that at any rate the other appeal made by Lord Llewellin, to utilise their services, will receive some response from the Government.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, read out the composition of the standing nurse-training committees, and he indicated the manner in which the committees are to be peopled with representatives. Noble Lords will have gathered that every organisation or body mentioned in the list is a statutory authority, and therefore an authority which has some real claim, because of its functions, to representation on that committee. The Government feel that if they open the doors to a professional organisation like the body mentioned by the noble Lord we should be landing ourselves in considerable difficulty. The Minister agrees that the Royal College of Nurses is a body that must be consulted. Indeed, there must be the closest co-operation when things in which there is a mutual interest have to be performed.
LORD LLEWELLIN: I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord, but did he mean the Queen's Institute of District Nursing?
LORD SHEPHERD: Yes. That is essentially a body that must be consulted, not merely by the Minister but, I should hope, by the General Nursing Council. We on our side of the House have a very great admiration for this Institute and the work they are doing. Every day I see one of the nurses trained by this Institute visiting a neighbour's house, in all kinds of weather; and my admiration is boundless because of the zealous way in which the duties are carried out. However, I am sorry that I cannot accept the noble Lord's Amendment, although the Government will do everything they can to encourage the consultation of which I have spoken.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, in view of that undertaking to take them
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into consultation as much as possible, I shall not press my Amendment. I see the difficulties of including in a Statute a voluntary body like this, because of course they might cease to exist, and then the Minister would not be able to appoint a person after consultation with them. When the noble Lord was speaking I was in some doubt as to whether one could describe a board of governors of a teaching hospital as a statutory body. I have a little doubt as to whether they are a statutory body, but they are likely to continue, I suppose. I see the difficulty about including this particular body in the Statute, but I hope—as I know will be the case—they will be taken into consultation as much as possible. I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 14, line 31, leave out ("sub-committees") and insert ("any sub-committee").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is similar to the other Amendment relating to the payment of expenses. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 14, line 32, leave out from second ("of") to ("as") in line 33, and insert ("earnings they would otherwise have made or any additional expenses (including travelling and subsistence expenses) to which they would not otherwise have been subject, being loss or expenses necessarily suffered or incurred by them for the purpose of enabling them to perform duties as members of the committee or sub-committee, as the case may be.").—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Third Schedule [The Hospital Grants Committee]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential on the reinsertion of Clause 4. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out the Third Schedule.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Fifth Schedule [Enactments repealed]:
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, this is consequential on the new Clause 8. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 17, leave out lines 50 to 56.—(Lord Shepherd.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.

SUPERANNUATION BILL
5.26 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF CIVIL AVIATION (LORD PAKENHAM): My Lords, I rise to move the Second Reading of the Superannuation Bill, 1949. I am sure that there will be support from all quarters of the House for this Bill, whose object is to improve certain features in the Civil Service Superannuation Code so that the conditions of service will be more on a level with those in other comparable occupations. We all agree that our Civil Service is the finest in the world. Some people occasionally are heard to argue that there are too many civil servants, but nobody argues that they are too well remunerated, and I think we are all anxious to do justice to them in this Bill and in other ways.
In one important respect Civil Service practice can, at the moment, be considered as comparing unfavourably with that of other similar employments. Up to now, only very limited provision has been made for widows, orphans and other dependants of civil servants, and it is with this deficiency in mind that Parts I and II of the Bill have been framed. As the House will have observed, it is proposed to set up two schemes on a contributory basis, on the model of what is done in a number of other occupations. Participation in the first scheme, covering widows and children, will be compulsory on marriage for all future entrants into the Service (I stress those words) but existing civil servants may contract out since it was not part of their contract when they entered the Service. However, I am sure that the advantages of the scheme will be so evident that few established staff will, in fact, wish to dissociate themselves from the scheme. The contributions will be 11 per cent. of salary, or, at the option of the civil servant, a capitalised payment
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to be deducted from the lump sum due to him on retirement or, if death occurs before, from the gratuity paid to his dependants. The State, for its part, will meet the remaining cost of the scheme, so that, when it is in full operation, the scheme will, it is calculated, be supported half by individual contributions and half by the Exchequer.
Part II of the Bill proposes a scheme whereby dependants other than wives and children may also be eligible for certain benefits. It is, in our opinion, only right that provision should be made for other near relatives who, in certain cases, may be just as dependent on a civil servant as are, in other cases, a wife and children. In most respects the scheme is similar to that for wives and children, but there are two main points of difference. First, the scheme is, and must he, optional. The second point of difference is in the basis of contribution. For the widows and children scheme it was possible to make an actuarial calculation to establish the required rate of contribution, on the assumption that all married civil servants will, in future, be obliged to come under the scheme; but in an optional scheme no such calculation is possible. I will not go into all the details now unless the House wishes me to do so, but I would like to say that the Government Actuary's tables ensure that the cost of the scheme will be divided equally between the State and the civil servant.
The effect of the schemes proposed in Parts I and II of the Bill is that if a civil servant dies after ten years or—and this is important—after he has retired on pension, his dependants will receive one-third of the pension that has either notionally accrued or has been actually paid to him. Furthermore, service of between ten and twenty years will count for this purpose as twenty years, and in no circumstances will any pension be less than £26 a year. The dependants scheme, I should also say, covers women civil servants, both married and single. The widows scheme also makes what I am sure will seem to your Lordships an excellent provision: that a woman civil servant's husband, provided that he is dependent upon her, may receive a pension by virtue of his wife's position. I do not know if any members of the House will ever benefit from that, but I am sure that we all accept its justice.

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Part III of the Bill includes a number of miscellaneous amendments to previous Superannuation Acts, rectifying anomalies in some places and in others improving, often markedly, the general conditions of service. At this stage I will refrain from commenting in detail except to mention the most important. Clause 34 facilitates the compulsory retirement on proportionate pension of civil servants aged 50 or above who are no longer fully efficient, and, at the same time, gives civil servants at the age of fifty the right to retire and, when they attain the normal retiring age, to draw the pension they have earned up to the time of their retirement.
Clause 38 provides that any unestablished service rendered after the passing of the Bill by a person subsequently established shall count in full for superannuation instead of counting but half. As noble Lords are, of course, aware, the Bill as originally drafted omitted this provision. It was in Committee in another place that an Amendment was carried whereby unestablished service rendered before and after—instead of merely after as in the Bill before your Lordships—the passing of the Bill was to count in full for superannuation. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer explained at a later stage, the Government have been unable to accept the Amendment on the grounds that those affected had no reason to expect such benefits when they entered the Civil Service. He further explained that the cost of the Amendment, which would eventually involve something between £5,000,000 and £7,000,000 a year, was such that he would not feel justified in the foreseeable future in placing such an additional burden on the taxpayer. I should also call attention to the repercussions which such a provision would cause in other classes of employment at a time when it is generally agreed that the greatest restraint is necessary.
At this stage, I would like, on behalf of the Government, to pay the highest tribute to the unstinting work of the unestablished civil servants, whose numbers have been so greatly swelled both by the expansion that has taken place in the last decade and as a result of the suspension of the machinery for establishment during the war years. The Government are con-
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scious of the fine work they have done and are anxious that everything possible should be done to meet them. I should like to emphasise as strongly as I can that Clause 38, as it now stands, provides that as from the passing of the Bill—almost at once, I hope—all unestablished service will count in full towards pension. I think I should repeat, with the permission of the House, what my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in another place. He said:
"I am anxious that we should make it clear that this system of lone periods of unestablished service should cease…We hope that in the future the unestablished period will be more of a probationary period and will not form a large factor in the employment of any civil servant who subsequently becomes established."
The problem of those who rendered unestablished service before the passing of the Bill is a legacy of the past, and I can only say that the Government are taking steps to prevent this problem recurring. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has made it plain. I hope, that the Government have recognised that an anomaly existed in the past, but that in the light of the general economic situation of the country it is impossible to rectify it retrospectively.
Part IV of the Bill does not raise any questions of major importance. Perhaps, therefore, I might now pass to the question of cost. It is estimated that Parts I and II of the Bill will not become a burden on the Exchequer for about ten years. This is due to the fact that entry to those schemes is limited to those retiring since 1945. In consequence, assuming the normal mortality rate, we shall not have to pay benefits to any large extent for some ten years. Further investigation which has taken place since the Bill was first introduced suggests that after some thirty years the total cost will be of the order of £5,000,000 a year. Part III of the Bill will cost £500,000 immediately. When the Bill was originally introduced it was hoped that this cost would diminish in the course of years, but as the result of Amendments in another place the cost will probably remain at about this level.
I hope I need say little more to explain or to commend this measure to your Lordships. I should, however, mention that, broadly speaking, the Bill gives effect to an agreement between the

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official and staff sides of the Civil Service National Whitley Council. In saying that, I do not want to give the impression that we have agreed to give the civil servants everything they asked for. That would not be true, as the noble Lord, Lord Crook, who speaks with great authority on these matters, would he the first to point out. But it is fair to say that when this Bill was published everything in it received favourable comments from the staff side. Speaking generally, they regarded it, I hope and believe, as a great step forward, and as a fair settlement of a number of points on which the superannuation code previously may he considered to have fallen short of what should be expected from good employers.
I will gladly attempt to answer any points of detail which may he brought up by your Lordships this afternoon, but I expect that the House would wish to discuss detail, if at all, at a later stage. I hope and believe that there will be a general view in the House that this Bill does justice to the Civil Service, and I trust that the House will see its way to give the Bill a Second Reading. I beg to move that it be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Pakenham.)
5.40 p.m.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for any length of time in speaking on this very intricate measure. I have little doubt that the Bill will be welcomed by all quarters of the House—particularly Parts I and II of the Bill to which the noble Lord opposite has referred. Lord Pakenham has explained to the House that one of the great merits of the Bill is that it seeks to fill a gap in the existing superannuation code of the Civil Service. In one sense, it completes work which was begun under the 1935 Act. I understand that much improvement was made in this Bill during its journey through another place. I would call the attention of your Lordships particularly to Clause 44, which enables full justice to he done to that small number of civil servants who served in the First World War though they had passed their entrance examination in 1914 and 1915. They are now able to count all such war
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service as if they had been serving in the Civil Service.
The only other matter to which I wish to draw your Lordships' attention this afternoon concerns Clause 58, which deals with the reckoning of unestablished service. As I understand it, the Act of 1887 gave certain permissive powers, of which successive Governments have made little use. The Act of 1935 enabled unestablished service after that date, when followed by established service, to count as half for pension. In 1946 further legislation was introduced which backdated the provisions of the 1935 Act to the year 1919. That was the position when this Bill was introduced, and no other alteration was originally suggested. In Committee in another place a series of Amendments was carried against the Government which had the effect of enabling all unestablished service followed by established service to be reckoned in full for pension. On the Report stage of the Bill, however, the Government moved a series of Amendments to delete those which had been approved at the earlier stage and substitute the provisions which are now in the Bill: that the counting in full of unestablished service would be only in respect of service performed after the passing of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, referred to that matter in the course of his remarks.
I think it important that we should be perfectly clear about what that amended provision now does. It makes the clause of no use whatever to any civil servant already established, and for some years to come it will count for little to those who have not yet been established. I cannot help feeling that the decision the Government have reached is bound to fall heavily on the lower grade civil servants and post office workers. I shall not put an Amendment down at the next stage of the Bill, for I feel that any Amendment of this nature should come from the Government themselves. I hope that the noble Lord will take the opportunity of consulting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer again to see whether it will be possible to make the concession which was intended during the Committee stage of the Bill in another place. I am not in a position to question the figure which the noble Lord gave of the cost of this scheme, but frankly I should have thought that the estimate of £7,000,000

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a year was somewhat excessive, in view of the fact that most of the civil servants who would come into the scheme would be in the lower grades and would therefore be lower paid servants. I shall say no more on this occasion, but give a welcome to the Bill. I hope as much as the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, that it will have a speedy passage to the Statute Book.
5.44 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, first may I declare my interest by notifying your Lordships that I am a member of the National Whitley Council for the Civil Service, responsible as one of the parties for the agreement on which this Bill is based. May I then 20 on to say that I welcome this Bill, as I welcomed the negotiations that led up to it. The Bill is another step in the improvement of Civil Service pension conditions for which many of us have agitated over a long period of time. It has taken us many years to get so far as we have to-day and we do not think we have got far enough. Since 1912 negotiations and agitation have been going on in the Civil Service, and to-day we obtain in this Bill a large measure of the things for which we have been agitating. I want to pay a tribute to my colleagues on the National Whitley Council, both on the staff side and on the official side, for their energetic work which led up to the agreement on which the Bill is based. I would pay tribute to the chairman of the Council, Mr. Albert Day, and would go on to name the responsible civil servants on the official side if it were not that, in accordance with tradition, they remain anonymous. But I would refer to the great care they have taken in studying all the problems, which has contributed to the production of this excellent measure. Nor would it be right for me to leave out the Ministers responsible, and I pay tribute to the care they have taken and the understanding and good humour they have shown at all stages.
The fact that I shall be bound to be critical does not in any way reduce the amount of praise I have for what we have in the Bill. That I venture to criticise three items which are either in the Bill in a lesser form or not in the Bill at all, is not a breach of understanding of the negotiations in respect of
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this measure, for the agreement provided that in respect of these items the staff organisations should have the right and opportunity of criticism. First, let me look at Parts I and II of the Bill. I think there is not one civil servant who will not welcome with open arms the fine conception that this gives to the Service. For a long period of years the absence of widows' pensions and provision for orphans and dependants was one of the constant problems of civil servants which they had been unable completely to solve for themselves, though they had solved this problem to some extent by means of benevolent funds and the like. The belief of so many members of the public that civil servants can rely on adequate pensions is one which those who have worked among civil servants know to be a dream. We were conscious of the fact that there were people retiring with pensions from 12s. to 20s. a week, whose only provision for death after their retirement on pension was an allocation to their widows, which they could make only if, after their retirement at sixty, their lives were declared to be good. The effect of this provision was to reduce the total amount of the small pension they had to an amount completely inadequate for their own needs. Their low pay did not allow them to save while they were working and they had no means of making provision. There will be many glad hearts when this scheme comes into force.
I should like to say a word about another provision, to which my noble friend Lord Pakenham did not refer but in respect of which there is great gratitude on the part of civil servants. Those broken down in health who have had to go sick with a pension (if they had over ten years' service and were therefore entitled to pension) of ten-eightieths, eleven-eightieths or twelve-eightieths of their salaries, have found themselves in dire need and have had to depend on benevolent societies or, as was often inevitable, on public assistance. We welcome the fact that it is now provided that no pension shall be based on a figure lower than twenty-eightieths of salary. I should like to thank the Government for this gesture in clearing up one of the civil servants' great difficulties. That is something for which I should like to thank the Government through my noble friend Lord Pakenham.

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At this late hour I will not keep the House by developing in detail the three reserved matters. However, I want to refer to them in order to get them on record, because they are inevitably three matters about which Parliament is bound to hear again as a result of the agitation in the Civil Service. The first is that of added years. I refer only in passing to the references in the Report of the Committee presided over by my noble friend Lord Chorley, and with which the noble Lord who sits on the Liberal Benches, Lord Layton, was concerned, and the other Committee to which the Chorley Report referred—namely the Barlow Committee of 1944, which in paragraphs 43 and 44 of their Report made it clear that the Civil Service recruits certain of the professional classes at ages beyond the normal vet makes no allowance in respect of the late age of recruitment to provide compensation in pensionability, so that these people can therefore never hope to get a maximum amount of pension.
The second item of reservation in the agreement which was reached on the National Whitley Council was that of the extent of gratuities paid to temporary staffs on retirement. This, too, was the subject of discussion in another place, and I very much regret that the Government, although able to accept the reduction of the period of service from fourteen to seven years in order to earn a gratuity, have been unable to accept any suggestion increasing the inadequate amount of one week's pay for each year of service to some larger amount.
The problem of those persons is a good deal related to the general problem of the doctrine of unestablished employment to which my noble friend Lord Pakenham has referred. That is the centre point of the third reservation, the one which has caused the greatest amount of heart-burning and to which my noble friend Lord Munster referred—namely, the counting of unestablished service. Over a long period of years the Civil Service has suffered from the grievous doctrine that a man could work for forty years, for the first thirty of which he could be regarded as temporary because he was on I the unestablished roll, and only in his later years could he be regarded as established. Indeed, in respect of some grades—such grades as those of messenger—until recently it was only possible for
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one person in eight ever to be regarded as established; and he was a very fortunate man who managed to get a permanent post after less than twenty-five years' service in His Majesty's Civil Service. It is true that those exaggerated cases are now a thing of the past, but it still remains true that, even after this Bill is passed, all the temporary service that those people rendered in the past will not count for purposes of superannuation.
I would remind your Lordships that this subject has been one of constant agitation and constant giving way, bit by bit, by successive Governments, because, as has had to be admitted, they were conscious that there was no merit in the case which the Government of the day could put up against Civil Service claims. We had, first of all, the position in which no temporary service counted. Then, under the 1935 Act to which the noble Earl, Lord Munster, referred, we had half service to count for the future. Then, in 1946, mainly because of ex-Service men of the previous war to whom consideration was being given, half service was allowed to count from 1919. At least, we can congratulate the Government very sincerely on the statement which my noble friend Lord Pakenham has made to-day and which the Government announced in the other place recently, that hereafter this system is to come to an end and that once this Bill has become an Act all temporary staffs who become established will count the whole of their service for pension purposes. But I say to your Lordships, in all seriousness, that the very victory which those who have agitated have now won will but cause them considerable bitterness, because those who have agitated for the last thirty years see themselves securing victory and justice for posterity, but not for themselves. While it is a good thing for all of us to achieve something for posterity it is against human nature to think that we snail not complain when we find that we ourselves are left out. Parliament is the employer of these people, and because it is the employer Parliament is bound to hear more of this subject.
I fully appreciate that the Chancellor of the Exchequer must look at the finances of the country as a whole; that his responsibility is to Parliament in all matters, and not just in respect of the Civil Service or a Bill of this kind. I

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deeply regret, however, that he finds it necessary to admit that the principle which the Civil Service have submitted to Parliament as their employer is a sound one, but that, purely on the grounds of finance, it cannot be met. Although I have uttered these critical comments, it is not my intention on the next stage of this Bill to put down any Amendments whatsoever. I ask the Government to look at the points I have raised, and to bear them in mind in considering this matter. However, I would not take any step to hinder the passage of the Bill, because I know how much real value there is in the Bill and how badly it is needed. Every day we delay the Bill here, more men are dying who have no provision for their widows. They know that this Bill is before your Lordships' House, and they are hoping that its results will be attained in time.
There is one point in the statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place and to which my noble friend Lord Pakenham referred—a statement which was further developed by the Chancellor when he said that for the future it was intended only to use unestablishment as a stage and not as a permanent method of employing people in the Civil Service. The Civil Service received the news of that statement with great gratitude. They have grown very tired of the assumption that everybody is temporary over a long period of time, and of the development of doctrine after doctrine which ignored recommendations of Committees and Royal Commissions on the subject. For instance, the Commission of 1929–31, presided over by the late Lord Tomlin, made a recommendation that no clerk in His Majesty's Civil Service should be regarded as temporary once he had served eighteen months. When I remind your Lordships that even before the last war began thousands of people were serving with many more than eighteen months' service—years' service, in fact—and to-day temporary staffs have many years' service, you will appreciate the feeling inside the Civil Service.
The Civil Service as a whole, and the National Whitley Council staff side in particular, are ready to grapple with this problem with the Chancellor of the Exchequer at once. It is a much larger problem than members of Parliament of
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both Houses normally realise. The truth is that, taking only temporary clerks, at the moment we have in excess of 120,000 who have up to about ten years' temporary service. We are busy establishing a number of these people by agreement, and the establishment agreements will operate over the next twelve months. If we allow for the run-down of contracting Departments and the establishment schemes which are now proceeding, we shall reach 1952 with not fewer than 50,000 temporary clerks held fairly permanently on the books of the Civil Service, many of whom by that time will have had thirteen years' service. It is the problem of that hard core of 50,000 with which the staff side of the Whitley Council, together with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his representatives at the Treasury, must deal. The staff side is ready with a number of schemes and suggestions, and I am glad to note—as I am sure my noble friend will confirm—that negotiations are about to take place which may serve to implement the principles about which the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke in his speech in another place.
Those of us who represent the Civil Service are grateful to the Government for this Bill, and we are grateful for the way in which all Parties, both in this House and in another place, have received this Bill. There was a great deal of satisfaction in the Service both at the speech which the right honourable gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury made in presenting the Bill in another place and at the views he expressed in defence of the Service; and equal pleasure was given by the remarks of the right honourable gentleman who opened for the Opposition, Mr. Ralph Assheton. I think it is appropriate, when a Bill dealing with His Majesty's Civil Service comes before Parliament, that all Parties of the House should be agreed about the measure, and that all Parties should make their contribution. All three Parties in another place have said their piece about the Civil Service and have co-operated, both in Committee and on the Floor of the House, in tributes to the Service and in aiding the movement of this Bill as speedily as possible to your Lordships' House.

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The Civil Service has been accustomed to a large number of kicks rather than to praise. I am afraid it meets the public in those places which hurt the public—in taxation, control and regulation, which are the lot of the Civil Service. They are hard-working people, despite the criticisms of red-nosed comedians. They are people who are not over-generously paid, and they are people who have not had the better conditions of employment extended to them. We are glad to see in this Bill overdue measures of reform introduced by the Government. I thank the Government for what they have done, and in the interests of those for whom it comes I wish the Bill a speedy passage to Royal Assent.
6.5 p.m.
LORD PAKENHAM: My Lords, noble Lords who have spoken have expressed their gratitude to the Government for this Bill, and I, on my part, would return the compliment by expressing my gratitude to the two noble Lords who have spoken. They both adopted a responsible tone, and on any point where they differed from the Government they recognised the great difficulty in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is placed. I do not think the House will wish me to go over all the ground yet again. I indicated in my opening statement the reasons which have actuated the Chancellor, and they have been set out at much greater length in discussions in another place. I will certainly make sure that my right honourable friend gives careful attention to what noble Lords have said, but I should be grossly misleading the House if I suggested at this stage that there was any likelihood of change. I will undertake to see that he fully appreciates what noble Lords have in mind.
I join with other noble Lords in yet another tribute to the Civil Service. I suppose if there are any people in the world who appreciate the help and self-sacrifice of the Civil Service, it is noble Lords who answer for many Departments from this Box. In our existence we deal with many different branches of the Civil Service, and often we are as clay in their hands. I myself appreciate all that they have done, and I am sure that other noble Lords on this Bench, as will other noble Lords who have been through the same experience, will agree. Let us therefore join once again in sending out a
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message of gratitude to the Civil Service, and I would once more thank noble Lords for the support they have given to this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS
6.7 p.m.
LORD AMMON: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, I beg to move that it is desirable that all Bills in the present Session presented under the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act. 1949, together with the memoranda laid and any representations made with respect thereto under the Act, be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.
Moved, That it is desirable that all Bills in the present Session presented under the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act, 1949, together with the memoranda laid and any representations made with respect thereto under the Act, be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.—(Lord Ammon.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Commons to communicate this Resolution and to desire their concurrence.

WEST BROMWICH CORPORATION BILL
Committed: the Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
NATIONAL SERVICE (ADAPTATION OF ENACTMENTS) (NAVAL AND MARINE FORCES) ORDER, 1949.
  NATIONAL SERVICE (ADAPTATION OF ENACTMENTS) (MILITARY AND AIR FORCES) ORDER 1949.
  Draft Orders in Council proposed to be made under the Notional Service Act, 1948: Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) for an Address to His Majesty, and referred to the Special Orders Committee.