Lords Sitting of 27 February 1958

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers
  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that as there are only two Starred Questions down on the Order Paper for Tuesday, March 4, the House will not be meeting on that day.

EGYPT: COMPENSATION CLAIMS
3.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will issue a statement showing what is the present state of negotiations between Her Majesty's Government and/or British nationals and the Egyptian Government concerning claims:

(a) arising before the revolution,

(b) for seizure of the property of British nationals,

(c) for losses suffered by shareholders in the Suez Canal Company owing to the premature termination of the concession,

(d) for the loss of stores in the Canal Base,

(e) on other grounds,

and whether Her Majesty's Government will also give an account in as much detail as possible of counterclaims by the Egyptian Government against the British Government and/or nationals.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF GOSFORD): My Lords, talks on a financial settlement have been resumed in Rome this week between delegations representing Her Majesty's Government
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and the Egyptian Government and I regret to say that while these are in progress it would not be appropriate for me to make any statement.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, I understand the difficulty, but the public are also in a difficulty. I put the Question down in detail, because I think that some of the information which has been vouchsafed—officially, apparently—should be corrected. First of all, may (with the indulgence of your Lordships, because I have done my best to put the matter in detail upon the Order Paper) ask about the evicted British nationals? The Government have stated that their claim is for £145 million, but I see in the Press that these people are refusing food at the camps because they are given only 15s. a week out of unemployment pay—is that correct?
Secondly, as regards the shareholders in the Company, of course, that is an international affair, but we have abandoned what the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor said—namely, any attempt to make an international issue of this; but are we going to pay for that part of the damage which we did to the Canal and enter into any inquiry? The third question is in regard to the Canal Base. Have the Government any idea of what was the value of that Base? I do not know whether there was a capital assessment of Government property, but the noble and gallant Earl, Lord Alexander of Tunis, told me in a debate in your Lordships' House that we were spending £2 million a year in keeping up the Base, restoring it and so forth. Fourthly, on what grounds is it correct to say that the military expenditure that we incurred was £54 million? Finally, as regards the Egyptian claims, there is no need for delay there. The claims have been stated by the Government to be £71 million. The aggregate of these claims is very great, and it is useless to say that negotiations, which, so far as one can see from The Times this morning, are to be quite bootless, are going on and on that ground refuse information about the loss caused to the public by the Suez adventure.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, while these talks are going on it would not be in anybody's interest for Her Majesty's Government to make a statement. As regards the hunger strike, I

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have no information. I did see a Press report but I know no more than the noble Viscount about that matter. If he would like me to investigate this, I will do so, but I had not considered that to be part of the Question and was not prepared to answer it. As for the value of British equipment and stores in the Canal Base, I think that the best thing I can do is to refer the noble Viscount to the statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for War on January 22, 1957.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, what amount did he state, because I did not include that?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: It was somewhat more than £60 million. I regret that I cannot give any further answer to the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, is it true, as stated in the Press this morning, that all claims have been put together globally—that is to say, that the attack on Port Said, for which Egypt claims £71 million, is being lumped together and considered along with the case of the businessmen who have been evicted? That is the first question. As to the first part of the noble Earl's answer, does he mean to say that the Foreign Office disclaim all responsibility for the fate of these unfortunate people who have been evicted from their property as a direct result of the Government's attack on Egypt?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, to take the last question first, the Foreign Office certainly do not disclaim any responsibility. Nevertheless, the fact is that, technically speaking, these refugees in hostels are the responsibility of the Home Office. I have already told the noble Viscount that if he wants further information about this particular incident, if in fact it did occur, I will gladly do my best to obtain it for him. With regard to the first part of the noble Viscount's supplementary question, I do not know to which report he is referring. The only one I know about is the report in The Times.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Yes, that is the one.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: I should like to say that that particular report is highly misleading.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: I am much obliged to the noble Earl. It is not news but it is interesting to have it from the Government Bench.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Lord because I had not quite reached my place when he was answering my noble friend's Question. I was glad to see that my noble friend Lord Stansgate had put as his first item, claims arising before the revolution. Some of us have had large correspondence with those who have been waiting for five or six years for settlement of their business claims. Surely these claims should be taken separately from the other matters. These men and women have a good civil claim. Can we not have some idea of how they are being treated at the present time, and whether some advance could not be made to them? Some of them are in a very different business position to-day from that in which they were formerly, owing to the unwarranted action of the Egyptian Government at that time.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I regret to say that I cannot give the noble Viscount any information. These talks are in progress, and it is quite contrary to all practice to give information about talks which are going on, if there is a possibility that by doing so those talks would be prejudiced.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, I also must apologise to my noble friend Lord Gosford for being a little late in arriving, but arising out of his Answer, which I understood to be "no comment", or the equivalent of no comment, and referring especially to paragraph (b) of the noble Viscount's Question—that is, seizure of the property of British nationals—may I put the following supplementary question? Can the noble Earl give an assurance that the claims of British subjects for full compensation for property seized by the Egyptian Government will be fully protected in any agreement come to with Egypt, at Rome or elsewhere?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are doing their fullest to protect all British nationals in this case.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, in that case, why does the warden of the

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hostel, according to the Press, inform these unfortunate refugees that they are very lucky, because they are not as badly off as the unemployed?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I think the noble Viscount will appreciate that that was, so far as I know, purely a Press statement. I have no knowledge of that and no information to give him.

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, this is the first of four Orders relating to Sunday cinemas. The Orders are in the usual form. There are no points to which I need draw your Lordships' attention. I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Borough of Brighouse, be approved.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Borough of Morley, be approved.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Urban District of Stevenage, be approved.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move that this Order be approved.
Moved, That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for extending section one of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Urban District of Woodbridge, be approved.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

WATER BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
3.12 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MANCROFT): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This short measure will enable us to get rid of two more Defence Regulations. I hope that it will commend itself to your Lordships for that reason, as well as for its own merits. May I first explain briefly to your Lordships some of the background which, in the Government's view, makes permanent powers of this kind necessary? As we know, serious droughts are fortunately rare in this country. We do not suffer the great losses of stocks and crops as do countries like Australia. But when we do have droughts they cause a great deal of inconvenience and even some hardship. The Bill is designed to give permanent powers for maintaining public water supplies in such exceptional conditions.
Your Lordships may wonder why the authorities responsible for public water supplies—that is, the statutory water undertakers—should not make sure that they are always able to keep up supplies, however great the drought. But to provide and maintain sources and storage for this purpose, which might be required once, say, in twenty years or so, would mean tying up large amounts of capital, with a consequent increase in the cost of water in all years. It would also use a good deal of land for reservoirs that could better go on being used for farming.
We are, as your Lordships know, encouraging water undertakers to amalgamate into larger and more efficient units. A dozen or so more undertakers have amalgamated since the last time we discussed this matter in your Lordships' House on a Motion by my noble friend Lord Albemarle, and more demises are on the way. We may expect the undertakings to be able to deal with all normal and some abnormal years, but the premium for insuring all undertakings against the worst possible drought would be too heavy.
The worst droughts in this century occurred in 1921 and in 1933–34. In 1934 the shortages became so serious that Parliament was asked to pass an emergency measure—the Water Supplies

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(Emergency Shortage Orders) Act, 1934. This empowered Ministers to make orders enabling the water undertakers to get more water. The Act was a temporary one and was in force for just over eighteen months. The Government of the day were criticised for not having permanent powers available so as to avoid the need for rushing emergency legislation through. The Act, however, was not renewed.
During and since the war, Ministers have been able to deal with shortages of water, however caused, by making orders under the Defence Regulations. Defence Regulation 50A has been used to make orders allowing water undertakers to take water from emergency sources. Entry on land and the carrying out of works has required further authority under Defence Regulation 50. For example, an order to take supplies from a river by means of a temporary intake would have to be made under both Regulations.
Defence Regulation 56 has been used to relax restrictions and obligations resting on water undertakers. For example, when an impounding reservoir is built, a stream is dammed and water collected behind the dam. Under their normal powers, the water undertakers are then required to send down a certain amount of water from the reservoir to maintain the flow in the stream. This is what is called compensation water ". It will be considerably less than the biggest flow in flood times but a good deal more than the minimum flow in very dry weather.
The water undertakers' normal powers may also restrict the amount of water they may pump from a river and they prescribe the flow that must be left in it. Requirements of this kind have been relaxed under Defence Regulation 56 and so also, in England and Wales, have limits on water rates and charges. Variations in water rates and charges are now dealt with under the Water Act, 1945. Seven orders for making extra water available, which it has not yet been possible to get rid of by making more permanent arrangements, and 88 orders authorising increased charges, are still in existence.
In more recent years the Defence Regulations have been used only to deal with drought. The dry weather of 1949, 1955, 1956 and the spring of 1957, though not
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so serious or prolonged as that of 1921 and 1933–34 caused some strain on water undertakers. During the war almost all new work was stopped, and capital investment restrictions have prevented water undertakers from making up all the lost ground in time. But the new works which are being completed every year are rapidly reducing the gap between supply and demand in moderately dry years.
Clearly, the Defence Regulations could not be relied on for ever and the question the Government have had to consider is whether it is right to take permanent powers. Much has happened in the world of water supplies since we had the temporary Act of 1934. We have good cause to be proud of what has been done towards bringing piped water to all but the most remote areas of this country. Statutory water undertakers now supply very many people who used until recently to depend on their own wells. Farmers in many cases use supplies from the mains for watering their stock and for things like milk cooling. I do not think it is generally realised that 95 per cent. of the population of Great Britain now have piped water supplies. In rural areas the figures are 90 per cent. supplied in England, 80 per cent. in Wales and 86 per cent. in Scotland. This, I think, contrasts favourably with, say, the figure of 66 per cent. of the total population in the United States of America.
In town and country alike, the building of new houses with bathrooms and hot water systems is naturally leading to the use of more water in the home. New industries which use large quantities of good quality water, such as chemical and plastics industries, have developed since the war. It is. I think, worth remembering that, with all the restrictions, more than £240 million has been spent, since the war, on water supplies in Great Britain. But because more people now depend on public supplies, industry and agriculture, as well as the town housewife, are likely to suffer if water undertakings cannot meet their commitments.
The procedure of the Water Act, 1945, and the Water (Scotland) Act, 1946, by which permanent works are authorised is too long-winded for dealing with

1027
drought emergencies. It cannot be completed in less than six weeks and, if there are objections, is very much more lengthy, by which time it is probably raining "cats and dogs." The Government have decided, after looking at the use which has been made of the Defence Regulations, that permanent powers should be available. This Bill has therefore been drafted to provide powers under which the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Secretary of State for Scotland will be able to make orders temporarily authorising water undertakers to get more water in various ways.
The Bill broadly follows the lines of the 1934 Act which, though passed in such a hurry, proved quite serviceable. Clause 1 allows my right honourable friends to make orders on the application of the appropriate statutory water undertakers. The Minister concerned has to be satisfied that a shortage of water supplies exists or is threatened because of an exceptional shortage of rain. The Bill does not use the word "drought," because, in the meteorological sense, a drought occurs after a comparatively short period without rain but in the context of this Bill I use the term "drought" in the sense of a shortage of rain so prolonged as to cause or threaten a breakdown in water supplies. This could occur when the rainfall was below average for a long period, without there being a drought in the meteorological sense. Even in a wet summer there might be a shortage in areas dependent on underground supplies, if the preceding winter had been dry.
An order under Clause 1 may authorise the undertakers to take water from a source not normally used—it may be a river, lake, stream or borehole. An order may also vary restrictions or obligations resting on the undertakers as to the amount of water that may be pumped from a river or the amount of compensation water to be discharged from their reservoirs. Supplementary provisions may be included in orders for such matters as entry on land at not less than seven days' notice, and the carrying out of works. In deciding whether to make orders the Ministers must consider the interests of everyone concerned with the conservation or use of the water for agriculture, fisheries, industry, navigation or, indeed, any other purpose. Orders
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made under this clause will operate for a period of not more than six months and, by Clause 4, may be extended for a further period, but not so as to exceed one year altogether. Penalties are provided if water undertakers contravene certain provisions of an order.
The First Schedule sets out the procedure to be followed in applying for and making orders under this and the next clause. Under the Defence Regulations, no procedure was laid down for ensuring that everyone concerned was informed and given an opportunity to make representations. In practice, Ministers have insisted on notice being given, on applications being advertised, and, where there were objections, on holding an inquiry or hearing.
This procedure cannot, however, be so satisfactory as providing by legislation for a definite procedure under which everyone knows what his rights and duties are. The procedure set out in the First Schedule is similar to that for orders under the Water Acts, but allows for more rapid action. Advertisement is now once and not twice. Advertisement and notice allow seven days, instead of twenty-eight for the making of objections. A hearing may be arranged instead of a public local inquiry. Incidentally, the orders are not subject to special Parliamentary procedure.
Your Lordships may ask how the procedure fits in with the accepted recommendations of the Franks Committee. It will not, of course, be possible in an emergency procedure like this to provide all the safeguards envisaged, but I would ask your Lordships to remember that this is a Bill to give temporary powers. The orders made under it cannot permanently deprive anyone of his land or rights. The Bill does provide a definite procedure where none existed before. The Second Schedule to the Bill provides for compensation to be paid to people injuriously affected by the taking of water or by the use of land. The provisions follow the same lines as those of the 1934 Act. Under the provisions of Clause 2, my right honourable friends will be able to make orders, if necessary, authorising water undertakers to supply water by means of stand-pipes or tanks in the streets. Clause 3 revokes Defence Regulations 50A and 56. Defence Regulation 50, to which I have already referred, will

1029
be revoked by the Land Powers (Defence) Bill, which is now before another place. Existing orders could not all be replaced immediately, and they may remain until March 31, 1960, to give time for them to be replaced by orders made under the Water Act, 1945. Clauses 4, 5, and 6 are formal. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this is a useful measure. It dispenses with yet more Defence Regulations, and it fills an obvious gap in our water legislation. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Mancroft.)
3.26 p.m.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has explained, in his accustomed capable manner, that this is principally, as is indeed the case, a procedural Bill. It is part of the movement away from the Defence Regulations, as the source of enabling power, to definitive legislation by way of Acts of Parliament. I think the noble Lord can rest assured that we on this side of your Lordships' House will do nothing to impede or delay the free passage of the Bill.
The noble Lord made some general references to the question of the supply, use and distribution of water in this country, and there was, of course, the impressive and comprehensive debate on the whole subject in May of last year. That does not preclude speakers in your Lordships' House this afternoon from referring to some of the general questions in connection with water supply, especially as the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in winding up the debate in May of last year, expressed regret—which I think was generally shared—that there were not more frequent discussions and considerations of this question in your Lordships' House.
This Bill is really mis-named. It is not a Water Bill: it is a procedural Bill. It does not add, so far as I can see from the Memorandum or an examination of its clauses, to any of the powers possessed by the Minister; nor does it do anything to face up to, and still less to remedy, the serious problems in regard to the conservation of water resources, the using of our resources and their distribution. One could riot help feeling somewhat encouraged at the figures which the noble Lord gave as regards supply, especially in lie rural areas, but it is still the case
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that in some parts of the countryside there remains a lamentable lack of water supplies, affecting not only cottages and residences but, as a recent Report has shown in another connection, quite a number of rural schools.
Nor, so far as can be judged, has there been any appreciable progress since May of last year in the re-grouping of the many smaller water undertakings. There are, as your Lordships know, in excess of 1,000 water undertakings in this country. It has long been recognised that that is much too large a number and that there is an urgent case for regrouping these undertakings. Indeed, as far back as 1945, your Lordships will recall, the Coalition Government issued a White Paper, and in that White Paper it was stated that there should be a national water policy—and here I quote:
"to ensure that all available resources are used to the best advantage and to secure a proper distribution".
There is a good deal of perturbation in parts of the country at the permanent fall in the level of rivers as a result of the increasing demand, and indeed the increasing user, of water, especially by industry.
I think that one is entitled to ask the noble Lord to tell the House, when he replies, what the Minister is doing to meet the problems, the growing problems, and in many cases the urgent problems, of our water supplies. He has pretty wide powers under the Act of 1945, and, as the late Lord Waverley said in the debate in May last year, it would be interesting to know whether the Minister is effectively using those powers in a constructive manner or whether he is relying too much upon the Central Advisory Committee and upon a number of subcommittees which have been appointed either from the Central Advisory Committee or from elsewhere. In September, 1956, the Minister issued a circular to water undertakings urging them to consider questions of re-grouping. It is known—indeed, I think it was confirmed recently by the Minister himself when speaking to a conference—that very little has been done under that circular. I think the view will be generally shared that it is no good the Minister relying upon mildly hortatory injunctions to the many small water authorities. It is no good even referring to the fact, which is

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the case, that the Minister has power, in default of voluntary action, to take action himself. Even that threat, if it be a threat, has produced, so far as one can ascertain, practically no result, having regard to the number of undertakings which exist.
Moreover, the undertakers, small or large, supplying water in areas where atomic plants or plants associated with atomic energy are being established, are very perturbed, having regard to the relatively enormous quantities of water which are used and consumed by such establishments, as to the—not ultimate, but almost the proximate effect upon their position and their responsibilities and liabilities for supplying water. We were told by the noble Lord that since the war something like £240 million (I think that was the figure) has been spent on water undertakings in this country. That is a very impressive figure, but it is not so impressive when it is related to what has been spent on electricity, on gas, and on atomic energy. I should be the last to criticise the capital expenditure on either one or all of those activities, but I think we are at times inclined to overlook the important part that water plays in the carrying on of those activities and the increasing part it plays in the development of industry, leaving aside the need for the preservation, conservation and proper distribution of water for the health of the people. What we need is a new Water Act in which the problems of conservation, control and user are dealt with, and also—and this is important—in which powers to prevent avoidable waste of water are given to the appropriate Minister, with some feeling of assurance that the Minister will exercise the powers given to him.
With those general remarks I should like to pass to one particular provision in the Bill, and I suppose that in this connection I should declare an interest. No doubt as an undeserved tribute to my normal temperance, I have become a member of the Metropolitan Water Board. The Board have enjoyed for some time power to fill their reservoirs above the prescribed limit in cases of drought or near-drought. That power was conferred under Defence Regulation 56. The power itself under the order, which is entitled the Metropolitan Water
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Board (User of Reservoirs) Order, 1956, expires in July of this year. The power has been used by the Board on three occasions when dry summers made it necessary that the reservoirs should be fuller than is prescribed under the normal provisions of control.
The effect of being able, in case of need, to fill the reservoirs beyond the prescribed limit is that the amount of the reduction of the flow over Teddington Weir is reduced and that, of course, is an important consideration. The Metropolitan Water Board cannot go below the prescribed flow except with the consent of the Port of London Authority and the London County Council. If this power is not renewed, if the Metropolitan Water Board will not be able to do what they are at present able to do, fill the reservoirs beyond the prescribed limit, then it means that, in case of drought or near-drought, the flow over Teddington Weir will be pro tanto diminished.
I cannot appreciate why, if this order was justified, if the Minister of the day was prepared to agree to it, and indeed to make it, and with the knowledge that it has been usefully used during the period, it should now be the view of the Government that no such power should be granted. Having given indirect notice to the noble Lord that I intended to raise this detailed question, I would say that unless he can give me a satisfactory answer this afternoon I greatly hope that he will consult with the Minister and that he may be able to indicate on the Committee stage that the Government will be prepared to amend the provisions of the Bill so that an order of this character can be made at the instance and on the representations of the Metropolitan Water Board. With those general comments, I restate the fact that we on this side will do nothing to impede the passage of this Bill.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether he would mind clarifying a point which I may have taken up incorrectly? I think the noble Lord implied that the atomic energy power stations required an excess quantity of water. So far as atomic energy requirements of water are needed to make up their boiler water and cooler water, I would point out that the amount is no

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greater than any ordinary steam or power station requires. I should like clarification, if he can give it me, on that point.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, I must confess that I cannot claim to be more than normally informed as to the requirements of atomic energy installations. I may be wrong. If so, I am in company with a large number of people, because I think it is generally felt—it may be only an assumption—that these installations consume much larger quantities of water than an ordinary power station or a comparable installation. If I am wrong, so much the better.
3.42 p.m.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords. I rise only to say that the purpose of this Bill seems to enjoy the unusual distinction of being approved by all the local government associations—at least, it has been so far. I think it is felt reasonable that, in exceptional circumstances, the Minister should be possessed of exceptional powers, and it seems reasonable, too, that these powers should be exercised under ordinary law rather than under Defence Regulations. The protection in the proposed Schedule against the misuse of these powers is also considered reasonable.
The question of what the Bill omits to do, however, opens up a much larger subject which I am afraid I have not come prepared to discuss. I sympathise with the noble Lord in his impatience, as I understood it, that sometimes the procedure in regard to water supplies seems to go extraordinarily slowly in the case of joint schemes and new schemes. I think, however, that although it is always attractive to wish that a dictator would take the whole matter in his hands quickly and put everything right, when one reflects, one realises that these schemes often cause less friction and probably are more effectively carried through by the ordinary democratic procedure of consultation and getting general agreement, even though, as I have said, the process often seems interminable. However, so far as this Bill goes I certainly hope that it will be passed.
3.45 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I always wish that when I was quite small and had to take a powder Lord Mancroft had been there to administer it. In intro
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ducing this Bill, he tells us that we are now shaking off the Defence Regulations, when, in point of fact, instead of carrying the pack on our backs we are now actually having it grafted into our bodies. But, like my noble friend Lord Gage, I realise that in the circumstances in which we are placed some such Bill as this is essential.
Before entirely concurring, however, I should like to say now why it ought to draw our attention to the importance of the whole problem. I remember well when the Water Act was passed. I hoped for great things from that Act. Shortly afterwards I had to sit on a Committee on a Water Bill, and during the course of the Bill we were told that out of the whole of the Peak District, the most prolific water-bearing district in the country, there was only one small unpolluted source, which was the little river Manifold. All the other great rivers were polluted. The rivers of Leicestershire were so polluted that they could not be brought into use. That was the situation at that time. I think something has been done since which I will mention in a moment.
There is another side to this question. When I was a young man anyone providing a water supply for a house and a family always reckoned on twelve gallons a day per head. During the sittings of that Committee I worked out that the normal consumption of a family in a modern house was something like thirty-six gallons a head. Our need for water is growing greater and greater every day—by that, I mean the need for ordinary domestic supplies. In addition, our powers of pollution are much greater, because detergents are used by practically every family and every laundry. So not only is our supply of water very restricted, but our destruction of water is much greater.
Noble Lords opposite will remember that when their Government was in power it passed Water Act after Water Act, and I think they must now reflect rather painfully that those Acts have been largely inoperative. The reason is simple. Most cities and people who pollute water do so under the proviso in the 1876 Act. If you come to a modern city and say to those concerned, "You must cleanse your water supply. This must go forward ", they can quite properly say, "We have done nothing against the law. We

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have complied absolutely with the law and, if you are going to put this heavy capital expenditure upon us, then the Government must be prepared to give a substantial contribution." It seems to me that in order to tackle this question, the Government will need to provide a large sum of money, and, as time goes on and that expenditure is delayed, the amount will increase more and more. We must all be aware of that, and I think it is a most serious problem which ought to receive more attention than it does. At the same time, this Bill is concerned with dealing only with an emergency, and I realise that it is a Bill that we must have.
There is, however, this one point of detail on the Bill to which I should like to draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. The Bill, in the Schedule, talks about an "arbitrator". In Scotland for a long time we have preferred a much better form of English. We use the word "arbiter" and we like to stick to that; and in most Bills dealing with an arbitrator in England there is a provision that in Scotland there is to be an arbiter. I do not see that in this Bill, and I suggest that on the Committee stage we should go back to what is a better form of English—or, at any rate, of Scots.
3.52 p.m.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, when I first looked at this Bill I felt, like the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, that this was a question of casting out motes and getting beams, because we are told that we get extra freedom when we go away from Defence Regulations and saddle ourselves with a Statute in their place. But when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, introduce the Bill I changed my view, because I then saw more clearly the real purpose of the Bill and its necessity. I feel there is no doubt that this Bill fills a need; that it is wanted, and that it will be welcomed not only by local authorities but by the water industry in general.
In introducing the Bill, however, the noble Lord made one very important statement on water policy, and emphasised something which some of us, as individuals in the water industry, have long thought about—the wrongness of over-insurance in this matter. He asked why a Bill of this kind should be necessary at all, and whether, in a perfect
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world, there ought not to be sufficient supplies ready for maximum consumption in the time of minimum rainfall. The noble Lord emphasised that that would be over-insurance; but in a sense it does adumbrate a rather new thought in the water industry, because we in that industry have been accustomed always to try to provide for what is known as the three-dry-year period, which in fact is almost the driest and shortest time of supply that one can possibly get. It is perfectly true, however, that as more and more land is taken up for reservoirs and more and more water has to be taken from rivers, we must be careful not to over-insure and so waste the resources of money and nature that we have in this small country. It becomes obviously necessary, therefore, that we should have some statutory provision for dealing with the emergency and crisis which, even in the best of planning can never be absolutely avoided.
In introducing the Bill, the noble Lord made another statement which caused a little trouble to me at first, because he said that nowhere in the Bill was the word "drought" used. It is used on the front page of the Explanatory Memorandum, of course, but is not in the Bill itself. There a drought is called "an exceptional shortage of rain": which leads me to my next point—that if we are not to have these emergency powers applied, when there is a statutory drought (and lawyers already know what a "statutory drought" is) but only in times of "exceptional shortage of rain", while that is very right and proper, it means that under the Bill water undertakings will not be able to get orders for emergency measures, as they have in the past, when it is found that there is a temporary shortage of water due not to any drought, statutory or otherwise, but to the fact that the undertaking has not made sufficient provision for the rising consumption in their area. I believe that that will be a great spur towards the re-grouping that we all want to see brought about, for an authority will no longer be able to get emergency power under a Defence Regulation (I believe it was Number 56) to make an additional abstraction from a river or source, or reduce a compensation flow, merely because of their own lack of foresight. The Bill provides for exceptional shortage of rain but not for

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exceptional shortage of foresight, which I believe is a very important point.
The other point to which I should like to draw attention, because I do not think anybody else has done so in the debate so far, is the question of river boards. I am sure we shall all agree that river boards are becoming of ever greater importance, and their close co-operation with water undertakings must be ever closer as time goes on. I do not believe that river boards will really be affected by this Act. They will be in no worse position under the Minister's orders under this Act than they were under orders under the Defence Regulations; but there is just the question of the notice to be given. As I read the First Schedule in conjunction with Clause 2 of the Bill, notice will be given to a river board only where the water is being taken from a source or discharge of compensation water is involved. Those are obvious cases when a water board must have notice, but, as I read it, the very next item in the Schedule—"Orders which authorise the execution of any works "—does not provide that the Minister will be under any obligation to give the water board any notice. I wonder whether that is not a point that we shall have to consider as the Bill proceeds, because I am not sure that water boards would not be right in asking for notice to be given when emergency works are to be done on their rivers.
Another point to be considered with regard to river boards is whether they ought not to be entitled to notice not only when abstraction is to be made from their river or there is to be any alteration of a statutory flow but also when some source is being tapped under these Emergency Orders which ultimately might seriously affect, though not directly (and perhaps not obviously to the authority obtaining the order), the flow of their river. I do not think there are any other specific points that I wish to raise. I gave the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, very short notice that I should raise those two points. I have no doubt that your Lordships will see fit to give this Bill the Second Reading which I think it deserves.
4.0 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, before I begin the few words that I wish to say to your Lordships, I must declare a personal interest in the Bill, because I am
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a director of a statutory water company. Secondly, I should like to apologise to the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading for not having been here when he made his speech, but unfortunately I was detained outside. There are two reasons why I believe that all of us who are involved in water undertakings will approve of this Bill: first, because I believe it is perfectly proper that what has been done in the past under Defence Regulations—which, after all, were purely temporary affairs—should now be turned into Statute Law; and, secondly, because the powers which this Bill gives will be extremely valuable to water undertakings.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Latham, and the noble Earl, Lord Waldegrave, in that I trust this Bill will give more impetus to the re-grouping of undertakings. The point which the noble Earl, Lord Waldegrave, made, that it will be possible to get water to meet a defect of nature but not one clue to neglect by the undertaking, will do a great deal to encourage the minor undertakings to come together among themselves. My final point concerns a matter which I do not think is a real source of danger. In the past, the powers under the Defence Regulations have not been used to any wide extent, and we trust that the Minister will not allow them to be used too much in the future. With those few words I think I can recommend your Lordships to give this Bill a Second Reading.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, if I may rise again for a moment, I also should have declared an interest, in that I am a director of a statutory water authority.
4.2 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I rise to associate myself completely with the observations of my noble friend Lord Latham. The purpose of this Bill is quite clearly set out in the Explanatory Memorandum: it is
"to provide permanent legislation to enable the Minister … to give statutory water undertakers temporary powers,"
and the Bill takes the place of the temporary legislation of the Defence Regulations which exist to-day. That is the sole purpose of the Bill. In so far as that is the purpose, I approve of it. The noble and learned Viscount the Lord

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Chancellor will, I am sure, agree, because for several yeas now I have had the opportunity of drawing his attention to the fact that these Emergency Regulations, which the present Government had committed themselves to get rid of, still exist in substantial numbers. I welcome every effort to reduce that number. I find, as I always thought, that it is not such an easy undertaking as it seemed to be in 1951, before the present Government came into office. Even when this Bill is passed, there will still be a number of Regulations left, and I imagine that I shall not be entirely deprived of the opportunity of making the speech I normally make when these Regulations are extended for another year.
However, this Bill gives us the opportunity of discussing the general water situation of this country. As we are discussing Emergency Regulations, I would say that a water emergency is with us always. I do not remember a single summer when there has not been in some part of the country a water emergency. It seems to me very bad organisation of our resources that not only should we accept and recognise a permanent shortage of water somewhere in the country every year but should be actually legislating for it and asking for temporary measures to provide for something which we know is permanent. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, pointed out, as did other noble Lords, the position is not likely to improve.
There is—and I am very glad to note it—an increasing demand for water. That arises partly, of course, as a result of an increasing demand by industry. But there is also an increasing domestic demand for water, first because of better housing, and also because of the provision of bathrooms for nearly every family. I understand from my noble friend that 90 per cent. of our population now have a water supply in their own homes; and that proportion is going to increase. Then the habit of doing the washing at home is increasing. Laundry bills are higher than they were, so that fewer people send their washing to the laundry and more do it at home. The result of that, naturally, is an increasing demand for water. There is also the fact of an increasing population; every year 250,000 more people use water.
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Furthermore, with this increasing demand there is a tendency for a decrease in supply as a result of pollution, the use of detergents and the increasing losses caused by industry. Next (this is something that has not been mentioned in to-day's debate). I believe there is an increasing waste of water. In these days, when people can turn on the tap and get as much water as they like, if one watches the position in most homes one sees that the amount of water wasted is appalling. Various remedies have been suggested, such as the possibility of the use of meters and making people pay according to their consumption. I am sure that there would be a considerable saving in the consumption of water if people had to pay according to the amount of water they consumed. I am not seriously putting that suggestion forward at this stage, because one would have to give much more consideration to its implications, and it would be a new feature in our domestic life if we had to pay for water directly in accordance with consumption. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a considerable waste.
Finally, there is a waste due to the multiplicity of authorities dealing with water. My noble friend Lord Latham pointed out that there were over 1.000 water authorities. That seems to me a shocking multiplicity of organisation. This country does not need over 1,000 water authorities to supply us with the water we require. I understand that three-quarters of them are public authorities, yet we have not hesitated to reduce the functions of public authorities where it has been thought to be necessary in the interests of efficiency; and I should have thought this was a case in which there ought to be considerable grouping of water authorities. Indeed, in my own view, and I believe in the view of my Party, there ought to be nationalisation of water supply in order to get the greatest amount of efficiency.
I raise these matters, which are not entirely relevant to the Bill, because, while we are not in any way opposing or wishing to delay this Bill, I should not like it to be thought that it really deals with the question of water supplies in this country. It does just what it purports to do in the first paragraph of the Explanatory Memorandum; it converts emergency, temporary Regulations into

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permanent ones; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, said in his picturesque language, instead of being tied up temporarily we are being tied up permanently. That is not exactly my idea of giving greater freedom to the people, but it is an illustration of the fact that some of the Regulations, at any rate, really were necessary. As noble Lords are discovering more and more, it has not been possible to repeal these Regulations. All that is being done in an increasing number of cases is to make them permanent. Nevertheless, I hope now that this Bill will be approved without further delay.
4.10 p.m.
LORD CLITHEROE: My Lords, I will not follow the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on the general question of water supply, on which I should much like to address your Lordships on some other occasion, but I would say a word about this short Bill. When I first read it I had the opinion, like other noble Lords, that it was to end some statutory regulations, but I soon observed that it was merely making them permanent, so naturally I became somewhat anxious. I recognise that there is need for a Bill of this sort, but I want to make two points about it. First of all I think that as a result of this Bill there may be a tendency to encourage improvidence. That should be carefully watched, because some authorities who are poorer or worse placed than others may well decide to rely upon the terms of the Bill in times of shortage rather than make the provision which they really ought to make for supplies in their own areas. I hope that this Bill will not be used in any way to encourage such improvidence.
The second point I want to make is about non-statutory undertakings. The Bill talks only about statutory undertakings, but, as noble Lords will be well aware, a great many people in this country are supplied with water from non-statutory undertakings. I observe, from Clause 1 (b), that the Minister has authority
"for suspending or modifying, … any restriction or obligation to which the undertakers are subject as respects—
(i) the taking of water from any source",
from the point of view of non-statutory suppliers. What that means is that some neighbouring authority has the right
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under this Bill to ask the Minister to take water from a non-statutory undertaker, but a non-statutory undertaker has no right under this Bill to ask for aid from a statutory undertaker. I wonder whether perhaps my noble friend Lord Mancroft, either in his reply or probably at some later time, would give a little attention to that point.
4.14 p.m.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, as a consumer, thought that more capital should have been spent on water, and naturally we should all agree with him, whereas my noble friend Lord Waldegrave spoke of the dangers of over-insurance, and as a producer who has had to obtain the capital he strikes the more cautious note. The only answer is that we have been desperately short of capital, and if we had put it into water it would have meant taking it from some other pressing need. In as much as we are still short of capital, I believe that this is a good Bill, because it would enable the capital to be stretched in an emergency.
But why I rose to speak was to ask my noble friend Lord Mancroft a question about the seven-days' notice. In Clause 1, it is provided that seven days' notice has to be given to enter upon any land to take water or conduct works. In his speech on the Bill my noble friend mentioned an inquiry. I have not managed to find anything in the Bill about an inquiry, but if there is to be seven days' notice plus an inquiry, some fair time must elapse before action can take place. Of course, water undertakings must be expected to use foresight, but there are undertakings which are dependent on recent rainfall and recent flush of rivers.
Not very long ago my noble friend Lord Mancroft and I were jointly concerned in an emergency, when the water supply of a popular holiday district in North Cornwall ran practically right out. That was put right largely owing to the efforts of my noble friend, who was able to secure all manner of emergency measures and the co-operation of a neighbouring water authority which had sufficient water.
Through my noble friend's efforts, this authority was able to lay down temporary mains, down roads and across fields, and to pump a supply into the

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system of the deficient authority. I wonder how that emergency could have been tackled if seven days' notice plus an inquiry had had to be given before anything could be done. Furthermore, could this situation have been solved at all if there had been no co-operation between these two undertakings? If there really is a delay of this nature, as seems apparent from the Bill, then one can only surmise that authorities may look at making orders in advance against an emergency and probably not at the time, which is not a desirable thing. Perhaps my noble friend can set my mind at rest by saying that there is some other procedure whereby, in the event of a real emergency such as we jointly experienced, timely action can be taken.
LORD KINNAIRD: My Lords, I should like to say how much I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Clitheroe, has said, because it is the case in Scotland that large areas of land are provided with water either by private people or by private undertakings, certainly not by any statutory undertaking. I have not had time to study the Bill carefully, but I hope the noble Lord will bring the point up at a later stage.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I am grateful to your Lordships for the friendly welcome you have given to this little Bill. I had no idea that so many Members of your Lordships' House were interested in water. A number of points have been raised, but I think we can deal with most of them, or look into them carefully, before Committee stage. Several points have been raised which we cannot possibly deal with on Committee stage because they have nothing whatever to do with the Bill; nevertheless I welcome them as interesting and a guide to my right honourable friend on the way in which your Lordships are thinking.
The principal point raised was that of re-grouping. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, rightly points out that there are nearly 1,000 undertakings in this country, and wrongly points out that the best way to make them most efficient is by nationalisation. I disagree with him, politely but very cordially. We are trying to make them more efficient within the bounds of existing legislation. I should like to tell your Lordships that there have been twelve more amalgamations
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since we last debated the matter and other discussions are going on. My right honourable friend is not dissatisfied with the progress which is being made.
I would adopt the idea of my noble friend Lord Gage, who did not favour dictatorship, and I think it is important that there should be time for negotiation. Many more proposals are expected to come before my right honourable friend within the next few months. So far, five compulsory orders have been announced and more are under way. In many cases officers of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have joined in local discussions. In point of fact, nearly 700 undertakings are actively considering at the moment the question of amalgamation and re-grouping. The curious thing—and I think I made this observation in the course of the last debate—is that brewery undertakings seem to amalgamate much more readily and speedily than water undertakings.
My noble friend Lord Saltoun drew attention to the use of the word "arbiter", which he prefers; and asks that it should be included in the Bill. I am glad to say that we have forestalled him. If he will look at paragraph 4 of the Second Schedule, he will find that it reads as follows:
In the application of this Schedule to Scotland, for any reference to an arbitrator there shaft be substituted a reference to an arbiter."
LORD SALTOUN: I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I am so blind that I had not seen that.
LORD MANCROFT: Perhaps the noble Lord, as a sort of penance for his oversight, would like to try to find for us a better word than "undertaker" to describe the person who provides the water.
My noble friend Lord Waldegrave asked a question about river boards. Seven days' notice does apply to the river boards. There is always the question here of balancing the two interests, speed against fair play. I think the noble Earl will find—as I am sure that he, with his technical experience, will agree—that water undertakers are usually in pretty close touch with their local river board and will no doubt have consulted them before deciding to apply for an order. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, who told me that he was unable to remain in his

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place, asked me about the Metropolitan Water Board's Use of Reservoirs Order of 1956. I think this is a matter that will have to be gone into carefully before the Committee stage, because this order, which I understand expires on July 31 of this year, cannot be extended under the Bill. We shall have to see if we can help the noble Lord in any way. So far as I can see at the moment, without taking advice, the only way open to the Board to get an extension of the powers which they now have would be to promote a Private Bill.
I was also asked about the amount of water used by the Atomic Energy Authorities. There is here a slight difference of opinion between the noble Lord, Lord Latham, and my noble friend Lord Stonehaven. I understand that huge quantities are in fact used for cooling, but it is mostly seawater or brackish water from estuaries: comparatively little drinkable water is used. My noble friends Lord Clitheroe, Lord Waldegrave and Lord Hawke all hoped that this Bill would not encourage improvidence.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: If the noble Lord is departing from atomic power stations, I should like to make this point. It is a fact that atomic power stations vary in their water needs according to climatic conditions. In the case of the Blackwater Station, where there is a surrounding rainfall of not more than eighteen inches, the Essex County Council had to try to arrange for supplies from other sources. This aspect of the matter must be considered, because of the varying climatic conditions and the much lower level of main water resources in some parts of the country compared with others.
LORD MANCROFT: I take the noble Viscount's point, but I think it raises a much bigger problem than the small one raised by the Bill. However, that does not minimise its importance.
LORD REA: I am not certain of my facts, but I think the noble Lord will
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find that in the case of Calder Hall and Sellafield the large amounts of water used are all fresh water.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: Perhaps when I spoke I did not make myself clear. What I meant to say was that the atomic power stations, in my opinion—and I ask to be put right on this—use no more water than the equivalent-sized station working on conventional fuel.
LORD MANCROFT: Obviously the question of supplying water on a longterm basis to major installations, such as atomic power stations, raises a bigger point than is raised in this modest Bill, which is now beginning to look much more important than it was when I introduced it.
I should like to emphasise and endorse the point made by three or four noble Lords concerning improvidence and incompetence. This Bill is not in any way an encouragement to incompetent authorities. Most competent authorities, I think, can realise that a crisis is corning upon them, and that a serious water situation is likely to develop, well before the seven days' period, and I think a matter of compromise there is easily brought about. My noble friend Lord Hawke recalled the occasion in Cornwall, nearly two years ago, when he and I were almost compelled to brush our teeth in light ale for a fortnight. That crisis had been foreseen for several weeks ahead, but it was far too serious for the authorities to cope with. Other small points have been raised, but in view of the fact that we have other Business before us, I will ask your Lordships' permission to examine them carefully and, if necessary, deal with them on the Committee stage. I am grateful to your Lordships for giving this Bill a friendly welcome, and I am only sorry that it does not go as far as some of your Lordships seem to think it should.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

COMMONWEALTH INSTITUTE BILL
4.26 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE:My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. As the Bill deals with one of the principal agencies in the United Kingdom for the promotion of Commonwealth inter-relations, I think your Lordships will agree that it is a matter of the highest importance. Noble Lords will no doubt have read the Explanatory Memorandum in the Bill, in which its purpose is described as being
"to provide for the vesting in the Trustees of the Imperial Institute of a new site for the Institute, and for the erection by them of a new building."
The Imperial Institute Act of 1925, which is the legislation under which the Imperial Institute is administered, ties the Institute to the buildings in South Kensington which at present it occupies, and it cannot be moved elsewhere without amending legislation.
The need to move the Institute is the result of the decision of Her Majesty's Government to expand the Imperial College of Science and Technology on the South Kensington site, and thereby to enable an increase in its student numbers from 1,650 to about 3,000. That decision was announced in another place on January 29, 1953. A careful examination of the urgent need for the expansion of the College convinced the Government that the best solution was to concentrate on the existing site between Prince Consort Road and the Imperial Institute Road. It was, in fact, as my noble friend Lord Selkirk told your Lordships on March 13 of last year, the best site upon which to expand the College, as the City and Guilds Engineering College, the Royal School of Mines and the Royal College of Science are already there.
At the same time, Her Majesty's Government considered with equal care the requirements of the Imperial Institute, bearing in mind the important rôle that it plays in the life of the Commonwealth. I would remind your Lordships that the Institute occupies only a small part of the Collcutt building, the main part of which is used by the London University. This dual occupation dates from the end of the last century, when the Institute was
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in financial difficulties and was rescued by the Government, which in 1899 took over the lease and discharged a substantial mortgage and floating debt handing over to the London University those parts of the building which have been occupied by the University ever since. From the point of view of the Institute, and therefore from the point of view of the Commonwealth as a whole, a new building specially designed for its purpose will be of great advantage. As was pointed out in the Tweedsmuir Committee Report of 1952:
"The present accommodation which dates from 1887 is not well suited to the present activities of the Institute."
On January 25, 1956, my noble friend the present Leader of your Lordships' House said this [OFFICIAL. REPORT, Vol. 195, col. 521]:
"In view of the urgent need to increase the country's output of scientists and technologists, the Government have decided, notwithstanding the difficulties which are involved to adhere to the scale of development for the Imperial College which they originally announced. In order that this decision may be put into effect, new premises for the Imperial Institute will be provided elsewhere."
Whether or not the Collcutt building should be retained is not directly relevant to this Bill, and though I personally do not share in the regrets of those who lament the physical disappearance of this building, I rejoice that it has been found technically possible to keep the tower, and that it has been decided that the planning of the rectangular site in South Kensington should proceed on the assumption that the Queen's Tower is to be retained. I use the words "physical disappearance" as it seems to me that it is the spirit of Commonwealth unity and co-operation which it is so much more important to retain and to fortify. It is that spirit which created the Imperial Institute, and it is that spirit which will create and fortify the new Commonwealth Institute of 1961.
Here I hope your Lordships will allow me a momentary digression from the plain practical facts of this Bill. Collcutt's tower has recently, in our discussions and elsewhere, been considered as "a free standing campanile." I hope that, if and when this tower does stand alone, it will not be referred to as "Collcutt's Campanile": it is the Queen's Tower, erected in honour of Her Majesty Queen Victoria; and it carries within its bell

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chamber ten bells which were the personal gift to the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, the first President of the Institute, a gift from an Australian lady, Mrs. Elizabeth Millar, of Melbourne.
The chimes of these bells, known as the Alexandra Peal, may be heard on certain special occasions. Let us hope that these chimes may long continue to be heard, and that, when they ring, men, women and children passing by may pause to think and pledge themselves anew to the great concept of Commonwealth partnership. Let them never forget that the funds which built the Imperial Institute were subscribed by millions of people from all over the Empire. No less than £413,000 was subscribed. In addition, special donations were subsequently made for specific purposes, notably a gift of two lakhs of rupees from Sir Cowasjee Jehangir, which raised the total sum to about £440,000. Of this sum, in accordance with the terms of the Charter, £140,000 was set aside for endowment, the remainder being spent on the building and the construction of the Imperial Institute Road. The total sum ultimately spent on the building and equipment amounted to £354.000.
The purpose of the Institute was to promote the commercial, industrial and educational interests of the British Empire. No one possessing any sense of history—and I deliberately leave aside the controversial æsthetic sense—can accept lightly the demolition of the old Imperial Institute. I personally am very proud of what it stood for, but we have to move with the requirements of the times, and its disappearance will enable us to train nearly double as many student scientists and technologists, whom we so badly need; and it will also enable us to house the new Commonwealth Institute in a building specially designed for its purpose, in modern conditions.
Meanwhile, subsequent to the Government's decision, announced on January 29, 1953, to expand the Imperial College of Science and Technology, considerable progress has been made in that direction. The student numbers have already grown from 1,650 to 2,453, and the College itself estimates that it will be able to accommodate up to 3,300 students in the buildings as planned. The Aeronautical and Chemical Engineering building is complete in the north-west corner. On
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the north side a big new storey has been added to the Royal School of Mines. A start has been made on the major project of an engineering block, costing some £1,300,000, on the eastern side. The planning of the remainder of the site, and of a contiguous site in Princes Gardens, where student and staff accommodation is to be built, is proceeding rapidly. As your Lordships are aware, a suitable site for the new building of the Commonwealth Institute has been found and secured. The site is in Holland Park, where Her Majesty's Government have leased from the owners, the Ilchester Estate, approximately 3¼ acres for which a capital payment of £215,000 has been made; and there will be an annual rent of £10. The lease is for 999 years. The Governors were strongly in favour of this site, and their recommendation was endorsed by the Trustees. I may perhaps add that the Director of the Institute is enthusiastic about the prospects, and I think he has no regrets over leaving the old Imperial Institute.
The Government had to consider what size the new building should be. They decided that it would be fair and just to provide a building which, in terms of space, would be equivalent to the accommodation now used by the Institute—that is, 102,000 square feet, for exhibitions, cinema, offices, workshops, and so on, with a margin for corridors, staircases, et cetera bringing the total to a gross figure of 125,000 square feet. In terms of utility, there is no doubt that the Institute will be much better off in a new building specially designed on a spacious site of its own than where it is at present.
It has been suggested that this Bill should provide for the possibility of enlarging the building at some later date. The main reason why this is not practicable is that the Bill is, in effect, asking Parliament to authorise expenditure, and the extent of the expenditure must be defined. There is expenditure on the site, expenditure on the building, and also, of course, the annual expenditure on the maintenance of the building for almost an indefinite period. It follows, therefore, that if at some future date any major addition to the building were agreed to be desirable this would require amending legislation. It does not mean, however, that legislation would be

1051
necessary to cover minor items of internal reconstruction. Nor does it mean that the plans of the new building cannot be drawn in such a way as to make it possible to enlarge the building if and when a development of this kind proves to be practicable.
The responsibility for the appointment of an architect rests with the Trustees of the Institute, since the present Bill gives the Trustees the function of erecting the new building. The Trustees have also consulted the Governors of the Institute, and at a meeting held on July 17, 1957, under their new Chairman, my noble friend Lord Dundee, the Governors decided to recommend that the choice should fall upon Professor Matthew and Mr. Johnson-Marshall. The Trustees decided to accept this recommendation, and they invited the architects to undertake the project. This selection does, of course, anticipate the passage of this Bill. It has been done simply to enable progress on the new buildings to be made without delay. The formal appointment of Messrs. Robert Matthew and Johnson-Marshall, will be made when the present legislation gives the Trustees power to do so.
The cost allowed for the building has been fixed at a figure which we think should allow for imaginative planning and a finish of good quality, but which will none the less offer, as any new project should, a challenge to economy in design and construction. Your Lordships may wonder why the design for the new Commonwealth Institute building was not made the subject of a Commonwealth competition. The reasons are twofold: first, such procedure would inevitably have involved considerable delay and further expenditure; and, secondly, the winning design might have imposed upon the building certain forms which might not have suited the practical requirements of the Institute. The Director, who is, after all, the man most fitted to judge the practical requirements of the Institute under his direction, will work in close co-operation with the architects.
Your Lordships will, I think, wish to consider the valuable work which is carried out by the Institute. It might perhaps be of somewhat wider scope than some of your Lordships are aware.
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I hope that my noble friend Lord Dundee will have something more detailed to say about this matter in the course of his remarks shortly. Perhaps I may make a few observations. It is estimated that approximately 1½ million people are reached each year through the activities of the Institute. During 1957, approximately 1,500 parties visited the Institute, totalling about 42.600 teachers and children. In the exhibition galleries of the Institute the total annual attendance is in the neighbourhood of half a million.
Many special exhibitions, mainly of Commonwealth art, have been held in the Institute. There are three performances of Commonwealth documentary films every day. Maps, leaflets, study kits, and film strips are provided for the use both of the public and schools. A number of travelling exhibitions circulate throughout the United Kingdom, and there is a lecture service at schools. Lectures are provided on payment, but the charges are kept as low as possible by means of special grants from the Colonial Office and from some of the Governments of the overseas countries of the Commonwealth. Many members of the Overseas Civil Service give valuable held by lecturing for the Institute when they come home on leave. One of the most important activities of the Institute, which was started in 1952, is the organisation of conferences on Commonwealth subjects for sixth-form pupils in grammar schools and for teacher-training colleges. There were thirty-six such conferences in various provincial centres last year, including seven which took place in Scotland. There is also the Commonwealth Students' Club, the aim of which is to increase understanding and friendship between students from all parts of the Commonwealth, including, of course, the United Kingdom, by promoting companionship in leisure and shared activities. Though its membership is relatively small, this club is doing most valuable work.
My Lords, I will now turn to some of the clauses of the Bill which may require a little elucidation. Broadly speaking, and with the exception of the change in the title, some minor changes in the Trustees and the new Clause 5, the Bill does not alter the present statutory pattern of the administration of the Institute. This pattern is a little complicated, as

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there are three parties involved. The first is, a body of Trustees—not Governors, Trustees—some Ministers, some not, in whom is vested the building used by the Institute. Normally, the Trustees have no duties except to safeguard the premises and the endowment fund to which I referred earlier. The present Bill gives them the function of erecting the new building, as I have already said earlier in my speech. They have no part in the management or the activities of the Institute. Secondly, there is a responsible Minister (the Minister of Education) who carries the ultimate responsibility for the management of the Institute, and provides with Parliament's approval, such monies as are necessary to supplement the Institute's other sources of revenue, such as the endowment fund income, contributions from other Commonwealth Governments, and so on. The third group is a body of Governors, some appointed by the Minister, some by the self-governing Commonwealth countries, and some co-opted, to whom the responsibilities of management are mainly entrusted by the Minister. The Institute also has a full-time Director appointed by the Minister. The rest of the staff are appointed by the Director on behalf of the Governors.
The constitutional changes proposed by the Bill are, first, in the composition of the Trustees, where the Secretaries of State for Commonwealth Relations and Colonies are to replace the Prime Minister, the Lord President of the Council and the President of the Board of Trade; and, secondly, in the method of the appointment of the private Trustees, whereby it is proposed that the present requirements for prior consultation with the Governor of the Bank of England and the President of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce should be dropped. The reason for this latter change is due to the alteration in the functions of the Institute which took place in 1949, when it was given its present predominantly educational rôle.
The Bill does not in any way alter the purposes of the Institute which are defined in the Order in Council of 1949. The Bill does not alter the composition or method of appointment of the governing body, but it does bring up to date the list of self-governing countries of the Commonwealth who have to be consulted before any change in this regard is
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made by Order in Council. After the Bill becomes law it will be possible to consider making an Order in Council under the procedure of Section 8 of the 1925 Act to give any new member Government acceding to the Commonwealth the right to appoint members of the governing body.
Clause 4 enables the Minister to require the Trustees to surrender parts of the present building pending the completion of the new building. It will be necessary to invoke this power at a very early stage after the Bill becomes law, since the planning of the Imperial College will require the demolition at an early stage of much of the accommodation now occupied by the Institute east of the Great Hall. Plans have, in fact, been worked out to cope with this situation. A new area of some 13,000 square feet is being provided for the Institute under the Great Hall and will be ready within the next week or so. The Director of the Institute is satisfied that after the initial disturbance the new exhibition facilities will be at least no more inconvenient than those available in the past. The Institute will, however, have to be closed to visitors during March and April of this year—I repeat, closed to visitors; the work of the Institute will, of course, go on.
I should like to add here that it is clear to me, from a conversation that I have had with the Director, that the most cordial and co-operative relationship exists between the Institute and the authorities of the College. We hope that after this initial disturbance it will be some time before any further encroachment on the Institute's accommodation will be necessary. Clearly, no precise guarantee can be given, especially as no more than an approximate estimate can yet be given of the time which the new building for the Institute is likely to take to plan and complete. But I know that my right honourable friend the Minister of Education has already repeated his predecessor's assurance that every effort will be made to ensure as much continuity as possible for the activities of the Institute during the transitional stage.
Clause 5 enables the Minister of Education to lend objects in the Institute for exhibition elsewhere, and to dispose of useless objects. There are precedents in other Acts—for example, the

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Imperial War Museum Act of 1920. Commonwealth Governments will have the special privilege of taking over any exhibit if it can more appropriately be housed by them. Clause 6 deals with the cost of putting up the new building. The cost of the new building will be met by the Exchequer. The cost of maintaining the Institute will, as now, also be met by the Exchequer, except so far as it is met from other sources. These are the income from the endowment fund, contributions from Commonwealth Governments and sums received in the course of running the Institute—for example, from lecture fees. At present the expenditure of the Institute is about £94,000 a year, to which Commonwealth, including Colonial, Governments contribute about £12,000. The endowment fund is held by the Trustees under the 1925 Act, and produces an income of a little less than £5,000 a year. The contribution from the Exchequer for the current year is £40,000; but, in addition, the Trustees occupy their building free, valued at £33,500 a year, and obtain certain free services from the Ministry of Works valued at £17,500 a year.
I hope that I have not wearied your Lordships too much by going into this Bill, which to me is a most important one—and I hope that your Lordships share my views—in such detail. It is one of the earnests of our belief in the value of Commonwealth co-operation and in educative work to do with Commonwealth history. I hope that your Lordships will give it a good welcome, and that our friends in the Commonwealth all over the world will know that we here, in London, really care about our great Commonwealth partnership. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Marquess of Lansdowne.)
4.55 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, certainly I would agree with the noble Marquess who has moved the Second Reading of this Bill that it is a most important one, and also that the subject with which it is concerned is of vital significance to this country. To-day we are considering the end of one story and the beginning of another—the end of the story which commenced with contributions from
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civilians and soldiers throughout the Empire towards the building of the Imperial Institute to celebrate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. I believe that the private soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers of Her Majesty's Forces contributed voluntarily a day's pay, or something of that kind, at the time. Certainly, the foundation stone was laid by Queen Victoria in the presence of a distinguished and large congregation upon an occasion a good deal hotter than it is to-day.
Throughout the years the Institute has performed an important task, although to my mind it has never been as well known as it should have been. It has formed part of the great mass of buildings in South Kensington which the late Viscount. Lord Haldane, described as the "English Charlottenburg." That is the end of that story, as the building, by the decree of the Government, is being pulled down. Perhaps it is significant that this memorial to the late Queen is now pulled down to provide scientists in the middle of the twentieth century with the training to make, among other things, bigger and better bombs. However that may be, the Government has taken this decision. I regret it. I do not think it is necessary to pull down this building. I think that the University of London in general, and the Science College in particular, would be able to use a building of this description; and well it would serve them. However, we are not particularly concerned with that issue to-day and I do not want to enlarge upon it. The Government know my view and that of many noble Lords in this House, because we have had more than one debate upon it, and I shall not enlarge upon it.
The question now is simply one of the future of the Commonwealth Institute, and this is the beginning of the new story—that is to say, the move of the Institute to its new quarters in Holland Park Road, or what was at one time part of the grounds of the old Holland House. Perhaps it is not right to describe it as Holland Park Road; it is probably part of Kensington. I do not quite know what the exact description of it will be, but at all events it is part of the old Holland House, and as we have not had a plan attached to the Bill it is difficult to say what road it will front.

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My Lords, the situation is that there is both a plus and a minus in connection with this move. There is a plus because undoubtedly the Institute will obtain a better building—there is no doubt about that. At present they are housed largely, not in the old Institute building itself, but in a number of buildings of lesser importance around it—chalets and corridors and such places as that; they are temporary buildings. So they will get a much better building and they will be able to display their various goods and their panorama and the like in a much more congenial atmosphere. That is the plus.
On the minus side there is the fact—I think it is an undoubted fact—that it will not be so convenient to get at. Once you get away from what you may call the "Charlottenburg"—that is, the number of buildings in the South Kensington area—you are getting away from the transport facilities that exist there. I believe it has been found that the moving of the London Museum to Kensington Palace has not been a great success, and certainly moving the Imperial War Museum to the southern part of the city, to Lambeth, has not been a success because people cannot find their way to it. So to that extent I think there will be a loss. I shall say a little more about that in a moment.
However, as they have had to move from that particular area of South Kensington, I think possibly this is one of the best sites to which they could have gone. It is certainly far better than the original site proposed, which was a bombed site, I believe, somewhere in the southern part of the city, on the other side of the river. That, I am certain, would have been fatal. Before I go on to my next point, I would say, as this is the first opportunity we have had of doing so, that I am sure that noble Lords would wish to express their regret at the loss of the noble Viscount. Lord Hudson, who did so much for the Imperial Institute and was so interested in this work; and to welcome the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who is to take his place. We wish him and the Committee every possible success on the new site.
As to the name, I believe we should all agree that in this day and age it is desirable to change it from "Imperial Institute" to "Commonwealth Institute."
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I think it is particularly appropriate since they are going to the grounds of Holland House, which was for so long the home of Whiggery and the important centre of wit, for I am sure that the shades of Lord and Lady Holland, Charles James Fox, Lord Melbourne, and Thomas Babington Macaulay would not want the home of Whiggery to be sullied by the name "Imperial".
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, the Commonwealth Institute is not to be made up of Whigs, I hope.
LORD OGMORE: No doubt there will be a few Tories in it. As to the membership of the Committee, your Lordships will remember that in August of last year the noble Earl. Lord Perth, and I had a difference of opinion on the question of the appointment of Trustees and Governors. It was not that I in any way objected to the noble Lords and gentlemen who were appointed—far from it—but I felt that the appointments did not in themselves sufficiently widen the scope and that there should have been other appointments, in addition to those noble Lords and gentlemen, which would have expanded the range of experience and understanding contributed to the Trustees and the Committee. It was a curious fact that all the appointments were either of noble Lords from the Benches opposite or distinguished former civil servants. Much as we all esteem noble Lords opposite and civil servants, we do not regard those two categories of the population as being the sole repository of wisdom and experience; and there might have been something to be said for having others who could contribute experience of a kind different from theirs. Perhaps that matter can be looked into now, for I hope it is not yet too late to do so.
There is just one other point that I have to make on the actual detail of the Bill, and as we may not have a Committee stage I had better mention it now. It was rather surprising to me to find in Clause 3 of the Bill that the Ministry of Works should have obtained from the noble Earl, Lord Ilchester, a lease. I have always understood that it was the practice of Her Majesty's Government wherever possible to obtain freehold title, and perhaps when he comes to reply the noble Marquess will inform the House as

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to the circumstances which induced Her Majesty's Government to depart from their usual practice and to obtain a lease for these valuable premises, instead of a freehold.
Another question I should like to ask is: what is the cost to be? Though I may have missed it, I do not recall that the noble Marquess stated the figure. I have in mind that £750,000 has been quoted for the building, but perhaps he can confirm that when he comes to reply. I am sure that the first thing Her Majesty's Government and the Trustees and Governors must do is to ensure that there is as little dislocation as possible in the changeover. There is bound to be some, of course, and to that extent there will be a loss, if one building is to be pulled down before the other is erected, there must be weeks or months of delay, and perhaps the noble Marquess can say how long that delay is likely to be. At any rate, it must be cut down to the minimum possible, because this is a living Institute and any loss is bad. Much loss of time will possibly be a very serious matter, because children come to these institutions at certain periods of their scholastic life and we might have a whole range of children from various schools who will never go there at all, which would be a great pity. Then, people coming from the country or from Scotland or Wales may visit the Institute if it is there but will not be able to do so if it is not.
To my mind, another very important matter is transport: in fact it is vital. If we cannot get a place outside the actual museum area where transport is laid on, then we must ensure that there is an easy and rapid form of transport, either bus or underground. I have had a look at the Underground map, and though without seeing the plan I could not, of course, see what stations would be near, it looked as though Holland Park would be the nearest, with Kensington High Street, and perhaps Earls Court. None of them is very near. At present there is a covered way from South Kensington Station almost to the doors of the Institute, or at least to within a couple of hundred yards of it; so we are surrendering quite a good means of access for one which may be not nearly so good.
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Then, it is important to have a good parking place for charabancs and cars. Many children and others now come in buses which at the moment are parked in the excellent facilities provided in Imperial Institute Road; so that matter will have to be considered. I can assure your Lordships that nowhere on the main road around Kensington is likely to be at all convenient for the parking of buses or cars, and that is very important for the purposes of those coming to the Institute.
I wish to pay a tribute to Mr. Bradley and his staff, who are doing an excellent job of work. We must encourage them to develop the facilities of the Institute to the greatest possible extent, as I hope they will now be able to do, and to have the displays properly mounted; to have, wherever possible, moving panorama, because nothing catches the eye of a child like a moving panorama, as we found in the Colonial Exhibition in 1948: and also to expand the other activities set out in the Annual Report for 1956, a copy of which Mr. Bradley was good enough to send me. They are very extensive and most of them have been referred to by the noble Marquess to-day. Although the noble Marquess did not say so specifically, I take it that those activities will be maintained, if not increased, in the new building; that the cinema will continue to show Commonwealth and other films; and that the Commonwealth Students' Group will be maintained there. I occasionally go along and speak to students in the Commonwealth Students' Group and also take part in some of their functions. It is an excellent organisation which I hope will be expanded in the new premises.
It is very desirable that the plans, when they are completed, should enable substantial additions to be made, if necessary. We do not want to find in a few years' time a Government spokesman saying, "I am very sorry, but the plans were made in 1958 and this is the only building which can be built on this site. We cannot put up any additions without vast expenditure, and you should have thought of that at the time." Well, we are thinking of that at the time, and we ask the Government to ensure that substantial additions can be made if necessary.

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Among other features of the Institution is the Travelling Exhibition. We have heard that it has travelled to Scotland—I think the noble Marquess said on six occasions—
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Seven.
LORD OGMORE:—but not to Wales on any occasion, although I think I saw it there some years ago.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: It has done so.
LORD OGMORE: May I suggest that this year is a particularly good one for the Travelling Exhibition to visit Wales, because this year, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, the Festival of Wales is being held and the whole of Wales is en fête, as it were. Welshmen have contributed a great deal to the Commonwealth in the course of history, and Welsh people would, I am sure, appreciate the opportunity of seeing the work of the Commonwealth Institute. I would ask the Minister and also the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, to consider whether that is not possible. I am a Vice-President of the Festival and I am sure the Festival authorities would be pleased to welcome such an exhibition, and I would ask them to consider whether it is not possible for them to do so. The Festival does not open until July so there is a little time before the opening date. I think that the Games open in July and the Festival in June; nevertheless, there is enough time.
There is only one other matter to which I should like to refer, and that is a matter which concerned me considerably when I read about it in the newspaper this morning. The following is from a report contained in the Daily Telegraph of to-day's date. The heading is: "Commonwealth 'Fed Up'. Lack of Publicity ", and the report says:
"The Australian High Commissioner, Sir Eric Harrison, said in London yesterday that Commonwealth countries were completely fed up' with the lack of publicity given to the Commonwealth in Britain. He was speaking at a lunch of the Institute of Public Relations.
"He said: 'The only things that seem to appear are reports of hush fires, floods, cricket and cricket again, and maybe the Wallabies, sometimes when they play a little too rough.
"'It's something that must be remedied. Sometimes I am completely amazed at the crass ignorance shown by big business executives as to what Australia is doing,
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"'Please do not take the Commonwealth ties for granted. The time may come when divergence of opinion might well break the Commonwealth asunder unless hard thought has been put into it'."
We all know Sir Eric Harrison as a great friend of Britain and a great believer in the Commonwealth, and he is, of course, the High Commissioner for Australia in this country. I am perfectly certain he would not make a statement of that kind unless he had a serious reason for doing so and considerable evidence. I must say I think this is a very serious statement for a High Commissioner to make, and it is one we should regard with the utmost care. I entirely agree with Sir Eric Harrison. I have long held this view. It is no good spending money on publicising Spain or Czechoslovakia and other foreign countries (although in itself it is a perfectly good thing to do) if our own brothers in the Commonwealth are neglected, because when the time comes they are the people who are going to stand by us as they have done so often in the past.
One of the means of combating the ignorance in this country is the Commonwealth Institute. It has been sorely handicapped in the past by unsatisfactory accommodation. It has been sorely handicapped by lack of funds and by lack of general interest. I think the debates in this House in the last few years—and we have had several—have stimulated interest in the Commonwealth Institute, as can be seen from the figures of the people who have been attending or visiting it. I would ask the Government and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and his Governors, to do everything in their power to make the Commonwealth Institute a really live and dynamic instrument in this field. It has been said that friendship needs continually to be nourished, and, as Sir Eric Harrison quite rightly says, the same thing applies to the Commonwealth tie: the Commonwealth tie itself needs constantly to be looked at, and everything should be done to ensure that the tie remains as firm in the future as it ever has been in the past. I support this Bill, my Lords, and I hope chat you will give it a Second Reading.
5.16 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: My Lords. I rise to welcome this Bill, and I shall detain your Lordships for only a few minutes. I shall not go very far but I

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shall go rather wide. I was the Chairman of the Committee of Inquiry set up by the last Government to inquire into the activities of the then Imperial Institute and to make recommendations for its future. We made some very sweeping recommendations, and a number were surprised, and some even shocked, when we said that if our recommendations could not be met within a reasonable time, we recommended that the Imperial Institute be wound up and the building put to some other use. The reason why we said this was that we believed that the creation of the Commonwealth is the greatest achievement of the British race. We have a great subject to deal with. If we cannot do justice to that subject we belittle it.
The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has drawn attention to the Australian High Commissioner's speech of yesterday. I, too, read that speech. He is merely voicing what many of us in this House, and hundreds and thousands in the Commonwealth, think; but if, in the words of the Australian High Commissioner, people are "fed up" at the lack of publicity, then take the position of some young man in the Commonwealth who may have come from, say, New Zealand or Nigeria and visits this Institute in London. London is no longer the head of the Commonwealth but is the heart of it. If he sees his own country portrayed there, in a way which he thinks does not do justice to it, he will not be merely "fed up" but he will be deeply aggrieved and be tempted to think. "Is this the measure of what the people in this country think of my own country?"
Nothing I have said so far must be held to disparage in any way the previous directors and officers of the Institute. They did a very good job with very little money and very little encouragement. Because they built so well, this resurgence of the Institute is possible. It owes a lot, as has been said, to the late Lord Hudson, whose task has been taken over by my noble friend Lord Dundee—and we wish him, as well as to the Director, Mr. Kenneth Bradley and his staff, all the luck in the world. We, as a Committee are extremely pleased that so many of our recommendations are being followed—not all of them, to be sure, because if one is realistic one must accept that
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if you want to realise a dream you have to give up part of it.
On the matter of the new building, of course there are others we should have preferred. I should have liked to see it beside London River, looking out upon the Houses of Parliament; but I think the site chosen has many advantages as well as disadvantages. When the last building was erected it was a great building to do justice to a great purpose, but we have a warning in building something too big to be maintained.
This, I think, leads one to reflect how few buildings there are, not only in London but in Britain, where one can go in and obtain any information about the Commonwealth as a whole. In the last twelve months I have done 80,000 miles of travelling within the Commonwealth. I do not say that in the hope of impressing your Lordships, but merely to record the humility I feel at the vast amount of the Commonwealth which I have not visited. And if that is my trouble, how much more is it the trouble of those who rarely, if ever, get a chance of leaving these shores. The noble Marquess told us that half a million people had been through the galleries in the past year, and that 1½ million people are reached in one way and another by the Institute's activities. We all welcome that. Here, at any rate, is a place where those who are interested can come to know the whole Commonwealth.
But—and this is where I warned your Lordships I was to go rather widely—surely this is part of a much larger problem. I have always felt that the greatest danger to the Commonwealth was that we become strangers to each other. Do not let us underestimate that danger. In this country people know a certain amount about Canada; they hear a certain amount, generally rather one-sided, about South Africa; they know much less about Australia and New Zealand, far less still about the Asian Dominions and absolutely nothing at all about the Colonies. It is very difficult to maintain a partnership if some of the partners are completely ignorant of the others. Far more associations of men have been destroyed by apathy than were ever destroyed by hostility. As the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has said, the Institute is starting a new history—a new life, under a new name, in a new place

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and in a new building. We all wish it well, and sincerely trust that not only this Government but those who follow them will never allow it again to shrink and wither through lack of support and encouragement.
5.22 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, I do not propose to detain the House for more than a minute or two, because after the ample and instructive introduction by the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, there is little which remains to be said on a subject which commands such general agreement. I should like to say that there never was an institute, or institution, which more properly could be called the Commonwealth Institute than this one. That name might have been applied with equal propriety to the Institute of a generation ago; it seems to me almost a belated recognition, though that might easily and properly have been its name from the beginning.
I have in my hand the brochure published by the Imperial Institute, entitled Imperial Institute, 1887–1956. I must admit that although I know a certain amount about its subject matter, I was deeply impressed by this record of the Institute's activities, which are growing ever greater, particularly in a more educational direction. I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating the Director and staff upon their excellently produced Annual Report for 1956, which I also have beside me.
It is true that there is lamentable ignorance of the Commonwealth in this country—there always has been—but, as the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, said, it is a vast subject and one must remember that it does not fall to everybody to have facilities for travelling and for obtaining that intimate personal knowledge which is so highly desirable. On the question of publicity, perhaps I may intrude this thought. It has been said that there is not enough publicity. But those who know about the activities of the Commonwealth Institute realise their vastly growing nature (I will not go into the list of different sections), and is it not possible that we are deluded a little by the fact that the Institute does not publicise itself? It publicises the Commonwealth. Perhaps it might be better if it gave a little more publicity to the work it is doing and which it was founded to do.
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In studying this recent brochure, I have been surprised, at the extent of these activities, and I have had unusual facilities to acquire personal knowledge. Perhaps there is this to be said in answer to the Australian High Commissioner: that these activities are not so much on the surface that they would be mentioned by, and perhaps have not yet succeeded in reaching the notice of, the higher executives in business, because I imagine that the Institute has concentrated so largely and so properly on the rising generation.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I do not think that Sir Eric Harrison was criticising the Institute. So far as I recollect, he did not mention the Institute. He was criticising the lack of interest in the Commonwealth in this country and the lack of publicity given to Commonwealth matters.
LORD MILVERTON: I am sorry if I was misunderstood. I never meant to suggest that the High Commissioner was referring to the Institute, but that perhaps he had been moving in circles where the work of the Institute had not yet penetrated. That may easily have been so. I am particularly interested in the activities centred under the Commonwealth Club, which is now functioning under these auspices. I think that there is no greater field for work and no more valuable work than this of encouraging and co-operating in social life in leisure hours. So much of our reputation depends on that. I have personal experience abroad of how the whole of a man's outlook on this country can be coloured by the accident of whether people were kind to him or not in this country. I do not wish to detain your Lordships longer because we are about to hear the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who is in charge of the direction of these activities. I should like to say, however, that I give the Bill my unqualified support, and that I think all the decisions therein embodied are correct.
5.28 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, when your Lordships last discussed this subject in 1953 the Report of the Committee presided over by my noble friend Lord Tweedsmuir had lately been published. I understand that the Government have never formally adopted the Tweedsmuir Report, but in practice its

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recommendations have been followed by the Board of Governors of the Institute in the development of their educational policy. I should like to acknowledge our debt of gratitude to my noble friend and to his Committee for producing this most valuable Report.
In the last five years, under the chairmanship of the late Lord Hudson, whose death was a sad loss to the Institute, great progress has been made, in spite of severe financial limitations. I think that the credit for this progress is mainly due to the remarkable vigour and ability of the Director, Mr. Kenneth Bradley. Since 1933, the annual number of gallery attendances has increased from 380.000 to about half a million, and the number of student parties which have received instruction has increased from 1,000 to 1,300. The number of lectures, some of which are given in the Institute's premises, though most are given in schools throughout the country, has gone up from 5.000 to 7.000; and that has embraced total audiences of no fewer than 700,000 schoolchildren. The number of school conferences and courses for more senior pupils has gone from two to thirty-six. There are also some new features of the Institute's activities which have been introduced, and which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, and by my noble friend Lord Lansdowne. There are the travelling exhibitions: thirty-eight showings to 250.000 people took place last year. I am sorry to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, that Wales has been neglected, and I can assure him that we shall immediately do our best to put this right. We started an independent committee of the institute in Scotland, to extend its work there. That committee has existed for only two and a half years, and it now organises school conferences in Scotland, and also arranges the circulation of our travelling exhibitions.
I am glad that my noble friend Lord Lansdowne referred to the Commonwealth Students' Club. It is perhaps a small affair, but I think it is most desirable. The average membership is about 300 Commonwealth students, all of different races, who use the premises of the Institute at week-ends for lectures, concerts, dances and other kinds of recreation. I ought perhaps to mention that it
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throws a slight additional strain on the staff of the Institute, who have to do a good deal of overtime work, extra cleaning and so on. However, they are most willing to do it, and I believe that it is well worth while.
The main purpose of the Institute, and the main reason why Parliament votes us any money at all, is to educate the British public about the British Commonwealth. I do not think one could have better evidence of the need for doing that than the speech by the Australian High Commissioner which the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has quoted. I am sure Sir Eric Harrison will appreciate that if the Australian Government could see their way to increase substantially the contribution which they are now making to the Commonwealth Institute, so that we might greatly improve the Australian gallery at the Institute, we should be delighted to use that in order to advertise here much more effectively than we can do now the social and economic achievements of that great Dominion—because that is precisely what the Commonwealth Institute is for.
The section of the public which we most particularly desire to reach is, of course, the schoolchildren. By far the most outstanding and effective item in the Institute's programme for last year was the lantern lecture given last April by the Duke of Edinburgh to an audience of 2,000 senior schoolchildren; and on a much smaller scale, hundreds of thousands of similar lectures are being organised in all parts of the country. As I think my noble friend said, about 1½ million people received some kind of instruction last year through the Institute, and more than half of them were children. But although all these children have received sonic instruction, and, we hope, some entertainment, it does not amount to more than a few hours each.
What we should like to see is more attention being paid in all the schools in this country to teaching children about the Commonwealth. I should never be rash enough to criticise the curriculum in any of our schools—even the Minister of Education would never dare to do that—but perhaps I may be allowed to make one general observation. I have always thought it rather a pity that history and geography should be taught, as they usually are, as two completely

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separate subjects. I am sure that I should be much less badly educated than I am if, when I had been at school, instead of having to attend a geography class for an hour and being supposed to learn something about the rivers and mountains of Africa, and then the next week having to attend a history class, when I was supposed to learn something about the Norman Conquest, I could have been taught the geography of Africa and the history of the Commonwealth countries and races in Africa as one combined subject.
While it is important for us to make continual contact with schoolchildren, I think it is perhaps even more important to make contact with school teachers. During last year the Institute had seven largely attended conferences at the teachers' training colleges; in the last two months we have had five well-attended lectures in London, again attended by members of the teachers' training colleges; and there have recently been two larger conferences, not for the training colleges, but for older teachers who are already working. Of course, our purpose is not to try to persuade school teachers to adopt any kind of political slant—that would be quite wrong. What we are trying to do is to ask them how they can help us, and to find out how we can help them, in giving more objective teaching to the schoolchildren of this country about the history of the British Commonwealth and the ideals of human freedom and inter-racial friendship for which the Commonwealth stands.
We are grateful to the great majority of local education authorities, both in England and in Scotland, for the assistance which they have given us in our aims. I should also like to express my appreciation—my noble friend Lord Lansdowne has already expressed his—to all the Dominion High Commissioners and other representatives of Commonwealth dependencies, most of whom have ex-officio seats on the Board of Governors and make substantial contributions towards the funds of the Institute for the purpose of maintaining the various Dominion and Colonial galleries. Some of the newest independent members of the Commonwealth—Ghana, for example—have been most eager to make financial contributions in order that they
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may be able to show us here what they are able to do.
I should like to make particular reference to India, because India has special difficulties about sterling currency at the present time. Every pound in sterling which the Indian Government want to spend over here has to be meticulously scrutinised before authority is given to spend it; they have most severe sterling exchange difficulties. The Indian Government, I know, would like to give more money in order to have a better Indian gallery here. The Indian High Commissioner and his Office are most helpful in discussing the means by which we might be able to do that. I hope that it may be possible for our Director this year to be sent out on a visit to India—and possibly Pakistan and Ceylon might be included—so that he can discuss with the Indian Government what is the easiest way of providing the money and the material which they would like to provide, in order that their gallery here, which is seen perhaps by millions of people, should give more effective demonstration than it does now of the cultural contribution and the economic contribution which India makes to the Commonwealth and to the world.
I wish that I had time to tell your Lordships a little more about the work which the Institute is trying to do, but I must conclude with a word or two about the new building which is envisaged by this Bill. The overriding consideration behind the Bill is the urgent and imperative need of the Royal College of Science to extend on the premises now occupied by the Commonwealth Institute. Any delay in that extension might have an adverse effect on the future scientific preeminence of Great Britain in the world. Therefore, there must be no delay. They have got to finish moving in by 1961, and the Commonwealth Institute has to get its new building in Holland Park finished and ready to move into so that we can make way for the College of Science by the end of 1961.
The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, asked about the transitional arrangements between now and then. I do not think I need say much about that matter. The Institute will have to be closed for only a short period of two months in March and April of this year. Apart from that, I think that all its activities will be able

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to continue—I hope upon an increasing scale. Arrangements have been made for all the Commonwealth and Dominion Galleries to be temporarily housed in adjacent buildings Both the Imperial College of Science and the Government Departments concerned have been very helpful and co-operative, and the Board of Governors have no complaint to make about these transitional arrangements.
Your Lordships will probably be more interested in our ultimate target of getting this new building put up in Holland Park by the end of 1961, a building of major importance both to London and to the Commonwealth. It will have to be built under limitations which I think your Lordships will agree are pretty tight. There is the financial limitation—I understand that the maximum sum we are allowed to spend on this new building is £600,000. Perhaps I may quote what was said on the Second Reading of this Bill in another place by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour—and repeated, I think, by my noble friend Lord Lansdowne this afternoon. He said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 582 (No. 50), col. 306.]:
"On the question of costs, the cost allowed for the building has been fixed at a figure which, we think, should allow for imaginative planning and good quality finishes, but will, nonetheless, offer, as any new project should, a challenge to economy in design and construction."
I should like to say that I most emphatically agree with the second part of that statement, and I shall not make any comment about the first part.
As to space, we are limited in the Bill to 125,000 cubic feet, which is the absolute minimum we require for the continuance of our present work. I am told that it is constitutionally necessary to put that figure in the Bill, and I am also advised that if, by any chance, any generous private donor should endow us with a large sum to undertake some new activity and extend the building, it would not be difficult to get an amending Act passed. But the most important limitation of all is that of time. We have to get the work finished by the end of 1961. So the task which confronts us now is to erect this building, which will not only be required for the practical purposes, which are of great importance to the Commonwealth, but also be of major significance to the Commonwealth and
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to London, which is the capital of the Commonwealth.
We want it to be a building which may be admired not only by our own people but also by the large numbers of Commonwealth visitors who come here. That is what we have to try to do with £600,000 in three years. I think it is the kind of task which might well have been imposed on the Israelities in Egypt by the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph:
"And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. … And the taskmasters hasted them, saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was straw."
Then when the Israelites went and complained about this to Pharaoh, and told him:
"There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick; and, behold, thy servants are beaten"
Pharaoh merely replied:
"Ye are idle, ye are idle. … Go therefore now and work: for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks."
It seems to me that is very much the position in which my Board of Governors have now been placed by Her Majesty's Government.
When we first considered the problem last July, the first decision we came to was that if we were going to ask a number of architects to submit competitive plans and drawings, so that someone might judge which would be the best architect to choose, we might then perhaps reach the stage of laying the foundation stone of this new building just about the time when we were, in fact, to have it finished and occupied. So we—that is, the Board of Governors—took the step of making up our own minds at once on the firm of architects who we felt would be most likely to do the job as we wanted it done within the prescribed limits of time. We made our recommendation in July to the Minister, and our recommendation was accepted by the Trustees in December. At one time it was feared that it might be constitutionally impossible even to appoint the architect until this Bill had reached the Statute Book, but we were advised that it would be all right if we instructed the architects to go ahead on the understanding that it all depended upon the passing of this Bill. So we had a conference in December with the architects,

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to whom we had submitted a detailed schedule of every square foot of our requirements, in every lecture room, every exhibition gallery, and for all the other accommodation which we require, right down to the last coathanger; and we have instructed the architects to get to work and produce plans and detailed drawings showing the fulfilment of those requirements.
I do not think we can expect to get the plans for another six or seven months, and then they will have to be approved, I think, by the L.C.C., and certainly by the Ilchester Trustees from whom the site has been acquired. That may perhaps take a little longer, and I myself can see no reason why all plans should not also be shown to any person who may be considered, or who may consider himself to be, a good judge of architecture so that all the howls of execration which I feel bound to anticipate may be uttered before it is too late for us to pay any attention to the howlers.
I think it is a very good plan to get all the howls as quickly as possible, and I would only ask your Lordships, and everyone else, to bear in mind that when we have only £600,000, and only three years in which to do the job, it is impossible to produce a Palace of Versailles—in fact, at the present rate of building costs, I doubt if one could produce even the Petit Trianon. We certainly shall not be able to please everybody; I do not know whether we shall even succeed in pleasing ourselves, but my only consolation is that if the Government had given us £10 million, and allowed us ten years, even then I do not expect that we should have been able to please everybody. But we are deeply anxious to get a building which will be worthy of the significance which it will have for the Commonwealth. We are anxious that its appearance should be worthy of its purpose as well as its utility, and all I can say is that we shall do our best to get a modern building—it will have to be a modern building—which may combine the most strictly economical methods of construction with, I hope, grace and dignity, and which will at least not be despised by the future citizens of the British Commonwealth.
5.52 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this
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debate. First I will try to answer the questions that have been put to me by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, was good enough to give me advance notice of some of the questions he has asked, so I hope I shall be able to give him satisfactory answers. The noble Lord was somewhat anxious about the question of inaccessibility, as I think he put it, and transportation to the new site. I have gone into that matter carefully and it seems to me that the noble Lord's anxieties are somewhat ill-founded. To start with, I think he will agree that a large number of the visitors to the present Imperial Institute go there by charabanc. That, no doubt, will continue to be the practice. But for those who do not so travel there are innumerable buses which pass by, through Kensington High Street—ordinary buses and Green Line buses as well. So far as the Underground is concerned, I have had inquiries made and it appears that the Inner Circle and District lines pass through High Street Kensington Station and it is about five minutes' walk from the station to the new site. But I must, of course, admit to the noble Lord that that five minutes' walk will be in the open and not under cover.
LORD OGMORE: Five minutes walk by whom—Chris Brasher? Because it is quite a long way, I think one would have to be a "mile in four minutes man" to do it in five minutes from High Street Kensington Station.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I am afraid that I have not measured the ground myself; I am only giving the noble Lord the figures I have received, and if they are incorrect I will certainly try to correct them for him. There does not appear to be any serious difference in the facilities for getting to the new site and for getting to the old site. In regard to a matter that I think also worried the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, there is one big advantage: that is the question of parking space. I understand from the Director that there should be sufficient parking space for twenty-five charabancs and seventy-five private cars. That, surely, should be amply sufficient for the requirements there.
Then the noble Lord raised the question of the Trustees and the Governors. I should like to go into that point very

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briefly. I will not detain your Lordships by discussing the present Trustees, because the names of the Trustees were circulated at the noble Lord's request. The names of the Governors and the composition of the Board has not so far been circulated. The Chairman, as you all know, is my noble friend the Earl of Dundee. The Vice-Chairman is Sir Griffith Williams. The members of the Board of Governors are the following: Sir Arthur Kirby, Commissioner, East Africa; Mr. R. Beloe, Chief Education Officer, Surrey; Sir Robert Russell, Indian Civil Service—and he is particularly responsible for Scotland as the chairman of the Scottish Committee of the Institute; Mr. M. T. Mbu, Commissioner for Nigeria; Mr. H. L. Bullock, who was chairman of the Trades Union Congress from 1949 to 1951 (I am not quite sure of my dates but in 1949 he was certainly chairman): Mr. G. H. Gordon, Trade Commissioner for the West Indies; Miss Mary Glasgow, former Secretary of the Arts Council; Sir Ronald Gould, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers; Mr. F. S. Joelson, Editor of East Africa and Rhodesia; at the moment there are two co-opted members, Sir Donald Anderson, Vice-Chairman of the P. & O. Company, with, as you know, great interests in Australasia; and Mrs. I. M. Spry, wife of the Agent-General for Saskatchewan. I think your Lordships will agree it is a fairly wide ranging list of Governors, and all those people appear to me to be eminently qualified to be members of such a Board.
The noble Lord asked me a question about cost, which has in large measure been replied to by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. The figure which appears in the Bill is £725,000; that is the total amount which is allowed for. It does not appear in our version but in the version of the other place it is there. As to the question of the lease, I think the noble Lord will agree that 999 years is pretty well as good as ownership.
LORD OGMORE: It depends also upon what are the covenants in the lease. It may not be anything like as good as ownership. If there are restrictive covenants or covenants which enable the freeholder to take back the land under certain conditions, it may not be nearly
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as advantageous as freehold. That is the reason, I understand, why the Government usually insist on freehold.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I am not in possession of the detailed legal facts. If the noble Lord wishes me to obtain them I shall be pleased to do so.
The question of transitional arrangements which the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, raised was, I think, admirably answered by my noble friend Lord Dundee. Indeed, I have an assurance from the Director himself that he is not unduly perturbed about how things will go. The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, raised the question whether every possible use would be made of modern facilities for display, and I can assure him that the Director is very much alive to that matter. In fact, when I went around the Institute with him and we looked at the displays which he has there, he explained to me in some detail what he proposes to do in the new Institute. I can assure the noble Lord that full use will be made of dioramas and moving pictures. As to the question of the cinema, there will be a cinema in the new building and it will be slightly larger than the cinema in the old one. I think that I did make it clear, or I tried to make it clear in the course of my opening remarks, that nothing that is in this Bill prohibits the planning of the new building to make allowances for further developments, and I can assure the noble Lord that Her Majesty's Government will take due consideration of that point and provision will be made for additions should they prove practicable.
On the question of travelling conferences, I looked in the book which the noble Lord himself has and I see that during 1955, at least, Wales was not so neglected. I have not the details for last year but only the figures, so it may well be that Wales was not overlooked last year either. But certainly note will be taken of the suggestion of the noble Lord, and I think Lord Dundee has already made a mental note of it.
LORD OGMORE: The noble Marquess means the suggestion that, if possible, something should be done during the Festival year?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: It is not for me to say that, but I understood that the noble Earl had taken the

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point and that it will be given due consideration.
With regard to the observations of Sir Eric Harrison, we have heard from various noble Lords that what the Commonwealth Institute stands for is to combat exactly the state of affairs about which Sir Eric Harrison was talking. In my own opinion, the High Commissioner was perhaps somewhat exaggerating the situation; but there is a distressing ignorance, and that is one of the things which we hope will be corrected through the work of the Commonwealth Institute.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, asked me a question about the scale of grants. Even if he did not do so, I feel that I should have given them to your Lordships, so I will give them to Lord Ogmore now. The scale of grants has been steadily increasing. In 1950–51 it was £12,000; in 1955–56 it was £24,000; in 1956–57 it was £36,000; and in 1957–58 it was £40,000. In addition to those grants there was a sum of nearly £13,000 which came from the Governments of Commonwealth countries themselves. I believe I have now answered all the questions that Lord Ogmore raised. I should, however, like to associate myself with him in the tribute which he paid to the late Lord Hudson.
I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, that, without any prompting from me, the Director of the Institute said how grateful he personally and his staff were for the work which had been done by the Tweedsmuir Committee; and as Lord Dundee has already told your Lordships, although their Report was not adopted it has indeed been followed in many respects. I should also like to associate myself with Lord Milverton in congratulating the Director of the Institute and his staff on the work that they are doing, and also to wish them every success in the new premises to which they go. The noble Lord, Lord Milverton, referred to the question of publicity by the Institute. No doubt that is a matter which may well be considered by the Board of Governors; it is not one upon which I should like to pass comment.
Lord Dundee has assured your Lordships that the activities of the Institute have been steadily expanding, and indeed over the last five years there has been a remarkable increase in all the activities
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of the Institute. As to the rather plaintive note of Lord Dundee, which drew from him his admirable quotation from the Bible, all I may say to him is that I pray that he and his fellow Governors will not be idle, but will get on with the job and will spend the money wisely, quickly and well, as I am sure they will. My Lords, I do not wish to detain you any longer. I am grateful for the "sendoff" to this Second Reading, and I wish, with all my heart, that when this Bill eventually becomes law the work that the Institute is doing will grow and will continue to be of the great value that it has been in the past.
On Question, Bill read 2a; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

OVERSEAS SERVICE BILL
6.6. p.m.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

OVERSEAS RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT BILL
6.7 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COLONIAL AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF PERTH): My Lords. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Earl of Perth.)
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, even at this hour, which is, for us, somewhat late. I feel that this is too important a measure to pass without a word being said on Third Reading. I shall not detain your Lordships long, but there are one or two matters to which I want to refer. I should have raised them on Second Reading, but I arrived back from Nigeria only on Monday and therefore I had no opportunity of doing so. First of all, I would say that I am sorry that the Government have not taken the same course in regard to the Colonial Development Corporation as they did with regard to the old Imperial Institute whose affairs we have been considering—namely, to turn it into a Commonwealth Development Corporation, for I believe

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that as the years go by, that title will more truly represent its character. Perhaps in the course of time the Government will consider that point. It has been put to them on numerous occasions, and on the next occasion that a Bill relating to overseas resources comes before your Lordships' House they might insert a proviso changing the name in this way.
The second regret that I have is that the Corporation is excluded from projects in colonial territories which have become independent, except for schemes which are already in being at the time when the country or Colony becomes independent, and except as agents. I have no objection to those provisos—in fact, I fully agree with them. The last thing I should want would be to see the Corporation estopped from completing schemes which it had undertaken to commence and pursue. Moreover, as I have for years past advocated in your Lordships' House that the Colonial Development Corporation should act as agents, it would ill become me now to quibble when the Government are making provision for it to do so. I agree with that portion of the Bill, but I think that it is a mistake to have excluded the Corporation from territories which have become independent—what we call emergent territories—where such emergent territories desire it to engage in operations, and also where the Corporation itself desires to operate schemes of one kind or another.
There can be no involvement of United Kingdom money in the sense of providing grants or loans, because, of course, the Colonial Development Corporation would expect to recover the money that it spends, together with interest on that money; so that there can be no objection from that point of view. I believe, from what has been said by spokesmen who on several occasions have enunciated policy, that Her Majesty's Government have the wrong idea about these emergent territories. They appear to think that when an emergent territory becomes independent we can push it off, just as a Victorian father used to push off a younger son, with £50 cash and a gold watch, saying. "There you are, boy, get out into the cold, hard world and do your best."
In these days, it is quite impossible for any country to stand en its own feet economically; and many countries, in
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spite of the fact that they have become independent, need a considerable amount of assistance. We need it here ourselves. Since the war we have had a great deal of assistance, and so has practically every other country. The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, the noble Earl, Lord Perth, and myself, among others, were at the Independence celebrations in Malaya. I am sure that the noble and learned Viscount will bear me out that it was perfectly obvious that that country has a large number of problems to face, economic as well as others; and if we do not help them, in this and other ways, they will be tempted to go to other countries and other sources for aid—sources that may be, to say the least, antipathetic and even hostile to us. They do not want to do it, but they may be driven to go to other sources for help. I will not elaborate upon this point because this is a Third Reading, but I believe that it is a mistake to make a provision of this kind which prohibits the Corporation from operating in these territories in the circumstances which I have described.
The final point I want to make is a rather different one—as to the policy of the Corporation itself. This applies particularly to Clause 2 of the Bill, under which a large sum of money is placed at its disposal, and the amount which the Corporation may borrow is increased. What are the purposes for which the Corporation is going to borrow this money, and how is it to spend it? What are the conditions under which the Corporation is to assist colonial territories? When the Corporation was formed, the object was to assist in the development of the resources of the colonial territories. We knew very well that at that time there were a number of resources in the colonial territories which, for one reason or another, could not be developed by private enterprise; and it was hoped that these resources, many of which could be dealt with only on a long-term basis, would be developed by the Colonial Development Corporation, either in conjunction with Colonial Governments or otherwise.
It now seems—it may be on the instruction of Her Majesty's Government—that the Corporation has lately changed its policy and in one or two instances it appears to have been the case that the Corporation is unwilling to participate in schemes in colonial territories if there

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is no private enterprise partner with a substantial financial interest and no private enterprise management. I am not saying that, under certain conditions, it may not be desirable to have a private enterprise partner or management: it may be that in certain conditions it is. The case that I am making is that where, for one reason or another, desirable schemes are held up because the Corporation insists upon private enterprise management or private enterprise capital, and that management or capital cannot be provided, that surely is running against the whole intention of the original Act, and the Acts which have followed it; and. I should say, is quite inimical to the whole purpose of the Colonial Development Corporation.
The kind of scheme that I have in mind is one in which there is no quick or ready return but which is a long-term project that will be of enormous interest to the Colonial territory and will develop not only the actual project but also a large number of undertakings, such as electricity, railways and the like. It may be fundamental to the development of the economy of a particular territory for a particular project to be undertaken. It may well he that at that stage private enterprise may say (one cannot blame them, and I am not blaming them for saying it): "This is not the kind of project in which we can invest our shareholders' money. It will be rather a long-term project. Undoubtedly it will be of great benefit to the country and community, but it is not one in which we are entitled to invest, so far as our shareholders are concerned." What then is to happen to the project? If the Corporation does not come in and assist, who is going to do so?
The particular Colony itself may not have available the finance or the technical skill necessary to bring the project to fruition. That is the kind of difficulty we are up against, and I believe that if the Corporation, on the instructions of Her Majesty's Government, is maintaining that kind of view, it will be most detrimental to many important schemes in the colonial territories. The noble Lord, Lord Reith, talking in the Report of the Corporation for 1956 about new business, said in paragraph 8:
"Tests applied are: (a) eligibility in terms of 1956 Act. (b) good development endorsed by territorial Government: (c) viability both as to
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scheme as a whole and CDC participation; (d) availability of expert management when appropriate, with substantial financial stake; (e) association with local interests".
The noble Lord, Lord Reith, does not state there, in terms, the necessity for private enterprise partners with substantial financial interest and private enterprise management before he will participate. He might be held vaguely to be referring to that under (d), when speaking of "availability of expert management ", but he does not say so; and all the expertise is not in private management—there is some elsewhere. In the 1954 Report and Accounts of the Corporation the noble Lord, Lord Reith, and his colleagues said, on page 6:
"(1) Management. (a) CDC has paid heavily for inefficient management and supervision it has also found that private enterprise has not always efficient management for hire; (b) there is no complete alternative to the hard way of training up one's own staff."
With that I would agree. In many cases, it is impossible to find suitable management, either in private enterprise or otherwise, and it is necessary to build up one's own staff; and therefore to make it a condition that there should be private enterprise management may mean, on the noble Lord's own showing, that there can be no participation at all.
With those few objections, my Lords, I support the one or two parts of the Bill to which I have referred, although as I say, I think it is unfortunate that the Government have not taken the opportunity in this Bill to remedy the defects to which I have drawn attention.
6.21 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I am glad that we have had the opportunity of hearing Lord Ogmore, who has always shown such a particular interest in the affairs of the Colonial Development Corporation. He was away on important business in Nigeria at the time of Second Reading, but I am glad that we have had the opportunity today of hearing his points. On the question of the name, I think we discussed that matter rather fully on Second Reading. The point was made that if there was some difficulty where the Colonial Development Corporation was operating in Commonwealth territory, it was perfectly open to the Corporation to set up a subsidiary which had a Commonwealth name in order to get over that difficulty.

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So far as the scope of the Corporation's activities is concerned, we remain very anxious that the funds which it has should be, by and large, devoted to the purpose for which it was set up—namely, the development of the Colonies. The Colonies still have immense scope for development: they are always needing new capital. Quite frankly, apart entirely from any other policy reasons, we should rather see the situation left as it is, in that what has been allowed for future development of the Corporation's purposes is, in a sense, not enough for the Colonies, so that it would be a great mistake to go outside.
When we come to the question of the territories which have recently been made independent, it is not true, if I may say so, that we just throw them by, and say, "There you are; there is £50—off you go into the world!" In fact, they continue to get assistance in one way or another from us. It may not be direct Government-to-Government assistance in the way of money—we went into great detail in the White Paper as to why we thought that was not normally appropriate—but there are other ways of helping. The London market is available and there is the assistance coming from private enterprise; great investments may be made and there are all the ordinary matters of that kind. There may be a certain amount of exaggerated fear about what happens, and certainly so far as the countries which have recently become independent are concerned they are themselves (if I may put it this way) pretty well off. That is true of Malaya; it is true of Ghana; and it will be true, if we take another example, of Nigeria. So I think that the fears which have been mentioned are exaggerated, and it is right that the Colonial Development Corporation should continue to operate mainly in the Colonies.
The third point which the noble Lord raised was whether there had not been some change in policy on the part of the Colonial Development Corporation so far as it operated schemes which were in measure marginal schemes, and whether it was no longer prepared to go into these unless it had a partner which was a private-enterprise partner. I can assure the noble Lord that there is no foundation for that fear at all. If he looks at the
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Report of 1956 he will see that in that year eight new schemes were started. Of those eight new schemes, half were schemes in which the Corporation alone was operating. In another one, both Government and private enterprise collaborated, and in the other three, private enterprise was partner.
Coming to more recent times, I would point out that only a short while ago we were asked by the Corporation to approve a scheme involving over £1 million, and that scheme was a very important scheme for the development of the particular Colony. They were anxious to have, if they could, private enterprise to collaborate with them in it, but they approached various firms who knew the territory, and for one reason or another none of them was anxious to go in. That does not mean to say the scheme was not in every way highly suitable and that one of these days it will not be very profitable. That did not deter the Corporation: they went ahead, and in due course I feel sure we shall see how wise they were and how unwise the others were not to join in.
On the other hand, I can think of a case in which the Government of a territory was very much interested in a large scheme, which would have entailed very important results for that territory and in which they would have gone into partnership with a group of private firms for the development of the scheme. For one reason or another, the farther they looked into it the less the private firms liked it, and one after the other they withdrew. Then the Government approached the Colonial Development Corporation and asked whether they would join in. The Colonial Development Corporation looked into the matter carefully but came to the conclusion that it just did not measure up to what they wanted, to what they thought they were justified in doing. Therefore, in that case, they said, "No, we are a little nervous about this; nervous about the fact that a lot of other people have withdrawn; and at this moment we would rather not go through with it."
It may be that we all have our own pet schemes and that we should like this or that scheme to be developed for the benefit of this, that or the other territory; but, my Lords, I think that that is where the Colonial Development

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Corporation must be allowed to use its own judgment, and that is indeed why we set up this Corporation originally in the form in which it was set up. But I can assure the noble Lord that there is no change in the general policy which has been followed previously. And so we come now to the end of the debate. It may not be all that the noble Lord
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and some other noble Lords opposite would have wished for, but it has gone some way, and let us and let them be grateful for the small things.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past six o'clock.