Lords Sitting of 15 December 1959

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Viscount Simonds

DISPOSAL OF HERR KRUPP'S ASSETS
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg leave 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 can state the present position of the Mixed Committee set up to consider applications for an extension of time for the disposal of certain assets of Herr Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach under the 1953 Deconcentration Agreement and whether the report and deliberations of the Committee will in due course be published.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE): My Lords, the position is still as described in the reply given by my noble friend on November 10. The Committee has granted an extension of time up to January 31, 1960, and has under consideration an application for an extension beyond that date. It will be for the Committee itself to decide whether its deliberations should be made public, and for the four Governments to decide whether any report that the Committee may make to them should be published.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to thank the noble Marquess for his Answer. Is the noble Marquess aware that while he was away, doing, if I may say so, a good job in Indonesia, I asked the noble Earl, Lord Perth, whether, in order that the public should know precisely what had been the arguments used by Herr Krupp, the report of the deliberations should be published; and is the noble Marquess aware that in his reply the noble Earl, Lord Perth, said twice that the Government would bear
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very much in mind the importance of possibly having the report made public?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, as I think your Lordships are aware, a decision as to whether a Report will or will not be published, in the event of such a report being submitted, is a matter for the four Governments together to decide; and I am sure your Lordships will agree that it would be very improper for me to anticipate a decision that has to be reached together by four Governments.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, would the noble Marquess indicate whether the Government are aware that Dr. Adenauer has sent a congratulatory message to Herr Krupp, as he did to the other Nazi industrialist who was convicted not only of using slave labour but of flogging it?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I have no information whatsoever on this subject.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, is the noble Marquess aware that this is not a technical point at all; that it appears possible that Herr Krupp can build up again a great munitions industry, and possibly even nuclear power? And is the noble Marquess aware that this has been the subject of complaint by the Russian Government within the last 48 hours?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, with great respect to the noble Viscount, I really do not think that that supplementary arises out of the original Question.

CONTROL OF GREY SQUIRRELS
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I beg leave 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 reintroduce the cash bonus scheme for the destruction of grey squirrels, in view of the rapid increase in the number of these pests.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): MY Lords,

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representations have been made to my right honourable friend on this subject, and he is, of course, giving consideration to them.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he can encourage his right honourable friend to give them favourable consideration, because this is an exceedingly serious matter, particularly in those counties where agriculture is predominant? Very little action has been taken to remove these pests during the past eighteen months and they are becoming a serious menace.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, my right honourable friend will give consideration to this matter, as I have already told noble Lords, but I really must not anticipate what results his consideration will lead him to.
EARL WINTERTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that while the Minister is giving consideration to these matters these grey squirrels are increasing with great rapidity in Sussex and in other Southern counties?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I am well aware of the great menace that grey squirrels are to foresters and agriculturists generally, but I cannot say whether my right honourable friend will come to the conclusion that the proper way to keep them down is to pay a bonus on their tails.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, may I thank the noble Earl for his reply to my Question? I am very pleased to hear that something is going to happen—or so I gather from his remarks. When can we expect anything definite? Or would the noble Earl like me to put down a further Question at an early date when we resume?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, a further Question would always be helpful, and I shall be as helpful as I can, and always try to be, in my Answers, but I am afraid that I cannot at the moment say when my right honourable friend is likely to make any pronouncement on this particular subject.
LORD WINSTER: May I ask whether the noble Earl is aware that in Cyprus we had a similar trouble, not with grey squirrels but with the carob rat, and we instituted a system of paying a reward for the tails of these carob rats? The result was that we caused a very flourishing and prosperous industry of breeding carob rats all through the island.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I was not aware of that interesting state of affairs, but I will certainly convey it to my right honourable friend, who may take it into consideration when he is doing his considerations.

MR. BUTLER AND EIRE
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, touching the Business, might I ask the noble Earl the Leader of the House when we may expect a statement—I appreciate that it will not be to-day—commenting on Mr. Butler's speech at Belfast last night relating to sanctions against Southern Ireland?
A NOBLE LORD: Last night?
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, I do not think that there is any statement to make. Of course, if the noble Viscount wants to ask me a Question I will willingly answer it.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, does the noble Earl think that the House can separate and leave this issue in dispute? The noble Earl probably does not remember the Irish question, but it is a very burning issue to-day and might lead to immense trouble; and this casual remark of Mr. Butler's about an independent foreign State, and what he is going to do to it, may do a great deal of harm.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I hope that the House can well separate without a statement from me on this subject. As I say, if the noble Viscount wishes to pursue this matter I will do my best to give an Answer to a Question if he asks it to-morrow.

POST OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH (MONEY) BILL
2.39 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, I think I said quite enough on Second Reading about the Bill itself, so that I need add nothing more to-day. I think I should take this opportunity, however, very briefly to mention three or four points about how the money provided for in the Bill will be spent and the developments which will be made possible by it. Of the total capital expenditure for which the Bill asks—that is £270 million—it is expected that about £244 million will be spent on the telephone service, about £19 million on the postal service and £7 million on the telegraph service.
On the telephone side, there is no doubt that Subscriber Trunk Dialling is the most dramatic development. Your Lordships will remember that Her Majesty graciously inaugurated the new system at Bristol last year. The subscribers there, I am glad to say, seem to like being able to dial for themselves calls to about half the other telephones in the country. In fact, they practise"Do it yourself" for about 97 per cent, of the calls for which that is possible. Last month Bodmin joined Bristol Central by being converted to this system, and Evesham will follow early in the New Year. That, my Lords, is only the beginning. By March, 1961, which is about halfway through the period to be covered by this Bill, the Post Office are planning for customers connected to about 90 other exchanges throughout the country to have similar facilities. By 1965, about 60 per cent, of all long-distance calls should be dialled by the caller, and by 1970 the proportion should be up to over 90 per cent.
There is similar progress forward to automation in regard to the Telex service. Your Lordships will probably know that this is a service that enables customers to send or receive written messages with the same speed as a telephone call; and it is therefore hardly surprising that so valuable an aid to business efficiency should have expanded
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pretty fast. There are now about 5,000 subscribers to this service, and its conversion to full automatic working will be completed by the end of 1960. This should result in economies in operation, and should also lower the cost of call charges to customers. The three Telex centres in Scotland are being converted now, and they will be followed in the spring of next year by those at Birmingham and Nottingham.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Could the noble Lord tell us exactly what is the nature of this service? Is it something like a teleprinter, or what is it?
LORD CHESHAM: It is something very like a personal teleprinter: I think that is the best way to describe it. The subscriber simply taps out the message, and it arrives at the other end at much the same speed as a telephone call would. It is a sort of personal teleprinter service. I think we might expect an even faster expansion of user when it is converted, and perhaps in ten years' time there may be about 20,000 subscribers.
I should like to go on for a moment to developments on the postal side, because I want to assure your Lordships that we in this country are just about leading the world in developing machines which help with mail handling. At Southampton, initial trials have been completed with prototype machines which separate packets, long letters and short letters, date-stamp them, and arrange them ready for sorting. Production machines from these prototypes have now been ordered for further trials in three large centres. At Norwich all the ordinary letters are now being sorted by machines which were designed by Post Office engineers and were built by a British firm. These are being tried out in other places as well; and orders for them have been received from Egypt, Switzerland and Soviet Russia. Even more advanced techniques of letter-sorting are being developed which, if the development is successful, will enable yet more of the letter sorting to be done automatically. Then, what I think I can claim to be the most highly mechanised parcel sorting office in Europe, with a completely new type of parcel-sorting machine, has just been opened in Leeds by my right honourable friend. And

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this process of automation, as it were, has not been confined to inside the sorting offices. The customers at our counters have not been forgotten: there are trials going on with suites of self-service machines for use in our public offices.
Finally, I feel that I must say a quick word about that very ambitious project for a round-the-world cable, which came into being as a result of the Commonwealth Conference in London in 1958. A start is to be made in 1961 by laying a cable between this country and Canada. It will be a single cable of a new British design, and will be using British two-way repeaters throughout. On the understanding that other Commonwealth countries would be willing to shoulder similar obligations, we have agreed to play a full part in this very comprehensive Commonwealth scheme; and we have recently taken part in a successful conference in Sydney to plan the long Pacific link which goes from Canada to New Zealand, and thence on to Australia. The recommendations of that conference are now under consideration by all the Governments concerned. One point that I should like to add is that no part of the cost of this scheme is included in the money which is sought under the present Bill. The United Kingdom share of it will financed by Cable and Wireless, Limited.
My Lords, that is all I have to say, but I hope it is enough to show your Lordships that a great deal of development work, some of which can almost be described as exciting, is going on which we hope will lead both to better service to the public and better working conditions for the staff. I should like, therefore, to commend the Bill to your Lordships for a Third Reading. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Chesham.)
2.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, we are very much obliged, as always, to the noble Lord for the manner in which he has introduced the Third Reading of this Bill. It gives us an opportunity to say one or two things about the Post Office. Its record is certainly complete justification for what can be done by a national
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service—or, if you like to call it so, a nationalised service—where the one thing to be looked at and considered is the service to the public. The extent to which the professional and technical staffs of the Post Office have themselves been responsible for many of the quite new avenues of development, with their own inventions, and things of that kind, is remarkable, and I think that they deserve a high word of praise from members of all Parties in our Parliament. I should like to congratulate them upon the developments they are making.
It is very interesting, of course, to hear about the especially advanced position which we hold internationally with regard to the new processes of sorting mail. However, the service to the public in general is a very wide and sometimes a very elementary thing as well, and I feel that some of the more populous centres in rural areas are still very badly served. The noble Lord himself kindly took up a matter for me in regard to an urban district of 3,500 people where, at the time I communicated with him, there was no collection of letters after about ten o'clock on a Saturday morning—and that is not very convenient. The time of collection has now been extended for an hour or two; but we really ought to try to meet the needs of the public in an area like that. Where there is a concentration of population in a rural area which has an early closing day—say, on a Wednesday—they ought not to find that they can do no business with the Post Office after eleven or twelve o'clock on a Saturday morning. A little elasticity there would greatly improve the contentment and happiness which is so widespread as a general rule amongst the public with regard to the Post Office services. As to the resilience of the general administration and the expansion of the duties of the staffs of the Post Offices, with the additional tasks laid on them, the extraordinary development in counter work in the last twenty years is so remarkable that we ought not, perhaps, to be so ready to decry our general British capacity for dealing with these matters, and be always comparing ourselves un-favourably with some other country overseas.
The financing of the Post Office intrigues me very greatly. The Money

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Bill which is before us to-day is to provide for Treasury money to the extent of £120 million to be spread over about two and half years; but, in fact, the actual expenditure on development of one sort and another (mostly on telephones, as has been indicated by the noble Lord) will be £270 million. One hundred and fifty million pounds of this is to be provided, I suppose, by what might be termed accumulated depreciation provisions. It is a little strange to me after my study of mostly co-operative trading societies' trading balances to follow the accounts of the Post Office on this matter. Certainly we always show a very careful depreciation account in a balance sheet, with any additions that may come into contemplation during a particular year, and always arrive at what is the net value of all capital buildings, shop-fittings, rolling stock and even livestock in their proper positions. One would never take into account in a balance sheet anything which had not been written down to the extent of the depreciation provided for in the year's account. Now we see a new technique (I know that it has been discussed in other spheres besides the Post Office: in general industry and the like)—the technique of writing off so much every year on the balance sheet and at the end of so many years spending that amount of money. That is a procedure which sometimes would be greatly criticised. The old and devoted shareholders of the company concerned may well say,"Why have you adopted this extremely unsound method of writing up assets?"
Of course, it may be argued that what has really been done is to transfer what has become a permanent reserve in depreciation account to new capital additions, but those new capital additions will continue to require their annual depreciation allowance every year thereafter. I am wondering, in these days of inflationary prices, what sort of system there is in the Post Office for providing for what seem to be heavy increases in depreciation charges every year. Anyhow, there was something in the intervention of a Conservative Member in another place, who asked whether or not we could be satisfied with this procedure, and, where capital assets were depreciated out of the balance sheet, how they could be replaced. We had some
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information on this matter from the noble Lord two years ago, but I am still not very clear about the advantages of going along this channel of action, and would like to know a little more.
What is perhaps most likely to be in the public mind to-day about this report—a very promising report in many respects—is the priorities which the Post Office have in mind for the use of this new capital expenditure. The large sum to be spent includes about £244 million for the telephone service—I think that was the figure the noble Lord gave this afternoon. Of course, it is pleasing to hear of the success of the experiments in the trunk dialling system at Bristol, now to be extended to Bodmin and Evesham, and to be extended considerably further during the next five to ten years. But what about the people who are still labouring under grave disability in the ordinary telephone service? What sort of priority do they get? Two years ago the Postmaster General made a severe increase in charges, and some of the privileges of the customers were taken away. For example there used to be a time when I got 100 calls a year free, because I was paying a decent rent for the telephone service. That has been wiped out. A call used to be 1d.; now it is 3d. And if what was said in another place is correct—perhaps the noble Lord would say whether it is true—when the scale of charges went up, 300,000 subscribers gave up their telephones because they could not afford the new charges. That is not a great success.
At the same time we have for years had a long list of people who have applied to become subscribers but have not yet had their telephones installed. I am glad to see from the report that the list is decreasing. Again the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong in my estimate, but I think that about 160,000 potential subscribers are still not supplied with telephones. Should not this capital expenditure on the telephone service give high priority to meeting these difficulties in the service?
I come to the question of the efficiency of the service. From reading the Report of the debate in another place, I gather that about 5,000 exchanges, out of a total of 6,000, have automatic dialling. What about the 1,000 which have only

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manual handling? I have raised with the noble Lord several times the question of Enfield, a very important suburban town. It is in Middlesex and is not one of the series of metropolitan boroughs, but it is really part of the Edmonton, Tottenham and Southgate group of boroughs. Enfield still has a manual exchange. If I ring up a friend in the borough of Enfield, I get a ringing sound at the other end, but that is not the number I want, it is just the manually handled exchange at Enfield. After listening for half a minute or more, I hear a difference in sound, which is the call being put through to the subscriber by the manual exchange. As often as not, I may get through to another exchange altogether. What happens exactly I do not know. Sometimes I have to wait so long on the first call that I give it up and ring off before the second call begins. Then perhaps the person I am calling comes through and finds that I am not there to answer it. It is an extraordinary mix-up. That has a bad effect upon business in Enfield, which is a very busy place. It is a great engineering and furniture-making centre.
I hear all sorts of gossip and grumbles about this matter. What seems to me extraordinary is that the present Secretary of State for the Colonies, formerly the Minister of Labour, has to be persuaded by the Postmaster-General to give some priority to turning manual exchanges into automatic ones. I hope that the noble Lord in charge of the debate will draw his attention to Enfield and perhaps use his weighty support. I do not want this only for Enfield; I want it also for the other 999 exchanges which are still manual. I want them to be given priority over some of the new experiments, valuable as these are. What comfort is it to learn from the report that by 1970 there will be a 90 per cent. automatic trunk through-service when it is going to take the same time—that is, ten years—to transfer the remaining manual exchanges to automatic working. That seems to me to be entirely a wrong basis for the priorities in this matter.
How is it proposed to deal with surpluses in future? The Post Office has a substantial surplus of nearly £8½ million for last year. In looking at the accounts, I see that for some years previously there had been a deficit. This year the
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whole of the surplus is to be transferred to general reserve. One is very interested to know that there will be a general reserve. Apparently at the rate you are paying on depreciation account you accumulate such a reserve that you can, as it were, pull out of the moon £150 million to increase capital expenditure. All these years past you have had a deficit on your general account; this is the first time you have started a general reserve for some years and you put in the whole surplus. It might be some consolation to the people who are paying for threepenny calls and suffering other disabilities in the postal services to know that there is going to be a general reserve, but I think it is about time, at the rate the Post Office is expanding, and if you are going to get the full use of the developments of which you have proved you are so capable, that some consideration should be given to the matter of charges. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes up and down the country lecturing industry in general, and retailers in particular, as to the need for reducing their prices, I think something should be said on behalf of those users of services which have been so long, so well and so deeply established as the general postal, telephone and telegraph services. I put that point forward for consideration.
This is a Third Reading—although, for the convenience of business, this particular discussion was postponed from Second Reading to Third Reading—and I have time to put only one other point, which is this. On the whole, I think we have seen rather fewer reports in the last two years of deliberate, damaging and very expensive raids upon valuable mails. I do not know how much is included in your capital expenditure for improving your security. I must say, however, that it seemed to me an extraordinary situation when I read in the paper the other day of a Post Office can—or so it seemed; it was a red van—which appeared at one of your district offices and the driver was able to collect valuable mail and get away. Nobody at the district office, apparently, was aware of the fact until, I suppose, the proper collector came later and found that the goods had already been stolen. What is the Post Office doing? If the position in regard to the number of these awful train robberies

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and affairs of that kind about which we got so"het up" a few years ago has been improved by better security, what further is now going to be done to try to eliminate them altogether, and especially to have a really up-to-date method of preventing an impostor in a properly coloured van—I daresay he used a uniform, but with no other means of identification—from getting away with a business like that? I should be glad if the noble Lord could tell us a little more about security. I have nothing else to say, other than to repeat what I said in opening: that, taken as a whole, the Post Office deserves our thanks and the thanks of the whole community, and I think it gets them.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, the noble Viscount and the House will forgive me for one moment. I was so diverted by the matter of the carob rat in Cyprus that I quite forgot to say, on Business, that there is to be after half-past three a short statement about the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' meeting.

POST OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH (MONEY) BILL
3.5 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I think it is unlikely that anybody would speak on this Bill and do otherwise than give it a blessing. It happens that when the Government come to this House for authority for Post Office expenditure it gives the Members of the House an opportunity which does not often present itself, to raise matters germane to the telephone. Certainly we are all indebted to the noble Lord, who gave us relief and encouragement in his explanation of how we may hope for improvement in the facilities for the long-distance telephone—and, incidentally, it would be more progressive if he could introduce the term"long-distance" instead of"trunks". But the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition, in giving his blessing to the Bill just now in the interesting talk he gave us, did not refrain from using the opportunity to"needle" the Government with the statement that the
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promised improvements could be accelerated.
Those of us who have spent a good part of our lives in North America, who are habituated to the system of prompt long-distance calls and are familiar with the gap between the service here and the service in the United States—the latter being so much in advance—have certainly been encouraged in recent years to see that gap progressively narrowed by the enterprise of the Government and by Government expenditure. In North America one is able to ask for a long-distance call and then hang up, knowing that one will be called when it is available. In this country, however, when one wishes to spend money on the telephone, one is told by the operator to hold on; and, having done so for many minutes, one is then asked,"Are you there?" That makes one inclined to say,"Where else do you think I would be?" In North America the operator would say,"Hello", and not irritate the one wishing to spend money by asking,"Are you there?" It is on that particular point that one feels there could be some improvement in the existing service.
I should like to ask the noble Lord whether, in reporting to his right honourable friend the discussion which I hope will ensue on this Bill (and perhaps this may be less controversial, because I see my noble friend Lord De La Warr in his place: and in his time as Postmaster General we had some quite enlivening discussions on the Post Office, and evidently the advance in service to-day is not likely to duplicate that), he would give consideration to applying in England a practice which exists, and has for long existed, in North America. I would suggest that the reduced charges applicable after six o'clock on all days here should apply all day on Sundays, because recent figures of the telephone receipts on an ordinary week-day, as against receipts on a Sunday, seem to support the belief that the existing services are far from employed to the full on a Sunday; and were the reduced rates introduced, it might well be that the revenues would be appreciably increased and that total advantage to the service might accrue. It is because of that experience in North America, and the belief that it adds to the revenue—

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it certainly increases the value of the service—that I beg to support the Bill.
3.10 p.m.
THE EARL OF WOOLTON: My Lords, perhaps I may intervene in this discussion for a moment or two. I think nothing is so discouraging for the staff of any industry than to find that when their superiors talk about it they constantly criticise it. I followed what my noble friend Lord Barnby said about America, and of course the speed with which one is put through from one part of that continent to another is quite remarkable. But I wonder whether the noble Lord ever had any letters sent to him when he was there. It is a reliable service, but you get a delivery once a day in New York. We do a great deal better than that. I share with the noble Viscount, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, a complete mystification about Post Office finance. I once had the honour of being one of four people who advised the Postmaster General on financial matters. I strained hard, but I never really understood the financial position. I came to the conclusion that the Treasury were determined that I never should, because the whole system of Government financing, as presented to committees or to the public, is such that a business training, however long, is no use in enabling you to fathom it.
What I really rose to say, however, was this. This is the season when the Post Office are put to a strain which very few private businesses would like to undertake, even although it were profitable. I have been amazed not only at the efficiency with which this Christmas trade in postal deliveries is run, but at the way in which the staff behind the counters, not only in the large cities but even in the small villages, keep their heads and deal with their crowding customers who sometimes want stamps, but sometimes want all the other things that the post offices provide. They take the whole burden with such cheerfulness that I feel it appropriate that on this occasion we should pay them a compliment.
3.13 p.m.
VISCOUNT CROOKSHANK: My Lords, if one ex-Postmaster-General in this House may be allowed to make two or three remarks, they would be these.
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First of all, I should like, through the noble Lord who opened the debate, to express, I am sure on behalf of us all, our admiration at the skill of the research department of the Post Office. The noble Lord pointed out what is being done, and it is true that for a great number of years that Department has led research throughout the world in these matters. When the opportunity comes, I think we should say so.
The second and only other observation I want to make is more in the nature of a reminder. I should like to have an assurance, though I know that without notice my noble friend cannot give it. It is this. For many years past, it has been the established practice of the Post Office, when putting up new buildings—and, of course, the money with which we are concerned to-day is intended largely for that purpose—to make quite sure that they conform to the general architecture of the locality or town. I remember quite well a small village post office which cost more than it otherwise would have done being deliberately built with a thatched roof to fit in with the village street. I have noticed recently some departure from this practice, and I hope the departure will come to an end. It is rather unfortunate that the only instance I should like to quote (it has nothing to do with the noble Lord) happens to be in Chesham Place, where a perfectly monstrous building for a telephone exchange has been put up. It is completely out of keeping with any of the local architecture—not that it is so beautiful—and out of place. I hope, therefore, that in the expenditure of this money in the future the old principle will, so far as possible at any rate, be adhered to, and that we shall see, as used to be the case—and still is in many instances—Post Office buildings which are a credit to the locality as well as a perfectly good and suitable building for the devoted staff to work in.
3.15 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, we have had some very interesting points raised, and I will try to deal with as many as I can without being too long. I had better start with this question of finance about which the noble Viscount opposite wishes to know. I am slightly encouraged by my noble friend Lord Woolton, in that on his reckoning I need know

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nothing about it for about 40 years. I will try not to display my own ignorance, but I shall be comforted in knowing that, if I do display it, I am in good company.
I think the easiest thing for me to do is to try to go, very briefly but very simply, through the method by which the Post Office finances are governed, and I hope that in the process of doing that all may become clear. The noble Viscount no doubt remembers that a new relationship with the Exchequer was laid down in 1955. As a result of that, the Post Office endeavours to run itself like a well-conducted business, and seeks to pay its way after contributing a fixed sum of £5 million to the Exchequer—a sum which may be said to correspond roughly to the amount of tax that would be payable if its situation were different.
In addition to that, it was decided if necessary to make proper and prudent provision for depreciation at rates which reflected the current value. A prudent business must adopt a sound depreciation policy. It is not enough to provide only on the basis of original cost of assets, the historical cost, when experience has shown that their replacement costs two or three times as much as that. On the other hand, it is not necessarily vital to provide from depreciation provisions the whole cost of replacement. We adopt a middle course. We calculate each year's depreciation by reference to the current value of the assets, but without seeking to adjust previous years' provisions to the new level. We think that that policy makes for price stability, and therefore enables the Post Office to finance a substantial proportion, which is over 50 per cent., of its capital expenditure, without recourse to borrowing.
In addition to that depreciation, provision has also to be made fully for pension liability. The surplus, if any, after meeting these objectives, is retained as a reserve owned by the Post Office. I hope I have not over-simplified the matter, but at the same time I hope I have made it clear.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am going to read it very carefully and have another go at it, but I am not at all sure. I do not expect the noble Lord to say more, but when I hear his report of the fixed contribution I cannot make up my mind
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whether or not you have really paid £5 million to the Treasury every year since 1955. I understand that that is so. And yet you show a deficit. On what real basis is this £5 million assessment made?
LORD CHESHAM: I feel that I am going to be in a muddle if I am not careful. As I understand the matter, it was decided (at a time when I, personally, was at a slight disadvantage, because I was in no way responsible) that it would be a fair thing that the Post Office should make that contribution to the Treasury. We have to remember that here is a business with a turnover of over £400 million a year, so that in fact it is not what one would call in a normal commercial sense a most tremendous burden on that business. I think that that is the kind of basis. It is easier to make a flat rate, and by my analogy with the tax situation it could be, so to speak, win or lose; the Post Office could be, as I see it, in a better position or a worse one compared with a private business, but probably, taken over the years, it works out as a fair arrangement.
I should like to turn to this question of surplus, which is in credit, as the noble Viscount pointed out, for The first time since the new arrangements came into effect in April, 1956. I would put it another way, very simply that it has taken, in fact, three years to build up to that reserve position. That reserve belongs to the Post Office, and I should have thought it quite a modest cushion to be held by a business with the turnover I mentioned, over £400 million. The existence of that reserve may well be said to be a benefit or a potential benefit to all the customers, and I think it is a reserve which certainly should be held. I agree that the postal and telephone accounts both showed surpluses last year and contributed to that, although the telegraph service did not. The overall general result is very much in line with what was expected when two years ago the charges had to be raised in order to meet the cost of bringing the rates of pay in the Post Office into line with the rates outside.
May I go on from there to the question of priorities, which the noble Viscount asked about—what we plan to do in this respect, in spending the money to be raised under this Bill, and particularly in regard to the telephone service. While

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resources are limited, and naturally we cannot have more than our appropriate share out of the available total, there must be said to be priorities, but I think we should say in the main, that even so, the problem is less one of actual priorities than of planning an orderly advance over the whole field, which is a very wide one. This is partly because the telephone service is a very complex organisation over the whole country and partly because the service is growing so rapidly. Your Lordships, I think, will appreciate the complexity and the complications of the system and I do not think I need go into that at all.
If I may give some facts of the growth of the system, I think they may be helpful. These developments which have taken place in the last ten years are quite interesting. The total number of telephones connected to the system has increased from 5 million to 7½ million. The pairs of wires in local cables have increased from 4½ million to nearly 7 million. Trunk circuits have increased from 16,000 to 26,000. Local and trunk calls have risen from 3,000 million a year to over 4,000 million a year. Eight hundred manual exchanges have been converted to automatic working. That is ten years' progress. I quote it to back up my point of how the orderly advance over the whole field is really more to the point than putting down a positive list of priorities, one below the other.
The main point I should talk about, and I think perhaps your Lordships would regard it as the main job of the Post Office, on the telephone side at any rate, is the reduction of the waiting list. Ten years ago it was nearly half-a-million people. When I first had the honour to introduce a Post Office Money Bill to your Lordships, in 1955, it was about a quarter-of-a-million people. At the time of the next Bill in 1957 the figure had dropped to 110,000, and to-day the actual waiting list—I am coming back to this in a second—is of the order of 50,000 people. The noble Viscount mentioned the figure of 160,000. I do not want to quibble on this one, but that is in fact the order list, and there is a subtle difference between the order list and the waiting list, in that of that number 80,000 to 90,000, or a few more perhaps, week in, week out, are in process
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of provision; the order has been given to the electrician to go and put the instrument in. That I regard as the order list. The waiting list is composed of those people in regard to whom the order has not yet been given to the electrician for one reason or another, and that list is round about the 50,000 mark.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, might I ask the noble Lord to say how long it will be before those 50,000 get their telephones? The reduction of the waiting list is very spectacular, but if it does not mean a reduction in time it does not mean a great deal.
THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether it also includes party lines, from which we all suffer?
LORD CHESHAM: In the first place, there is a very considerable turnover in the number I mentioned, and I think it would be reasonable to say that the majority of those 50,000 will get their phones within a year. I can certainly say that the hard core, so to speak, who have been waiting for a telephone for more than two years is under 10,000. Party lines come a little more quickly; that is the point of the thing. But the situation has improved considerably, and it is not usually necessary to insist, if people are going to have a phone, that they must have a party line. Certainly three out of four applicants can be offered an exclusive line now, which I think is a very good thing. Whether we can manage to keep this rate of progress going or not will depend entirely on the rate of demand. At the moment two-fifths comes from businesses; that rate is running at the highest we have known for four years, and reflects, I think, some measure of rising prosperity in the country. We are connecting new customers at the rate of more than 1,000 a day and I hope we shall be able to keep that up.
The noble Viscount mentioned that after the increased tariffs were announced in 1957 300,000 people gave up their telephones. I should not like to try to contradict him in any way, but the best estimate that I can make of the number of people who gave up their telephones because of the increase in the tariff charges was about half that number; I should say about 150,000. That

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is the best I can do. Between October, 1957, and April, 1959, 450,000 people gave up the telephone; that is in the period after the tariff went up. In a similar period before the tariff went up 300,000 people gave up the telephone in any case, knowing nothing about the increased tariff; and I think the real answer, if that is so, is that the rate of demand is now, as I have said, very high. There has been a tremendous increase in the figure for October of this year. The new demand figure was over 41,000, and it has been the highest monthly figure in the last four years.
I should like to digress for a moment on the question raised by my noble friend Lord Barnby. I think his use of the term"long-distance" instead of"trunk" is a most retrograde step. I do not think that we should be talked by him into using three syllables where one would do. I was also glad to hear from him that the American service has improved so much since I was there some eight years ago. I certainly was not particularly impressed with it then, and I was glad to get home, where one can hear a British accent. But perhaps that service has come along. I thank him for pointing it out. At any rate, we do not feel very inferior to anybody.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, in regard to the noble Lord's respect for brevity, would he also apply the same observation to"Hello" instead of"Are you there"?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I will take this point up with my noble friend later. I do not want to waste the time of the House. I shall ask him, when I talk to him about it, what other expression, so brief and so terse, could one possibly use to find out whether the caller is still there.
LORD AIREDALE: What would the noble Lord do if the answer was"No"?
LORD CHESHAM: I will resist the temptation to answer that. My Lords, if I may resume my reply, may I say that the broad plan for the future is to continue to add plant to meet the growth of traffic and of orders for service from new customers, and at the same time to continue the plans for mechanising the service over about the next ten years. I come now to another point of the noble Viscount. This programme of
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mechanisation will cover the conversion to automatic working of the remaining 1,000 manual exchanges. It sounds easy to say."Let them be mechanised"; but may I put it this way? When you think that it means mechanising two exchanges every week from now until 1970, that indicates a little the problems that are involved in the job. The noble Viscount mentioned the Enfield exchange. I am happy to be able to tell him that the automatic equipment is now being installed and will be completed by the autumn of next year.
The noble Viscount also queried whether it was a good thing to introduce subscriber trunk dialling in some parts of the country while in other parts customers are still waiting for the first stage of conversion from manual to automatic exchanges. Naturally we should like to convert all the manual exchanges as quickly as possible; but even if there were no difficulties in the way, such as money and technicalities and so on, the programme would still need to be spread over several years. I should like to add that wherever possible and wherever suitable, exchanges are being, and will be, converted direct from manual to S.T.D. It will not always be possible in the intermediate stages to cut out what one might call ordinary automatic.
The effort to build and equip exchanges, with all the other work that goes on with it, is really considerable, and to compress the programme into a shorter space of time will not only be extremely difficult but will also have the effect, of increasing redundancy problems, both while it is being done and when it is finished. At the moment that problem is fully under control, and I should like to recognise now the full co-operation and help that we have had from the staff associations on the matter. Briefly, then, we are aiming to spread our investment resources over a carefully prepared long-term plan of exchange mechanisation and at the same time to expand trunk and local networks to meet the increasing demands which are being made by existing customers as well as the new demand for service. I hope I have managed to make it clear that this sort of balance is essential.
My Lords, the noble Viscount had a final point—namely, about the security of mail in transit. I should like to deal

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with this. He will understand if I do not go into any detail of the measures that the Post Office now takes, or in fact that it proposes to take—I think it would be extremely unwise to do so—but I would say one or two things. In the course of a year 350 million bags of mail are moved about this country, and with operations on that scale it would be extremely difficult to avoid some losses. We all know—there have been debates about it, quite rightly, in your Lordships' House—that crime in general has recently been on the increase, and I do not think that we can hope that the Post Office will escape some share of that increase. But, on the other hand, I am glad to say that whilst in the year ended on March 31, 1959, the number of bags lost was somewhat greater than had been the case in the two previous years, the loss in all those three years was about half what it was in the early 1950's. That applies both to ordinary mail and to registered mail.
The problem of safeguarding the mail is not easy. I do not want to sound defeatist, but I do not know whether it can ever be finally settled. One has to go on trying to devise new procedures and arrangements to give security and to keep on checking them and overhauling them. Even then, there is room for a human failure which is bound to occur from time to time. I do not want to sound defeatist or complacent. So long as there are any losses at all, the Post Office cannot be satisfied. I would assure your Lordships that the Post Office, which in this matter has the willing co-operation of its staffs and works closely with the police and with the British Transport Commission, fully realises the great importance of providing maximum security, and proposes to go on doing its utmost to do so. My Lords, I think I have now said enough—
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I accept the noble Lord's reply in general on that point, but I think that the specific incident which I mentioned, as reported in the Press, seemed to require some precautionary measures in future to deal with that particular class of incident. I hope that an indication can be given that that will be done.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am certainly most ready to listen, as will be my right honourable friend, to what the noble Viscount has said. I cannot believe that action would not be taken on what he suggests—in fact, I cannot think that action has not already been taken. But one must remember that this is a constant war, and that sometimes somebody scores a small victory. One hopes that, on the whole, one is going to score many more victories oneself. The noble Viscount need not feel worried that the matter will be just left and that more and more will be stolen.
I feel that that is enough to make good my claim that in the main fields of Post Office activities progress is going on. In that, I believe, we are very fortunate in having the fullest co-operation and support from the staff associations. We are very fortunate in the abilities of the officers of the Post Office at all levels who are all working very hard to improve the service. We know that it is not yet perfect. We can only go on trying to improve, and an inducement to do so will be the words used by the noble Viscount with which I should like to associate myself—particularly as Christmas is approaching—in praise of the people of the Post Office. I would wish to endorse what has been said by the noble Viscount and other noble Lords upon that.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.

COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTERS' CONFERENCE
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, with the permission of the House, I will now give to your Lordships the text of a statement which has just been made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place. It is as follows:
"I have been in communication with the Prime Ministers of the other Commonwealth countries and we have now arranged to hold a meeting in London, beginning on the 3rd May, 1960. I feel sure that the House will join with me in welcoming this event to which we all attach the greatest importance."
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am sure that we on these Benches all agree with that
LORD REA: And, I am sure, my Lords, that all the rest of us agree with it also.

JUDICIAL PENSIONS BILL
3.42 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2:
Retiring age
2.—(1) A person who holds an office listed in the First Schedule to this Act shall vacate that office on the day on which he attains the age of seventy-five years.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved to add to subsection (1):
"Provided that this subsection shall not apply to any Lord of Appeal in Ordinary."
The noble Lord said: I have put down this Amendment in order that Her Majesty's Government may have the opportunity of withdrawing, or perhaps I should say of modifying, a proposal which, it seems to me, if carried into practice will seriously damage the development of our great legal institution, the Common Law, which in some ways is our greatest contribution to the culture and civilisation of the world. I feel a good deal of diffidence in speaking in the presence of so many eminent members of my profession.
On the occasion of the Second Reading we had the advantage of a very clear and admirable speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid. I appreciate that some of his colleagues on the judicial side of the House might have a certain diffidence in following up what was said, but I am sure that I am expressing the opinion of your Lordships as a whole in hoping that they will not allow that diffidence to stand too much in the way, because obviously they are much better qualified than I and most other Members of your Lordships' House to express an opinion about these problems. I appreciate also that there
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is a certain inconvenience, because it was explained that there was some urgency about this matter, and it can be seen that the legislative programme and the administrative arrangements following thereon will to some extent, possibly, be put out of joint if this is carried through. But it seems to me that the efficient and rational development of our legal system is of such importance to the lives of our own people—and not only our own people, for this applies to our fellow-citizens all over the Commonwealth, which is very much affected by our Common Law—that I ought not to allow this difficulty to stand in the way of bringing this matter before your Lordships this afternoon.
Your Lordships will have noticed that the Amendment which I have put down applies to Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. In the Second Reading debate we discussed the age of retirement as a general matter, and I advanced the view that it might be a good thing to have an age of retirement for Judges working in Courts of first instance, since they have to handle witnesses, deal with juries and very often travel about on circuit, and in other ways to do a great deal of fatiguing work. Those Judges might well be subjected to a retiring age, possibly even lower than that provided in this Bill. Another point which I believe is very relevant here is that the Judge of first instance almost invariably is working on his own, and if his mind wanders for even a minute, as tends to occur more and more as a man gets older, he may well make a mistake which could be serious. In Courts of Appeal, on the other hand, where the Judges sit in groups, should that happen almost invariably one or other of the Judge's colleagues will bring the point to his notice and the matter will be put right. I suggested, therefore, that while trial Judges, so to speak, should be within this compulsory retiring age, appeal Judges should not.
The noble and learned Viscount was not disposed to accept that opinion, though he did not, I think, deny the substance of the argument. But he said that in the general deployment of the judicial power he sometimes had to use Judges in appeal work and sometimes in work involving witnesses, and matters of that kind. Obviously there is a point of substance from the administrative point

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of view, though I am not completely convinced by the argument. If one considers the actual situation in the Court of Appeal one finds that a Judge there rarely continues beyond the age of 75. The only outstanding case which occurs to my mind was that of Lord Justice Scrutton, certainly one of the great Common Law lawyers of the century, who many of us thought would have adorned your Lordships' House; so that, so far as the Court of Appeal is concerned, this is a rather academic matter.
It seems to me, therefore, that the substance of this problem is here in your Lordships' House, and that if we could withdraw this House from what lawyers call the"mischief" of this Bill we should have achieved the major objective. I cannot personally see any good reason why this House should be within the scope of this particular clause in the Bill. This House is not, of course, part of the Supreme Court of Justice. From earliest times your Lordships' House has exercised a supreme appellate jursidiction over the superior Courts of England and has done so as the High Court of Parliament. All your Lordships are members of the High Court of Parliament, and at one time any one of your Lordships would have sat on judicial work had he felt inclined to do so. But it has been the convention for some years that only Lords of Appeal in Ordinary and those others of your Lordships with judicial experience should sit on judicial matters.
In fact, Lords of Appeal form the nucleus of the House for Judicial work. As noble Lords will know, they are usually promoted from the Courts of Appeal or from the Court of Session, although that is not invariably the rule. We have on the Judicial side of your Lordships' House most eminent Members who have never sat as Judges in the ordinary way. Many here will remember Lord MacMillan, who for years rendered most distinguished service here; and he is not in any way a unique example in respect of this particular matter. So your Lordships' House stands apart, so to speak, from the ordinary, normal court system, and the exclusion of Law Lords from this compulsory retiring age can be easily justified, both on the logic of history and on the logic of membership. It is perfectly true, however, that the great majority of Lords of Appeal come here
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on promotion; and it is therefore natural that many of them (although of course there are quite a number of exceptions) should be approaching 70—certainly nearer 70 than 60—when they arrive in your Lordships' House. Most men who are appointed to the Judicial Bench at all are fifty-ish. It has been said by a very eminent authority that it takes a Judge five years to learn his work, and then it will probably be another three or five years before he reaches the Court of Appeal. In the Court of Appeal he will work for a further five or eight years, so that it is likely that, when he reaches your Lordships' House, he will in fact be approaching 70. And, of course, it takes quite a number of years before a Judge in your Lordships' House, a Lord of Appeal, reaches the height of his powers.
The work of this House, I think every lawyer will agree, is in many ways different from the work in the Court of Appeal; and, naturally, even a very able man does not immediately reach the heights of his powers as a Judicial Member of your Lordships' House. The result is that we find that we have always working in this House, ever since this system started, a substantial number of very eminent lawyers who are well over 70, over 75 or even into the 80's. Lord Reid, in his speech on Second Reading, suggested that research would amply bear out this view. I have not myself had time to conduct researches as I should have liked to do, but I have a certain amount of information which seems to me to be interesting and valuable, and I should just like to make a few points in relation to it.
At first, right back in the 1870's when this system started, there were only two Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. Both of them, it is interesting to note, were Scotsmen: Lord Blackburn, who came from the English Bench, and Lord Gordon. Lord Blackburn was undoubtedly one of the greatest lawyers of the last century. It is interesting that he retired voluntarily at the age of 73, at the height of his powers; and as the Dictionary of National Biography says, his retirement was regarded by the profession as an irreparable loss. He lived substantially longer. One interesting thing is that at that time there was no Act which allowed a retired Lord of Appeal to retain his membership of your Lordships' House. Lord Blackburn had

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to have a special Act passed so that he might come back to your Lordships' House, so to speak; and ever since then a Lord of Appeal has remained after his retirement, a Member of your Lordships' House. It is only fair to say that Lord Blackburn's view that he should retire fairly early was not peculiar to him. It has been followed in a number of other cases. I should not like to say how many, but Lord Blanesburgh, Lord Roche and Lord Maugham all retired, I think, before reaching 75. So there has been that view, and men who have felt that they have reached the retiring age have not hesitated to retire in good time.
Lord Blackburn was succeeded as a Lord of Appeal by Lord M'Naghten, a man at least as eminent on the equity side as was Lord Blackburn on Common Law. Lord M'Naghten came to your Lordships.' House straight from the Bar, without intermediary practice as a Judge, and served your Lordships' House with the highest distinction for some 25 years, retiring several years over 80. He certainly made a number of outstanding contributions to this House after he had passed his 75th birthday. Of almost equal eminence is another equity lawyer, Lord Lindley, to whom in particular we owe a great deal of the development of our Company Law. Lord Lindley had staved in the Court of Appeal but he did not come here until he was 71, and he was working here with great distinction until, at the age of 77, two years over the age in this Bill, he sustained a severe fall, damaged his head and had to retire. At that time he was at the height of his powers, and there cannot be any question that he would have worked in your Lordships' House until over 80 if it had not been for this accident. Slightly later we had the great Lord Moulton, who died in harness working here at the age of 77. At the same age died Lord Acton and Lord Porter, two outstanding commercial lawyers.
In my speech on the Second Reading I referred to the longevity of commercial lawyers and mentioned the name of Lord Sumner. I was wrong about Lord Sumner. In fact he was not 75 at the time I had in mind: I believe that he died at the age of 75—again, I think, in harness. However, at the time that I was thinking of I was coming a good deal to your Lordships' House, because I was then devilling for an eminent commercial
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advocate; and at the time I am thinking of, which is in the fairly early 'twenties, it might well be that the Court assembled here would consist of Lord Finlay, an ex-Lord Chancellor, who did not become Lord Chancellor until he was 74 and who at this time was about 80 and still a Judge of the greatest ability; Lord Dunedin, who was going on for 80 at this time and retired several years later, I think at 82; Lord Atkinson, who retired at 83, a very common-sense lawyer who certainly retained his faculties until well over 80; Lord Craigmyle, who at the time was over 75 and who I think retired at 79.
The Scottish element remains a prominent feature, because not only do we get Law Lords from Scotland direct from the Court of Session, but they also come from our own Court of Appeal; and as a matter of interest it is probable that over long periods of time there have been more Scotsmen than Englishmen as Lords of Appeal in your Lordships' House. So your Lordships will see that in the early 1920's this Court, your Lordships' House in its Judicial capacity, was almost entirely composed of Judges over 75; and I defy anybody to find a more able Court than that was. All who were practising before the House at the time appreciated enormously the work that was done. Others who had passed the 75 mark by several years were Lord Russell of Killowen, 78; Lord Romer, 77 and Lord MacMillan, 79; and Lord Wright, another very great commercial lawyer, who I am glad to say is still with us, was working here until he was over 80. Those were all Lords of Appeal. But there have been several ex-Lord Chancellors who have rendered outstanding service after they have passed the age of 80. I have already mentioned Lord Finlay. Lord Maugham was over 70 when he became Lord Chancellor.
Perhaps the most remarkable of all was the great Lord Halsbury, who after he was 80 years of age commenced the illuminating series of judgments on the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906—a series which did more to build up the jurisprudence of that Act than anything else. He regarded the Act as the workman's charter, and he came to it with a very liberal attitude. That is a very interesting fact, because the politics of a man are not necessarily reflected in

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the liberality of his approach to legal problems in any sort of way. Nor is it our experience on the whole, I think, that a Judge becomes more conservative with age. Once he has taken up a certain line, whether it is a liberal line or a conservative line, in respect of the development of the law, he seems to pursue that line during the remainder of his career. The service which Lord Halsbury rendered in connection with this Act of 1906 is the sort of valuable service which is provided by Members of this House: because this was not an Act that was in any way unusual. Acts of social legislation of this kind have to be expounded authoritatively in a way which can be effectively done only in your Lordships' House.
My Lords, I have referred to those former Lord Chancellors to show how very lively and able a man's mind may be legally after he has passed the age of 75. Of course I realise perfectly well that ex-Lord Chancellors continue to serve in this House after they have become pensioners, and I take it that the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, after they have reached the compulsory retiring age, will still be entitled to sit in your Lordships' House. But I am afraid that in most cases they will retire to their estates, and it is unlikely that we shall have the advantage of their help here, even if it is theoretically possible that we should do so. This would provide material for an interesting research if I had the time to do it. In the case of Lord Blackburn, although an Act was passed enabling him to come back here, I have looked through the Law Reports for the three years after his retirement and, so far as I can see, he never did come back. The same applies to Lord Blanesburgh and Lord Roche. I have looked through the Law Reports covering the couple of years after they retired, and I cannot find that they ever came back. So I am afraid that, while theoretically this power to continue sitting after retirement somewhat mitigates the mischief of this provision, in practice it would not help us very much.
I am afraid that I have detained your Lordships for some time, but I feel that, before I sit clown, I ought to say a few further words about the significance of the Judicial work of this House. This House is more than a mere court of
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appeal, deciding whether or not the Court of Appeal is right: it takes an essential and outstanding part in the development of the law. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, made this point very clearly in his admirable speech the other day when he referred to its contributions of permanent value in the development of our law. Perhaps it is only lawyers who can appreciate this to its full extent, and perhaps it is only those of us who have worked in the university law schools, and have taught there, who appreciate it to its fullest value. I hope, therefore, that if I try to say a few words more about it to your Lordships, I shall not be attempting to"teach my grandmother" too much.
The law which affects the lives of ordinary people—the law relating to contracts and civil wrongs, to many aspects of property, family life, and matters of that sort—is Judge-made law. The principles and rules have been worked out by the Courts in relation to the changing needs of the community, and have been worked out in the main by a comparatively small number of great Judges. The problem of adjustment and development of the law is one of considerable nicety, calling for a maturity of judgment, great knowledge of affairs, and a poise which it is easier to recognise than to describe. Long practice and very long experience in the law are required in order to equip a man fully for this work—even a man who has the necessary eminence of intellect and the necessary judicial qualities to make a great Judge. The number of men who achieve this eminence is very small, but they do establish the milestones of legal development, and their work is of outstanding importance. During the years since the 1870's, when the present system was brought into being, all but a minute fraction of these men have worked in your Lordships' House. Their wisdom has redounded not only to the advantage of the people of this country, but to that of the citizens of every part of the Commonwealth; and not only of our own Commonwealth, but also of the United States of America, where they share with us the heritage of the Common Law.
My Lords, I think I have said enough to bring out the essential fact that this wisdom, this maturity, is at its best between the ages of 70 and 80; and I

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hope that your Lordships will feel that this House and this country ought not to be deprived of the services of these great men, as they will be if this clause of the Bill goes through as it stands. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 23, at end insert—
("Provided that this subsection shall not apply to any Lord of Appeal in Ordinary".)—(Lord Chorley.)
4.6 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: I find myself in complete disagreement with my noble friend who has just spoken. Having listened to him, one would imagine that the ideal age for a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary is somewhere between 77 and 85, and that until you have reached the age of 77 you are not really qualified to act with that wisdom and knowledge of affairs, and so on, that is required. I am bound to say that, much as I admire Lords of Appeal in Ordinary—and I do, and we all do—they are human beings, and subject to all the weaknesses and frailties of ordinary human beings. Even my noble friend had to admit that sometimes their minds wander, but he consoled himself with the fact that there was always another Lord of Appeal in Ordinary whose mind would not be wandering at the same time and who could put him right. But it might happen, by sheer coincidence, that the minds of all the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary might be wandering at the same time—and then what happens?
However, seriously, we have made it a rule—and I hope it will become law—that Judges of the High Court will retire at 75; and a Judge of the High Court is of the same quality and the same calibre as a Judge in the Court of Appeal and a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. There is no sudden chemical or other change in a Judge once he becomes a member of the Court of Appeal or of the House of Lords which enables him to carry on longer than an ordinary Judge. As I said on the occasion of the Second Reading of the Bill, there is no Providence which particularly protects Members of the House of Lords from the ravages of old age; and while one would admit that there have been outstanding Judges—of course there have been—and outstanding judgments, I would ask noble Lords to
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consider whether, if they had not been there to deliver these outstanding judgments, other Judges would not have appeared and delivered equally outstanding judgments. Let us bear in mind that every time a Judge of 85 is sitting as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary he is depriving a younger man of the opportunity of doing the same thing: and, other things being equal, I would rather have a man of between 65 and 70 sitting as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary than a man of 77 to 85.
We must consider the position of the Bench as a whole. I said on Second Reading and I should like to say again that, in many cases, members of the Bar make a great sacrifice in becoming High Court Judges, and one of the inducements—and I think that we ought to hold out inducements to them—is the opportunity which may arise of their becoming members of the Court of Appeal and Members of your Lordships' House. These are perfectly honourable inducements for Judges to look forward to, and it ought to be something which a man who is eminent at the Bar should be able to hope for; but if his path to promotion is blocked by men of the age that my noble friend has in mind, that is going to act as a deterrent to a man who may think of becoming a Judge.
We have all known cases of barristers whose earnings have been £30,000 or £40,000 a year who have made the sacrifice and become Judges at £5,000 a year, as the salary now is. They have done this because of many factors, but one of them is the hope of becoming in due course a Member of your Lordships' House. If we are going to have this solid block barring promotion, it is going to act to the great detriment of men joining the Bench. My noble friend seems to imagine that the only qualification for a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary is the ability to deliver eminent judgments, but even a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary has to listen to Counsel and weigh up evidence. He must have his mind very much on the matter before him, and in the nature of things there are bound to be most difficult cases coming before your Lordships' House. The easy ones are disposed of earlier. He must have great patience and health and many other qualities besides the ability to think clearly.

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I do not dispute that we have had many examples of men who have satisfied every qualification required; nevertheless, I do not think that a Judge himself is necessarily the best person to decide whether he ought to retire or not. I suppose that most of us, when we have reached the age when we ought to retire, feel that we are quite competent to carry on. Few of us are big enough to admit that the time has come when we ought to retire. When there is an automatic age limit of 75—and that is, in all conscience, high enough—it will not depend on the Judges; it will not be a matter for discretion; it will simply be the case that the time has come and a Judge will retire accordingly. I hope that your Lordships will not be impressed by the case that has been made and will allow the Bill to go forward as it stands.
4.14 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, put his case with great knowledge and with deep affection for the law. At first sight, he made an attractive case; but when one looks into it, its attractions grow less. I believe that it would be invidious to our Judges if there were such a distinction as this. This is illustrated by what happened when the latest appointment was made, when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Jenkins, was elevated to your Lordships' House as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. He had a great"send-off" from the Court of Appeal, where he had presided with much distinction for many years—an almost tearful"send-off"—yet within a week or so, rather to his embarrassment, I believe, after what had been said to him only a week or so before, he found himself back in the Court of Appeal presiding over a hearing, owing to the fact that there were so few Judges available at the Court of Appeal.
The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, bases part of his case on the great contribution made to the Commonwealth by Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. So far as the Commonwealth is concerned, I feel that there is great merit in having an age limit, and it may be that the age limit ought to be less than 75. The Lords of Appeal in Ordinary are the core of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council; and as your Lordships' House is the Supreme Court of Appeal for the United Kingdom, so is the Privy Council
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the Supreme Court of Appeal for most of the Commonwealth. With the rapid means of communication available today, it is my belief that if the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council were really to do its job properly, it should not meet in Whitehall all the time but should meet periodically in the various Commonwealth countries.
From my own experience, I know that many cases would be brought before the Privy Council if they sat from time to time in the Colonial and Commonwealth countries. The fact that the Judicial Committee always sit in London and the expense and uncertainty of coming here have precluded many people from taking advantage of the fact that there is this great Court. Not only from the point of view of justice to the individual litigant but also from the point of view of binding the Commonwealth together, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council should meet in the main cities of the various Commonwealth countries to hear appeals. That would mean that members of the Judicial Committee should be comparatively young men. It could not be expected that gentlemen of 80 should go flying off to Nigeria or Australia. So that is one reason why we ought to have an even earlier retiring age than in this Bill. I presume that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor is going to reject this Amendment and I would support him in doing so.
4.19 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, moved this Amendment in a most interesting way, but I should like, fundamentally and most heartily, to join issue with him on whether his Amendment is necessary for the furtherance of the Common Law or the administration of justice. I should like to take him up, first, on the point he made that, broadly, the best work of Judges is given, in the bracket instanced by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, between 77 and 85 or, as I am prepared to agree, in the late 70's.
LORD CHORLEY: With respect, I never said that that was so. I said merely that in a number of cases very good work indeed was done by men of that age, and that it is a pity that we should be deprived of that service.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think the noble Lord will find that, carried away by his enthusiasm, he put it a little stronger than he now believes. But I am quite prepared to meet that argument. The noble Lord will appreciate that that reduced enormously both the width and the force of his argument. If the argument was, as I understood it to be from the noble Lord, that you need five years as a Judge of first instance, eight to ten years in the Court of Appeal and then five years in the House of Lords to come to judicial maturity, then that is a wider argument. If it is simply that some people at some time have given important judgments after they were 75, that is a much narrower and less compelling argument. But in case other noble Lords got the same impression as I did from the speech of the noble Lord, I should like to deal with that point.
The noble Lord suggested that members of the Court of Appeal came to the House of Lords at a rather late age. If he will look at it again, I think he will observe that many Judges have been Lords of Appeal for many years before reaching the age of 75, let alone the later age at which some of them retire. The noble Lord mentioned Lord Blanes-burgh. He was only 62 when he came to the House of Lords; Lord Dunedin was 64: and the second Lord Russell of Killowen was 62. It would be an error to believe that these Judges were only in the plenitude of their powers after they reached the age of 75. The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has, I think, pointed out that recently (and your Lordships will have in mind modern and existing examples that you see every day) Members have come to this House under the age of 60. But in the past, one of those whom I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, had in mind was the father of the present Lord Chief Justice, the first Lord Parker of Waddington, a very great Judge indeed, who came to the House of Lords at 56. Lord Sumner, whom the noble Lord mentioned on Second Reading and corrected himself to-day, came to the House of Lords at 54. While Lord Chancellors are sui generis (if I may claim to be in that category) the House will remember that my noble predecessor, the first Lord Birkenhead, came to my office at 47; and Lord Haldane came at 56.
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But there is one other aspect of the matter that I hope will appeal to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, because I should much rather convert him than merely defeat him on a Division. He, like myself, has a great love for the spread and development of the Common Law, and I think he would agree with me that most of us who have that affection see its development in cases which have especially remained in our minds from our student days. I have just taken some examples, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, will think that they come within the category of great cases that are milestones in the law. I think he will agree with me that Entick v. Carrington, one of the great cases that limited the powers of the Executive, is one of these. Lord Camden was 51 when he gave judgment in that case, which was, I suppose, one of the greatest curbs on the powers of the Executive that the courts of law have ever imposed. I am sure the noble Lord will agree with me that Somersett's Case, the case of the freedom of the slave, is probably the best known judgment that the great Lord Mansfield ever gave. He was 67 when he gave that judgment.
The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, mentioned Lord Macnaghten, and I should not yield to anyone in my admiration and praise for Lord Macnaghten as a great Judge. I think the noble Lord will agree that the case that is most often quoted in causes concerning charities is Pemsel's case—certainly I shudder to think of the number of times that I have quoted it myself—which is a great guide in that field of the law. Lord Macnaghten was 61 when he gave his opinion in Pemsel's case, having already been in this House for some time. All the Law Lords in Salomon v. Salomon, a case of vital importance in the development of company law, were under 75.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, is concerned with the industrial history of the country. As a matter of arithmetic (I hope and think that I have it right) the average age of the Law Lords in Allen v. Flood—and there were nine of them, including Lord Halsbury—was 68. I think the noble Lord would agree with me that one of the most interesting developments in our jurisprudence was the way the law dealt with problems of war after 100 years since Lord Stowell

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dealt with the problems of war at the time of the Napoleonic wars; and I think he would agree that the opinions in Zamora dealt with that problem in an outstanding way. Lord Parker of Waddington was 59 when he gave his opinion in that case, and Lord Sumner was 57.
But if I come to later days, just beyond the period to which the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, referred, again I think he would agree with me that the imaginative treatment of the law of torts and the law of negligence in Donoghue v. Stevenson makes it one of the most discussed cases of modern times; and that was in 1932. In Donoghue v. Stevenson, the average age of the Law Lords was 64; and the oldest. Lord Buckmaster, was 71. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, will acquit me of going through to find cases that suit my point of view. I think he will agree with me that these are all famous and outstanding cases which we all have in mind and to which we have all referred constantly.
There is another point which I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has got right, even from the point of view of research, and certainly not from the point of view of intention of retired Judges. As he said, it is possible and often done for the Lord Chancellor of the day to invite retired Judges to sit judicially. I should like to say—and I am sure I am speaking for all my predecessors—how grateful we are to our retired colleagues for their generous help. If I might give an example, in the five and a quarter years that I have been on the Woolsack I have been indebted to Lord Porter who came back, and to Lord Birkett, who had not been a Law Lord, but who had been a Lord Justice of Appeal, and was given a Peerage, who has helped me constantly. In the days before I was Lord Chancellor, Lord Wright came back after retirement. I remember that he came back especially to adjudicate on the petition of appeal in the Australian Banks case, in which I was engaged as counsel. It is therefore possible—and not only possible, but probable and natural—for them to be available; and if one had a subject which was specially their metier one would undoubtedly ask them, if, of course, one was satisfied that they wanted to come and that their
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help was suitable, to return. I should have said that that need for occasional help at the selection of the Lord Chancellor of the day is no argument against the imposition of a retiring age for the ordinary permanent members of the Judicial component of the House of Lords.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, to-day put the point of promotion which I had touched upon on Second Reading, and the really serious aspect which that has. I do not want to repeat the general arguments that I advanced on Second Reading, but I want to draw attention to them. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has already pounced on, and dealt with, the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, about the wandering mind. In defence of my colleagues and myself, I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that a wandering mind is not regarded as a good quality in the ultimate Court of Appeal, either in the House of Lords or the Judicial Committee, even if the wandering mind is of only one member of the Court. I will not go further, because Lord Silkin dealt with other possibilities, and I need not repeat his point.
There is, however, one very important aspect of this question upon which the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, touched, and I should like to develop it from another point of view. Even if it is not possible at the present moment to have the peripatetic Judicial Committee for which he advanced an interesting argument—and there are obviously many, not all truly political, and I do not mean Party political, arguments in favour of what the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, implied—it is vitally important that those who come from the realms of the Commonwealth and the Colonies should have complete confidence and be completely satisfied with the tribunal before whom they appear.
As the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, said, the Privy Council is manned regularly by the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. In general, in Commonwealth countries, both in the independent members and in the Colonies, there is a retiring age for Judges. It is true that there is no retiring age for Judges of the Federal High Court of Australia, but there are retiring ages in the different States. As the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, knows, in certain cases there is a direct appeal from the

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State Courts. Canada, which has abandoned the appeal—but we have had still over the years what we call a phasing out of Canadian appeals; I sat in one only a few months ago—has a limit of 75. In New Zealand, which still maintains the appeal to the Privy Council, there is, I understand, a retiring age of 72. I went through all the details before, and I shall not trouble your Lordships with further examples.
It is, I think, important that those who come here, and by coming here constitute an important Commonwealth link, should be completely satisfied and have complete confidence in the tribunal. In general, I would say to Lord Chorley that the possible sacrifice of Judicial talent makes it all too easy to overestimate the loss and does not outweigh the fundamental principle that the administration of the law should be in the hands of men who are not past their prime in the estimation of the general body of citizens, and that the exceptional cases—because that is really what the argument now comes down to—do no more than prove this general rule.
I refer to, without elaborating, the difficulty that I mentioned in replying to the debate on the Second Reading. Practical experience has shown that a Judge does not always know himself when the time has come for him to go, and on the need to make way for younger men to avoid promotion blocks which may prevent first-class Judicial material from being promoted. That is a point which one must face. I tried to face it on the Second Reading debate, and I do so again. The only way to face that is to have a retiring age of this kind, and I hope your Lordships will not accept the Amendment. In fact, I go further than that and ask the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, not to press it, in view of the answers he has had from the three quarters of this House.
4.38 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: I am sorry not to have had any support for this Amendment. I do not want to take up much more of your Lordships' time, but I want to say a word or two in answer to the arguments made against me. I do not think my noble friend Lord Silkin gave much attention to what I was saying; it seemed to me that he had prepared his speech in advance. I was not for a
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moment suggesting that all the Lords of Appeal should stay at work until they are over the age of 80. What I was saying was that the system established in the 1870's had worked very well indeed. It had led to a proportion of the Law Lords making outstanding contributions after they had reached the ago of 75—a proportion of them. I was not suggesting that they did not begin to do their best work until they were over the age of 75, or that all of them stayed until they were over 80. That is obviously not true. But it seems to me that it is rather damaging, to interfere with a system which has worked so well and has enabled a substantial proportion of the Law Lords to make these contributions after the age of 75.
I have always supported Lord Ogmore's suggestion that the Privy Council should go round, and I hope that the authorities will give attention to this point. While I can see that it would be rather difficult to ask Members of your Lordships' House who were over 75 to go, there is always a sufficient number in the 60's, as the noble and learned Viscount pointed out, to get together a Privy Council which could in fact go round the Commonwealth. I do not think there would be any difficulty in getting the younger Members to embark on work of that kind.
The noble and learned Viscount quoted a number of outstanding cases in which, I quite agree, the speeches had been made by Members of your Lordships' House who were in their sixties, but it was suprising how many of those outstanding men had gone on and worked in this House after reaching 75 years of age. The two speeches in the Donoghue v. Stevenson case, which I agree is the most interesting case, are those by Atkin and Macmillan, both of whom worked here several years after they were 75. I think both the noble and learned Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, were very unfair to me over my suggestion about the wandering mind. I was saying that occasionally the mind of an old man may wander; but whereas in the case of a Judge of first instance that may wreck the whole case because he is sitting by himself, in the Court of Appeal there are others there and obviously it is not such a serious matter. However, it is getting late and I see that

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I have not received the support I had hoped for and indeed rather expected, and therefore I ask your Lordships' leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether the clause shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD SALTOUN: One likes to understand exactly what one is doing, and I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are quite satisfied that if the clause remains in its present form they will always be able to arrange that a Judge is not in the middle of trying a case when he becomes 75 years of age. Will they always be able to arrange that, in all circumstances? Or, if the clause remains in its present form, will the Judge be able to finish the case in which he is engaged before his retirement becomes effective?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I can assure my noble friend, Lord Saltoun, that we shall always be able to deal with the problem he has raised and he need not worry about it. Which way it will be dealt with may differ in different Courts, but we can deal with it.
LORD SALTOUN: Thank you.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed. Bill reported without amendment.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of December 10), Bill read 3a, and passed.

COMMONWEALTH SCHOLARSHIPS BILL
4.46 p.m.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of December 10), Bill read 3a, and passed.

SEA FISH INDUSTRY BILL
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of December 10), Bill read 3a, and passed.

LORD HIGH COMMISSIONER (CHURCH OF SCOTLAND) BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
WATER OFFICERS COMPENSATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

PROPOSED NEW DARTMOOR PRISON
4.50 p.m.
LORD STONHAM LORD STONHAM rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the proposal to build a new"Dartmoor" adjacent to the present prison at Princetown is strongly opposed by the Prison Officers' Association, and whether, before proceeding further with the proposed plans, they will appoint an independent committee of investigation with power to make recommendations. The noble Lord said: My Lords, you will have noticed that in my Question I refer to opposition by the Prison Officers' Association to the building of a new prison adjacent to the existing one at Dartmoor. But since my Question was tabled, I have learnt that there is strong opposition to this proposal by a number of amenity associations and organisations. For example, from Lady Sayer, the Chairman of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, I learned that that body is strongly opposed to the proposal and that, in fact, a memorandum, of which Lady Sayer was good enough to send me a copy, has been sent to the Home Secretary.
From the same source I learned that the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society has officially resolved to object to the proposal, and that officers of a number of other societies who have not yet had the opportunity of meeting have already, unofficially, forecast that their organisations will object to it—namely, The Council for the Preservation of Rural England. The Youth Hostels' Association, The Ramblers' Association and the

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Dartmoor Rangers. Therefore, those who have an immediate practical interest in that proposal and those whose interests lie in their strong desire to preserve for the enjoyment of our people the amenities of Dartmoor are equally associated in these protests.
The only Government statement that I have been able to trace about the future of Dartmoor Prison is in paragraph 91 of the White Paper, Penal Practice in a Changing Society (Cmnd. 648), where, under the heading of"Special Projects" it promises—I am quoting—
"a complete reconstruction of Dartmoor, which is approaching the end of its serviceable life."
This was not taken as meaning the building of a completely new prison. Indeed, as recently as December 3, the Home Secretary, in replying to a Question in another place, again used the word"reconstruction". But I understand that the Director of Works of the Prison Commission has confirmed that it is the intention to build a completely new prison. This would be very welcome; but what is objected to most strongly is that that prison should be put immediately, or approximately, adjacent to the existing one.
I understand that as recently as last Thursday, December 10, there was a private meeting in Dartmoor attended by representatives of seven local authorities and associations and including also the prison governor and a member of the Prison Officers' Association, which was presided over by Mr. R. D. Fairn, a Prison Commissioner, who said:
"The Prison Commissioners made it quite clear that they would pull down the old prison once the new prison was built, and they were anxious, in their rebuilding, Ito act as good neighbours."
What I am particularly concerned about in this regard is as to whether the Prison Commissioners are also anxious to act as good employers, because the prison officers have received with dismay and consternation the news that the new prison is to be built at Princetown, cheek by jowl with the old one.
As most of us are aware, Princetown Prison was built in 1806 to house French prisoners. For reasons which seemed good at the time, it was sited in the
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most desolate spot on Dartmoor—inaccessible, bleak and wild, 1,500 feet above sea level. In 1850 it was adapted for use as a convict station. For more than a century, it has loomed, grim and terrible, in people's minds, not so much because it has housed some of our worst types of criminal—because there are, in fact, far larger numbers of equally bad criminals quite safely and without pro test housed in prisons, such as Wandsworth, in the middle of large towns—but because of the association of the grim prison, with its bleak surroundings and the worse climate in England. It is to this wet, cold"hell" that the Government intends to condemn for perhaps another 150 years, not only prisoners, but generations of prison officers, their wives and children.
No one who is aware of the conditions could possibly countenance building another prison in this spot. Last year, 96·7 inches of rain fell at Princetown; and in one day last month, on November 25, 3·9 inches fell. Only the fish in Brighton Aquarium are wetter than that! It is not merely the wettest place in Britain, but one of the wettest in the world. In winter, fog or cloud is Perpetual and with snow and rain and continued condensation the life of officers, their families and prisoners is a misery. Since the war the Prison Commissioners have built 120 Cornish unit houses for the staff; but, however well they are built, nothing will stand up to the climatic conditions there. Owing to condensation, the walls in the houses have to be wiped down every day. If they are left two or three days fungus starts to grow.
Then there are the difficulties arising from isolation—the isolated nature of the spot. Princetown is 7½ miles from Tavistock, a little country town of about 6,000 people, and 15 miles from Plymouth, which is the nearest neighbouring town of any size. Since 1956 there has been no railway service to Princetown because it did not pay and, for economic reasons, had to be discontinued; so the village relies on a bus. This runs three times a day, except on Sundays—there is no bus on Sundays—and the last bus arrives back at Princetown at 7.32 o'clock in the evening. So a visit to the cinema or to a theatre is out of the question for members of the staff, except during the day time on their leave days.
It is true that officers get an inconvenience allowance of 18s. a week. This costs us taxpayers something like £10,000 a year, which it would not cost us if the prison was not in such an inaccessible spot. This 18s. a week is just about enough to take an officer and his wife into Plymouth and back on his leave day, and perhaps to afford something of a simple meal. Virtually nothing can be bought in the village except food and drink. There are four various kinds of provision shops in the village of Prince-town. It is true that something can be ordered in specially from other shops, but it is always more expensive, and for anything of any other character they must go either to Plymouth or to Tavistock.
There are other consequences which are far more serious. There is virtually no local employment. One prison officer's daughter works in Plymouth. She leaves Princetown at 7.30 in the morning and gets home at 7.32 in the evening, and out of her wage of £3 15s. a week she pays 26s. in fares. As we are well aware, not infrequently during the winter time the village is cut off for two or three days at a time because buses cannot get through. No dentist visits the village. A doctor comes for a surgery—in fact, two doctors come to the village and there are four surgeries a week, but certainly not on Wednesdays, and not on Saturdays or Sundays. If anybody wants a prescription dispensed it has to be done at Tavistock and sent on the next day by post. Of course, that cannot be done if the prescription is required urgently. Quite recently a doctor made out a prescription for some tablets for an officer. This prescription was urgent. His daughter walked all seven miles to Yelverton and most of the way back. At times these people could scarcely be more cut off if they lived in a lighthouse. Their children's education suffers, and standards are lower in the village school than in more populous places. I am aware that that is the case, unfortunately, with other village schools—not all, but some. The teachers are on the lowest pay scale and it is difficult to get anyone to stay long under such conditions. In fact, there have been three headmasters in the last five years.
In short, the Princetown prison officers and their famalies are deprived of most of the civilised amenities which people are entitled to expect—and that in a
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climate which only seals could endure with equanimity. It is small wonder that service at this prison is regarded by the staff almost as a punishment. Indeed, the Prison Commissioners have recognised that by limiting the"sentence" to five years. Even so, from time to time officers who are transferred to Dartmoor on promotion resign from the Service rather than tolerate a continuance of these conditions.
Surely it is also contrary to the whole spirit of the penal policy of Her Majesty's Government, as expressed in the White Paper, to subject prisoners to so much punishment in addition to what the Judge, no doubt very properly, awards. Brutal and dangerous men some of them most certainly are, but they are not more dangerous than thousands of others imprisoned safely in the heart of large towns like London; and I would submit that the conditions on Dartmoor can only increase their feelings of hopelessness and desperation, particularly as for practical purposes it is almost impossible for them to exercise their rights to receive visitors. They are, of course, entitled to receive visitors, but any visitors have to stay overnight in Princetown. For practical purposes, other prisoners have to accumulate their visits, and after a time they can be transferred to prisons in London—which means that a prison officer must come with them, at considerable expense—to receive their accumulated visit entitlements.
Apparently, Her Majesty's Government are willing—and I welcome this—to spend perhaps more than £1 million on a new prison, and I submit that if that is so it would be pure sadism to build it in the same spot. I would just quote two paragraphs from a memorandum prepared by the Dartmoor Preservation Association. Paragraph 5 says:
"The argument that the remoteness of the prison makes for public safety, and renders convicts' escapes more difficult, no longer holds good. Prisoners who escape almost invariably get clear away from Dartmoor, often in stolen cars, before being recaptured. A gaol at Princetown means no greater protection for the public than a gaol anywhere else, and less protection than an island gaol."
Paragraph 7 of the memorandum says:
"Finally, and in our submission undeniably, the building of a new permanent prison in the heart of a national park would be a disastrously unsuitable and incongruous development, and certain to lead to further developments of a cumulatively damaging kind. The damage wrought to amenity by the presence of the old

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prison is great, and increases yearly. The Prison Commissioners' interests are entirely at variance with the national interest in a national park. Ugly ancillary developments proliferate on the prison land, and appear to be outside all planning control. And, of course, the presence of the prison means, each summer, a concourse of sensation-seeking motorists who park their cars at vantage points from which, through binoculars, they can watch the convicts at work—as the convicts are well aware; a practice which certainly adds to the difficulties of the prison staff and the local police. A new prison would increase and emphasise these evils, and generate further disfigurement and degradation of the national park."
It might be asked:"What is the alternative?" Although it is not my business, perhaps, to suggest this, I would put forward two suggestions. The first is: let us end this evil Dartmoor tradition of a kind of land-locked"Devil's Island". Of course, the"bad hats" in Dartmoor are the same as the"bad hats" in other places. If Her Majesty's Government are determined to build a new prison, and I hope they are, let us build it on any suitable site in or adjacent to a town. That is what should be done if the Government are really in earnest about penal reform.
My second suggestion, as an alternative—and I admit that it is a second best although it may have more appeal to local authorities in Devon, the Devon County Council and the Tavistock Urban District Council, who, I believe, are very understandably concerned at the possible loss of rate revenue if the prison is shifted elsewhere—is that the new prison should be built at Hurdwick, outside the national park area and half a mile north of Tavistock. Your Lordships may recall that during the war there was a temporary army camp at Plasterdown, a hutted camp within the national park; and later there was a proposal by the Army authorities that that camp should be made permanent, but there were protests by the amenity associations and the project was dropped. At that time the Devon County Council suggested that the permanent camp should be built at Hurdwick, and that proposal was welcomed by Tavistock Urban District Council. The site is still there. There is room for farmland and even a disused quarry of the attractive Hurdwick stone, which had to be closed down for lack of labour—a disadvantage which, of course, would disappear if the prison were shifted to that area.
If, as may well be the case, the great argument by the Prison Commissioners is,
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"We have built 120 houses here"—in any case, they are unliveable-in, in that spot—"and we have spent £750,000 on them and cannot leave those houses", I would say that that is nonsense. If we are to spend more than £1 million on a new prison, and as the Prison Commissioners are to demolish and replace the old Devonshire house flats and build new houses, I say do not put them where no one can live in them in comfort and happiness, but move them to another place where prison officers and their families would have all the amenities of a small town. I submit that it is unthinkable that because there is now staff accommodation at Princetown the new prison must be built there.
I would ask Her Majesty's Government, in common justice and for the sake of the future of the Prison Service, to say to-night that the new Dartmoor will not be built at Princetown; or, if the noble Earl is not in a position to say that, that at least they will give an undertaking, as my Question asks, that they will appoint an independent committee to make a full public inquiry into the matter and to make recommendations in accordance with the evidence.
5.9 p.m.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, your Lordships will know that the noble Lord opposite is a very great expert on all matters concerning prisoners, and also on the Prison Service; and I am quite sure that those noble Lords who also have those interests—though alas! they are not in their seats this afternoon—will read his words with considerable interest. All that the noble Lord has said is well known to my right honourable friend and to all who have this problem of Prince-town in mind. It is a problem which the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, and others who have served in the post of Secretary of State for the Home Department in the last 25 years, have had upon their minds.
The White Paper to which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referred gave details of the Prison Commissioner's building programme, which included this possibility of rebuilding Dartmoor prison. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, then referred to the meeting which took place on December 10 last. It was no doubt as a result of that meeting, at

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which all the interested bodies were represented, including a representative from the Prison Officers' Association, that these objections to which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, referred have come forward. It was made quite clear at that meeting that after this particular scheme, the rebuilding scheme, had been considered representations could be made to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary by these bodies. And in fact many of the bodies have done so; and no doubt some of those representations are the reports the noble Lord opposite mentioned.
It was also made quite clear that the planning authorities would be consulted, following the usual procedure which is carried out for development of Crown property. That was made quite clear at those meetings. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary made clear on December 3 that he would consider whether it would be desirable for a public inquiry to be held to go into the Dartmoor Prison rebuilding proposals, and that consideration is still going on at this present moment. As the noble Lord opposite is probably aware, there is a Question down in another place on this subject. So I am afraid, my Lords, that I cannot tell him to-day whether the public inquiry can take place, because that matter is still under consideration. But I assure the noble Lord that if such a public
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inquiry should take place there will be some means whereby the prison officers down at Princetown Prison will be able to make their opinions heard at such a public inquiry—as I say, if it should take place.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl before he sits down, whether he is aware that at the meeting on December 10 no discussion on the site, the place of the site, was possible? It was only a question of discussing architectural problems. What the amenity associations and the Prison Officers' Association are concerned about is where the prison is going to be.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I think that is the difference between the policy decision and building decisions and proposals. They were actually building proposals that were discussed at the meeting on the 10th; and the various representatives went there, looked at the site and at all the proposals and plans to deal with it. It was definitely not a policy meeting. However, representations can come up from those bodies and will be considered by my right honourable friend, and I have no doubt that my right honourable friend will seriously consider what the noble Lord opposite has said, though practically all his information is already at his disposal.
House adjourned at fourteen minutes past five o'clock.