Lords Sitting of 12 February 1959

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE On the Woolsack.
Prayers

PRIVATE BILL STANDING ORDERS
3.5 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR)THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR) rose to move that the following Amendments be made in the Standing Orders relative to Private Bills, etc.:—
Standing Order 30A, page 24, line 19, leave out ("six inches") and insert ("not less than one inch")
line 23, leave out ("an Ordnance map on the scale of not ness than one inch to a mile")
Standing Order 216, page 87, line 44, at end insert ("Provided that no such Petition may be presented against a Manœuvres Order made under section one of the Manœuvres Act, 1958, and accordingly paragraph (6) hereof shall not apply to any such Order.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. The first two of the three Amendments to the Standing Orders relating to Private Bills which are contained in this Motion may, I hope, be taken together, because the second is consequential upon the first. The third Amendment is quite separate, and I will take that later.
Standing Order No. 30A deals with the question of Bills seeking powers to take water for water supplies, and the Standing Order at present requires the Promoters of those Bills to deposit a map showing the position of wells and other such-like works on a map of not less than six inches to a mile. It has been represented to me, and I think with considerable force, that this is an unnecessary requirement, partly because these details have already to be shown on other maps and so there is a certain amount of duplication. Another reason is that it is not always very easy to obtain up-to-date editions of six-inch maps, and I am satisfied that it would be sufficient if one-inch maps were used for this purpose as a minimum requirement. So I propose that that shall be the rule in future, doing
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away with the necessity for a six-inch map for this purpose. As I have said, the second Amendment is consequential and stands or falls with the first.
May I deal with the third Amendment, which also is designed to prevent duplication? On the Second Reading of the Land Powers (Defence) Bill on May 8 last year, the House was informed by the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, who was in charge of the Bill on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, that a private person aggrieved by a Manœuvres Order made under the Bill could, under Private Business Standing Order No. 216, petition the Special Orders Committee for relief, and that such an arrangement would merely have duplicated the right of audience before the Manœuvres Commission proposed by the Bill. The Land Powers (Defence) Bill has now been passed and has been consolidated into the Manœuvres Act, 1958, which received the Royal Assent on December 18 last. I accordingly propose now that Standing Order No. 216 should be amended by removing the right of persons aggrieved by a Manœuvres Order to petition the House and appear before the Special Orders Committee.
This Amendment is a very limited one. It retains the right of the Special Orders Committee to consider Manœuvres Orders in their public aspect and to report upon them to the House. All it does is to remove from that Committee their duty, if a petition is deposited against a Manœuvres Order, to hear the parties and to adjudicate upon the dispute. This duty, as I have already explained, is now taken over by the Manœuvres Commission.
I should like to add a short historical note. It may be of interest to your Lordships to know that between the years 1897 and 1939 Manœuvres Orders required an Address and did not go to the Special Orders Committee. In 1939, at the very beginning of the war, an Amendment was made to the Standing Orders of the House, to Standing Order No. 216, which required all draft Orders needing an Address, including, of course, a draft Order connected with manœuvres, to go in future to the Special Orders Committee. In fact, however, since 1939 no Manœuvres Orders have been made, so the point is not one that recurs very often, as your Lordships will at once see.
My Lords, I will add only this further comment. Your Lordships will require, I expect, to be satisfied that in the place of what is being taken away something satisfactory is being put, so I would draw the attention of the House, very briefly, to Section 6 of the Manœuvres Act, 1958. Your Lordships will there see, in subsection (1), that the Commission informs local authorities and invites representations from them when a Manœuvres Order is made. Under subsection (2) the local authorities inform the public and invite representations to be made, Under subsection (3), if there are representations a public inquiry must he held; and under subsection (5)—I would particularly draw your Lordships' attention to this point—the Secretary of State may delete or modify provisions precluding entry on to land made under subsection (3) of Section 5 of the same Act.
I think that is all I need say upon these Amendments. May I add just this? In this matter I must be, and indeed am, entirely neutral, and it is not for me to say whether this change ought to be made or not. I am proposing the Motion (of which I have given very long notice on the Order Paper), because it was suggested last summer that it should be done and it is my wish to help in every way possible. I merely suggest that the House may require to be satisfied either that the Act gives equal protection to occupiers of land or, if it does not do so, that it is right that it should not do so. Whether it does so or not is not for me to judge. I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name.
Moved, That the following Amendments be made in the Standing Orders relative to Private Bills, etc.:—
Standing Order 30A, page 24, line 19, leave out ("six inches") and insert ("not less than one inch")
line 23, leave out ("an Ordnance map on the scale of not less than one inch to a mile")
Standing Order 216, page 87, line 44, at end insert ("Provided that no such Petition may be presented against a Manœuvres Order made under section one of the Manœuvres Act, 1958, and accordingly paragraph (6) hereof shall not apply to any such Order.")—(Lord Merthyr.)
3.15 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, again we are most grateful to the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees for his care in
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explaining to the House the situation in regard to the Motion on the Order Paper. As to the first two items, one can understand the reason behind the Amendments. I expect that originally there was some particular reason for providing the amount of space given to the information to be deposited, and all I am concerned about is whether there has been due consultation— I hope and expect there has—with people, such as the Parliamentary Bar, who are accustomed to represent others at these inquiries. I imagine that they are not raising any objection to this change, With regard to the matter of Manœuvres Orders, I am obliged to the Clerk of the Parliaments in that I have been able to look at Section 6 of the Act of last year, and I should have thought that this matter is largely covered. However, there is always a sort of feeling at the back of one's mind that there ought not finally to be an inhibition against the private citizen from being able to ventilate a grievance in Parliament. Therefore I take it that, provided we are satisfied win the general procedure laid down in Section 6, it would be quite understood that if he liked to go to his local Member of Parliament and have a grievance directly represented, nothing in either Section 6 or in this Order would prevent him from doing so.
3.18 p.m.
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, there are two points in the speech of the noble Viscount to which I should like briefly to reply. First, about the maps, I can assure the noble Viscount that no objections have been received to this proposal. The main point there is that, these wells and other works have in any case to be shown on large-scale maps in another connection; therefore this requirement was duplication. This alteration is being made at the suggestion of Parliamentary agents. Passing to the other matter, the noble Viscount asked whether there was, by reason of this change, anything to prevent any person aggrieved from going to his Member of Parliament. Certainly there is nothing to prevent his going to his Member of Parliament; but I think it is only fair to say that I suppose, strictly speaking, that this change, technically at any rate, takes away the last word in the matter from Parliament and gives it to the Secretary of State. That is as I read it. If your Lordships will look at the last subsection to which I referred, you will see that it says that the Secretary of State

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may amend the Order. I take it that that means without the consent of Parliament. That is a technical matter, and if your Lordships wanted to pursue it, I should like to ask the representative of Her Majesty's Government to deal further with it, if necessary.
On Question, Motion agreed to: the said Standing Orders amended accordingly.

FOREIGN TRAVEL ALLOWANCE
3.19 p.m.
LORD REA: My Lords, I beg to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will now repeal the foreign travel allowance restrictions (with due safeguard against the improper movement of large capital sums), in order (a) that a large and unproductive amount of clerical work in passport, emigration and customs offices and in banks and similar organisations may be reduced; (b) that British subjects may travel abroad more freely and to the advantage of international understanding; and may be relieved of the anxiety that illness or accident abroad can involve them in grave but unnecessary financial difficulties; and (c) that foreign peoples may be discouraged from erroneously regarding the British as a penurious and niggardly nation.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would like to relax the currency restrictions on travel abroad as soon as possible, but he has also to consider other claims on our resources. The present restrictions involve a small amount of extra work by customs officers and in banks and travel agencies only, but this extra work would not be significantly affected by an increase in the basic allowance so Ion as safeguards have to be maintained against the unauthorised export of capital. Special arrangements are quickly and easily made to meet the needs of people who fall ill or have accidents abroad.
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The Government attach great importance to freeing private travel abroad from restrictions as a means of improving international understanding, and to this end only eighteen months ago the basic travel allowance was made available for visitors to the dollar area. Informed opinion abroad on these matters seems to be not that the British are a penurious and niggardly nation, but that we have adopted a liberal and yet prudent approach to our responsibilities.
LORD REA: My Lords, while thanking the noble Earl (but not very effusively) for his Answer, and disagreeing, very respectfully, with his last sentence, may I ask whether he would agree that the present restriction is really ineffectual, bearing in mind that most British tourists do not normally wish to spend more than £100, while it is, I think, common knowledge that those who do wish to exceed that amount resort to many kinds of subterfuge and evasion which bring the law into disrepute.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I would not say that that is as general as the noble Lord suggests. The object of having these restrictions, is, of course, that we have to have some form of control on the export of capital, and it does not mean very much more work when the authorities who have to deal with the matter consider also applications for extra foreign currency.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, do not Her Majesty's Government allow a British subject to spend as much money as he likes in buying French textiles, and why on earth should they stop him spending as much as he likes in travelling in France? Are Her Majesty's Government aware that in this matter of foreign travel they are displaying a contempt for personal freedom quite inconsistent with their professed philosophy?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I have great sympathy with the views of my noble friend, but we have to go carefully in these matters. Experience has proved that if we go too fast in easing currency restrictions that may lead to all kinds of difficulties in foreign exchange.
LORD WINDLESHAM: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl a question with regard to the last few words of my noble Leader, in which he mentioned the

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possibility of the law being brought into disrepute in this matter? Is the noble Earl aware of two of the evasions which are most easily carried out'? One is by a passenger routing himself from Scandinavia, where the restrictions do not apply. The second, much more common, of which I am sure the noble Earl is not aware, is to arrive at London Airport, or any other port with one's pockets full of Irish £1 notes, worth 20s, abroad, and when asked how much English money one has to state, perhaps, £6 or £7. I know of a man who recently has been taking a great deal of sterling out of this country—and he never told a lie at the airport. On the Irish £1 note are written the words "Payable on demand in London". It does not say exactly where. That is a very easy and not uncommon means of evasion.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I must try to remember all these stratagems.

BUILDINGS (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

HOSPITAL TREATMENT OF CHILDREN
3.24 p.m.
LORD CROOK LORD CROOK rose to move to resolve, That, in the opinion of this House it is essential to the future of the Health Service to retain the existing large centralised children's hospitals, alike in the interests of (a) the most efficient treatment of children; (b) the effective continuation of the Register of Sick Children's Nurses; and (c) implementing the policy of education of children in hospitals as desired by the Minister of Education, the Minister of Health and the county education authorities. The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Motion standing on the Order Paper in my name. It is a Motion which I suggest to your Lordships is in no way revolutionary. Indeed, it might well be described as conservative in its origin, because it desires to keep things exactly as they are: it seeks to make no change in the present situation but to keep to the policy at present being followed by Her Majesty's Government.
Your Lordships may well retort: "Why then should you move the Motion?" I move it because of the knowledge that the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Health is considering a large-scale change which would set the clock back fifty to 100 years in respect of the administration of children's hospitals. What is more, he would be doing it not for reasons of policy but for reasons of expediency. In my submission to your Lordships, he would be flying completely in the face of his own declarations recently, agreeing with the recommendations of the Royal College of Physicians. I am sorry that I have to refer once again to that Report, which has been bandied about and discussed in your Lordships' House to a considerable extent in recent weeks, but I am bound to do so, if only to remind your Lordships of the main organisational themes of the Report. I do not want to remind your Lordships only of particular matters which suit the Motion I am moving: I want to remind you of a complete and clear summary of the themes of that Report.
Broadly, as I submit to your Lordships—and I do not think the noble Earl who is to reply for Her Majesty's Government would disagree with me on this—it says that there are four main ways in which children's treatment can be given. It says, first of all, that the most desirable treatment is that in the larger, specially equipped children's hospitals. It says, secondly, that the next desirable is the treatment given in a self-contained children's block. The determining factors there should be the needs of the area, density of population and town planning considerations, plus the fact that the self-contained block would have all the necessary equipment and services readily available. Thirdly, there neither of these is available, treatment should be carried out in a small children's ward. Fourthly—though this is to be avoided everywhere in Britain, if that is at all possible—the children should be treated in the same wards as adults. On this most undesirable fourth alternative the Report says:
"The proper care of children in hospitals is so different from that of adults that their admission to adult wards is to be deprecated."
In fact, it is to the two first-mentioned forms of organisation that the Royal College of Physicians look; and it was for that reason that so many of us interested

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in this subject were glad to learn last year that the right honourable gentleman the Minister of Health, for his part, on behalf of his Ministry, broadly accepted the terms of the Report.
May I quote further to your Lordships, because I want this to be a factual debate and not a debate on views that I may hold as a Member of this House? In respect of the first choice, that of the special hospital for children, the Royal College say in the Report:
"There is no doubt that special children's hospitals offer the best service for children, because the staff, at all levels and in all departments, is attuned to the needs of the sick child. Children's hospitals carry with them a tradition of service which cannot lightly be set aside."
Then of the second alternative, the separate children's block, they said:
"In large general hospitals a separate self-contained children's block in close association with the obstetric department of the general hospital is desirable. Where there is no separate children's block, all children should be in special wards in a single unit under the general supervision of a pædiatrician, with a sister in charge who has had training and experience in nursing sick children. A children's unit makes possible such amenities as schooling and facilities for play, etc."
A little later in the Report the Royal College of Physicians go on to say:
"It is unnecessary and undesirable to attempt to provide a children's unit in every general hospital or even in every area hospital,"
and they make very clear in their comments the reason why they reach this view. Again I quote, so that the views which your Lordships hear shall not be mine:
"Small units are undesirable because they are detrimental to satisfactory arrangements for the proper care of children, and to the training of doctors and nurses in this field. Units of less than twenty beds are uneconomic, and in closely populated areas children's beds should be concentrated in units of forty beds or more, including beds for both medical and surgical disorders, small units being gradually eliminated."
In their later paragraphs, dealing with the medical and surgical staff to be employed the Royal College have this to say:
"The application and development of special techniques in departments dealing with the investigation and treatment of children is extremely important. These specialist facilities could be fully established only in large pædiatric units."
They develop in later sections of their Report their views about the educational
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and recreational needs of the children. If I may select one important observation which they make, it is this:
"The happiness of children in hospital can be materially influenced by the opportunities they have for occupation. The use of education in hospital, not only to prevent illness from interfering with educational progress, but also to keep children happy, should be recognised. Provision should also be made for recreation and play."
Those then, my Lords, are not views which I am venturing to express to your Lordships; they are the official views of leaders of the medical profession dealing with children, showing what they think should be the position in the future. I am not, in this Motion, concerned with any attempt to advise the Minister, his officers, his advisers or any board as to future policy. I am only inviting your Lordships to look at the present position. I am desirous of showing that we already have some of these provisions. Over the past 100 years we have built up something that was good before it was taken over by the Health Service, and something which has since been improved further, giving us that of which we can be proud.
I want to try to interest your Lordships for a few minutes in the largest and probably the best-equipped children's hospital in Britain, and perhaps in Europe, a hospital which the Minister of Health has now been invited to close down—not for reasons of general policy, not for reasons of principle, not because he has adequate alternatives, but solely for reasons of financial expediency and to suit other matters. If this move of the Minister were in fact to fit in with proper reorganisation, reallocation and those things which Ministers must undertake if they are to administer an efficient service, then I should not be moving this Motion which is in front of your Lordships this afternoon. I refer to the proposal to close Queen Mary's Hospital at Carshalton, in Surrey. It is just over fifty years old. It is one of those which followed from the pioneering traditions which produced that hospital of great tradition to-day, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, just over one hundred years ago. It has accommodation and facilities for about twice as many children as the Great Ormond Street Hospital, and its situation, with its extensive grounds, is even more fortunate that that of Great Ormond Street or of the other two or three such hospitals which exist in this country.
Queen Mary's well-planned buildings are spread over 100 acres of Carshalton, on what were open downs when the hospital was built, fifty years ago. Since then, Greater London has reached out, and in the hospital's immediate surroundings there are three-quarters of a million population. The Carshalton Council's housing estate abuts upon the grounds of the hospital. The great L.C.C. Estate of St. Helier sprawls south of Merton, Morden: and Mitcham, with the greater part of it in Carshalton. It is one of those areas of Greater London which has developed in population so fast that one of the large general hospitals in this country has been built there. Indeed, I believe that St. Helier Hospital, Carshalton, with its 731 beds, is the largest hospital of modern construction in this country. It was completed only after the war had commenced in 1939. That, my Lords, is the measure of this huge population which has grown up on this area which was once a part of the downs.
In the ten-mile circle around Queen Mary's hospital there live no fewer than 2¾million people. And this great hospital is magnificently equipped. It has a resident physician superintendent, three physicians, six surgeons, ten resident medical officers, a matron, assistant matrons and 300 nurses trained or training in the Special Children's Register, and forty qualified school teachers. Queen Mary's, Carshalton, produces 15 per cent. of the nurses for the Special Register of Sick Children's Nurses. It is the hospital to which other training hospitals send their nurses to secure experience of sick children's nursing; while other hospitals, such as Guy's and St. Thomas's, send their medical students for a short stay in order to secure similar experience.
Patients come to this hospital, my Lords, at the desire of medical men and parents from the areas of twenty-five local authorities, and some from hundreds of miles away, at their own request, by arrangements made by hospital boards in various parts of the country. The reputatian of the hospital is world-wide. It is equipped with every medical and surgical need; and since they took it over in 1948 the Regional Board have built up the hospital's service as a general children's hospital, catering for all types of disease in childhood. The Board decided that Queen Mary's was to be their main pædiatric venture and that they would
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build up a full range of services, By 1953 it had become clear that this must involve a policy of concentration, in view of the developing excess of children's beds throughout the country. I ask your Lordships to note that as long ago as 1953 it was already clear to those who were studying these matters and were skilled in them that, because of the gradual improvement in the health of children, by reason of their better feeding, advances in antibiotic treatment, and the schemes of injections and the like that were available, an excess of children's beds was developing. But it was because of that that centralisation went on.
The Board appointed a full range of children's specialists, including pædiatricians, a pædiatrie surgeon (incidentally one of the few in any hospital in this country), orthopedic surgeons, anesthetists, pathologists, and radiologists; and they established what is probably the best physiotherapy department in any children's hospital in this country. They did a great deal. They spent capital on the re-equipment of the X-ray and pathology departments; the pharmacy was resited and replanned; many other minor but very useful improvements were made, and valuable capital projects were put in hand. All this work went an, and all this expenditure of capital on development proceeded. The refurnishing of two-thirds of the wards along these new lines had been completed by the date in the summer of last year when, suddenly, there was mooted this idea of closing the hospital.
Your Lordships may, quite rightly, ask me, when I talk in general terms about the hospital, exactly what this hospital does. My Lords, it cares, under ideal conditions, for every childhood ailment, from the emergency surgery of the newborn baby to the care of the permanently disabled child. This provision includes special units for the treatment of poliomyelitis, muscular dystrophy, rheumatic ailments, cerebral palsy, and orthopedic handicaps. Throughout all these subjects it is a specialised and specially-equipped hospital. Indeed, I would that your Lordships, instead of merely listening to me offering you words to-day, could have the opportunity of being persuaded by your own vision and your own excitement at seeing what is being done at that hospital: to look in (and this is why I

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use the word "excitement") at the rooms dealing with the handicapped and see the most modern and advanced system of treatment and care; and to go, in the interests of your Lordships' House, into the cerebral palsy unit—self-contained, with its own dining room, its own dormitory, its own school, its own treatment room—all arranged so that treatment can be fitted in with the continuation of education, which is so much a part of this hospital.
The children are taught on the wards by forty teachers who, from my knowledge of them, I can describe only as "dedicated to their jobs". They are all specially picked; they are either graduates or teacher-trained; and they include those especially capable of giving either education of a grammar school type or education specially for those children who, in addition to the complaints from which they suffer and for which they are taken to the hospital, suffer also the dreadful handicap of being deaf. In this hospital they have achieved in the field of education, as well as in the field of medicine, outstanding examples for the world. One boy, largely immobile, lying on his back and unable to use hands or arms, has passed the General Certificate of Education in six subjects at "O" level, using with his mouth a brush, a pencil, and rubber pads that manipulate an electric typewriter.
The children in that hospital—a hospital quite unlike those that most of us see when we are ailing—can join the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, the Brownies, and so on. Thanks to the organisation of a League of Friends—local people interested in the hospital—they are able to go in their own bus (owned by themselves and paid for by local effort; specially designed to take wheelchairs, and driven by voluntary bus drivers) to all manner of amusements and matters of interest; at the one extreme, pantomime and musical events, at the other, educational visits to Kew Gardens or the Tower of London. On one of those lovely occasions which remain in the memory of some of the long-stay patients, they were taken in buses and private cars and deployed along balconies and in shop windows in Epsom, in order to see Her Gracious Majesty pass by on her visit to Epsom College. The children go home
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to their parents for visits, in private cars made available by the efforts of local people. In fact, and not to keep your Lordships unduly on this point, I may say that they live within the hospital, to the broadest possible degree, the full and valuable life that their parents would like to see them live in the outside world, if only it were possible.
Small wonder, therefore, that medical men and parents ask voluntarily that children should go to Queen Mary's. It is because they know that there the children have the best possible surgical and pediatric treatment, with all those extras which mean not only education but morale to the growing citizen. Since I put this Motion on your Lordships' Order Paper, I have been glad to receive quite voluntary tribute, and much more than tribute, from all the doctors who, of their own volition, send patients to this hospital. The Local Medical Committee for the County of Surrey, by ananimous resolution, has protested to the Ministry of Health against the proposed closure, and has said to him that it does so
"because this hospital makes provision for the special treatment of children which is unobtainable elsewhere and, in any case, the withdrawal of this accommodation will make it very difficult for general practitioners in a wide area to find hospital treatment at all for their child patients ".
On February 5 the honorary secretary of the medical committee for the remaining part of the area, the Croydon Local Medical Committee, sent me this resolution:
"That this Committee deplores the proposal of the Ministry of Health to close Queen Mary's Hospital for Children, Carshalton, as a children's hospital as it is essential for the treatment of both acute and chronic children's cases which cannot otherwise be accommodated in this area."
My Lords, so much for the medical aspects: may I now turn to the educational ones. Because they are conscious of the unrivalled and unequalled educational service that they are providing in respect of this special problem, the Education Department of the Surrey County Council were astonished when they heard of the proposal to sweep all this away. They wrote to the Minister, since, as many of your Lordships will know, the Minister of Health, jointly with the Minister of Education, had written to hospitals urging the importance of continued education in schools. The Surrey

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Education Committee said that teaching in general wards is "almost impossible", and even in children's wards in general hospitals the same difficulties applied to a lesser degree. They informed the Minister—and again I quote; they are not my words:
"For severely handicapped children the services of specialist qualified teachers are needed, but such teachers are scarce and cannot be provided for scattered individual patients."
As to education in special children's wards, they said:
"Even in the best conditions what can be achieved is inadequate."
Then they went on to refer to the larger general hospital, that of St. Helier, Carshalton:
"The unit at St. Helier which accommodates a maximum of eighty children is the only one in the region of any size.
It must be assumed that of this number of children a proportion are either too young or too ill to receive education, leaving probably less than fifty children able to benefit from tuition. This number of children cannot justify a very large number of teachers to educate them. Obviously, with such limited numbers the tuition must, as with the small groups referred to above, have little variety. Aid when it is borne in mind that the children may be aged from two to sixteen years and of varying standards of intelligence and attainments within their age groups, it is clear how difficult it is in such circumstances to make really suitable educational provision for the children."
They went on to outline the needs and the solution and to inform the Minister of their knowledge of all the facilities which they were providing at Queen Mary's and how it was completely impossible for them to provide anything like this service anywhere else.
I have endeavoured to give to your Lordships, at the cost of keeping you perhaps a little unduly, a picture of the hospital which it is now proposed shall be abolished. Can your Lordships believe, any more than I can, that the Minister or the Regional Board who have built up this wonderful hospital and have spent all this money and loving care have suddenly felt that everything they have been doing from 1948 to 1958 was wrong? Of course that is not the explanation of the suggested closure. Behind lies one thing only: the lack of provision of capital expenditure to rebuild the Fountain Hospital for Mentally Deficient Children at Tooting. Queen Mary's is
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to be broken up and everything it stands for is to be destroyed, so that a new home may be found for mentally deficient children at no apparent capital cost.
The Fountain Hospital at Tooting was erected as a temporary structure towards the end of the last century, during an epidemic of fever not expected to last. From its user for that purpose it has changed to a user for the mentally deficient, just as it has changed hands again and again—from the M.A.B. to the L.C.C. and then to the Health Service. Since 1948 the Minister has made a number of promises to rebuild. Indeed he went so far as to select a piece of the hundred acres of Springfield Mental Hospital within the same immediate row of streets half a mile away, for the rebuilding. But whatever the plans, no money has ever been found to honour them. Now the position is that Fountain Hospital is in such a sorry state of disrepair that no Minister could ever find anybody who could carry out any repairs to make them any good at all. Therefore the Minister has either to find the capital to rebuild or to find an alternative way out. The way out found for him is to abolish Queen Mary's and spread these children around in thirty hospitals in the region, none of which is equipped to give the kind of treatment which I have outlined as part of that given by Queen Mary's. And to give even a semblance of the kind of treatment which is given at Queen Mary's in these hospitals to which they would be dispersed would mean an even larger capital expenditure by the Minister than that involved in rebuilding the Fountain Hospital, and it would take a number of years.
Of course the Minister, from his own point of view, has a justification for this suggestion. It is that the number of beds occupied at the Queen Mary's, Carshalton, is now less than it was. Since I am trying to keep this to a factual presentation, it is for me to try to show your Lordships what are the facts. There are in this hospital 550 beds, with 150 in reserve. Of these, no fewer than 400 are occupied at the moment. In the last twelve-monthly period for which figures are available there was a turnover of 4,307 children, aged from a few days to sixteen years. There were performed there 2,019 major operations and 416

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minor operations, a total of 2,435, and the number of out-patients treated numbered 11,500.
Let me say to your Lordships straight away that I am not trying to burke the issue. I accept the position put to your Lordships in the Princess Louise Hospital debate on January 28 last, that (I quote the noble Lord, Lord Moran, OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 213 (No. 31), col. 892):
"Clearly, the Minister is faced with the bounden duty of seeing that these beds are properly used. … "
I accept what the noble Lord said in that debate better than I can say it and with far more authority and right to speak on the facts than I. The noble Lord continued [col. 896]:
"Now why is it important that a children's hospital should be large? If it is not, it will not he able to compete in the open market for first-class personnel for the accessory departments. The good radiologists and pathologists want to go to a hospital where there is plenty of material. Therefore we come to this sombre conclusion—which I do not think anybody disputes—that the days of small hospitals in every branch of medicine are numbered. They are not economic and they cannot possibly compete for the personnel necessary to run their ancillary departments effectively. That means to say that to get first-rate accessory departments the pædiatric unit of the future should be big enough to supply them itself. To do that it must either be another Great Ormond Street Hospital or, alternatively, it must he a pædiatric block attached to a general hospital which itself has these departments."
The noble Lord, Lord Moran, also interpreted the report of the Royal College of Physicians. He said that what the Pædiatric Committee had in mind was not all special children's hospitals, irrespective of size, but the hospital at Sheffield, with 221 beds. What the Committee had in mind was either a hospital as large as that or a children's unit of adequate size—and I quote
"… it did not matter which, provided two things were supplied. One was that it was of adequate size, and the other that the ancillary departments, mainly pathology, radiology and the like were first rate."
I have tried to show that even to-day Queen Mary's is using 400 beds. The hospital to which the transfers would be made, if this policy were carried out by the Minister—who, I am glad to say, has already delayed some eight months before finally reaching his conclusion—with a total of about 350 beds, are 34 in number, and the numbers of beds are
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as follows. There are 3 of 10 beds or less; 15 of between 11 and 20 beds; 12 of between 21 and 30 beds; 1 with 40 beds; 2 with 52 beds and 1 (St. Helier) with 77 beds. The lowest figure desired by the pediatric specialists who co-operated in the Report to which I have referred is forty. I know that if my noble friend Lord Moran were here to criticise me he might well say that I was pitching the figure far too low, in the light of what he had to say.
I want to say a word or two about education in these hospitals. The largest of those I have quoted is St. Helier. I would remind your Lordships that I have already quoted the statement of the Surrey County Council Education Department: that they find themselves unable to provide at St. Helier Hospital what they regard as adequate education. I am not trying to secure that your Lordships should advance to the Minister proposals about how he should organise the Health Service. Of course there will be times when he will re-plan closed hospitals, will open others, and will make changes. If what was involved in the proposals now before him were part of a planned policy to close large children's hospitals, and to proceed to prepare children's blocks of appropriate size, properly equipped and staffed on the lines of the Report of the Royal College of Physicians and the support which your Lordships gave some three weeks ago to the general ideas, that would be another question to be considered on its merits. But that is not the position with which we are faced. Even if it were, it would take years of planning and reorganisation, construction of buildings at capital costs, involving new staffing problems and the like, before this transfer could be carried out in accordance with such a policy. But I repeat that this is not part of the policy. Indeed, I suggest that it is the negation of it; it is an expedient. Until the Ministry have available a policy, let us have things left alone.
I do not want to suggest to your Lordships—and I have tried not to suggest it in what I have ventured to say—that the use of large children's hospitals is the only way to deal with this matter. What I have said is: until we have some other plan, some other way of dealing with this matter, do not let us do away with the one thing we have which is of

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value to us; do not let us fail to Lind some small amount of money to deal with this problem in front of us. Your Lordships may well say to me: "But there is this gap between the number of beds filled and the number of beds in Queen. Mary's Hospital. What do you say about that?" I say that before the Minister came to suggest this closure the management committee of the hospital had many ideas to discuss with the Minister. For myself, I have a clear answer: I should be content to see the limited number of beds allocated to children in these other hospitals given up. I should be prepared to see certain of the children go where doctors and parents have chosen. For the rest, they should go into Queen Mary's, thereby releasing that number of beds in these thirty-four hospitals. That would help to cut down the long waiting list of adults who are waiting hopefully for operations, and to produce the additional maternity beds which, as the Government reminded us in the debate on the Princess Louise (Kensington) Hospital, are now one of the main needs to which we must pay regard.
I have tried, even at the risk of unduly keeping your Lordships and of boring you, to keep what I have to say completely and utterly factual without making an emotional appeal at all. Nobody knows more than noble Lords here how easy it is to make an emotional appeal when one is talking about children, and particularly when talking about children who are sick and suffering from dire disease. I have based nothing I have tried to say to your Lordships on those considerations. Indeed, the nearest I would come to emotional appeal to your Lordships is to say this. Having fought inside the Civil Service for years to produce decent working accommodation for people serving the State, I was delighted to see in The Times of last Monday week a sketch of the income tax office in Manchester, to be built at a cost of £1,250,000 for a staff of 1,200; and I was delighted the following day to see, similarly in the Press, a picture of the new Meteorological Office, which, at a cost of £1,750,000, will probably try to tell us what the weather is going to be. However, I should like to see one odd million spent on building a hospital. As I walk about and see around your Lordships' House these great towering edifices going up, at a cost of millions of pounds, to provide offices and
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shops as a memorial to this era, I wonder: can we never find money to build one hospital?
Moved to resolve, That, in the opinion of this House it is essential to the future of the Health Service to retain the existing large centralised children's hospitals, alike in the interests of (a) the most efficient treatment of children; (b) the effective continuation of the Register of Sick Children's Nurses; and (c) implementing the policy of education of children in hospitals as desired by the Minister of Education, the Minister of Health and the county education authorities.—(Lord Crook.)
4.7 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to say a few words in support of the noble Lord who moved this Motion, but I want to include one or two reservations in that support. The first I think the noble Lord himself dealt with. It is that, supposing the terms of the Motion were to be accepted entirely, it would mean that there would never be any possibility of changing the existing plan for children's hospitals in the country. That, I think, is the last thing that the noble Lord would intend; and surely one of the purposes of the National Health Service was that the Minister should be able to make certain changes in the hospital planning of the country as various conditions changed and as new circumstances came along. In the second place, I cannot follow the noble Lord, Lord Crook, entirely, because I do not know well the hospital to which he has referred; although I have passed it, I have never visited it. Therefore I cannot follow the noble Lord in the long and good account of the work the hospital now does. But I am sure it is first class.
I should like to put before your Lordships in rather different language some of the considerations which I mentioned in the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, on January 28, that is, on the question of whether children should, where it is possible, be taken care of in special children's hospitals, or in the general wards or special wards of large general hospitals. The position is changing because luckily we have fewer sick children to cope with; therefore this will be, so far as one can see, a diminishing problem. However, it is something which I do not understand, and I am

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rather worried about it, because in the world at large the tendency is for children, where possible, to be taken care of in special children's hospitals. That certainly was occurring in the United States. It is occurring in France to quite an extent, and it is occurring very definitely in the Scandinavian countries, where their hospital planning and construction is admired by most people in the world. In fact there is one big hospital in Stockholm which consists of a large compound—if I may so call it—with a general hospital, a children's hospital, and an old people's hospital, but they are separate blocks. I feel that that is very important.
When the noble Lord, Lord Crook, put down his Motion I thought I would inquire about what was occurring in our Provinces. I got in touch with eleven of the principal undergraduate teaching schools in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. They were chosen not because they were teaching schools, but because they were situated in big centres of population where one could get a good idea of the tendency. Of these eleven places, eight had special children's hospitals and their children do not go into general hospitals at all. Four at present have no special children's hospitals; they go into general hospitals in special departments. One town in particular had plans to build a children's hospital as soon as they possibly could, and it was one of the top priorities for the Board of Governors when they got some money. The last place at which I inquired was in the lucky position of having both a large children's hospital and, at the same time, special departments in the general hospital.
It seemed to me that, in the Provinces certainly, the tendency was to provide special children's hospitals. I will not deny that some of the general hospitals had a few children's beds for emergencies or casualties, but I do not think that that will be for long, because it would be simple for the parents and the police in charge of casualties to know that instead of taking an injured child to a general hospital they could take it to the special children's hospital. That is merely a question of planning. The same thing would apply to the parents: once they knew about taking their child to a special
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of Children 200 children's hospital it would be simple for this procedure to become quite general and not to cause any particular trouble. It looks as if the practice in London is lagging behind what is going on in the rest of the world, and certainly what is going on in the Provinces. In London you have this enormous centre of population where there is no question that it is possible to get the children in certain special hospitals scattered over London so that parents would not need to travel a long way to see their children.
Various references have been made both in the debate of January 20 and in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Crook, to-day about the Pediatric Report of the Royal College of Physicians. I think my memory serves me aright when I say that the committee which made that report was brought into being because there was a proposal that the children's hospital in Sheffield should be shut down and taken over for other purposes. As a result of protests arising from that proposal, this committee was set up which brought out quite definitely in its report that the right and best thing to do was to treat children in special hospitals, provided they could be of a certain size. Nobody would suggest a little place. This is one of the cases where size counts for quite a lot.
There is a publication, published by the Ministry of Health, called The Welfare of Children in Hospital, which is a Report to the Central Health Services Committee. That deals more with the care of children in hospital, but it says—and I agree—that it would be impracticable to treat all children in specialist hospitals. That is something I should not dream of suggesting, because in the rural areas and small towns where there are no big centres of population children must be treated in the special departments of the general hospital. But I feel that if there is this tendency coming along—and here I speak with the support of many but I will not say the complete body of pædiatricians—we are going the wrong way. I hope that the Minister and Her Majesty's Government will not be carried too far along the lines of changing the big children's hospitals into something else and putting the children in the special departments in the general hospitals.
4.16 p.m.
LORD COHEN OF BIRKENHEAD: My Lords, I hesitate to burden your Lordships with yet another speech on this topic, but may I, at the outset, deal with the question which has been raised once again by the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, on the Royal College of Physicians' report. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, now accepts Lord Moran's interpretation of that report, and the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, is prepared to accept it perhaps a little more wholeheartedly than he did a fortnight or so ago. I would remind your Lordships that that is a report of pædiatricians, and it is unlikely that they would seek in any way to curtail the boundaries of their empire.
Another Report, published only a couple of days ago, was a report to the Central Health Services Council, of which I have the honour to be Chairman, by a Committee of all those interested in the welfare of children in hospitals. Its chairman was Sir Harry Platt, an ex-President of the Royal College of Surgeons. On it were represented distinguished pædiatricians, hospital administrators, general practitioners, those concerned with ancillary services within children's hospitals, and so on. Since the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has quoted it in part, I should like to read something which is in this Report. In paragraph 15 it says:
"The guiding principle which emerges for the care of children in hospital is that whilst the child must, of course, undergo the necessary investigations and treatment for the condition from which he is suffering, he should be subject to the least possible disturbance of the routines to which he is accustomed. Every effort should be made by hospitals to preserve continuity with the home during the time the child is in hospital."
In paragraph 34, which was quoted in paraphrase by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, it says:
"It has been suggested to us that the aim should be to nurse all children in children's hospitals. There are, however, various considerations which make this proposal impracticable. It is not desirable that a child should be removed to a children's hospital which may be far from his home, thus making it difficult for his parents to visit him, when he could be nursed in a children's ward in a local hospital which is in the charge of a children's specialist visiting from a neighbouring centre sufficiently frequently. The greater the distance from a main children's centre, the less the likelihood that the child will be sent to it, and the greater the need for the doctor rather than the patient to travel."
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When I read the Resolution on the Order Paper, which is couched in general terms, I was under the impression that the noble Lord, Lord Crook, would proceed to debate this matter in general terms, and, having established the proposition in general terms, would then say that the particular instance to which he proposed to refer came within the terms of the general Resolution. But not at all. The noble Lord has debated a particular instance and is asking your Lordships therefore to infer the general from it. As a proposition in logic that fails. On the other hand, if I could establish that there are unequivocal exceptions to that proposition, then I suggest that the proposal as a whole fails.
I have served on a regional hospital board since its inception, and I know the difficulties which confront any regional hospital board when it has to make decisions as to the advice it shall give to the Minister when it runs counter to quite proper and laudable local desire to retain a hospital for the purpose for which it was first intended. There are two hospitals within my region which, I think, exemplify what is the general position. The first is Heswall which, beautifully situated, overlooks the estuary of the Dee and the mountains of North Wales and was established as the prototype of hospitals of which Queen Mary's, Carshalton, was a later example. It was designed to provide, for particular types of case, the appropriate environment, the fresh air, free from the pollution of an urban atmosphere, sunlight and plenty of space for exercise and play. Heswall was established by the late Sir Robert Jones and Dr. Macalister in 1899. It was opened in effect as a separate hospital in 1905, some years before Queen Mary's.
At that time, as the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has rightly said, the major problems with which these hospitals had to deal were the non-respiratory forms of tuberculosis, malnutrition, rickets, cardiac rheumatism, St. Vitus' dance, and chronic osteomyelitis. Again as the noble Lord, Lord Crook, said, these conditions have diminished, due to better houses, with more adequate space and light; to clean food and pasteurised milk; to the welfare foods which were provided during and after the war; to the better balanced diet which children now have, and to various forms of therapy, such as antibiotics, I drugs, vaccines and the like; and hospital

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needs have also been lessened by other forms of child care which can now be given in the home and thus no longer necessitate a stay in hospital, and by outpatient care, day hospitalisation and other forms of treatment.
Now, my Lords, Heswall has 240 beds. Within the last twenty years the occupancy of these beds has fallen by over 20 per cent., so that a considerable proportion of the hospital now remains empty. I do not propose to burden your Lordships with figures, except one or two which illustrate the magnitude of the decline of certain children's diseases which were treated in those hospitals. If we take a five-year period, say from 1931 to 1936, and compare with it a five-year period twenty years later, and take only a few conditions, we find that tuberculous peritonitis has dropped from 245 patients in the first quinquennium to 8 patients in the second; rickets has dropped from 132 patients to 6 patients; cardiac rheumatism is now 80 per cent. less (there are now 20 per cent. of the number of cases which there were twenty years ago) and the drop in St. Vitus' dance is even greater: it is now only 13 per cent. of what it was previously.
You may ask, but what use then is now being made of the beds that have been emptied by this desirable decline, at which we all rejoice, in many of these children's diseases? The answer is that, as at Queen Mary's, Carshalton, its original purpose has long in great measure been discarded. It is now being used in considerable measure for the treatment of acute conditions, acute bronchitis, for operations for hernia, minor operations such as circumcision and the like. As yet no final proposals have been made by the board of governors, which is responsible for that hospital and for what shall be done in the future. I believe the solution lies in a certain amount of integration and that Heswall might be kept wholly as a children's hospital.
Take the other, take Leasowe, faced by the same problem, faced by a drop in non-tubercular orthopædic conditions, from 193 in 1926 to 10 in 1958. That hospital recognised very early the need for a change in its purpose and it now houses a magnificent plastic surgery unit, a number of adult cases with non-tuberculous orthopedic conditions and also a
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number of other acute types of children's conditions. This, of course, reflects the experience of the whole country. When you consider that the notifications in the age group up to fifteen, which is, of course, the major age group, suffering from non-respiratory tuberculosis were nearly 4,500 and that they had dropped ten years later to less than 1,000, you realise that the clientele of children's hospitals is, thank God! rapidly and dramatically diminishing. Therefore we must not be Canute-like, blind to the needed change of orientation of many of these hospitals. We must not ignore this changed disease pattern.
I do not propose to discuss Queen Mary's, Carshalton, in any detail, because I have not apprised myself, except through what the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has said, of all the details of this particular problem. I know Queen Mary's at least I knew it in the old days when I visited it on several occasions, and I have no doubt that Queen Mary's is doing a magnificent job on the patients which it has. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, says that it keeps 150 beds in reserve. That, of course, is a euphemism for saying that they are not used, and something else ought to be done to utilise, in our present needs, beds which are kept in reserve. As the noble Lord, Lord Crook has said, the function of the hospital has significantly changed. When I knew it thirty years ago it was a long-stay hospital of the same type as Heswall. When I saw the figures only yesterday which the noble Lord, Lord Crook, had provided, I found that nearly 80 per cent. of the children now in Queen Mary's stay for less than a month, which means that they could be dealt with satisfactorily in acute general hospitals with adequately equipped children's units, and so conform to the desiderata of the Welfare of Children in Hospital Committee's Report.
There is clearly a need, in view of the changing demographic and disease pattern of our hospitals, for a review of the situation. There is clearly a need for all our hospitals and all our regional boards so to do. Some have already done so, such as Leasowe. Others have tried to shelve the issue by admitting to their beds cases which need not have been, for purely hospital reasons, admitted to their beds. It is desirable that in the future a large number of these patients should be dealt with either by

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home care or by day beds, or by an outpatient clinic. It may very well be that as the result of that review some hospitals which are now children's hospitals will, and should, be retained solely for the purpose of treating children. But it may well be also that a number of these hospitals should, as Leasowe has done, ensure that their accommodation is not wasted but used where there is a great need, as in many adult services. Pædiatric surgery is a type of surgery which can properly be undertaken in a large centralised children's hospital. But also there is a need for plastic surgery units; there is a need for cardiac and neuro-surgical units, and there are great needs—an overwhelming need for beds for the mentally deficient and one which will be increasingly felt in a field which I know that the noble Lord, Lord Amulree has at heart, namely, the care of the aged sick.
A fortnight ago this House decisively rejected a Motion which sought to disturb a decision about the use of a hospital. So far as I know, no decision has yet been promulgated about the future use of Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton. But, in taking any decision, what are the principles which must be followed? The first is that we must look for other possible uses if the need for the specific use for which the hospital was built has so lessened that it has a significant number of surplus beds while there are other groups of the population which are in urgent and dire need of hospital accommodation. The second principle—here I agree wholly with what the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has said—is that we must ensure that if children are displaced from a hospital, they are not deprived of any service at the highest level which shall be necessary for their cure and rehabilitation. These are the principles which I would apply, strictly and objectively, in determining the future of any hospital, whether it be a children's hospital, an infectious. diseases hospital or a sanitorium.
It is perhaps pertinent to remark that the battle here is not always between children's hospitals and general hospitals. The "cold war" has existed for a long time between the children's hospitals and infectious diseases hospitals, because both of them are in sight of losing a considerable proportion of their patients. One of them seeks to establish that what they
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regard as an infectious disease should be treated in an infectious diseases hospital; the other that the same condition should be dealt with in the children's hospital. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Crook, must be well aware of the fact that there has been a dispute going on as to whether meningitis under the age of 16 is a children's disease or an infectious disease. To me, the concern is an ill child, and it is the ill child who has to be treated.
Let me say at the outset of my concluding remarks that, in my view, it is both dutiful and laudable that a hospital management committee should seek to retain the functions of its own hospital; that it should show loyalty to the work of that hospital. But it cannot view the regional needs with an Olympian detachment.
"In all disputes",
said Sir Thomas Brown,
"so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose."
The regional hospital board seeks to put the regional needs in perspective, and from time to time it must, through the Minister necessarily change the use of some of its hospital resources to meet changing needs. It has had to do so in regard to infectious diseases hospitals, to sanatoria, to some children's hospitals and the like, and it has to make provision for new and very important and dramatically successful specialities such as cardiac surgery, neuro-surgery, pædiatric surgery, plastic surgery, and the like.
But even the vision and authority of a regional hospital board is confined to its regional boundaries. It is the Minister who has to weigh national needs. It would be reckless folly, I suggest, for this House to concur in the general Motion on the Order Paper and which I remind your Lordships once again this House is debating, and not the specific instance which has been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Crook. It would be reckless folly to impose on the Minister a rigidity which ignores the changing scene of hospital needs and resources. We should in that way tie his hands so that he is unable to discharge his statutory responsibilities in the light both of these altered needs and of changing resources.
House adjourned during pleasure and resumed by the LORD CHANCELLOR.
4.39 p.m.
LORD UVEDALE OF NORTH END: My Lords, I rise to support certain propositions which the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has put before the House, and I am pleased to note that there seems to be a general agreement on the propositions as set out in the Resolution. The Resolution concerns the retention of large centralised children's hospitals on the grounds of ensuring the efficiency of the treatment of children, the registration of sick children's nurses and the education of those children.
LORD COHEN OF BIRKENHEAD: My Lords, may I, with your permission, interrupt just to say that the Resolution says
"to retain the existing large centralised children's hospitals."
I can only interpret that as meaning all the existing large centralised children's hospitals.
LORD UVEDALE OF NORTH END: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. I could not accept the proposition that any and every large children's hospital should be retained. That, of course, depends on the special circumstances governing the area. But in addition to the general proposition which has met with a large measure of acceptance, the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has brought up a specific instance—the proposed closure of Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, which is now carrying out this work for children, and its replacement—or rather its reestablishment—as a hospital for mentally defective children. These mentally defective children are at present treated at the Fountain Hospital at Tooting.
In view of this debate I visited both the Fountain Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital early in the week. I was already acquainted with Queen Mary's Hospital at Carshalton, and knew its reputation as an outstanding hospital for the treatment of children. I had not previously visited the Fountain Hospital at Tooting. When I went to the Fountain Hospital, the first thing that was obvious was that this hospital was still accommodated in temporary buildings. These buildings, consisting largely of corrugated iron, were put up in the year 1893 and were expected to last for ten, possibly fifteen, years. They have been standing there and in use now for sixty-six years.
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At first, the hospital was employed for the treatment of infectious diseases, but since the period of the First World War, 1914–18, it has been used for the treatment of mentally defective children. It has an excellent medical staff. It has a research department carrying out useful work, and the nursing staff is at a strength of 180. There are in that hospital at the present time 600 mentally defective children. The hospital is overcrowded. There are 50 children in a ward which would be fully occupied by 25. There are no day rooms for the children who can be up during the day. There is a long waiting list for admission to the hospital, and the average time of waiting is two years. Every year 17 children awaiting admission to that hospital die. To show the difficulties of the nursing staff, I may say that, of 600 children in that hospital, 400 are incontinent, and there are only 200 who are capable of training or any form of ordinary education. When I left that hospital, I remembered that a new hospital had been projected for quite a time, and that plans had been prepared for a building on the Springfield Hospital Estate. No steps have yet been taken, however, for the construction of that new hospital, and I felt that the conditions under which the medical and nursing staff were working were a reproach to the community generally.
I then went to Queen Mary's, Carshalton, which I found a very different proposition. That hospital was built in 1909 as a convalescent home for children who had been suffering from infectious diseases. It soon changed its character and became a hospital for children requiring long-term treatment—cases requiring orthopedic treatment, cases of chronic rheumatism and children suffering with chronic nervous diseases. In 1945 it was made into a general hospital for the treatment of children, and began to take acute cases as well as long-term cases. To-day it is exceptionally well equipped for the work that it is carrying out. Most of the cases now admitted remain there for less than one month, but there are some cases, numbering about 50 in all, which remain there for a period of years.
As the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has told the House, this is rather an exceptional hospital in that it occupies a very large area of 100 acres. The buildings are set far apart—a fact which has its

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advantages, as well as its disadvantages. The total strength of the hospital is 550. The number of patients there is 400. The educational facilities for the children at that hospital are exceptional. The operating theatres, the physiotherapy departments and all equipment required are of the highest order; and it would be a national loss if it were decided that the hospital should close down.
Two points have been raised in this debate. One is that the hospital is not fully occupied; the other is the question of the distance that parents and friends have to travel to visit children in hospital. My own feeling is that there are hospitals with children's wards that would be quite willing to transfer the children's beds to Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton, and in that way enable themselves to deal more effectively with the adult cases which crowd their waiting lists. No doubt there are other proposals that could be made without interfering with the essential work that is carried on at Queen Mary's, Carshalton.
The difficulties that have arisen at the Fountain Hospital in Tooting should, I feel, be dealt with by the construction of a new hospital at Tooting. The problem, as has been said already in the debate, is financial; and no doubt that problem is acute with the cost of the Health Service mounting up to something like £700 million a year. But this question of adequate treatment for mentally defective children is really urgent, and this new hospital could be erected in sections over a course of years. They have at the Fountain Hospital a devoted staff, who, if they saw this new hospital taking shape, would willingly continue the excellent work they are now doing in very depressing circumstances.
That, my Lords, is my solution for the present difficulties. Maintain the hospital at Carshalton, the famous Queen Mary's Hospital for Children. Part of the hospital may be used for other things, but maintain the unit. Do not scatter the patients; do not destroy the organisation. But I do think that, whatever expenses may be involved, a commencement should be made with the building of a new hospital to re-house the patients at the present hospital at Tooting.
4.53 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Cohen of Birkenhead was, I think, a little critical of my noble friend Lord Crook for having made his Motion a general one. Yet I think my noble friend Lord Crook was right so to do, and I must say I was charmed by the very quiet way in which he presented his facts. That he did not appeal to our emotions was, I felt, a correct and very right way of looking at this problem. The fact that he put his Motion in general terms enables us to see his particular concern in the perspective of the general problem, and to look at the needs of the sick child in hospital in rather more detail than we were able to do in the last debate on January 28.
The noble Lord's timing was rather good, perhaps not so much from his own point of view as from the point of view of the debate, in that it has very nearly coincided with the publication of the Report to which the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, referred, on the Welfare of Children in Hospital. It is a very interesting Report and I shall say a word or two about it in a moment. In the previous debate there was a good deal of legal argument and some very strong feeling, but I think six general propositions were established about which there is now really very little contention. If I may say so, it was particularly the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Moran and Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, which established these propositions.
The first is that the need for children's hospitals, or beds in hospitals, is declining and will probably decline still further. The proportion of children's beds occupied is now perhaps only 60 per cent. or even 50 per cent. of what it was. The second is the increased needs in other specialties. The third is that it is impossible to contemplate vacant children's beds remaining unused. The fourth is that such changes of function are bound to be painful, both to lay members of committees and to the medical and nursing staffs involved, and, therefore, those of us who view these matters from outside must, if we are sure it is right, give our full support to regional boards and boards of governors when they have to make such changes. The fifth point which I think was established is that for the efficient technical care of children in

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hospital large units of beds are essential—not necessarily large units of children's beds but certainly large units of beds—so that there may be adequate ancillary services, particularly pathology, X-rays, physiotherapy and the like. And so the sixth point which has been established is that small individual children's hospitals should probably be the first to be converted to other uses. That was as far as we got in the last debate.
The Motion of my noble friend Lord Crook carries us a stage further. I think that in effect he accepts these six general propositions and then goes on to urge the concentration of sick children in large centralised children's hospitals. He in fact swings right to the opposite extreme from the position adopted by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, in the previous debate. May I say at once that I think his is a very much better idea, as a general proposition, than that of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, in such large units we do have the concentration of expertise which is needed. We have doctors who are fully specialist; we can have expert pathology, radiology and nursing services; and, as he has rightly stressed, we have teachers for the chronic children, the long-stay children. There is only one serious disadvantage to his proposal and that is the inevitable increase in distance between parents and children. There is, therefore, quite an even balance to decide here.
During the past ten years there has been a great change in our ideas about the care of the child in hospital. First, it has been realised that admission to hospital for a young child, a little child, particularly, is a fairly frightening experience. It varies greatly with the child. Some are very brave; some are absolutely terrified. Generally speaking, the more secure the child is at home, the greater is its self-reliance on separation from home. The greatest strain is seen in only children and first children, especially if they have over-anxious, over-fussy, mothers, and in children from unhappy or broken homes.
There was in the old days little enough consideration of the child's mental state in the hospital itself, particularly in the tonsil and adenoid wards. Children used to be admitted into these wards on one day of the week and lined up, almost
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like pigs for slaughter. One would be taken off to the theatre, would come back unconscious and bleeding, in the sight of the other children, and this process would go on until the last poor little one at the end of the line was reached. That sort of thing, thank goodness! is now very rare, if not quite extinct.
A second change that has happened in the last ten years is the realisation that the sudden separation of a young child from its parents, and especially from its mother, can have long-term effects on the child's character and behaviour. This is important, but I do not think it should be exaggerated. It has been very well stated in the Medical World by Dr. Yudkin, who is the consultant pædiatrician of the Whittington Hospital in London—a familiar combination of the Archway and other hospitals at Highgate, and one of the biggest hospitals in the metropolis now. This is what he says:
"What is known about the effects on young children of a stay in hospital? Certainly harmful effects are frequent, both as regards the immediate situation in hospital and their behaviour for some little time after they return home. They are unhappy, quiet, and sometimes defiant in hospital; often miserable, clinging and irritable at home. In the vast majority of children living in ordinary homes, these effects pass off within a few weeks. It is possible, but by no means certain, that a short hospital stay can by itself produce more serious effects later on."
That, I think, is quite a moderate statement, and I think is an accurate one.
Dr. Yudkin goes on to say, however:
"When young children stay for many weeks or months, the effects are more lasting. These children have lived part of their lives in grossly unnatural surroundings, … If the children come, as they often do, from otherwise normal homes, the effects, though long-lasting, are likely to be overcome, but these children must be classed with other groups of deprived children in any discussion of the long-term effects."
And he goes on:
"Much more research is needed."
Now those are both moderate statements of the situation, and one would emphasise that the importance here is particularly where the long-stay child is concerned—the children about whom my noble friend Lord Crook spoke so graphically.
The problem is, then, how to make the admission to hospital as little frightening as possible, and how, while the child is in hospital, to preserve the family ties.

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There have been two lines of attack on this problem. The first was that of the late Sir James Spence of Newcastle—perhaps the greatest figure in British pædiatrics in the past twenty-five years. He saw the problem, and he created in Newcastle a mothers' and babies' hospital. He converted three houses by joining them together so that it was possible to admit mothers with their babies. There are twelve beds for mothers and babies in this hospital, and also twelve extra cots for babies without mothers: and that has been a very successful institution, of course, for little babies under about two years. Professor Court, Sir James Spence's successor, has continued with it, and, so that the mothers can be in with their babies at the same time, there is now at the Newcastle General Hospital, which is the old former municipal hospital, a unit for the admission of mothers with their babies suffering from the condition pyloric stenosis, which requires surgical treatment. Professor Craig, of Aberdeen, has, I understand, a 12-bed mother and baby unit which is very similar indeed.
Now in this sort of unit there has to be an entirely new approach to the nursing of sick children. The mother has to be taught by the nurse the care of the sick child, which means that the nurse has to become a teacher as well as a nurse. She has to become a demonstrator—somebody who is showing the mother how to do the job. Often enough, it is sufficient to admit a mother and child to the hospital for training in the care of the sick child for only two days and nights: then the mother and baby can go home again, and, with home care, either through nurses or through physicians, it is perfectly all right. The illness is coped with, although occasionally there may be a need to readmit.
That is one line of attack. The second line of attack which has been tried is all-day visiting and any-time visiting in children's wards. This proposition was at first strongly resisted by many people on the grounds that the visits of parents were bad for children; that they upset them; that the children behaved badly after the visits, and so on. But, where-ever it has been adopted, it has been most successful. The mothers come into the hospital and do things for the children. They do not just sit with them; they do
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things for the children, and, again, learn the technique of nursing sick children. On the whole, this is a more practical way of looking after most of the sick children—and these are, of course, the little children—when they are admitted to hospital, especially where long-stay children are concerned, because it would be uneconomic for mothers to go and stay for many months in the case of a child who is going to be in hospital over a great time. However, it does mean that the children should be admitted to hospitals which are as near home as possible. If the mothers and the fathers visit every day, then distance travelled becomes very important.
We must keep this in perspective, of course. For older children it is not nearly so important. My own children were very interested in this Report. They hold the view that parents are all right in their place, but you do not want them in school and certainly you only want them sometimes in hospital. We have to keep the matter in the right perspective. Again Dr. Yudkin summed it up, I think, very well. He said:
"There is no doubt, however, that hospital experience is sometimes quite definitely beneficial to a child's emotional development. For the slightly older child who is still desperately tied to his mother's apron strings or for most school-age children the hospital experience, adequately overcome, adds a great deal to their maturity. It is not unusual to hear mothers referring to their child's 'growing up' during the stay in hospital. 'Growing up' always involves overcoming difficulties and learning to be independent, and a humanely-run hospital may give older children opportunities that they have not found at home. It would be ridiculous, of course. to use this as a plea in favour of the older methods. Rather it is important to recognise that the overcoming of difficulties, with proper help, is a real phenomenon in a child's development and should not be overlooked in the planning of hospital and ward management any more than we should overlook methods of preventing the unhappiness of the younger children".
I therefore think that the ideal children's unit is beginning to emerge. Children's wards should be part of a large hospital unit, and ideally they should be near enough to home for daily visiting—especially for the under fives and, if possible, for the long-stay children. Equally, it is vitally important to keep the children out of adult wards. Now when is a child not a child? The Report of the Committee of the Central Health Services Council points out that adolescents get very upset and that it

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is very bad for them—particularly adolescent girls who are admitted to gynecological wards, for example—and I think that fifteen is probably the right age to take. In adult wards they see things and hear things which are really better not seen and heard, and that applies especially to the surgical cases and to the cases of tonsils and adenoids.
A very valuable analysis has been made by my former colleagues at the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust of the number of children now admitted to hospital. Of all patients admitted to hospital, about one in five is aged 0 to 15. Of these children—and these are approximate figures only; they vary a little from hospital to hospital, but not greatly—three-fifths are admitted for tonsils and adenoids. One-fifth are admitted for surgical conditions—appendicitis, accidents, burns, pyloric stenosis and orthopædic conditions. One-fifth are admitted under the care of pædiatricians—that is to say, physicians specialising in children's diseases. The average stay of tonsil and adenoid cases is very short, three to four days only.
Basing myself on these figures, I calculate that in a 400-bed general hospital, the need is for a children's unit of the following size: sixteen children's medical beds, sixteen children's surgical beds and about twenty children's beds for tonsils and adenoids, making a unit of fifty-two in all. That covers, of course, all children up to and including the age of fifteen, which would be more than is usually given in calculations of this sort. That is the ideal unit. It is big enough for full specialisation and for full ancillary services. I think that with fifty beds it is possible to have school-teaching in the wards for children. The minimum put forward in the Central Health Services Council Report, which I suggest might be a little unwelcome to my noble friend, is eight to ten beds, as a unit. I think that this is too small and would result in inadequate service. When my noble friend was giving his figures of the alternative accommodation to which it was proposed to send the Carshalton children, I felt that some of the units probably were too small.
Applying what I have been saying to the problem of Queen Mary's, Carshalton, I think that the cases as set out in
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my noble friend's speech fall into two great groups. First, of all, there are the short-stay children, the acute cases, who stay less than a month. Most of them, I suspect the great majority of them, could be looked after in children's blocks in local hospitals, if that was physically possible. I think that that could be done without serious detriment to these children and with one benefit to them—namely, that they would be nearer to their mothers and fathers. On the other hand, the long-stay children present a great and real problem. Before the noble Earl rejects my noble friend's plea, I hope he will look carefully at the problem of the long-stay children at Queen Mary's. My noble friend mentioned that they had a very good poliomyelitis unit. We hope that that will be required less in future as a result of polio inoculations. My noble friend also mentioned that they had a muscular dystrophy unit. There is no reason to suppose that it will be less used. I am afraid that it will continue to be required. Muscular dystrophy is a perfectly awful complaint affecting children, for which no known cure exists. It persists over many years, and it is really valuable to have one or more of those specialist units for an area like London. Again, cerebral palsy requires specialist units to deal with children. The care of long-stay rheumatic children, though these cases are greatly fewer than they used to be, at present presents a real problem; in the case of these children, Queen Mary's has made for itself a special name.
From my noble friend's figures I have tried to work out, I expect quite inaccurately, the number of beds at Carshalton probably occupied by these long-stay cases, for which they are doing such a fine job. I estimate that it is in the order of 200 beds, but I say that very much subject to correction. I feel that whatever happens to Carshalton in future, the important thing is that those units should not be split up and dissipated. I do not mind if the rest of the hospital is used for other purposes. As for acutely sick children, I think it would be a good thing for them to be looked after in their local hospitals. I hope that the work being done for these specialised long-stay children, for whom Queen Mary's has done and is still doing a splendid job, will not be lightly set aside in the future.
5.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, this has been an interesting debate and somewhat unique, because, except for the noble Lord, Lord Crook, who moved the Motion, and I, who am going to do my best to answer him, all the noble Lords who have spoken are professionally qualified to speak on this subject. A fortnight ago, rather on similar lines, we debated the possible future of the Princess Louise Hospital for Children, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said, this debate too has developed into a general discussion on the future of the treatment of children in hospitals. But the noble Lord, Lord Crook, as he was good enough to tell me beforehand he proposed to do, devoted the bulk of his speech to the particular case of Queen Mary's Hospital, Carshalton.
Perhaps I may say at once to the noble Lord, and to other noble Lords who are equally interested in Queen Mary's, that at this very moment, more or less, the suggestions put forward by the Regional Hospital Board are being considered by my right honourable friend, and he has told me that one of the reasons why his decision has not been reached before was that he specifically wished to hear what was said by your Lordships on this subject before he finally made up his mind. I hope that that will be some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Crook, who, if I may say so, has put his case very adequately and movingly, yet, as he said, without emotion.
As my noble friend Lord Dundee said in the last debate, we have to go back to the reasons why these problems over the use of children's hospitals have arisen. The fact is that we are very fortunate in not having to-day so many sick children as we had in the past, and particularly in having fewer long-stay cases; and it is, I understand, mainly the fall in these cases which has resulted in empty beds. I took the trouble to make some inquiries to find out what diseases formed the bulk of long-stay cases in the past. I understand that the diseases in which there has been this great fall are chiefly tuberculosis, rickets and marasmus, which means, when translated, wastage due to malnutrition, and also, as the noble Lord, Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, mentioned, rheumatic heart diseases.
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The noble Lord, Lord Crook, quoted the Report of the Royal College of Physicians on the various methods of dealing with sick children, a matter which was mentioned in our last debate. He quoted first the provision of treatment in a children's hospital, which may be a general or a special hospital; secondly, a separate block at a general hospital; thirdly, a children's unit of one or more wards; and fourthly—and most undesirable, as many noble Lords have said—beds in an adult ward. I think it is fair to say that the whole general trend would be to reduce the four possibilities to three; and that, of course, would be the first three. I think everybody is agreed that, except possibly in emergencies, that should be achieved. These hospitals or units may be divided again into two types: that is, units for the short-stay cases, which I visualise would be for things like tonsils, minor accidents and so on; and units for long-stay cases—which we hope will become even fewer—whether they are suffering from some of the diseases I have already mentioned or whether they are mentally defective children housed in special hospitals such as the Fountain Hospital at Tooting.
Unfortunately I am unable to give your Lordships any statistics showing clearly how these children fall into various categories of disease, but I can give the House some rough idea of where sick children are treated. I gather that the last census was taken on the night of April 8. When the count was taken there were nearly 37,000 children between the ages of four weeks and fourteen years in all hospitals in England and Wales. Of these 37,000, nearly 6,500 were in mental and mental deficiency hospitals, and of the remaining 30,500 fewer than 4,000 were in children's general hospitals—that is, in short-stay hospitals for children only, such as Great Ormond Street. In other words, the overwhelming majority of children now receive, and have received for some time, I gather, treatment in units of hospitals which also treat adults, and are not in hospitals for children only.
I would ask your Lordships to consider whether the best informed opinion accepts or condemns this position. The Report of the Royal College of Physicians, published in 1957, to which reference has been made states:
"There is no doubt that special children's hospitals offer the best service for children "—

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This part has been quoted before, but I think it well worth repeating—
"because the staff, on all levels and in all departments, is attuned to the special needs of the sick child"
and because children's hospitals
"carry a tradition of service not lightly to be set aside."
I do not think anybody disagrees with the statement that there should in certain circumstances be special children's hospitals.
But the Report goes on (it has already been quoted and I will not bore your Lordships by repeating it) to stress the necessity for parents and friends to visit. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, and others, if you do not have in an area a certain number of these smaller units attached to general hospitals for adults, but have all the children in the area concentrated in one big children's hospital, it will be almost impossible for the average parent to visit. That, I think, is what we all have to bear in mind when consideration is being given to whether a particular children's hospital should be changed from its present use, largely because it is not being filled to its maximum capacity. And that, of course, is probably the first reason why the Regional Board would start to consider whether a hospital should be used for a different purpose. Some noble Lords have suggested that it might be possible to do away with the smaller units and give those to the adults, concentrating then on one big children's hospital. It is open to question however, whether that would not also mean depriving children of opportunities of being visited, something which the experts on both these Committees—not only the one I have just mentioned but also Sir Harry Platt's committee, which produced a few days ago the Report which noble Lords have quoted—regard as of the first importance. I think that that question must be very much in our minds.
The noble Lord, Lord Crook, also mentioned the question of education. The Minister of Health and his colleague the Minister of Education are fully aware that adequate educational facilities should be given to children in hospital. I imagine that children who are in for a short period, having their tonsils out or being treated for an accident or something like that, would not be fit enough to
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receive instruction and in any case would not be there long enough for any such arrangements to be made. I have not seen, in any of the various Reports, what sort of period expert authority considers children should be in hospital for it to be necessary for them to receive instruction, but, speaking entirely for myself, I presume that it would be something in the nature of at least one school term.
LORD COHEN OF BIRKENHEAD: Perhaps I might quote the Report which, with regard to education, says this:
"Those in adult wards are specially liable to be overlooked, but even for a short stay a break in education may be positively harmful, and whenever a child is admitted hospital authorities should consider whether he is likely to stay long enough and be fit enough to receive education."
So it may be for a comparatively short period, even for weeks.
TILE EARL OF ONSLOW: I am grateful to the noble Lord; that gives us an idea of the educational point of view. In long-stay hospitals, where children are grouped together in large numbers, I understand that it is a much simpler problem to provide the educational facilities than it is in short-stay units. However, I understand that in all cases this matter is being looked into, and that arrangements are being made with the local education authorities so that the statutory obligations of the two Ministers concerned are adequately carried out.
There is one other point the noble Lord, Lord Crook, raised, which was the question of the teaching and training of children's nurses. I understand that at present there are twenty-five training schools recognised for the Sick Children's Nurses Register in which some 2,000 to 2,500 students are being trained. There are nearly 10,000 names on the Register, and the number of trained nurses employed in children's acute hospitals is only about 1,000, which includes general trained nurses. I also understand that every nurse training for the General Register must have at least three months' experience in children's wards. It is unlikely that the disappearance of one training school would affect the numbers that are trained annually for children's nursing. My Lords, I hope that I have answered most of the questions the noble Lord and others have asked, and that

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he will consider that I have done it reasonably accurately. I certainly have wished to give him all the information I possibly could.
5.32 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I should like to thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, and the noble Earl who has just replied for the Government. He rightly said that he and I have cause to be nervous when the only other four speeches were those of eminent medical men, to whose views we shall pay due regard. May I say to those four noble Lords how much I appreciate their intervention—and I say that whether they have accepted the views I have advanced or whether they have not. I am also grateful to my noble friends Lord Amulree and Lord Uvedale of North End, who I knew were going to express views on the lines I was venturing to place before your Lordships. I am equally grateful that such distinguised people as my noble friend Lord Cohen of Birkenhead and my noble colleague Lord Taylor offered their observations. If I may say so, I find in their contributions—which at some points were critical from their point of view—a great deal of comfort for the point of view I have put forward.
My noble friend Lord Cohen of Birkenhead was good enough to say something, as part of his general belief, which I find so impeccable that I could accept it wholeheartedly; and I could apply it completely to the case of Queen Mary's to which I have referred to-day. He referred to the need to see that the children displaced should not lose any necessary services, and that these things must be judged strictly and objectively. I would say to my noble friend that I regard that as complete support for what I have said this afternoon, because if the Minister will strictly and objectively make certain that the children proposed to be displaced from Queen Mary's are sent to places where they will not lose the necessary services, I shall not mind seeing them go; nor will others. But there is no hope that any of us can see that that could possibly be the circumstance at all. So much of what is talked about in so many of these Reports, while it is something we should all love to see, is away in the distance—as far as the first
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building of a hospital is to-day from where it was when we first talked about it when we had the Health Service debate in this House.
So far as the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, is concerned, I would say to him that I see no objection to placing these children in these large, well-organised blocks in other hospitals. I should not object to it on principle, and I should not object to it in fact. I should like to see it in sonic ways, because it would mean that somebody was bothering to build the blocks in these hospitals and was getting on wish the job that has been put off too long. But the blocks to which these children can be transferred do not exist, and have no hope of existing in present circumstances: they exist only as things that people like to see in Reports. And that will remain so until positive attempts are made to create the kind of service which the noble Lords, Lord Moran, and Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, pictured to us in the debate on the Princess Louise Hospital.
May I say a little about the Platt Report? I was glad to see it published on Tuesday, and to note that my noble friend had had it presented to him last October. He was able to give effective consideration to it and report to the Minister, and the Minister was able to do a thing unprecedented, so far as I know, in Government Department administration. When the Report came out on Tuesday morning I envisaged myself next October or November putting down a Motion to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they had yet had time to consider the Report of the Platt Committee. I visualised the noble Earl who has replied to-day getting up, with his accustomed good grace, and apologising to me that Her Majesty's Government had had the Report for only six months, and that I was completely and unconscionably wrong in daring to ask for considerations to be advanced at that early date because there would be so many more stones to turn over and avenues to run down. That has been my experience in this House two years after a Report has been made.
Therefore, I was amazed to see, the afternoon after publication, that there was already a circulation from the Ministry of Health to rush the Report out to the hospitals, so that they should

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receive it yesterday morning. Since there is one thing in my reply on which I can congratulate the Ministry of Health, and since it is so rare an event, may I say to the noble Earl how glad we are that at least this Report was given such quick consideration which enabled people to study it when it was not history, but news. It was considered at Queen Mary's yesterday, and, with one or two minor exceptions, every single one of the things recommended has been practised there for a long period of time. There are things in the Report which, had we the opportunity of debating it, I am quite sure I should find people like my noble friend Lord Cohen of Birkenhead, the noble Lord. Lord Moran, and perhaps my noble friend Lord Taylor saying they could not accept.
My noble friend Lord Taylor mentioned the unit of eight to ten children which, according to the Report, could provide welfare. He said that I might well comment that this was not an adequate service. We have only to look at the terms of reference of the Platt Committee to see why there is a difference in figures between those of my noble friend and those of the Royal College of Physicians Pediatric Unit. The Platt Committee were not asked to talk about the organisation of hospitals, but about the organisation of welfare—what to do inside a hospital—and I accept it as completely accurate that they could do these things for nine or ten patients. They were not asked to look at the organisation and administration of Regional Boards of hospitals dealing with a figure of 40 or perhaps 200 patients—the kind of figures talked about when we talked on the Princess Louise Hospital.
The noble Earl replying for the Government just now was given a very nice set of phrases to talk about education—those famous stones "and" "avenues" kind of phrases, to which, whatever Party is in power, noble Lords and Members of another place have become accustomed for so long. Of course, Ministers are doing all they can to see that changes referred to in circulars written some years ago are going to be carried out, whether in education or anything else. The plain truth, however, is that it is the facts that matter. It is not a question of dealing with short-stay
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patients. It is a question of ability to deal with the matters—whether you have the space; whether you have the facilities. That brings us back again to the building of the block; and until this has been provided, it is not much use doing away with the kind of thing that already exists.
I know that I shall be unpopular, and I know that I must be most careful not to occupy your Lordships' time for too long. I am grateful to the Government that I was given precedence to-day over the Government Business. However, I do want to say this about visiting. First of all, I wonder if the noble Lord who replied for Her Majesty's Government has quite seen some of the relevance of his own case on visiting. If there is a difficulty about visiting at Carshalton in these cases to-day, what will be the position when 600 children who are to spend the rest of their lives in hospital are transferred from Tooting, some miles further out, and 600 sets of parents and friends, already faced with travel difficulties in a central hospital, have five further miles added? I should not like to suggest that the Minister would need to stand first upon one leg and then another.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: If I may intervene, I think the noble Lord has got it a little bit wrong. What I was trying to put to him was the general principle: that where you could have suitable children's blocks or children's units well spaced about the area, that would be a very good thing from the point of view of visiting, because they would be well and frequently spaced apart so that parents would not have to go far. In general, I was talking about the point in that way.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I accept the noble Earl's intervention very readily, because I understood that was what he said. I am merely saying that if the people who now visit have another five miles added, all the difficulties of visiting to which the noble Earl referred must be increased.
May I, finally, say something about visiting at Carshalton, because if the Minister has been good enough to put off his determination and is to look at all the facts, I should like to be sure, even at the risk of boring your Lordships for two more minutes, he has all those facts, and

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that not one is left out. The patients in the hospital come from various parts of the country. They do so because doctors and parents voluntarily send them. There is freedom of choice, and it is wholly because of that freedom of choice that, out of the 350 beds allocated to children in 34 hospitals in the locality, the maximum user at any one time is 60 per cent.
If I deliberately look factually at those who visit Queen Mary's, I would, for any purpose of argument, so as not to make it unfair, eliminate any question of visitation in respect of long-stay cases, because I think there is a complete difference between the two. At the date of the suggested closure, there were 310 acute cases in Queen Mary's. Five came from more than fifty miles away; 53 came from between ten and fifty miles. Of the remaining number, 56 came from the contiguous area to the hospital, and 196 from inside a ten-mile radius. An analysis was made in order to show what the difference in visitation was and there was no appreciable difference. From the contiguous area 80 per cent. of the children, were visited three times or more a week; in the ten-mile area, the proportion was 76 per cent. In the contiguous area, 34 per cent. were visited four times or more a week and for those further away the proportion was 28 per cent. Coming down to daily visiting, 7 per cent. of those admitted from the contiguous area, were visited daily, and 5 per cent. from the ten-mile area.
I should also add, on this point about visiting, that we must not go from one extreme to the other. It is no good our pretending to swing from the point where we try to stop visiting in hospitals to the point where we expect visits every day; because the truth is that parents have other things to do than visit sick children. Many a woman finds the strain of visiting her sick child very difficult if she has two or three others to look after; there is the difficulty of getting baby-sitters and getting meals for the husband. We must not run away with the equally wrong consideration that we expect parents are going to visit every day.
I must apologise for detaining your Lordships so long. I do not apologise for making this a general Motion. I did it deliberately, for this reason. I believe in the proper allocation of Business, as Mem-
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bers on these Benches, in particular, do. I did not think it right to put down a Motion on Queen Mary's, Carshalton, on its own, something which I know about and would talk about. I had no intention of moving a Motion to go to a Division, and I wanted to put in the Motion something which would do what it has done—that is, encourage noble Lords of great knowledge and great ability on these matters to say something on it, as well as to give me the opportunity of saying to the Minister, "Hold your hand on this matter". That I have done, and with the permission of the House, I now ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

MARRIAGE (SECRETARIES OF SYNAGOGUES) BILL
5.48 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD COHEN: My Lords, the Bill the Second Reading of which I am about to move has the recommendation that it was considered so uncontroversial in another place that it got through not only without a Division but without a single speech at any stage being made for or against it. I could wish that there was in this House a Standing Order which permitted a similar procedure, but I understand that your Lordships will expect me to explain. briefly why it is necessary to amend the law relating to Jewish marriages, and to do so I must delve shortly into the history of that law.
It will be sufficient, I think, if I go back to 1856—the Act of 1856, entitled "An Act to amend the provisions of the Marriage and Registrations Acts". Before that date it was possible for persons professing the Jewish religion to be married according to the religious rites of such persons, but there were a number of vexatious conditions—not really vexatious but including the necessity of satisfying the registrar that the parties to the intended marriage were, in fact, persons professing the Jewish religion. Down to 1840, this seems to have caused no difficulty. Apparently, there was only one set of religious authorities. But in that year, a new congregation known as the

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West London Synagogue of British Jews adopted a modified form of ritual which did not meet with the approval of the then recognised ecclesiastical authorities, and they were unwilling to certify that persons belonging to that congregation were persons professing the Jewish religion. Difficulties thus arose to their getting married, at any rate according to the religious rites which they desired. To meet this difficulty, in 1856, when a new Marriage Act was introduced, there was inserted a special section, Section 22, to enable marriage registration books to be issued to the secretary of that synagogue and to the secretary of any other synagogue affiliated to it.
I need not trouble your Lordships with the details of that section, as it is, in substance, reproduced in the Marriage Act, 1949, which is the Act which I am now seeking to amend. But I am afraid I must trouble your Lordships with a short reference to that part of the Act which deals with registration of marriages. Under Section 53 (c) it is provided that a marriage can be registered
"in the case of a marriage solemnized according to the usages of persons professing the Jewish religion, by the secretary of the synagogue of which the husband is a member."
Then you have to turn to Section 67 to find the definition of a secretary of a synagogue. That is subdivided into three paragraphs (a), (b) and (c). Paragraph (a) reads in this way:
"a person whom the President of the London Committee of Deputies … certifies in writing to the Registrar General to be the secretary of a synagogue …;"
paragraph (b) covers the case of the West London Synagogue itself, and paragraph (c) covers this and subsidiary synagogues adopting the same Reform procedure.
At this point I must mention that Anglo-Jewish history has repeated itself. In the year 1910 another congregation of Jews was established known as the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. The tenets and the practice of that synagogue deviated not only from those of the orthodox but, to some extent, also from those of the West London Synagogue, so that the congregation did not fall within paragraphs (b) or (c) of the definition to which I have referred. Among the founders of that Synagogue were Doctor Claude Montefiore and Miss Lily Montagu, both well known for their social work, the
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former a distinguished student of both the Old and the New Testaments and whose works will, I think, be familiar to those who normally sit on the Episcopal Bench.
At first no difficulty arose as to marriage, and the secretary of the new congregation was certified by the President of the Board of Deputies under paragraph (a) of Section 67. But later on new congregations of Liberal Jews were started, and the orthodox ecclesiastical authorities—not the President himself but the authorities, in accordance with whose instructions he had to act—began to have doubts as to whether it was right for them to recognise those new congregations as congregations of persons professing the Jewish faith. The result was that again difficulties arose as to the marriage of members of those congregations, and it was finally felt by Jewish authorities, orthodox and Liberal alike, that the only satisfactory way out of the difficulty was to extend to the Liberal congregations similar facilities to those already accorded to the Reform congregations.
Those of your Lordships who are interested in the matter will have before you the Bill. You will see that the operative clause is Clause 1, which provides that the definition of secretary of a synagogue in Section 67 of the Marriage Act "shall be amended by substituting for paragraph (c) the following paragraphs". The new paragraph (c) is, mutatis mutandis, in the same terms as paragraph (b) of the definition in Section 67 of the 1949 Act relating-to the Reform congregation, and paragraph (d) reproduces the old paragraph (c) of that definition with the amendments necessary to put affiliated Liberal Jewish congregations on a par with congregations affiliated to the West London Synagogue.
Your Lordships may think that I am perhaps suggesting that the ecclesiastical authorities are very tiresome people, with difficulties. But I may mention that the exact meaning of "Jewish faith" has been a matter of trouble not only to the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities but to your Lordships when sitting in a judicial capacity. It is not so long ago—I think the Lord Chancellor will remember it—when your Lordships finally decided that the expression "Jewish faith" was so uncertain that it had no meaning. However, be that as it may, your Lordships

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will, if you accept this Bill, remove a difficulty. I think I may add that your Lordships will be removing the justifiable grievance of a substantial section of the community. The membership of the Liberal Synagogue is now some 2,450 and there are fifteen affiliated congregations with an aggregate membership of about 10,000.
May I conclude by saying what perhaps I should have said earlier in my observations—namely, that I am a member of the West London Synagogue and a subscriber to the Liberal Synagogue, and to that extent have an interest in this Bill. But that will not prevent my moving the Second Reading, to which I hope your Lordships will accede.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Cohen.)
5.57 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I have no wish to spoil the record of this Bill, but I think I should say to your Lordships that, so far as Her Majesty's Government are concerned, there is no reason why, if it commends itself to your Lordships, you should not give it a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RIGHTS OF LIGHT BILL [H.L.]
5.58 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair]
Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.
Clause 3:
Effect of registered notice and proceedings relating thereto
(3) Subject to the next following subsection, any person who, if such a structure as is mentioned in subsection (1) of this section had been erected as therein mentioned, would have had a right of action in any court in respect of that structure, on the grounds that he was entitled to a right to the access of light to the dominant building across the servient land, and
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that the said right was infringed by the erection of that structure, shall have the like right of action in that court in respect of the registration of a notice under the last preceding section:
Provided that an action shall not be begun by virtue of this subsection after the notice in question has ceased to have effect.
LORD GRANVILLE-WEST LORD GRANVILLE-WEST moved, in subsection (3), to leave out the proviso. The noble Lord said: My purpose in moving the Amendment standing in my name on the Marshalled List is to draw attention to a difficulty which will almost certainly arise if this Bill passes into law in its present form. As your Lordships know, to acquire a right of light under the Prescription Act, 1832, it is necessary, broadly speaking, to show that the flow of light to a building has been actually enjoyed for a period of twenty years without interruption, and an interruption lasting less than a year does not stop the running of time. That is because of Section 4 of the Act of 1832 which provides that
"nothing shall be deemed to be an interruption unless the same shall be submitted to or acquiesced in for one year after the party interrupted shall have had notice thereof".
The points I wish to make in support of the Amendment that I am moving are first of all dealing with the period of time, the twenty years, and secondly the interruption. As I see it, the difficulty arises in the case of a man who has enjoyed the passage of light to his building for a period of over nineteen years, or perhaps extended, as the time, is under this Bill. If he has enjoyed that right for over nineteen years, then it is impossible for time to run against him, and by the expiration of twenty years he is entitled to his statutory right under the Prescription Act, 1832. If, however, he acquiesces in an interruption which continues for a period of more than a year, then, of course, a fresh period of twenty years has to begin. Therefore, in this case the difficulty I see is that under the present law a man can object to an obstruction. such as a screen, erected to shut out the light passing to his premises, and he need not bring an action within twelve months. Indeed, so long as he protests in a reasonable manner against the existence of that screen he can bring his action after the twelve months have expired. It is possible, therefore, for him, having enjoyed that right over nineteen years, to bring

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his action in the court after the twenty years and succeed in establishing his statutory right to light.
Subsection (5) (b) of Clause 3 provides that as from the date of registration of a notice under the Bill and until such time as an action is brought he shall be deemed to acquiesce in the obstruction which is to be treated as resulting from the registration of the notice under this Bill. If, therefore, the notice is registered under this Bill on the day after the original nineteen years have passed, he finds himself in this difficulty: he can bring his action only when the full period of twenty years has elapsed, because it is only when that full period has been enjoyed that his statutory right crystallises, and, by the proviso against which I am now speaking, he cannot bring his action after the period of one year beginning with the date of registration of notice; for the notice then ceases to have effect. He is, therefore, in an almost impossible position and the provisions of the Prescription Act, 1832, will be frustrated so far as he is concerned.
I believe that this is a serious difficulty which may confront many people when this Bill passes into law. I realise that the Amendment which I have moved will not completely cure that difficulty but I have raised this point because I believe it is one of substance. I hope that the noble and learned Viscount who will no doubt be dealing with this Amendment will perhaps give consideration to it, because there may be many cases that will be affected by this proviso in the Bill whereby persons will be deprived of their rights to light which, under the present law, and if this Bill had not been brought into force, they would have enjoyed as a statutory right. I therefore beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 29, leave out lines 29 and 30.—(Lord Granville-West.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Granville-West, for raising this point, and for the obvious care and study he has given to this Bill, which has been shown by his speech. If your Lordships will allow me, I should like first to deal with the specific argument which he advanced and then say one or two more general words about
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the problem raised by this subsection and the proviso. It is perfectly correct, as the noble Lord said, that the registration of a notice may, under Clause 3 (3), be challenged by the dominant owner only by action in court on the ground that he was entitled to a right to the access of light to his building which the erection of a screen would infringe; and that under the proviso to the subsection the action must be brought within one year from the date of registration.
I agree that there is nothing between us on the underlying law, for, as the noble Lord has stated, the right of light is acquired indefeasibly only after twenty years of enjoyment, by Section 3 of the Prescription Act, 1832, and nothing short of a whole year's obstruction interrupts the enjoyment. I agree with the noble Lord—I am only re-stating this to show that we are proceeding from the same premises—that where a notice is registered after light has been enjoyed for nineteen years and one day, the notional obstruction can no longer prevent the twenty years from running; and on the other hand, the dominant owner cannot challenge the registration on the strength of an acquired right of light until the twenty years have run—that is, one day before the expiration of the one year period permitted, by the proviso, for bringing the action.
I am taking, as the noble Lord did, the extreme example in order to raise the problem quite shortly, but of course the dominant owner is still placed in a difficult position if the period is one week or one month. As I have said, this is a most valuable point. I can assure the noble Lord that I shall consider it yet again after hearing his speech. I should like to consider fully the arguments which he has deployed, but I believe my answer is a good one and I should like to put it to him so that he may consider it before another stage of the Bill.
Broadly, the answer is that I do not believe any Amendment is needed, because the dominant owner can challenge the registration at any time by a quia timet action. It is well established that the court will restrain the erection of a building which will obstruct ancient lights if its erection is continued, even though at the time of the action no obstruction is yet effected. If I may give

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the authority to a brother member of the legal profession, I would say that the case upon which I was relying is Lichfield Speer v. Queen Anne's Gate Syndicate (1919, 1 Ch. 407). From that it follows logically that the court will restrain an act which would effect an obstruction at a future date if it is allowed to continue, even though as yet the right of light which it will obstruct has not accrued.
I believe the noble Lord had clearly in mind, although he did not emphasise this point, that registration of a notice is more drastic than the erection of a "spite-screen"—despite that name— because it cannot be challenged by verbal or written protests. That is true, but it is inevitable. The registration of notices can be assimilated to the erection of a screen only as far as it is practicable. It is, for instance, impossible to devise anything comparable to a dominant owner's right to abate the nuisance by knocking down the screen. On the Second Reading I dealt broadly with the point that generally the "spite-screen" it out of keeping with our views to-day and that we are trying to assimilate the effect of the notice as far as we can to that of a screen; but since the rights of the parties must flow and he ascertained from the entries in the register, it is essential that, apart from action in court, nothing which does not appear in the register should have any effect. It follows that the registration cannot be capable of challenge except by action in court.
My Lords, on the general point, I am sorry to take the time of the House, but I want the noble Lord to appreciate my general views of the position, and moreover I know there are many people affected, and I should like them also to be able to refer to Hansard on this point. Under subsection (2) of this clause, a notice ceases to have effect after one year from registration, unless cancelled or, in the case of a notice registered with a certificate of urgency under Clause 2 (3) (b), allowed to lapse at an earlier date. For practical purposes the importance of the proviso lies in the fact that it imposes a one-yeas time limit on proceedings to challenge registrations likely to last for a whole year; because, as I have pointed out, only a notice which has remained in the register for a whole year effects an interruption in the period of enjoyment which gives rise to an easement of light
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under the Prescription Act, and therefore there could be no point in litigating about a registration which has been cancelled or lapsed before the expiration of a year.
A screen interrupts the access of light to the dominant building from the date of its erection until it is either removed or challenged. If it is allowed to remain in position for a year it will have effected an interruption which in fact has obstructed the light for that period and which, therefore, in law, under Section 4 of the Act of 1832, has broken the period of enjoyment which gives rise to the prescriptive acquisition of rights under Section 3, and no proceedings subsequently brought can alter the fact or the legal consequences which flow from it. If registration is to have the same effect as the erection of a screen, it follows that registration must also be incapable of challenge after one year.
I should like to deal with the general argument that this time limit may lead to an injustice, and I think the noble Lord will agree that what has worried people is that the owner of the dominant building, or others interested in it, may not hear of the registration in time, or may not be able to complete investigations and preparation of the legal proceedings before the year is out. The answer which I see to that, and which I am sure the noble Lord will consider, is, first, that the same difficulties face those persons where a screen is put up. A non-resident landlord or a mortgagee may not become aware of the erection of the screen for some time, or it may take a considerable time to prepare court proceedings. Secondly, the legal rights of the parties must not be left uncertain for too long a period. We have to look at the other side of the question, the position of the servient owner. He intends to build on his land, and he must be able after a time to go ahead with his plans with the reasonable assurance that his neighbour cannot prevent him from building.
What is the remedy for these difficulties? I think it is this: that in a proper case the dominant owner may have a remedy under the Common Law doctrine of prescription by lost modern grant. A year's obstruction of the access of light, and consequently a year's registration of the notice, bars the acquisition of right of light by prescription under the

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Act of 1832, because the right can be acquired only by proof of twenty years' uninterrupted enjoyment immediately before the claim to the right is asserted. A year's obstruction does not, however, in my view, prevent the acquisition of a right of light under the doctrine of a lost modern grant. Where access of light has been enjoyed over a period exceeding nineteen years, followed by an interruption of one year or more, the court may yet raise the presumption of a lost grant on the facts placed before it, more particularly if there is evidence to show that the dominant owner did not intend to acquiesce in the interruption or was prevented from challenging it by factors outside his control.
If the noble Lord will look at the proviso at which his Amendment is directed he will see that it reads:
"Provided that an action shall not be begun by virtue of this subsection after the notice in question has ceased to have effect."
That means that the action must be based on subsection (3), and that depends on his being a person who would have a right of action in any court in respect of that structure on the grounds that he was entitled to a right to the access of light to the dominant building across the servient land, and that the right was infringed by the erection of the structure. Therefore, the proviso bites only on that action; it does not bite on an action which is based on the Common Law doctrine of lost modern grant.
So that is on the general position, which I think is still open and eases one of the matters which the noble Lord had in mind—namely, that this proviso would have a completely barring effect. I apologise to your Lordships for taking so long, but I am genuinely grateful to the noble Lord for raising this point. I hope he will be good enough to consider what I have said and if there are still any doubts, as he knows, I and my staff will be only too pleased to consider them. But I hope that I have at any rate dispelled some of the difficulties which he had in mind.
LORD GRANVILLE-WEST: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for the great attention he has given to the Amendment which I put down upon the Order Paper. I am particularly grateful to him for the
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exhaustive review he has given of the legal principles involved in this matter, and I appreciate very much that he has become seized of the point which I had endeavoured to make, although, I am afraid, rather haltingly in the circumstances.
The only point I would make to the noble and learned Viscount with regard to the doctrine of the lost modern grant is that that, of course, has nothing like the certainty that a right of prescription would have under the Prescription Act of 1832, and it depends entirely on the view the judge takes as to whether in fact the lost modern grant be presumed. Indeed, there has been, as the noble and learned Viscount knows, a considerable difference of judicial opinion as to whether it is possible to rebut the presumption that a lost modern grant has ever been granted. Some take the view that no evidence can be called to show that no grant was, in fact, made. Other learned judges have taken the view that it is an irrebuttable presumption. It is, of course, a complete fiction—a fiction which has been described as imposing an intolerable burden upon the consciences of judges, because it has meant that they were proceeding upon a doctrine and presuming that a grant had been made when no one believed that it had in fact been made. It is in that respect a most unsatisfactory method of deciding this question, particularly as we are dealing with a matter of legislation.
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for saying that he will look at the point again: and, indeed, I am quite sure that he wishes to meet the problem, if a problem there be. I am most anxious to study with great care the explanations that he has given with regard to the Amendment and to the principles of law which apply, and I should like to say how deeply grateful I am to him for the trouble he has taken. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clauses 4 and 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Power to make rules]:
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Perhaps I may discuss the other two Amendments together; I can assure your Lordships

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that they are little more than drafting Amendments. Paragraph (b) of Clause 6 at present confers power to make rules to give effect to the provisions of Clause 3 as to the cancellation and variation of the registration of notices. Clause 3 refers to cancellation and variation only in connection with orders of the court. At present the rule-making power conferred by Clause 6 is purely permissive. I think it is more appropriate that the exercise of the power should be mandatory, in so far as it relates to giving effect to orders made by the court, and the Amendments will make it so. The Amendments also prevent an argument which could be raised on the present wording. namely, that since the rule-making power refers only to cancellation and variation under Section 3—that is, under an order of the court—there is no power to make rules providing for the cancellation or variation of registrations on the initiative of the parties. I think this ought to be dealt with. I beg to move the first of the two Amendments.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 12, leave out from beginning to ("and") in line 14.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 15, at end insert—
("(2) Any rules made by virtue of subsection (6) of the said section fifteen as applied by the preceding subsection shall (without prejudice to the inclusion therein of other provisions as to cancelling or varying the registration of notices or agreements) include provision for giving effect to any order of the court under subsection (4) of section three of this Act.")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed.

DOMICILE BILL [H.L.]
6.24 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill. Your Lordships may remember that in July of last year there was a Bill before your Lordships' House which amended
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the law of domicile. Among other matters, it created a presumption and also altered the burden of proof. The Session came to an end, and so did the Bill. I may say at once that in many important respects the present Bill is not the same as the former Bill. The present Bill merely establishes the existing law of domicile, subject to some important amendments.
As your Lordships know by this time, a person's domicile is the country in which he has his home and intends to live permanently. The law regards every person as having a domicile, whether it be the domicile of origin, which the law confers on him at his birth, or the domicile of choice, which he may subsequently acquire. If a person, having acquired a domicile of choice, abandons it without acquiring a fresh one the law regards his domicile of origin as having been revived until a fresh domicile of choice is acquired, even though in fact he may never have returned to his domicile of origin. This Bill abolishes the revival of the domicile of origin in those circumstances.
Clause 2 of the Bill provides:
"A person's domicile in any country continues until he acquires a domicile in another country (hut no longer)."
That clause, as I have already indicated, abolishes the revival of the doctrine of the domicile of origin. Furthermore, let me say at once that the word "person" includes male, as well as female, and married women, as well as single women. Therefore, under this Bill, a married woman, if she so wishes, is enabled to acquire a domicile different from that of her husband. Clause 3 provides:
"A person of or over the age of sixteen acquires a domicile in a country by residing in that country with the settled intention of making it his permanent home."
That merely establishes the present law, subject to one amendment. Previously, a person had to be twenty-one years of age before he could acquire a domicile. Now the age is reduced to sixteen.
Clause 4 deals with the domicile of children. A child's domicile is normally that of the person entitled to his custody. However, Clause 4, subsection (2), deals with the position which may arise when each or
two persons domiciled in different countries is equally entitled to the custody of a person under the age of sixteen. In

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those circumstances, the child's domicile is
"in that one of those countries with which he is more closely connected."
Clause 4, subsection (3), requires a little more explanation. It provides that the domicile of a child in the custody of an authority shall be the country whose law governs the constitution of that authority. This applies to children in the custody of foreign authorities, as well as to those in the custody of United Kingdom authorities. In England, there are three ways in which children may, by Statute, be in the custody of an authority. First, an order may be made committing a child to the care of a fit person; secondly, an order may be made committing a child to an approved school; thirdly, a local authority may in certain circumstances assume parental rights over a child by passing the required resolution.
I now pass on to Clause 5, which deals with matrimonial proceedings in the case of a wife's separate domicile. I must say that Clause 5 is most important. It reserves, very properly, to the courts of this country the right to decide what determines domicile according to the laws of this country. I do not wish to say anything defamatory about the systems of other States, but were it not for Clause 5 we might have a position where a certain State said that a married woman had acquired a domicile in that State by virtue of the fact that she had been resident there for six weeks. That would not do at all so far as the jurisprudence of this country is concerned. Clause 5 is going to be explained in a few minutes by the greatest expert on the subject in this country, who will tell your Lordships exactly why it is essential that the courts of this country should retain the right to decide what is meant by "domicile".
Clause 6 (3) safeguards the position of certain pensioners of the former Indian Services. Under the Pensions (India, Pakistan and Burma) Act, 1955, as amended by the Pensions (Increase) Act, 1956, increases of pensions may be granted to members of the former Indian Services who, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, were outside Asia at the date when the Service became discontinued. A number of such pensioners have been granted increased pensions, and applications for increases will be made
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from time to time as these people reach retiring age. Clearly, it would be wrong for the Bill to disturb the principle applied by the Secretary of State in determining this question, and Clause 6 (3) deals with that point. Clause 8 repeals the Domicile Act, 1861, which is a dead letter in any event, and goes on to say that the Act extends to Northern Ireland.
In conclusion, I may say once more that this Bill merely establishes the existing law as to domicile, subject to some important amendments. It does not alter the burden of proof in any way, and therefore there is no necessity for any sort of anxiety whatsoever on the part of anyone. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Meston.)
6.33 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, time and again the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has put us in his debt by bringing forward measures of law reform where it has been difficult for Her Majesty's Government to find Government time therefore. The occupant of the Woolsack naturally has a particular responsibility and interest in all proposals for the improvement of "lawyers' law". The difficulty about this is that I have by now run through all the various methods known to me of expressing gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, but as one who after forty years remembers with great interest and gratitude hearing the noble Lord's father talk in India, and whose father, like the noble Lord's, came from Aberdeen, if my family history is correct, I have a particular reason for saying shortly, but none the less sincerely, "Thank you", once again.
One of the earlier occasions upon which I expressed my thanks to the noble Lord was in June of last year, on the Second Reading of an earlier and, I think, better version of this Bill. In welcoming the earlier Domicile Bill, I took the opportunity to praise the work of the Lord Chancellor's Committee on Private International Law, on whose recommendations it was based. If I now say, as I do, that I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has made the right decision in reintroducing this Bill in a very different form, I take back nothing that I said last Session. I still think that the proposals of the Committee, which were

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designed to render the ascertainment of a person's domicile easier and more certain, would have made an improvement in our law. On the other hand, though I am frankly sorry to see these proposals dropped from the Bill, for reasons that have nothing to do with law reform, there is no doubt in my mind that the hard facts of the economic position of this country should be given greater weight.
We are all agreed that the maintenance of a favourable balance of payments position is essential to this island, and it is well known that an important factor in maintaining it is the willingness of businessmen from overseas to come and work in this country, to open branches of their businesses here and to bring their investments with them. It is a fact that Clause 3 of the Bill that passed through your Lordships' House in the last Session gave rise to serious anxiety among the Commonwealth and American business communities working in this country. As my noble friend Lord Hawke put it, when he voiced their fears during the debate on the Third Reading on July 24 last [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 211, col. 208.]:
"Our tax law is to them foreign. Our tax-gatherers are foreigners, and they definitely fear having to prove their future intentions to a foreign revenue collector."
They fear that, if they failed to satisfy him, they would be taxed on their world income instead of simply, as now, on their income arising in or remitted to this country. Many of them would be unwilling to face taxation of their income arising from property at home, not only by their own taxgatherers, but also, at higher rates, by ours. There is a real danger that we should lose their services and the business and capital that goes with them.
Whether their fears of the effect of Clause 3 of the last Bill were justified or not is a matter which I need not deal with now. I have already expressed my views in the Third Reading debate last July, and, as I say, I retract nothing that I said on that occasion. The important thing to realise is that these fears are widely and sincerely held and have received support from the opinions of lawyers of high standing. It would be invidious to mention names, but I think that they are well known to those interested in the Bill and I do not think that anyone would question my descrip-
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tion that they were lawyers of high standing. After giving a good deal of anxious thought to this matter I have come to the conclusion that it would be wrong to disregard these fears and that my noble friend Lord Meston is right in dropping Clause 3 of last Session's Bill. But I am sure that he shares my reluctance in taking the step, although I agree with the basis and background.
I should like to underline what my noble friend Lord Meston has already made clear: that it would be quite wrong to think that the Bill in its new form does not effect an important change in the law. It gives married women the capacity to acquire separate domiciles from those of their husbands. That is a change which has already had your Lordships' approval; in fact, after the enthusiasm and vigour with which that was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Pethick-Lawrence—in a sense it swamped the other parts of the Bill—it became a most important principle, which the whole House unanimously supported noble Lords on that Bench in putting into the Bill.
There are other improvements which my noble friend Lord Meston has mentioned, such as the abolition by Clause 2 of the doctrine of the revival of the domicile of origin, and the codification in Clause 4 of the law relating to the domicile of children. I think everyone will agree that it is all to the good that the age at which a person can first acquire an independent domicile should be the same North and South of the Tweed. I am glad to see some noble Lords from Scotland here, and they will be pleased to know that England is now bringing itself into line with our native land.
The Bill sets out to deal comprehensively with the law of domicile, and it would be strange indeed if a measure of this kind were to fail to deal with the method by which a domicile of choice is acquired. Therefore I feel that I must say a word or two about Clause 3. As I say, I think it is essential that the Bill as produced by my noble friend Lord Meston should have dealt with the method by which a domicile of choice is acquired; that is a fundamental matter for which the Bill can hardly fail to make provision. It does this by giving statutory form to the existing law as that was laid down in the leading case of Winans v.

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the Attorney General; and the words "the settled intention of making it his permanent home" are an echo, which all lawyers will surely recognise, of Lord Macnaghten's celebrated judgment in that case. In effect, our concept of domicile, which differs in many ways from the sense given to that term in Continental systems of law, will remain essentially unchanged.
For those of my noble friends who have been approached with difficulties about the clause in this Bill, I should like to repeat what I have just said: that the clause is based on the judgment of Lord Macnaghten in Winans' case, and it is from the majority in Winans' case that the noble Lord has taken the contents of this clause. As I see it, Clause 3 really re-states the existing law governing the acquisition of a new domicile and, as my noble friend Lord Meston said, the burden of proving that one has in fact been acquired still rests on the person who asserts that it has. For these reasons, my present view is that Clause 3 should find a place in the Bill and is a satisfactory re-statement of essentials of the present law.
It is not often that a Private Member's Bill which is concerned with technical questions in the general law arouses so much interest and controversy as the Domicile Bill has done in its rather unusual career. Such Bills necessarily run an unpredictable and rather perilous course before they reach the Statute Book. For myself, I can only say that I wish to this Bill a safe arrival at its journey's end.
6.47 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I should like first of all to join with the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Meston, for introducing this Bill, and for the clear explanation he gave not only of the Bill but of the changes that have been made. A similar Bill was before the House last Session and was brought to an untimely end by the close of the Session. I wonder whether the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor could give us any information as to whether this Bill is likely to be brought to an untimely end in similar circumstances. It would be most important for us to know that. I know that the Lord Chancellor referred to certain contingencies which might
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arise, and which would prevent this Bill coming into law, but he did not say what they were.
This Bill, as has been said, is different from the previous Bill in a number of respects. The previous Bill was based upon the Report of the Private International Law Committee which reported in February, 1954, and at the end of five years we find ourselves in the position of purporting to implement that Report. But in fact this Bill does nothing of the kind. In so far as the main provisions are concerned, as I understand them—and the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack will know that I am no authority on the law of domicile—we are now going back to the law as it was before. Possibly there may be some minor amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Meston, explained; but, broadly speaking, the law will be as it was before, based upon a decision of the courts. Consequently, from that point of view there is no need for this Bill at all. If it is merely to re-enact the law, there is no point in introducing a Bill and purporting to be implementing the Report of the Law Reform Committee.
The only provision of the Bill which has not been recommended by the Committee is that contained in Clause 5, the principle of which was unanimously approved by this House previously. Clause 5 gives to a married woman the same rights as regards domicile as those of her husband, and generally puts women in the same position as men. From my own point of view (and it was I who moved the Amendment which brought this matter before the House), and even more from the point of view of my noble friend Lord Pethick-Lawrence, this Bill is worth while, if only for Clause 5. I imagine that if the rest of the Bill is merely enacting the existing law you can keep it and merely enact Clause 5. I hope that we shall get this Bill through, whatever the rest of the provisions may be, but it seems to me an extraordinary thing that we should, presumably under pressure from people living abroad, set aside the Report of this important Committee which we intended a few months ago to implement. That is a very dangerous doctrine and a dangerous way in which to introduce legislation. Are we really to be subject to outside pressure in the legislation that we introduce into

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this House? Pressure from this country we can understand, but pressure from abroad is a very different thing. When you have actually gone as far as to introduce a Bill implementing a unanimous Report, and then, under pressure, you take it back to introduce a different Bill it is rather an alarming situation. Therefore, while I hope that this Bill may go through, especially because of Clause 5, I must confess to being somewhat disturbed at the circumstances which the noble and learned Viscount, with his usual candour, has explained to the House.
6.52 p.m.
LORD MERRIMAN: My Lords, I do not intend to follow the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack into the question of the economic reasons for the change of the structure of this Bill. I propose to confine myself to Clause 5 of the Bill which is headed
"Matrimonial proceedings in case of Wife's separate domicile."
I do so because that, I suppose, may be taken to be my special province in this matter. I take leave to say at once that I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, that there was no need for this Bill. Nor do I agree with him that Clause 5 does nothing to help a wife who acquires a separate domicile.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has completely misunderstood me.
LORD MERRIMAN: Then I am afraid I misheard the noble Lord.
LORD SILKIN: Completely. What I intended to say—no doubt I did not say it, but I should like to say it now, in order to make it quite clear—is that I think this Bill is worth while because of Clause 5 alone. I am glad Clause 5 is there, and I welcome it.
LORD MERRIMAN: I am obliged to the noble Lord. I must have misheard him. Be that as it may, having regard to the importance of Clause 5, it may be helpful if I try to say why I think it is so important.
As will have been perfectly plain from what the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said in the course of his admirable synopsis of the Bill, there were embedded firmly in the English law two principles: first, that a wife takes the domicile of
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her husband; and secondly, that all matrimonial proceedings are founded on the pure doctrine of domicile. There is one further matter arising out of that to which I should like to call attention, and that is the attitude of our courts to foreign decrees. I will do so, if I may, by reading one short sentence from a recent judgment of a member of the Court of Appeal. He said:
"Since a case decided in the Privy Council as long ago as 1895 English Courts have not recognised a decree of a foreign Court unless the parties were at the time of the proceedings domiciled in the jurisdiction of the foreign court, or if domiciled elsewhere such decree would be recognised by the law of the domicile."
To the pure law of domicile there have been two important encroachments made by recent Acts of Parliament. I venture to mention them in detail because they bring me to the point where I think this Bill is so important from the point of view of the married woman with a separate domicile.
First of all, a wife who has been deserted by her husband, or whose husband has been deported as an undesirable alien and was domiciled in this country at the time of the desertion or the time of the deportation, is able, on that former domicile, to bring proceedings in this country, though by the time the proceedings are taken the husband had changed his domicile. That is a serious change, and has been regarded as such. But your Lordships will perceive it expressly recognises the overriding principle of the domicile.
The other encroachment is rather different. A wife who has been ordinarily resident for three years in this country can bring proceedings in the Divorce Court even though her husband is not domiciled anywhere in the United Kingdom. Those are two marked encroachments, and they have been fully accepted and have had some rather remarkable developments. It is to the developments that I wish to call attention.
By what has been called the doctrine of reciprocity or, I think, more accurately, the doctrine of comity between two nations, the courts of the country have now recognised a decree pronounced by any court in a foreign country which itself has a law to that effect. For example, there was a case from New South Wales. I need not trouble about the decision

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on the domicile upon which the Court of Appeal were divided, but they were all agreed about this: that as there was in New South Wales an Act of Parliament which was on the same lines about the encroachment on the pure law of domicile as the one in this country, we should recognise the decree of the New South Wales court, although in fact it was not based on that particular basis. Similarly, the same thing would apply undoubtedly as regards a deserted wife.
Plainly, in my opinion, one can be dogmatic about this—though I try to avoid being dogmatic about anything connected with the law of domicile—that we should certainly recognise the decree of a foreign court in the case of any wife who had acquired a separate domicile in the foreign country judged by our own law of domicile, as modified by this Bill. But with regard to anyone who has acquired a separate domicile in that country, we should recognise the decree of divorce pronounced by that country even though they have not based their decree solely on the question of domicile. In other words, our courts would be prepared to inquire into the question of whether the wife who is asserting that she has acquired domicile in a foreign country, and seeking to use a decree in that country, truly had acquired a separate domicile in this country. If so, I think there is no doubt that we should be prepared to give effect to that.
I want to say one other word about Clause 5, and only one other word. It takes the place of an earlier version of the revised Bill which I thought was inclined to trespass on the passage which I have read from the judgment of the Court of Appeal about non-recognition of foreign decrees which did not recognise the proper principle of domicile. As it is now expressed, it is perfectly plain that it is confined to the United Kingdom, putting it generally. It does, however, mean this, at least: that a Scottish woman who formerly would have been unable to bring proceedings in Scotland if her husband was domiciled in England, will now be able to bring proceedings in Scotland and attract the domicile of the husband to Scotland.
The Bill says that the case is to be decided on the basis that they are both domiciled within the jurisdiction of that
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court of the United Kingdom in which the proceedings are started. There is one catch there which ought to be recognised by Scotsmen, if they are interested in the topic; and it is this. The law governing the case as it proceeds in the court will be the law of that part of the United Kingdom in which the proceedings are brought. So in the case I have suggested, the simple case of the Scotswoman bringing a divorce action although her husband is domiciled in England, it is the Scottish law which will be applied to the case. I need scarcely say there is no difference in Scottish law with regard to the offence of adultery; nor is there any difference in the law, as your Lordships have recently held, in regard to cruelty. But there is equally no doubt that in respect of the offence of desertion the law of Scotland differs very considerably from the law in England; and vice versa.
There is another point as regards the subsequent proceedings, the maintenance of the wife and so forth. The Scottish courts do not provide in the same way as we do for the maintenance of the wife, and if a wife brought her action in Scotland she would have to suffer that particular loss. But the point I am trying to make—and I hope I have succeeded in making it—is this: that this is a very important addition to the rights of a wife in connection with the acquisition of a separate domicile.
7.3 p.m.
LORD CRAIGMYLE: My Lords, seeing my name on this particular list of speakers, I must confess I felt like a minnow among the tritons. I am not learned in the law, neither in the law of England nor in that of Scotland, and certainly not in the law of domicile. I have, however, taken the precaution of asking the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack one or two questions in correspondence, and I am grateful to him for the guidance which he has given me. Like every noble Lord who has spoken so far, I welcome this Bill for its principal and obvious intention. I hope that I may, in fact, have misunderstood some of the legal points, and I must crave your Lordships' indulgence if I have, but, so far as I can see, I cannot quite go the whole way with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, when he says that no one need have any qualms about it at all. It seems to me that there is one

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thing which this Bill may do which it is not intended to do—at least, it may not be intended to do it; I speak subject to correction. It is intended to alter the law of domicile, which it does admirably, so far as I can see. It is not intended—I speak subject to correction—deliberately to alter the law of divorce. Yet I understand from what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Merriman, has said, that in certain circumstances it may in fact, in detail, do that.
May I specify what I am trying to say by an example? Like the noble Lord, Lord Meston, I will not be invidious about countries. I will say that there is an English husband married to a Ruritanian wife. If she goes back to Ruritania, deserting her husband, and lives there, obviously with no intention of coming back here, she is establishing a perfectly genuine domicile in her native Ruritania. She can go to the courts in Ruritania and obtain a divorce which I understand would then be recognised by the courts in this country, who would consider that the English husband was free to remarry. It seems to me that in either of two rather different sets of circumstances, that might be unfortunate. The one set of circumstances is that the husband might have thought the procedure was a very good idea; he might have wanted to be rid of the woman anyway, in which case the change in the law which this Bill is introducing has helped that couple to a collusive divorce.
The second set of circumstances, and one which one would rather contemplate, is that the husband may, in fact, be a devout man, may have married his wife in church and have every desire and intention by prayer and patience to get his wife back and to mend the marriage. Again, if I understand it correctly, before the passage of this Bill into law—that is, as the situation is now—he would have had three years to do that. I am not sure if that is correct. But after the passage of this Bill into law he may find his wife has obtained the Ruritanian divorce in a matter of months, so that his intention of mending the marriage has, thanks to the provisions of this Bill, been frustrated.
Your Lordships may say that all the Bill is doing is giving to the wife a right which the husband already has, and that that is simple justice and only slightly
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extends an already existing principle. I find myself unable to accept that view, for three reasons. In the first place, any extension of the means of obtaining a divorce is a matter of considerable importance which Parliament should deliberate most carefully, however slight that extension may be. The second reason is that, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Merriman, has pointed out, the existing law is, in fact, Common Law, subject only to two major encroachments by Statute. The change which we are now contemplating is being made in a Bill which will become an Act of Parliament, a deliberate decision of the legislative will of the nation. That seems to me to put the matter on a different basis from the existing situation which affects only one sex. The third reason is that the numbers of people affected will not simply be doubled: so many wives and so many husbands. If one were to count up the married couples living in this country, one of whose partners is foreign, surely by far the greater number would be those where the foreign partner was the wife, and the couples where the foreign partner is the husband would be a comparatively small minority.
It seems, therefore, that the number of people who would be affected by this change is so much greater than might have been anticipated that it falls to be considered as a fresh matter rather than as a slight extension of an existing matter. I do not know whether it would be possible to make an addition to Clause 5 to cover that point. In view of what has been said about Clause 3, I hesitate to suggest that it might be possible to put in a few words establishing a time limit under that section. I have no doubt that this would be much easier said than done, but I feel that it may be worth considering on the Committee stage. Having said that, and having taken up rather a lot of time with that one rider, may I reaffirm that that is only a rider, and that my support to the basic principle of the Bill is wholehearted? I shall certainly be among those who murmur "Content" when the Motion is put.
7.11 p.m.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, may I say that to my mind this Bill improves the law greatly in this one respect: it gives the wife a separate domicile from her husband. It removes that last

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surviving relic of a wife's servitude. My noble friend Lord Craigmyle has said that it may make divorce easier; I suggest that it removes an existing injustice to the wife. There are many cases where an Englishwoman may marry a man domiciled abroad. He commits adultery and goes back to America, or whatever the other country may be. She has to follow him to his domicile to obtain a divorce there. Indeed, there is the converse case which my noble friend put, of the woman domiciled in America who has married an Engishman. It often happens that she, by virtue of the law as it stands in America, can now—for instance, in the courts of New York State—obtain a divorce there. In this country the divorce would not be recognised because by our law her domicile is the same as ours. You would have what is called a limping marriage. People would be divorced in New York and free, each of them, to marry again. They would be married in England, and if they married again would be guilty of bigamy; or if one person came back, he or she would be liable, although it is not likely, to be charged with bigamy. I suggest to your Lordships that in that respect this Bill remedies a longstanding injustice.
But the serious point which my noble friend Lord Silkin mentioned is that this Bill discloses a remarkable state of affairs. An expert Committee on domicile was appointed and they reported unanimously in favour of a reform in the law, putting the burden the other way from what it is now. That recommendation was carried out in the Bill which passed all its stages last Session. Then, owing, it is said, to other business interests from abroad, the recommendations of that Committee were thrown over—I repeat, owing to representations of those business interests. I would not myself say that the cause of law reform is to be rejected on the pressure of other business interests. Therefore I have looked into the matter with some care, and I suggest that the representations that have been made are right in this way, that those decisions of this House ought not to be overruled.
I would tell your Lordships something of them because this is the key point of the difference. The first and the most important was the case of Mr. Winans
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who was born in Baltimore in the United States and lived there for the first twenty-seven years of his life. For the last forty-seven years of his life he lived mainly in Europe, principally in England, and he died worth £2 million or £3 million sterling. The question was, was his estate liable for death duties on his American assets? That is the critical question. The position was that, although he had lived here for forty-seven years, he had lived in furnished houses and hotels; he was a most eccentric person.
Let me tell your Lordships what Lord Macnaghten said of him, because it is quite entertaining. He said that he had three main objects in life. The first was his health which he nursed and tended with wonderful devotion. He took his temperature regularly every hour. His second great object in life was to build a special fleet of ships of a spindle-like shape, or shaped like cigars, which would not pitch and toss when crossing the Atlantic, and with these ships he would gain command of the seas for America as against England. That was his second object in life. His third object in life was to build up a port for these ships in Baltimore in the United States, and that he would develop property there which he had acquired just before his death.
He told his solicitors a year or two before his death that he intended to go to Baltimore and live there and build up this property. In his will be described himself as a United States citizen, and in all the properties which he dealt with he described himself as a citizen of Baltimore. Is it not surprising that Lord Macnaghten said that Mr. Winans was
"a sojourner and stranger when he came to this country and a sojourner and stranger here when he died."?
Was it not right that death duties should be payable on his English estates but not payable on his American assets? I would suggest that there was a lot of good sense in the majority decision of the House of Lords in that case in 1904, and I should not be averse to saying that that law should still stand and support the business interests which have made representations to that effect. I would not suggest that the law was wrong in that respect.
Take the other case, equally interesting, which it is suggested should be overruled. It is particularly interesting to

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those here who come from Scotland. It concerns a Mr. Bowie who was born in Glasgow and lived there for forty-seven years. He was a commercial traveller who did not like work. Lord Buckmaster said that he was "not a successful searcher after work." But when he was forty-seven he came to Liverpool. He was a bachelor and he stayed in lodgings, and also with his brother and sisters. He stayed on there for forty-seven years until he died there. But two or three months before he died he made a will. He had got some property and the left a great deal of it to hospitals and infirmaries in Glasgow. He made a special note in the will. He said, "These infirmary legacies—say they are anonymous; say they are from a Glasgow man." But he wrote the whole will out himself. in his own hand, and signed it himself without witnesses.
If he had died domiciled in Scotland the will would have been good, because one does not need witnesses to a will in Scotland. If he had died domiciled in England the will would have been bad, because here two witnesses are needed. The case came before the Scottish courts. I need hardly tell your Lordships that they upheld the will, so that the legacy should go to the Glasgow Infirmary, rather than to some remote next of kin of whom nobody, least of all Bowie, had ever heard. The case came to this House. There were four Law Lords sitting, three of them Scotsmen. The will was, naturally, upheld. Mr. Bowie had never made his home and had never intended to make his home in England. He, again, was a sojourner and a stranger here.
This expert Committee suggested that those two cases were wrong and that amendments should be made in the law overruling them. I should not be prepared to go so far. It seems to me that both cases were decided on good sense, domicile being read in relation to the actual problem in each case, the one of death duties, the other of a will. I suggest that it would be right, therefore, to acknowledge the justice of the representations that the burden of proof should remain where it is in the law. Those representations are right. But, equally, the Committee are right in this way: that in some of the speeches, as interpreted by some people, they went too far. It was said that domicile of origin could not be changed unless there was
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a fixed intention to abandon that domicile. That is going too far; but, on the other hand, the real principle was that if a man bad a settled intention of making his permanent home in a place then of course the did acquire a now domicile; and the only trouble in the law was in. stressing unduly the domicile of origin and giving an unnatural and strained effect to the word "permanent".
I suggest that with this new clause, as it is replacing the older rules of the Common Law, the courts and judges, whilst keeping the burden of proof as it is but by giving a reasonable interpretation to the word "permanent", can do all that is necessary, because "permanent" according to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary means simply:
"Designed to last indefinitely without change."
A permanent home does not mean an everlasting home. One can have one's permanent home in a place even though one may have the lingering thought that some day one might go back at some time to one's birthplace.
So this Bill and this clause, I suggest to your Lordships, really draws the right middle path; and those interested, in the United States or elsewhere, cannot complain of such an interpretation of domicile. Perhaps I may read to your Lordships, from one of their leading textbooks, their definition of "permanent":
"It is not necessary that one must intend to make a place home for the remainder of his life in order to acquire a domicile there. It is sufficient if the intended stay is of sufficient permanence to make the place in question home although there may be a probability, or even a certainty, that the home will subsequently be changed."
I do not suggest that our courts would go as far as that, but by enacting this Bill in its present form I suggest that it will effect a great and marked improvement in the law, by giving the wife a separate domicile; it will keep the burden of proof as it is, but will remove any difficulty arising through an undue weight and stress being given to the domicile of origin. I would therefore support the Bill wholeheartedly in its present form.
7.26 p.m.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, for bringing forward an altered Bill and to my noble and learned friend on the: Woolsack for his very clear statement on

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the tax issue. I hope that it will satisfy the overseas community living here, although I cannot say that for certain at the moment. We must recognise, of course, that any mention of domicile in legislation must create some degree of apprehension in their minds—apprehension that a delicate structure of tax law and tax practice which has been built up for so long might conceivably be in jeopardy; but it really would be absurd if we had to refrain from mentioning the word "domicile" in any legislation in order to allay any fear of jeopardy on that account. If, however, we have no intention at all of changing the burden of proof or the tax position, it is only right and fair that we should do our best to make our intentions absolutely plain and incapable of misunderstanding. I hope that this Bill, as re-drafted, will pass that test, and that the overseas communities will be satisfied with the very great trouble which has been taken by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, to meet their fears.
I might add that I believe the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, was based to some degree on a misunderstanding. So far as I am aware, there is no question of representations coming from overseas on this matter. It is merely people, Americans, Australians, and South Africans and others, who are—I will not use the word "domiciled"—working in this country and who felt that their position was in jeopardy. I believe that, as such, they were perfectly entitled to approach the Government of the day on the legislation in question; and if Her Majesty's Government think that by putting them in any fear or jeopardy, the interests of Britain are likely to be injured then it is perfectly right and proper for that Government to take the proper steps. I shall accordingly support this Bill.
7.28 p.m.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, I wonder whether I might mention a minor, almost trivial point. I said that Clause 7 of this Bill repealed the Domicile Act, 1861, and then went on to say that it was Clause 8, and not Clause 7, that repealed that Act. Not for the first time in my life I must have been muddleheaded, because in fact it is quite clear that it is Clause 7 of the Bill which repeals the Domicile Act, 1861.
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My name is on this Bill and I must take responsibility for having dropped the previous Bill, on which my name also appeared. That Bill established a presumption that a person's domicile was the country in which he had his home and intended to live permanently. That was a presumption which had to be rebutted by the individual in question. In plain language, that individual might have had to have an expensive law case to rebut that presumption. That raised a good deal of opposition from people abroad who wished to come and live in this country for several years for the purpose of their business.
I have listened with great interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said about the undesirability of being dictated to in these matters by extraneous circumstances of that description, but we have it on the authority of St. Paul that sometimes "it is expedient"; and assisted by St. Paul and by the noble and learned Viscount (and probably the latter is the more important of the two for the moment) I am going to take full responsibility for having dropped the presumption which appeared in the previous Bill and establishing the existing law as in the present Bill.
I should like to thank all the noble Lords who have spoken on the Bill. As for the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle, I think your Lordships and I would like to congratulate him on the legal knowledge which he has obviously inherited from his grandfather, Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, who was, I suppose, one of the greatest lawyers we have ever had in Scotland, and who, as your Lordships know, was for many years a Law Lord in this country. I quite understand his fears about increasing the grounds of divorce. I must be corrected if I am wrong, but I think I am right in saying that the courts of this country have always taken up, and always will take up, a very strict view of what constitutes "domicile". Unfortunately, it cannot be helped that the grounds of divorce in other countries are not always the same as in this country. If the noble Lord, Lord Craigmyle, can tell me how we can get over that difficulty, no one will be more delighted than I shall, and I know that I shall have the best advice on the subject.
My Lords, in conclusion I should like to thank all the noble Lords who have

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taken part in this debate. In particular, without making any distinctions, may I thank the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor for the kind things which he has said. I can only hope that this Bill will receive a Second Reading without any grave difficulty.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

COUNTY COURTS BILL [H.L.]
7.33 p.m.
House in Committee (according to Order): the Amendments made by the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills agreed to.

OVERSEAS RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT BILL [H.L.]
House in Committee (according to Order) on Report from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills: Bill reported without amendment.

EUROPEAN MONETARY AGREEMENT BILL
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
House adjourned at twenty-four minutes before eight o'clock.