HL Deb 03 June 1959 vol 216 cc647-64

7.30 p.m.

EARL WINTERTON

rose to ask Her Majesty's Government if they will appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the causes for the increase of crime, in view of the fact that only a Royal Commission possesses the legal authority to hear sufficient evidence for a comprehensive review of the whole subject. The noble Earl said: My Lords, at this late hour of the evening I propose to make only a few rather truncated remarks in advocating the points contained in the Question which I have upon the Order Paper, but before doing so I should like to depart to some extent from precedent—I am sure with the approval of every Member of your Lordships' House present—to say how much we miss to-night the presence, because of his lamentable death, of Lord Templewood, who contributed so much to our discussions. He was a very old and dear friend of mine and I know your Lordships will allow me to pay this tribute to him. No one could have been a more affectionate friend, no public servant could have had a greater sense of integrity; and no one that I knew in my long experience was less afraid of incurring unpopularity; and when he had incurred unpopularity he refrained from attacking, either in public or in private, those who had criticised him.

My Lords, this is a very big subject following upon a most interesting debate that we have had upon another big subject, and I want to put my points very shortly. My first is this: the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary to whom, if I may, I should like to pay a tribute as a very great Home Secretary, stated, I believe in another place, or at any rate in a speech, that frankly he and his advisers and Her Majesty's Government in general were not able to say what was the real cause of the very serious increase in crime. Incidentally, it is an increase which has been almost exactly matched in two countries with a standard of living as high as ours—Sweden and Switzerland—and there seems to be some universal cause for this lamentable state of affairs.

My second point is this: that while I may be wrong in thinking that a Royal Commission is the best form of inquiry, I am convinced (and I have taken advice here from some distinguished Members of your Lordships' House and others, who agree with my views) that only a comprehensive inquiry will be sufficient to find out the roots of this trouble. A Royal Commission, of course, possesses powers in the way of calling witnesses which are very extensive, and I do not think that partial inquiries such as that of the Committee presided over by my noble friend Lord Ingleby, which is inquiring into child crime, or the new Institute of Criminology at Cambridge, would cover the ground.

I want to put one or two points that have arisen in the discussions that have taken place in your Lordships' House and in another place, because they strengthen my case for an inquiry. I believe there is considerable divergence of opinion which, in accordance with custom, was expressed very politely in your Lordships' House in the debate that we had a short time ago on this subject. The divergence is between those whom I would describe as "redemptionists" and the "deterrers". The redemptionists make the point that the primary duty of the State when dealing with crime is to endeavour to redeem the criminal; and they use the argument that a great number of criminals are those who come from broken homes and generally unhappy home surroundings.

The noble Lady, Baroness Wootton of Abinger—who has asked me to say that had she not had another engagement she would have liked to be present to have said a few words—says that statistically speaking it is not altogether true that the majority of criminals come from bad home surroundings. But, say the redemptionists—and I think perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, could be described as a redemptionist—we shall never deal with this question until we have more Christian and moral teaching. Now I am not going to take sides, one way or the other, but the deterrers reply by saying that it is all very well to say that we must have more Christian and moral teaching, but that, on the admission of the Churches themselves, only some 10 per cent. of the population attend church and only a further 10 per cent. to 15 per cent. accept the theology of the Churches; therefore what is the use, they ask, of talking of more Christian teaching when there is this huge void? Surely, say the deterrers, the proper thing to do is to make crime so unpleasant for the criminals, both by the penalties imposed and the form of imprisonment which they undergo, that we shall stop this increase and reduce the amount of crime to reasonable proportions.

I will end this point by saying that, while I do not take sides, one way or the other, I do submit to your Lordships that there is this very serious difference of opinion. Both the redemptionists and the deterrers—if I may in vent those two terms—can claim support from Christian and moral doctrine. We are taught, as Christians. that we ought to forgive and that forgiveness is one of the greatest virtues of the Christian religion. We are also told that the wicked must be punished. May I be permitted to give a personal reminiscence? When I went to church as a boy I heard a great deal about hell fire, and one was told that the wicked would be punished for their sins, not only in this world but in another world as well. I have not heard a sermon on hell fire in the Church of England church which I attend for, I should think, at least thirty years. Say the deterrers, in the atmosphere in which they have been brought up the youth of to-day can be made to be good only if they know that it is going to be very unpleasant for them to be bad.

I submit that this is the kind of question into which a Royal Commission should go. And here I come to a very con- troversial point on which, again, I express no opinion except to say that I am not satisfied that the situation is clear. The advocates of the abolition of hanging, and those who accepted the compromise in the present Act of Parliament because they were advocates Of it and those (among whom I number myself) who thought it was right that flogging should be abolished, could say at one time, apparently, from a statistical point of view, that there had not been any increase in types of crime previously punishable by those penalties as a result of the reduction of the penalties.

I do not know how the position stands to-day, but I think this point requires consideration; and here again a Royal Commission, I believe, is the proper body to go into it. While it may be true that there has been no proportionate increase in these two types of crime compared with the increase in other forms of crime, it may be the fact that the enormous number of offences of breaking and entering and burglary which go on at the present time are partly due to the fact that a man armed with a lethal weapon who enters a warehouse can say to himself, "It is not like the old days. If I cosh a watchman I shall not be flogged and if I happen to kill him I shall not be hanged." That may be so; and, there again, I feel it is a matter which should be looked into.

Now I come to a very controversial point, and that is the question of the attitude of a section of the public, and of many newspapers, towards crime. I do not want to use wounding terms, but it is true to say that in certain circles, in certain newspapers indeed, there is more tolerance—I will not say sympathy—towards murder and sexual perversion than was the case a few years ago.

But the matter does not end there. The noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, in a very interesting lecture, which some of your Lordships may have heard over the sound radio (I do not know whether she was right or wrong, but I should think that, with her great experience, she was right), pointed out that there was a kind of class attitude towards different kinds of crime. She said that those with earnings which put them in the motor-car owning class did not regard it as at all a serious matter if a man was had up for driving a car under the influence of drink, or for causing a road accident, and that he suffered no social stigma. In fact, I think the matter goes further, because if Mr. John Gordon in writing in last week's Sunday Express is to be believed, there are cases of men convicted for quite serious motoring offences who have continued to be magistrates. The noble Baroness said that this had an effect on people of another class, who said, "If these people are able to get away with serious offences endangering life, why should not we help ourselves to something?" She went on to say that some people, at any rate, saw no harm (to use a vulgarism) in scrounging from the boss, because he was the boss. He was richer than they were and they could scrounge from him. That raises very interesting points.

However, to come back to my original point on the main issue, I think that a Royal Commission is required to inquire into whether this greater tolerance has led to an actual increase in the two very serious crimes that I have mentioned. That information could be ascertained, I think, only by taking evidence, for example, from chief constables and others. Recently there was a very disturbing incident reported only in one paper. No fewer than ten men at Oxford were prosecuted for importuning for sexual perversion, of whom, I believe three were undergraduates; and the Chief Constable of Oxford said there was no doubt that there had been a great increase in sexual perversion in the last few years.

I come now to the question of murder. I think that, whatever view any of your Lordships may hold on hanging, you would all agree with me that the hysterical attitude towards the man Marwood was deplorable and did a great deal of harm. A serious feature of it was, according to some observers, that it was not so much in favour of Marwood as due to dislike of the police. The situation was made infinitely worse by a most disgraceful attack upon the Home Secretary, made by that notorious political pulpiteer, Canon Collins, who accused the Home Secretary—a most dastardly accusation—of having been influenced in his decision by his desire to protect the police. It was particularly unfortunate that the Canon should have made this remark, because only three weeks before he had to apologise for having slandered someone else.

As I say, I do not know how far this tolerance has increased these two crimes. I think that in some quarters there is—it may be a good thing—a tolerance towards crime of all kinds which did not exist a few years ago. A small example of that (here I admit I am on rather delicate ground) was what happened after the Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool. To judge from some Leftist newspapers and two or three journalists, the people who were removed were treated with a sort of brutality that one might expect from the Gestapo; and some of these journalistic commentators went as far as to say that it was going to do the Conservative Party a great deal of electoral harm. What happened? Recently there was an action brought by these two young men. They lost it and they have to pay, quite properly, very heavy damages; and the statements of these journalists, one of whom gave evidence, were completely rejected by the magistrate. I submit that all these things, cumulatively, could have a bad effect on crime and criminals.

My last three points—and I do not wish to detain your Lordships for more than three or four minutes more—are these. There was great indignation among some Members of your Lordships' House (and I am not attempting to support what he said) at a speech made by my noble friend Lord St. Oswald in the last debate on the subject, in which he said the police had done things which made them unpopular. I neither support nor disagree with my noble friend Lord St. Oswald; I do not know sufficient about the facts. But there seems to be some evidence which, if true, shows a wholly regrettable state of affairs that the police have not to the same extent as formerly the support of the public. I have heard it suggested that the reason is that they come into contact with otherwise law-abiding members of the public to a far greater extent than their predecessors over motoring offences.

That brings me to another point: how far is the increase in crime due to the appalling shortage—for it is nothing else—of police in the Metropolitan Police Force, in whose area crime is particularly bad? I think I am right in saying that the force is between 3,000 and 4,000 short in an establishment of 18,000 or 19,000, which is a very lamentable state of affairs. How far is it due to the fact that, apart from the shortage in London and elsewhere, so many of the police are engaged on other than ordinary patrol work: dealing with traffic, dealing with motor cars? There just is not the personnel there. And how far is it due to a matter which I raised in a Motion for Papers some two months ago—to what I then described (and I had, I may say in parenthesis, great support from the Press) as the bad organisational state of some of the provincial police forces, in the sense that some were much too small and there was not the right liaison between them? Lastly, how far is it true that those old Aunt Sallies, at some of which we have been throwing things this afternoon—sound radio, television and the cinemas with their gangster films and other things— are responsible for crime, especially among the young?

I submit to your Lordships that all these matters which I have mentioned should be the subject of a comprehensive inquiry. I do not believe that the position is irredeemable. I cannot believe that this great nation is fundamentally lawless. I would say that in many respects it is one of the most law-abiding nations in the world. But there is this disturbing element of criminals, and a large proportion of them do not get caught.

That brings me to my last point of all: are the penalties for some forms of crime sufficient? Where it is a question of a fine, many fines are based, as those of your Lordships with judicial experience know, upon the value of money of 100 years ago. Here again I am on delicate ground. Have the very varying sentences of both higher and lower courts, which have been criticised pretty often in the Press, a deleterious effect on the preservation of law and order? I apologise for speaking longer than I had intended, my Lords, but those are the reasons I put forward in asking the Question which appears in my name on the Order Paper.

7.51 p.m.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, I hope the House will allow me, before I sit down, to say a few words about the late Lord Templewood. That was really all that I had in mind to say, or almost all that I had in mind to say, when I awaited the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Winterton. But I did put myself down to speak, apart from my tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Templewood, because I should not like the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, to bring up a very important issue in this House and then to find no one on the Opposition Front Bench here to show our deep respect for him. He knows that I have spoken on this subject rather often in this House, at rather great length, and rather recently, and therefore he will not expect me to cover all of its aspects. I hope the noble Earl will, at some not too distant date, put the subject down again, if not in this form, in a slightly different form so that we can go into it together.

I should be very ready to support him in a demand for a very strong inquiry into crime generally, but I should be more than doubtful whether a Royal Commission would be the right procedure. I feel that it would require what I believe one calls an expert body. And in saying "expert" I have in mind two kinds of person: on the one hand, the Home Office Research Unit—people who could clear up the facts of crime so that the position would be quite clear; and, on the other, people who have given their lives to dealing with these problems—judges, magistrates, clergymen, probation officers, prison officers, warders, and people of that kind.

EARL WINTERTON

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, and I thank him for the very friendly things he has said about me, but he realises, of course, that a Royal Commission would take evidence from the very people that he has mentioned, who could give the most expert evidence on this subject.

LORD PAKENHAM

I appreciate that. But perhaps, in view of the lateness of the hour, the noble Earl will forgive me for doing no more than simply recording my opinion and leaving it to the Lord Chancellor to tell us later what he has to say. However, I would gladly discuss the whole question with the noble Earl on the Floor of the House at sonic. time in the future. He put me in a difficulty which had not occurred to me when he denounced, in Parliamentary but very vehement language, my friend Canon Collins, a gentleman whom I hold in very high esteem and who is, if I may say so, a fitting representative of the noble Earl's Church. When I think of the great interest the Church of England is taking to-day in social affairs, I am prompted to think that Canon Collins is one of the foremost of the Church of England leaders in this field; and I am glad to think that I am one of the patrons of "Christian Action", of which Canon Collins is a director. I hope I can say that much without becoming too much involved in argument.

The noble Earl also referred—in language not quite so vehement, but almost as vehement—to those who supported the petition for a reprieve of Marwood. I was one of those who signed that petition.

EARL WINTERTON

No. I am sorry if I did not make myself clear. I referred to the hysterical scenes outside the prison. The noble Lord was quite entitled to sign the petition, as was anybody else.

LORD PAKENHAM

I am grateful to the noble Earl for that explanation. I signed that petition, and I wrote to the Home Secretary. When I was asked by the Press (as it appeared to be known who were the Members of the House who had signed the petition) what my feeling was about the decision of the Home Secretary, I said simply that I felt great grief—and I hope one is entitled to feel great grief on an occasion of that kind.

Talking of hysteria, I am bound to say that I did receive, through that expression of grief, quite a number of "poison pen" letters—mad letters, really. One letter was not from a madman but from a person who said that his father, his grandfather, and his great grandfather had all been clergymen—he did not say what denomination—and who said that he gathered from my statement that I almost approved of the crime. Quite a number of people used language of that kind. Fortunately, this gentleman's letter had a telephone number on it, unlike most of the letters written by people on such occasions, and I rang him up. He was a little surprised to find that it was I who was ringing him up. I said: "Did you really mean to use this language, suggesting that I approved of the crime?" He said: "Did I actually say that?" I said: "Yes, it is in front of me". My Lords, I had not existed for him as a real person. I was simply a depôt, a receiving point, for this discharge of hysteria. However, I have been at the receiving end of the other kind of hysteria, and I repeat my great grief at the decision of the Home Secretary.

Before I sit down I should like to say something in a different key altogether, which I hope will be acceptable to all the Members of the House, including my old friend, the noble Earl, Lord Winter-ton. We all realise that the hour is late, but I have been asked to speak for all noble Lords in this House who have not been able to stay in expressing our profound respect for the memory of the late Lord Templewood. It is certainly not for me, who knew him only in his later years, to pass any judgment on the more controversial phases of his pre-war politics; but I know that all of us on this side of the House would wish to pay tribute, as the noble Earl has done so well, to the prudence, the far-sightedness, the colossal industry, and the idealism, that he exhibited in carrying through the Indian reforms. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, if he had been here, would have been anxious to say something on that subject. As an old Minister of Civil Aviation, it would be right for me to say how well aware I am of how much the development of all kinds of aviation in this country owes to him. We recall that he took all sorts of flights, which I imagine were far more hazardous in those days than they would appear to be at the present time. His achievements as Ambassador in Spain were of signal value to the Allied cause; and, as the obituary notices have shown, he has left behind him a legacy of selfless and successful labours in many fields.

I have been asked by the National Association of Probation Officers to render their tribute along with mine, and I gladly do so tonight. I speak as one who knew him in his last years in this House, and particularly in his capacity as a penal reformer. If I had to sum up in a sentence my impression of him (and our association grew closer as time went on, until it was very close at the end) I would speak of him in connection with penal reform as a committed, a dedicated man. His was, I think—and those who have known him in past years can perhaps confirm this—a complex nature, and it may be that in some earlier periods that had not always been an advantage to him. But when I knew him all seemed to be simplified in his old age in a burning passion for truth and justice; and it was a great pleasure to fight with him—if I may use the expression, "beneath his petticoats"—and to accept the leadership of one who was so much more eminent than we were.

It may be that he shortened his life by joining me and others in initiating the recent debate on crime and prisons which we had in your Lordships' House only a few weeks ago. He told me that he had influenza at the time, and some of us may remember that he left the House on that occasion. When he reappeared later he was still suffering, I fear, from that, and it may be, therefore, that his participation in that debate shortened his life. If so, all of us here—certainly I, who was rather directly concerned with it—will have many regrets. But I am sure that he has no regrets. He died as we in this House had always found him—a Christian statesman with an unrivalled knowledge of the world, but with his eyes set on higher things. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his lifelong companion, his noble wife, who sustained him at every stage of his journey.

8.0 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR)

My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will bear with me for a moment if I join my noble friend Lord Winterton and the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, in saying how great a loss this House has suffered from the death of the noble Viscount, Lord Templewood. As the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has reminded us, our debate of April 8 was the last occasion on which lie took part in the deliberations of your Lordships' House, and it is significant and not irrelevant to my noble friend's Question this evening that the last decade of Lord Templewood's long career had as its main concern the causes and the cure of crime in this country.

He played so many and distinguished parts in our national politics, to which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has referred, that those of us who worked with him—in my case, for almost exactly a quarter of a century—are apt to forget that the cause which lay nearest his heart was penal reform, and that among the multitude of his achievements not the least was his tenure of the office of Home Secretary. It is interesting that his last speech in your Lordships' House dealt with one of the points which my noble friend made in his speech to-day, and I think that we should do most to honour Lord Templewood's memory if every one of us contributed to the best of his ability towards raising the moral standards of the community and consequently towards reducing the volume of crime. That was a point he urged on us with great force and to me with moving power.

I think that my noble friend Lord Winterton would agree with me, from his infinitely greater experience, that one of the most difficult problems of being a politician in the complicated modern State is to see clearly the wood for the trees amidst the enormous pressure of details that fall upon the Administration to-day. It was because Lord Templewood succeeded in that almost superhuman task, not only of seeing the wood clearly but of also keeping his own ideals clear, that his memory will always be green. We join with great feeling in the sympathy which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has expressed towards his wife.

My noble friend Lord Winterton began by making the point once again that the increase in crime is one of the most disturbing facts of this period. He said that it used to be thought that crime was caused largely by poverty, and that if poverty could be removed the incentives to dishonesty, which accounts for some 85 per cent. of indictable crime, would be removed. We have learned by bitter experience that this is not so. At a time when the country is more prosperous than it has ever been, and when a great many of the evils of bad housing, ignorance and ill-health have been, if not overcome, at least much reduced, we find that crime is greater than ever before.

We are coming to recognise that the problem is far from simple; that it is not a question of finding one or two major causes of crime that can be removed by Government action, but that it is a question of studying a whole complex of factors which interact to encourage or inhibit the growth of crime. It is from that point of view that I should like to put my reflections before my noble friend, because they have led me not to doubt the necessity for an inquiry, but to doubt whether a Royal Commission is the proper form. My noble friend will forgive me if I deal with his points in outline, because every one of them could easily be the subject of a long speech in itself.

My noble friend dealt with the difficulties of redemptionists in deterrence. My answer to that, if I may put it shortly, is that since 1895 and the Gladstone Report it has been clear to all but a very small number of those who study penology that deterrence in itself fails. My noble friend described deterrence clearly and powerfully. That has been tried and has failed, and from that time the dilemma has been to find the combination of deterrence and reformative treatment that is needed. There must be an element of deterrence. The removal of a wrongdoer from society has deterrence as one of its aims. But it is the combination that we are looking for. I entirely agree with, and I do not think that there are many of us who would question the noble Earl's point about the fall in moral standards. Certainly anyone who did me the honour of paying any attention to my own period as Home Secretary, whatever view he might have of other of my opinions, would agree that that was a point whose importance I took every opportunity of stating and of underlining.

With regard to the question of capital punishment, a Royal Commission reported on this matter a relatively short time ago. Despite a limitation in the Commission's terms of reference, I do not think that we could get much further information on the subject than the reading of that Report will give. In the end, one comes to certain subjective judgments on the matter. One has to take the effect on the minds of ordinary criminals, and I have no doubt at all that hanging does prevent a section of ordinary criminals from stepping from dishonesty to violence and the killing of a person in a house. But it came out clearly, when we discussed this question two years ago, that though this is my opinion, based on my own experience, other people have, and are entitled to have, different views. But I do not think that there are new facts on this question—at any rate, not from the consideration I have given.

The flogging point, which the noble Earl probably has in mind, is one of the most interesting, because, as he knows from his experience, the only major crime for which flogging was used was robbery with violence. That punishment was abolished in 1948. From 1949 to 1955 there was a decline in robbery with violence at a time when, broadly, there was a rise in most crimes; certainly there was a substantial rise in crime from 1949 to 1951. Since then there has only been one year, 1958, when the number of cases of robbery with violence has been more than in 1948; and as the noble Earl is aware, in 1958 the figures of indictable offices were going up extremely quickly.

I have said something of the attitude of the public, and I should like to deal with two other matters. I would assure my noble friend that since I have been Lord Chancellor nobody has been made a magistrate, to my knowledge—and I see every one of them—who has committed a serious motoring offence. There may be some discussion as to what is serious, but certainly I have never appointed, for example, anyone who has been convicted of being drunk in charge of a car. I have not actually checked it before coming in, but I cannot remember appointing as a magistrate anyone who has been convicted of dangerous driving. I would not say that I have not appointed someone who has been fined for parking. I may, in an exceptional case, after a long period have appointed someone who has been convicted of careless driving; but again I cannot remember it. Certainly it is my practice not to do it. I hope that that will be some assurance to the noble Earl.

EARL WINTERTON

May I put this point to my noble and learned friend, because I do not think I could have made myself clear? According to the contention which appeared in a newspaper—it may be false—there had been cases of magistrates who had committed serious motoring offences continuing to sit on the bench afterwards.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I am grateful to my noble friend. It is difficult to get the exact nuance. I thought my noble friend was dealing with appointments, and I shall go on to deal with that. Any magistrate who is convicted of a serious motoring offence is dealt with by me. Again, I might in certain cases, if he had given a long period of good service before the offence, move him to the supplementary list rather than remove him from the commission. But Iwant to make it quite clear, as the point has been raised in this House, that it is quite wrong to give the impression that I should pass the matter over.

The other point made by my noble fiend concerned the rise in the number of cases of homosexual crime. That, of course, is absolutely true, and that was the reason why, when I was Home Secretary, I included that point in the terms of reference of the Wolfenden Committee. So that there again we have had the matter considered. We have had an interesting debate on that point, in which I think the three of us took part, and we can examine it again. But we have had the problem examined.

I have tried to show that a great number of matters have been examined, and the facts are before us, but I want to make two points as to causation. Of course, fundamentally the causes of crime lie in human weakness, but human weakness reacts in different ways to different circumstances and to different stimuli: environment, upbringing, opportunity and the moral climate of the group or neighbourhood in which the individual finds himself. Basically I believe that the problem is a moral and spiritual one. Secondly, it is a social problem of considerable complexity. We have only recently begun to study the way in which men live and interact in society. The tools of that study—sociology, psychology and criminology—are relatively new. They are being developed and the Government are most anxious to assist their development and their application to this problem of crime.

Therefore I attach great importance—and I think I can speak for my right honourable friend Mr. Butler in this—to the creation of the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge. I believe it will give a powerful impulse in this direction. My right honourable friends the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland, through the work of the Joint Research Unit of their two Departments, will do all that they can to help and stimulate research, both at Cambridge and elsewhere, on these problems. I believe that research is a better method of approaching them than the appointment of a Royal Commission. I differ with great diffidence from my noble friend and his experience, but I should like to give him my views so that he can consider them. A Royal Commission is a valuable means of gathering facts and assembling opinion, but I believe that the problem here is principally one of obtaining information which is not at present available to anybody, and for this purpose the techniques of criminological and sociological research are more appropriate than those of a body which proceeds by hearing evidence.

My noble friend thought that a Royal Commission was alone in possessing legal authority. I was interested in the way he framed his Question, and I had a look at that legal problem. It surprised me, and I am sure it will surprise him, to know that, apart from having the right to ask a witness to take the oath, on which the witness can make a decision, a Royal Commission has not got the power to compel witnesses to give evidence. That can only be done by an inquiry set up under the Tribunals and Inquiry Act, 1921—a form of inquiry which I may say was praised with faint damns in your Lordships' House the last time we discussed it a few weeks ago. I only say that as a matter of interest, because I was myself surprised. I do not think the point I make is a very relevant one. In fact, it is not a question here of extracting from unwilling witnesses knowledge which they are known to possess. Unfortunately, nobody at present holds the key to this problem. It is one that we must study by whatever means seem most likely to produce results.

While it is not absolutely unknown for a Royal Commission to put in hand research on a relatively limited subject, I believe that where the problem is so wide and so difficult the answer will be found only by research carried out on a number of fronts by a number of disciplines, acting sometimes independently, sometimes in co-operation; and this kind of work seems to he eminently for the universities to undertake, assisted and encouraged, as they will be, by the Government.

I have put the point quite shortly. Again, I hope your Lordships will bear with me if I make this perfectly clear. What I have said does not mean that active measures to deal with crime must be postponed until years of patient research have produced the knowledge of its causes. The Government are doing everything possible to deal with the penal side of crime on the lines set out in the White Paper, which I shall not repeat to-day, and to co-operate with those influences in society, and in particular the churches and voluntary organisations concerned with welfare and education, to maintain sound moral standards and to stimulate those forces in society which are resistant to the growth of crime.

I say again what I said in the last debate. It is morally wrong for Parliament or anyone in the country to attempt to represent this as something which is wholly the concern of the Government. It is a concern for Parliament. It is a concern for every individual person of good will and, of course, it is a great concern for the churches as leaders of thought. I ventured to say last time that there is perhaps a special, heavy responsibility on us who aspire to be and hold ourselves out to he the political leaders of the people of this country. That must go on. My own view is that, apart from all we can do, there is a double inspiration which we must get into the people of this country and which perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I put personally. I see it in two persons: someone like Peter the Hermit, who will remind people of their sins and the failure of their moral standards—that is a matter for the Church—and, at the same time, someone like Sir John Moore with the Light Division at Sheerness 150 years ago, who will translate ideas into the practical methods by which the lives of many people can be put on a better plane before crime comes for the first time and casts the shadow. These are duties in the fields of religion and the playing fields which none of us can avoid. Having answered my noble friend on a rather detailed basis as his speech required, I hope he will forgive my emphasising once again the general view which I so strongly feel.