Lords Sitting of 12 April 1961

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

LORD WALSTON
Henry David Leonard George Walston, Esquire, having been created Baron Walston, of Newton in the County of Cambridge, for life—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

THE FOREST OF DEAN
2.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they propose to implement the recommendations made in the Report of the Forest of Dean Committee (Cmnd. 686) and, if so, When some action may be expected.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, a number of recommendations which might be acceptable to my right honourable friend (in particular those relating to the control of grazing) would require legislation, and I cannot forecast when this would be introduced. A number of other recommendations which are acceptable to my right honourable friend, especially those designed to preserve and improve the amenities of the Forest, are being put into force by the Forestry Commission. My right honourable friend is fully sympathetic to the view of the Committee that the unique character of this ancient Forest should be maintained.
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: My Lords, whilst I am grateful for the noble Earl's Answer, I should like to stress the importance of the recommendation made by the Committee regarding sheep. Nobody knows how many sheep there are in
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the Forest of Dean: the Committee put the number at some 10,000. The sheep are uncontrolled and uncontrollable. They form a danger to motor traffic. They eat the young timber of trees and they damage peoples' gardens. But, far more important than that, they are—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order! Order!
VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE: Then I would ask that the recommendation dealing with sheep should be treated as a matter of urgency, particularly in view of the danger of foot-and-mouth disease.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I indicated in my first reply that matters concerning grazing, and especially the grazing of sheep, would require new legislation before we could control these sheep, and therefore I am not able to indicate at the moment what could be done, nor am I able to indicate when we could introduce such legislation.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, turning from sheep to men, may I ask what the Government propose to do to provide alternative employment for the miners, or the ex-miners, in the Forest of Dean, who have lost their employment, in many cases, through the closing of the mines and who desire to remain in the Forest as part of the ancient Forest community?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I am not sure that that question arises out of the Report of the Forest of Dean Committee. But the question of miners who have lost their employment—and many of them have not completely lost their employment—is largely a matter for the Coal Board.

PRISON POPULATION AND ESCAPES
2.49 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the average prison population has risen by about a quarter since 1955; whether the number of escapes from prison in the same period has risen from 87 in 1955 to over 300 both in 1959 and in 1960; how they explain this increased rate of escape; and whether it has continued in 1961.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (EARL BATHURST): My Lords, the figures quoted by the noble and learned Lord are correct, and I am sorry to say that so far there has been no improvement this year. As was indicated in the latest Report of the Prison Commissioners, the reasons for the deterioration between 1955 and 1959 are not yet clear. A systematic analysis of escapes is now in hand which it is hoped may throw more light on this very serious problem and suggest possible remedies.
About three-quarters of the escapes in 1959 and 1960 were from open prisons, outside working parties and escorts—for example, to an outside hospital for examination or treatment. In these circumstances some risk of escape must always be present, although all possible steps are taken to minimise it.
The remaining escapes from closed prisons give particular cause for concern, and prison governors have recently been reminded of the paramount need for maintaining security. The acute overcrowding in the local prisons, which has resulted from the increase in population to which the noble and learned Lord refers, has made their task much more difficult, and the prison building programme makes provision for many new secure prisons, borstals and remand centres.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that Answer and ask him whether he is aware that alarm at these figures is increased by the fact that so many prisoners seem to escape by the same method; and whether it is not true that, if a small part of the efforts now expended in trying to recapture escaped prisoners were to be devoted to preventing their escape, the public would be much safer?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I have indicated that there is much concern at the Home Office with regard to these escapes. The particular method of escape to which the noble Lord refers is, of course, from visits to hospitals or other centres of medical aid outside the prison. Far that reason, new instructions are being issued, and we are experimenting with new methods.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, would not the noble Earl agree that it is most unfair to prison governors and staffs not to make it quite clear that in some local prisons it is virtually impossible, because of lack of staff and overcrowding, to supervise prisoners to anything like the degree necessary if the number of these escapes is to be cut down, and that it is no use blaming governors when they have not the staff or facilities to look after the prisoners?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I had hoped that I made it quite clear from my Answer that there is no question of putting blame on prison governors or staff, and I am quite certain that all your Lordships will agree that they carry out magnificent work in most difficult circumstances. But I thoroughly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has said, with regard to overcrowding; and as I hope I indicated in the last few lines of my Answer (and we shall be hearing more when the Criminal Justice Bill comes before the House) steps are being taken which, it is to be hoped, will in the fairly near future remedy the position about which the noble Lord has spoken.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, would the noble Earl agree that the experience in relation to open prisons has been much less satisfactory than it was in the early days of those prisons, when very few escapes took place? It is obviously very easy to escape from an open prison, and the whole problem is really to select for the open prison the sort of man who is not likely to escape. Can the noble Earl tell us whether the same care is being taken to screen prisoners before they are sent to open prisons?
EARL BATHURST: Yes; every care is taken to screen prisoners, and one of the mysteries is why so many more prisoners from all classes of prison are showing an inclination to escape, whereas, say, ten years ago not so many made such attempts. Obviously, that is another reason why secure prisons are so overcrowded.
EARL WINTERTON: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that those of us who have taken an interest in this subject, and have been, as I was

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for some years, a Minister at the Home Office, are deeply concerned to learn for the first time that three-quarters of these escapes are from open prisons? When we come to discuss the Criminal Justice Bill, will he, or one of his colleagues, devote some part of his speech to discussing the reason for this?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I am quite aware of what the noble Earl says, but it is not the escapes from open prisons that are causing so much concern. We are, of course, concerned over those, but it is escapes from secure prisons, and, above all, from working parties, or during visits to medical centres, to which I referred, that are causing my right honourable friend the greatest and most serious concern at present.
EARL WINTERTON: My Lords, did not my noble friend the Minister say that three-quarters of these escapes were from open prisons? Does not he think that is a very serious thing?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, it is a very serious thing, as I have agreed; but those particular escapes are not so serious as the others I have mentioned, from secure prisons.

WANDSWORTH PRISON INCIDENTS
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any statement to make about the situation in Wands-worth Prison.]
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, on Friday, April 7, after two prisoners had been taken to the separate cells for assaulting officers there was some tension in the prison. On four occasions on Saturday and Monday groups of prisoners refused to return to their cells from exercise, or refused to work. These incidents passed off quietly without violence, and apart from some sporadic shouting and throwing of articles from cell windows on Monday night, and a little shouting on Tuesday night, the prison has been quiet since. Some 200
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prisoners have been punished for failure to obey an order. An inquiry into this series of incidents has been begun, and when this has been completed any necessary steps will be taken to prevent a recurrence of concerted indiscipline.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Earl the Minister. While expressing great confidence in the Governor, whom I know quite well, may I take it that the noble Earl the Minister would agree that this prison, in particular, is shockingly overcrowded? Could he tell us, for example, how many prisoners it is intended to hold, how many it does hold, and how many sleep three in a cell?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I must thank the noble Earl for having given me notice of his supplementary question. I thoroughly agree with him that this prison is very—almost shockingly—overcrowded. Yesterday there were 1,599 men in the prison, of whom 627 were sleeping three in a cell.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I am much obliged to the noble Earl.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the position at Pentonville is precisely the same: that more than 500 men are sleeping three to a cell, in a prison built to accommodate 800, and that last week there were over 1,200 men there? That is really the cause of these troubles.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I believe that the answer to the last series of questions amply makes clear how much my right honourable friend appreciates these conditions.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m., my noble friend Lord Dundee will be making a statement on export credits.

DEPUTY CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Airedale be added to the panel of Lords appointed to act as Deputy Chairmen of Committees for this Session.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME
2.57 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND LORD AUCKLAND rose to call attention to the heavy loss of life due to accidents in the home; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion for Papers standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is the first occasion which it has been my privilege to move a debate in your Lordships' House and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity for being able to do so at such an early stage. I should like at the outset to thank all the persons and organisations who have helped me in connection with this debate—if I may mention a few in particular: Courtaulds, ROSPA, the British Standards Institution, the Mount Vernon Hospital at Northwood, British Nylon Spinners and many others. Though I have not mentioned them all by name, they can rest assured that they have my deep gratitude. I should also like to thank at this stage all noble Lords who are taking part in what I believe will be a stimulating debate.
Tomorrow in your Lordships' House there is to be the Second Reading of a very important Bill, the Road Traffic Bill; and nobody will deny the appalling seriousness of accidents on the roads. I can assure your Lordships that this debate is in no way intended to detract attention from the appalling tragedy of the slaughter on our roads to-day. As I shall prove later, however, by figures, the number of accidents in the home in the 1960s, with all modern science and electrical equipment, is still higher than the number of accidents on the road.
There are approximately six sources of accidents: the home, roads, railways, mines, factories and offices. For the roads there is legislation to punish the negligent driver or the driver who is convicted of driving under the influence of drink. An accident in a coalmine or a factory is the source of an inquiry; and an accident in an office similarly so.
There are, too, a number of very tragic accidents on farms, particularly with children. A child climbs on to a baler, and perhaps slips and gets caught in the machinery, and a tragic accident occurs. Publicity of accidents on the roads has been considerable—and rightly so, my Lords—but for accidents in the home it is a rather different story.
Both Houses of Parliament are fully conscious of this menace, and perhaps I may again mention a few names. The honourable gentleman the Member of Parliament for Bilston, the honourable gentleman the Member for Folkestone and Hythe, the honourable lady the Member for Belfast, North, and the former Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie, Mrs. Mann, have all striven hard, in various capacities, to do something about these accidents. The Consumer Protection Bill is about to go through its Report stage in another place, as is the Home Safety Bill, moved by the honourable gentleman the Member for Folkestone and Hythe. The Oil Burners (Standards) Act is now law as is the Fireguards Act—though it is not enforced nearly strictly enough.
There is one obvious difficulty concerning accidents in the home. An Englishman's home is his castle, and entry of his home—or a woman's home—by any form of official is resented. There are various reasons for this. There is always the bogus official who poses as a meter reader or census-taker, or somebody like that, who has in fact come to rob. If the housewife is on her own, particularly in an area where there have been assaults or robberies, she is naturally reluctant to open the door to a stranger unless she has adequate confirmation showing who he is; and it often takes time to establish that. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to compute the real implications of accidents in the home.
There are certain statutory requirements with regard to electricity. Where a house changes hands the Electricity Board has to inspect the wiring, but rewiring a house, as I know from experience, can be a costly job. In some of the old Victorian mansions, and some houses built before the last century, often inhabited by elderly people, some of the electrical wiring defies comment. There are loose wires everywhere; the plugs

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are often completely unsafe, and it is here that accidents frequently happen. New houses to-day are wired on the ring main system. I am not an electrician, but I will try, briefly, to explain what this means. Each plug has its own self-contained fuse, and there is no question of going to some dilapidated outside fuse-box and fiddling to find out whether 5-amp or 15-amp wire is needed: it is just a question of putting in another fuse. Of course, this does not completely eliminate electrical accidents. There is still the television set; there is the person who will tinker about with the television set without switching it off, or who removes the back of it and tinkers, and there is an explosion, often with fatal results.
Then, my Lords, there is the amateur handyman. I have nothing in principle against the person who does a job in his own home. It is often expensive these days to get labour. To have a fuse mended is often an expensive job, and there is no reason why it should not be done by a man who is capable of doing it. But the week-end opportunist handyman is often a menace. He will say that he will fit another flex on to the electric fire. He will probably do that, fitting on an extension which is sometimes worn, and he will half finish that job and then do another job. The occupant of the first house that I bought after I was married was a Post Office engineer. He was a man who called himself an amateur handyman, and he would do about six jobs all at once. He would fit an extension to an electric fire; then he would perhaps get his electric drill and do a few other jobs, and so on. These jobs were half done. When we bought the house, I and some friends of mine who are knowledgeable on electricity examined the circuits and the plugs, and the sight was a deplorable one. How on earth a fatal accident was avoided I have yet to understand.
Then, of course, there is the old multi-plug. How often have we seen a plug socket supplying a television set, and possibly a hair drier and electric light and other equipment at the same time? Every now and again the wiring is overloaded and there is an accident. Not far from where I live there was a very tragic accident recently. A young mother was in her home; her husband had gone to
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visit neighbours across the road, and she was with her six months old daughter. She plugged in the electric fire, and somehow this came into touch with the gas poker. There was an explosion and she was thrown across the electric fire and killed. Accidents of this kind can, and do, happen.
I would now say a brief word on an aspect which is not often mentioned: firearms. I am going to say only a brief word on this subject because a Bill on firearms and gun licences is at present before another place. All too often a gun or rifle is taken into a room when it is loaded. Boys, being what they are like to tinker about with these things. They show it to their parents. The safety catch is probably not on; the gun is fired and a tragedy, often fatal, occurs. Such an accident, which was well publicised, took place in Essex recently. A boy was killed when his friend was trying to demonstrate the workings of a gun.
Now, my Lords, oil fires. This matter has also been the subject of legislation, and I believe that other noble Lords are to deal with it in more detail. I should like to mention just two fairly recent accidents. At Ware, in Hertfordshire, there was a terrible accident (I think it was last year) in which five children were burned to death. Then there was the case of a caravan in Tipton, where children were left, I believe, unaccompanied, without anyone looking after them: the oil fire went up and four children died.
My Lords, I am now going to quote a few figures. Of all accidents in the home, 80 per cent. take place among children under 5, and elderly people over 65. I am going to deal primarily with children. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, who has had great experience of welfare and hospital work, is, I understand, to deal primarily with the elderly people. In 1959, 6,520 people died on the roads and 327,000 people were injured. In the same year, 8,157 people died in their homes—the highest figure since 1940—and 1,260,000 were injured. The latter figure does not include those who were injured and had treatment either at home or possibly from their general practitioner, and it may not include even all hospital cases.
Among children under 5, accidents in the home are the third largest cause of

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death. There are more deaths among children from accidents in the home than there are from poliomyelitis; and, even with the great co-operation which manufacturers of textiles, oil heaters and so on are giving to-day, these accidents are on the upgrade. It is true that the birthrate is increasing and that the number of elderly people in this country is increasing. That must be borne in mind. None the less, these figures are, to say the least of it, shattering. Nearly 2 million people a year seek hospital treatment due to accidents in the home—5 per cent. of the population. The cost is £5 million a year, and doubtless the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who is very much more experienced on this subject that I am, will elaborate on this matter.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord could tell us the source of that figure of £5 million. We were under the impression that the cost to the hospital service was very much higher than £5 million.
LORD AUCKLAND: That, I understand, is the basic cost. I have not the full figures, but those I have quoted are from reports which I have received from R.O.S.P.A.—the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents—though I have no doubt that, particularly taking into account the very serious cases, the real cost is probably considerably higher.
My Lords, as I said earlier I am dealing primarily with children, and particularly with burns and scalds. It should not be thought that burns account for the largest number of accidents in the home. In fact, falls account for the largest proportion, particularly among elderly people. A young child can have a fall without causing any damage, and it is surprising what resistance to falls a youngster has. But if an elderly lady or an elderly gentleman—and many of them live in these two- or three-storey tenement buildings, often on their own—have a fall, they may remain undiscovered for two or three days. There are various causes of such falls—badly laid lino, bad lighting, a foreign body on the stairs and so on—and the result is often tragic.
In 1957, in England and Wales, 644 people died from burns. In 1959, the figure was 719. Of these 90 per cent.
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were due to unguarded fires; approximately 70 per cent. of the people were over 65 and approximately 20 per cent. were children under 4. As to suffocation, the dangers from polythene bags have already been the subject of quite a national campaign—and these bags are indeed terribly dangerous. A child who finds a polythene bag is naturally fascinated by it, and may put it over his head or over a friend's head. Then, quite often, because he cannot get it off, and there is no breathing outlet, the result is fatal. In 1959, 481 people died from suffocation. Of these, 331 were children under 4, 133 were in bed or were cradled, and 174 were due to some form of choking.
My local hospital at Epsom gave me some interesting figures which, with your Lordships' permission, I will quote. In the twelve months from January 1,1960, the Epsom and District Hospital and the four hospitals under its control had referred to them 146 accidents in the home. Of these, 22 were burns, of which 12 involved children under 14, 6 of them being due to fireworks. My Lords, I am not going to suggest that November 5 should be outlawed. Far from it! There is nothing like a decent firework display, properly organised by the local authority, such as those in famous places like Lewes or Edenbridge, where it is tradition, or organised in a garden under parental or adult supervision.
I believe I am right in saying—and those who have more legal knowledge than I will no doubt correct me if I am wrong—that no child under 12 may be supplied with a dangerous firework; but, my Lords, this law is often completely abrogated. We find these cheap and often dangerous fireworks given to a child, who will light it; and off goes his hand. Firms like Brock's and Payne's are makers, generally speaking, of good-quality fireworks. Some years ago there was a great controversy over a certain firm that was producing very dangerous fireworks, and it was eventually put out of business, I believe. But November 5 is often a doctor's nightmare, and a fireman's nightmare; and the local hospital casualty departments, wherever they may be, are grossly overworked. I should like to ask the noble Earl who is to reply for the Government whether he will consult with his right honourable

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friend the Home Secretary about tightening up the law on selling fireworks, particularly to young children, because, as I say, this matter is not controlled nearly strictly enough.
Another hospital which I should like to mention is the Mount Vernon Hospital, at Northwood. Here is one of the largest and most efficient plastic units in the country. Treatment is given to persons from an area extending from the Wash to Peterborough, and South to the Medway towns. Last week my wife and I toured this hospital, paying special regard to the burns unit, and we saw some pretty terrible sights. I will quote one of them. A 6-months old girl was in hospital; she had been there for four months. When she was 2 months old, she was in her cot and the cot clothing caught fire. The child screamed, but the parents took no notice. It was not until burning was smelt that one parent went up to investigate.
My Lords, I need hardly go into the result: the child, miraculously, was not killed, but one leg had to be amputated below the knee. The foot of the other leg is deformed. The sight of one eye may well be permanently impaired. The top of the child's head has been very badly burned, and one ear has been burnt off. We saw this child. She is a cheerful little girl, full of courage; but what her future will be, I do not know. It was a harrowing sight, and surely here is a case of criminal negligence. I do not know what the penalties are for parents who wilfully neglect their children—because I would go so far as to say that this was a wilful case of neglect. There was a case where a parent who had lost two children was punished very severely. If a man drives a car negligently on the road, particularly under the influence of drink, even if a relative of his is killed, if a charge is proved that he was so under the influence of drink, or was driving negligently, he can be prosecuted and quite heavily punished.
I am forced to the conclusion that this principle should be more rigidly applied to some accidents in the home. Of course, no accident in the home is always preventable, as I shall stress later, but accidents of this kind can be prevented. We saw other cases in this hospital. For example, a girl of nine was burned while tampering with an electric fire. Her
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father was an electrician. There were also other cases which time does not permit me to mention.
I should like at this stage to pay a glowing tribute to the staff of the Mount Vernon Hospital. The deputy senior surgeon took us round, and some of the work which is done there is quite miraculous. We visited the photographic unit and saw a photograph of one case which was brought in, where whole lumps of flesh were burned away. Then we saw a photograph of the man taken three weeks later, and a marvellous transformation scene had occurred. If more people would go round these places and see the work which goes on, and see some of the heartbreaking sights in these hospitals, it would surely bring to the public conscience the fact that we are concerned here with a very grave matter. In the hospital I have mentioned the surgeon emphasised two very important points. Sixty per cent. of all cases brought into this hospital, on a general average, are due to accidents in the home; and approximately twenty-five major operations per week are carried out. One particularly important point was stressed by the surgeon—and the same point ha-s been brought out by Courtauld's representative, to whom I have spoken—and I hope that it will get some Publicity. If only more children would be put into pyjamas, rather than into nightdresses—particularly the rayon type of nightdress—the incidence of fire, and often fatal burns, would be cut very drastically.
Last Saturday I attended the tenth anniversary Conference of World Health Year, organised by the United Kingdom branch of the World Health Organisation, and the theme of the conference was accidents. At the Conference a film called "Hazard" was shown. It was made by the Iron and Steel Federation, and it told the story, in colour, of two steel-workers who went on a climbing holiday in the Dolomites. One wore a climber's safety helmet; the other wore a woollen cap which he was wont to wear when he supported his favourite football team. A boulder fell. It struck the man wearing the safety helmet, and he was not seriously hurt. But if it had struck the man in the woollen cap, the result would probably have been fatal. And this man had beforehand said to his pal: "Well, Jim,

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I'll take a chance. People have to die some time."
But, my Lords, there is a moral there. Whether it is an accident in the home, an accident in a factory, or an accident on the road, there are certain simple, common-sense precautions that can be taken. Yesterday I visited the research laboratories of Courtauld's, at Bocking, Braintree, in Essex. At these laboratories garments and fibres are tested for fire resistance. I spent about an hour watching the burning of certain materials. Rayon, particularly brushed rayon, is extremely dangerous, and very few firms will now make it. Viscous and raised pile substances are also very dangerous. I have in my hand some nightdress material treated with Proban. I have carried out an experiment with this material using a match. I tried to get it to burn. Your Lordships can see the result. But had that material not been treated, or had it been brushed rayon or synthetic cotton, it would have been a very different story. Cotton twill is also extremely dangerous. Marks and Spencer's carried out an experiment when Proban was first introduced. They would not sell to children or parents garments which were not treated with fire-resistant material. If more retail shops would do that, a great many accidents would be prevented. There are difficulties, fashionwise, I know. Of course, children in their first party dress like to look nice. But which is the more important—a life saved, or a glamorous but dangerously made party dress? That is the question which parents must consider, in the light of the accidents that have been taking place.
Proban have done good work in research. Initially they lost £300,000, but they are now making something of a profit. I am going to put a specific suggestion to the Government, which may or may not be workable; that is, that Proban, and any other firm which can seriously do something towards impregnating materials to prevent these tragedies, should be affiliated to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and given facilities, both in manpower and in finance, to carry out their researches. I am not a lover of subsidies, and I am not going to suggest that every fire-prevention organisation should be subsidised. But Government
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help, through more consultation with retailers and manufacturers, as the Report of the Molony Committee recommends, could do a lot of good. As the Molony Report says, it is not always possible completely to fireproof every garment, because it is not always practicable and often it is too expensive, but a good deal can be done.
In the Drapery and Fashion Weekly of March 16 of this year, there was an article about a Mr. Norman Wilson who, in partnership with his brother, is the proprietor of a drapery chain store in the North. The heading of the article is "Brothers say cost of 'a packet of fags' can save a child's life". I quote from what Mr. Wilson said:
"I asked two mothers, both wheeling prams, if they always insisted on flame-resistant night clothing for their children. The first replied that she didn't even know there was any to be had. The other had once bought a treated nightie for her daughter. But it had been so hard that it had chafed her daughter's shoulders. She had been forced to revert to the ordinary kind."
The article continues:
"Meanwhile inside the caravan a film was showing the dangers of fire at bedtime. On either side of the screen were shelves stocked with the new soft-to-touch nightclothes and stockings."
The proprietors of this shop have done all they could to advertise these safe fabrics, but there is no accounting for the follies of some parents.
In the Scotsman of Friday, April 7, there is an article by Mr. Russell Galbraith headed "Bid to Cut Toll of Accidents", which was written to commemorate World Health Day. In it, Mr. Galbraith says:
"It is particularly necessary that young girls' nightclothes and dresses should be flame resistant. In Britain today twice as many people die from burns as from polio, while five to ten times as many children as adults suffer burns. In many cases these accidents would not have happened if skirts and nightclothes had been flame resistant."
There are other aspects of this problem on which I could touch, but other noble Lords are going to do so.
Scotland has been very forward in their campaign. Many hospitals and local health authorities keep close records of accidents. There is an extremely good book by Dr. MacQueen, the Medical Officer of Health for Aberdeen, about accidents in 1955. In that year there were 4,500 home accidents in

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Aberdeen, and 46 general practitioners and 60 home visitors kept the local health authority fully informed of them. The same is done in Kilmarnock, where, in 1955, there were 9,000 accidents of all kinds out of a population of 44,000. Of these, six were fatal home accidents, five of them to elderly people and one to a child of two months; two were fatal factory accidents and one was a fatal road accident. From inquiries which I have made, I find that Scotland is much more versed in the use of publicity for the prevention of accidents, both in the home and elsewhere, and I feel that our Home Office could probably take a leaf from their book.
I should like to say a word about toys, because, as a parent of two young children, I am conscious of this problem. Removable eyes in teddy bears, dolls and other "cuddly" toys can be a menace, and the Molony Report draws attention to this. I think that here possibly the British Standards Institution, which is doing so much good work, could strengthen their control. Toys with jagged edges present another problem.
Finally, what can be done? It is wrong to expect any Government, of whatever Party, to be able to deal completely with accidents in the home by legislation. Legislation cannot control everybody. This must be a combined operation—if need be, on the same scale as a war-time operation. I have suggested a few methods by which the Government can help, sometimes financially and with publicity. Both the B.B.C. and the I.T.V. television can help, by showing not only the glamorous side of garments but their safer side also, through the use of flame resistant fabrics. Local authorities can help. The schools are already doing very good work, and the fire brigades co-operate with them in this. The cinema can do a great deal, as in films like "Hazard", if only private film companies or the C.O.I. could produce films like this and show them. Pictures are especially telling. We can speak here in your Lordships' House or in the House of Commons, or in local village halls, but what we say does not carry the same weight as a pictorial record or a personal visit. I am sure that if all these methods are used in a combined operation a great deal can be done. I think that this is going to be
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an interesting debate, because following me are noble Lords who have a great deal of practical experience in this subject, at the Home Office, in the medical profession and elsewhere. I beg to move for Papers.

THE EXPORT CREDITS GUARANTEE DEPARTMENT
3.40 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lards, with your Lordships' permission, I will now make a statement about some developments in the services offered by the Export Credits Guarantee Department which is now being made in the other place by the President of the Board of Trade. Those developments can be summarised under throe headings. First, there are premium rates. The policy of the Department, and of the Advisory Council, for whose continuing help my right honourable friend feels much in their debt, is to pay its way on the average over a period. To run consistently at a loss would be tantamount to a subsidy to exports; but neither should we aim at making a consistent profit. We have made a new assessment in the light of experience of the likely level of recoveries after major defaults, and are satisfied that this justifies a substantial reduction in premium rates.
My right honourable friend has therefore approved a new scale of premiums for medium-term business which will reduce the total premiums charged by about 25 per cent. The main benefit of these reductions will be concentrated in those markets where at present we charge the highest rates. There will also be reductions in respect of comprehensive business in the more expensive markets.
Secondly, longer-term export finance. Any extension of the length of credit on which our goods are sold adds to the strain on our balance of payments. That is why we support the Berne Union and resist any general extension of the length of suppliers' credits. But in the case of very large capital projects and of oceangoing ships, where the return on any investment takes many years to mature, the buyer may need and expect credit going beyond five years from delivery and he can already obtain it in some foreign countries. We are therefore

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introducing a new system whereby the Export Credits Guarantee Department will guarantee loans for longer periods made by financial institutions in this country to creditworthy overseas purchasers. The extent to which we can grant this facility will be limited by our balance of payments position. We shall have to be selective, therefore, in accepting individual projects and be satisfied that they will bring substantial benefit to our economy. In highly exceptional cases, where the business could not otherwise be financed and where in the opinion of the Government there are compelling reasons for regarding the project as one of outstanding economic importance to the United Kingdom, supplementary finance may be provided from the Exchequer under Section 3 of the Export Guarantees Act.
Thirdly, small exporters. In order to help small and medium sized firms with little or no experience of exporting my right honourable friend has decided to introduce a new form of E.C.G.D. cover for firms with a current export turnover of less than £10,000 a year. This will be available across the counter at all branches of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, and will cover small exporters in respect of transactions with individual approved buyers, at a flat rate of premium. The cover will be available for a limited time. This simple and easily accessible facility should encourage new firms to enter the export market and subsequently become customers of the Export Credits Guarantee Department on a normal basis.
This is of necessity no more than an outline of the new arrangements. I am circulating a more detailed explanation in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and am also taking steps to make them known as widely as possible throughout industry. I believe that these developments, taken in conjunction with the improvements we have recently made—part-period cover, "matching", the general extension of special facilities originally designed for the dollar area, and the special rates for ships—represent a major extension of the services available from the Export Credits Guarantee Department, and can stand comparison with those offered by any similar institution in the world. It is important that they should be known and used as widely as possible, and I
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shall welcome any help that any of your Lordships can give to this end.
3.46 p.m.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, I am sure your Lordships will be grateful to the noble Earl for the statement that he has made, and all those in this country concerned with exports will be encouraged at the proposed (if I may use the word) liberalisation of the export credits guarantee procedure and facilities. The statement as regards premium rates would seem to justify charges which have been made by exporters that the premiums have represented an overcharge. If it is possible (as apparently is the case, because at the moment it is proposed to do so) to reduce by something in the region of 25 per cent. premiums upon medium-term transactions, it would seem, as I have said, to justify the complaint that the premiums have been too high in the past. It is also to be observed that the statement indicates that there will be reductions in respect of comprehensive business in the more expensive markets, all of which of course is desirable. But what about the position as regards the less expensive markets? Is it contemplated that there will be a reduction of premiums in respect of those markets, which are not unimportant as an element in our total global export business?
I am sure that the proposals as regards longer-term export finance will be warmly welcomed by those concerned, because it is the case that our competitors have been granting credit facilities over periods much longer than five years. It is encouraging to know that the Government now intend to recognise this fact and place our exporters in a relatively (shall I say?) less prejudicial position than they are now. I am a little disturbed, and it may well be that other noble Lords will be also, to know that this facility will be limited by our balance of payments position. I hope that the operation of these new proposals as regards longer-term export finance will not be unduly restricted by the vagabond money which plays such an unworthy part in estimating our balance of payments. I hope, also, as I am sure those concerned with the export trade do, that in cases where it is thought that supplementary finance should be provided by the Exchequer the conditions and requirements will be fairly liberally

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interpreted. I am sure that the small exporters, who, as I have already said, together make up an important element and sector in our export trade, will welcome the more liberal proposals which are contemplated.
The noble Earl was good enough to say that details of a more comprehensive character will be published in the OFFICIAL REPORT. We shall read those with interest, and it may well be that facilities will be provided for debating the proposals. In the meantime, I again express our gratitude for the statement made by the noble Earl.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I greatly welcome the noble Earl's statement. But as he rightly said, this is a step that, strictly speaking, we cannot afford, because as we are not paying our way on current account by disposing of the collection of our debts we are making our position even worse than it is to-day. This extension of the credit that we can give forms no part of extending the whole basis of world credit, which is what we really need, and which can be done either by raising the price of gold or turning the International Monetary Fund into a credit-creating body. In the meantime, while those steps are under contemplation, it will be a help to our exporters to enable them to compete with the Germans and the Americans in this field.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, while agreeing with the last speaker that this ought to be a help to the exporters, may I ask the noble Earl two questions? First, how will the support now to be given to the exporters compare with that given by the West German Government which, I understand, is very handsome support indeed? Secondly, with regard to the small exporters, will it be 100 per cent. guarantee, or some lesser figure?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, might I also ask the noble Earl a point? I doubt whether his proposals will arouse much enthusiasm among the small exporters. He is aware, of course, that burying a guarantee across the counter does not in fact provide you with credit. One of the particular difficulties to which I think the Government should pay more attention is the provision of credit which covers adequately the risk, which credit may not be forthcoming even when there is a guarantee. The second point is
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whether, in his further statement, there is to be any examination of some of the practices of export credits guarantee, particularly in regard to the pressure which is brought to bear on exporters to cover all their exports with export credit, even when they have no reason to do so from a business standpoint. I know of cases where it can make a difference as to whether orders can be obtained.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I should like to support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that it is in many cases quite a handicap in the export trade that the rates that apply to all destinations necessarily include Canada. The only way that a company can avoid that cost is by making a separate company to deal with trade in that quarter, which is quite inconvenient. It is that kind of difficulty which I think it is as well the noble Earl should bear in mind in making representations.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Latham, for the appreciative reception and comments which he has given to my right honourable friend's statement. With regard to the particular questions that your Lordships have asked, I would say that how far Germany is assisting German exporters under their export credit arrangements is a matter on which a Question would have to be put down. With regard to the amount of guarantee given to small exporters under these new facilities, I would point out that the scheme provides 90 per cent. cover against loss, and the premium will be at a fiat rate of 15s. per £100 insured, which simplifies to some extent the present arrangements. I do not want to quote at too great length from the statement which I am circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow, and I think it would probably be more to your Lordships' convenience to read the statement than to listen to long extracts from it.
Following are the details referred to in the statement:

NEW EXPORT CREDITS GUARANTEE DEPARTMENT FACILITIES
Premium Rates
Medium Term Business. A new scale of charges is being introduced.
The scale now displaced provided for heavy cumulative increases in charges both for the worse markets in comparison with the better, and for long credit periods in comparison with

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the shorter. The substantial reductions in total charges now being made have been directed towards narrowing these differentials.
Countries are graded in four categories—A, B, C and D—with A commanding the finest rates. Charges in respect of D have been revised on the basis of a reduction of 40 per cent., and in respect of C of 33⅓ per cent. A and B charges have also been reduced by 5 per cent. The effect of this is that D rates will in future be three or four times as high as A rates, where previously they could have been up to seven times as high.
The reductions have been applied in such a way as to make the progressive increases smaller as the credit period lengthens. Cover on a transaction in respect of a D market which involved two years' pre-shipment and five years' subsequent credit might, under the old scale, have cost a once-and-for-all charge of something over £10 per cent.; under the revised scale the corresponding charge would be £4 15s 0d. And this will apply to some extent to the better markets also; for such a transaction in an A market the corresponding figures would be 38s. 9d. and 29s.
The new scale of medium-term charges comes into operation to-morrow. It is estimated that these charges, if applied to the existing pattern of medium-term business, would have meant a reduction of some 25 per cent. in income.
Comprehensive Business. Holders of comprehensive policies will, in respect of short-term business, have charges reduced by about a quarter and a third in respect of C and D markets; charges for A and B markets (which have already been reduced in this field) remain unchanged. Extended-terms business will in future be related to the Medium-Term schedule, holders of comprehensive policies paying medium-term rates less, in appropriate cases, a discount; this discount varies according to the policy-holder's insured turnover and the amount of "spread" in the business offered in good markets as well as bad, and may be as much as 20 per cent.
The new charges come into operation to-morrow in respect of extended-terms business, and from May 1 in respect of short-term.
Long-Term Credit
The main features of these proposals are:—

(a) The Export Credits Guarantee Department is being authorised in selected cases to guarantee due repayment of loans made to overseas buyers, the proceeds to be used for making payment to United Kingdom exporters in respect of contracts appropriate for the longer-term credit contemplated; this facility will be entirely separate from E.C.G.D.'s normal business of guaranteeing suppliers' credit.

(b) Such financial guarantees should encourage banks and/or other private financial institutions to provide money for such loans to overseas buyers.

(c) These facilities will be available on a basis of strict selection: that is, to qualify for consideration a transaction will have to satisfy the requirements set out below.

First, these financial guarantees are designed to assist in facilitating the sale abroad of
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large capital projects normally costing not less than £2 million (excluding local expenditure). Examples are power stations, steel mills, pipelines, industrial undertakings, railway projects and possibly harbours and dams. Oceangoing ships are another example, though the lower limit will not be as high as in the case of projects. Business will not be eligible if it can he covered by credit insurance within the shorter normal supplier credit period; further, the nature of the assets created must be such that their useful life extends substantially beyond the period of the loan.
Second, the prospects of due repayment must be such as to satisfy normal E.C.G.D. underwriting requirements, either because the buyer is creditworthy in his own right, or can make himself creditworthy by obtaining a guarantee, for example, from his Government or central bank. The country risk will also have to be acceptable for cover. For any proposals put up in respect of the weaker markets, exceptional treatment will have to be justified on the basis of good long-term prospects leading to a lasting and profitable connection for British trade.
Third, there will have to be demonstrably strong commercial grounds for gaining the contract. These would include benefit to the balance of payments, the maintenance of a position in an established market in face of competition, the development of a market with a promising longer-term outlook, and the stimulus to an industry which is short of orders but on which we expect to depend in the future for a substantial volume of profitable exports.
To sum up: it will have to be demonstrated that there are adequate prospects of due repayment of the suggested loan and that the proposed transaction is suitable in character for long-term credit and will bring economic benefit to this country.
The intention will be that, where a supplier and a buyer come together in the usual way of business, the availability of such a guarantee will enable finance to be provided from private sources. The terms of payment between buyer and seller will have to provide for the buyer to make an adequate initial down-payment, and normally a final payment (the risk on which the supplier would carry himself) on or after completion of the contract. The seller would obtain the remainder of the price out of the guaranteed loan; the buyer would repay the lender by instalments over the full term of the loan.
In highly exceptional cases, where the business could not otherwise be financed and where in the opinion of the Government there were compelling reasons for regarding the project as one of outstanding economic importance to the United Kingdom, supplementary finance might be provided from the Exchequer under Section 3 of the Export Guarantees Act.
Charges for financial guarantees will be calculated on the basis of the new rates for medium-term suppliers' credit.
The Department is now prepared to consider business falling within the scope of these proposals.
Small Exporters
The Department has designed a simplified "Small Exporter" guarantee which will be available from May 1 to all exporters who have not exceeded £10,000 export turnover per annum in recent years. It will be available through all the Department's offices in London and the Provinces.
The guarantee will, for short-1term business, provide 90 per cent. cover against loss. Claims will be payable four months after the event causing loss. Risks covered will be similar to those covered under normal short-term guarantees. Premium will be a flat rate of 15s. per £100 insured. Exporters will be able to cover individual buyers in any market for which cover is available, but all business with those buyers will have to be offered for insurance.
Transactions will be approved individually and a specific document, clearly stamped as covered by guarantee, will be available for an exporter to produce to his bank manager if he seeks finance.
This facility is specifically designed to meet the needs of the small business which has never exported, or has not exported on any significant scale; it is not intended for those able to make effective use of the normal E.C.G.D. cover. Once the holder of a "Small Exporter" guarantee has reached an insured turnover of £20,000 or at the end of two years, whichever is the earlier, he will be expected to use the Department's normal facilities if he wishes to continue with cover.

ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME
3.55 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I rise to resume the debate on the Motion on accidents in the home, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Auckland. I should like to congratulate the noble Lord on both the material and the presentation of his Motion to your Lordships' House. I am sorry he is not in his place, and I must repeat it to him on some other occasion. I am glad to associate noble Lords on this side of the House with this Motion. It is good that the noble Lord has managed to achieve such excellent timing for his Motion from the point of view of most of us. For the first time in history Friday of last week was World Health Day devoted to accidents; this week is First Aid Week—the joint effort of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the Order of St. John and Red Cross and the Order of St. Andrew—and next week we have the first of the accident exhibitions which is to open in County Hall on Monday.
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When I decided to speak to-day, I thought I should look at the statement I made to the House on the last occasion when I moved a Motion on this matter, which was in 1954, and at what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, who replied to me said, to try to see what we had achieved. I want to try for a little while to point out some of the facts in support of the excellent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Auckland. I see the noble Lord is back in his place, and I am glad to repeat that to him. I ask the indulgence of the House if I seem, I think for the first time in all my years here, a little ill-mannered by withdrawing before the end of the debate, and perhaps not long after I have spoken myself. I have already taken the opportunity in private conversation with the noble Earl who is to reply to explain the official engagement that may excuse my apparent ill-manners.
When I look at the speech I made in 1954 from this place, I find that the position has grown steadily worse in every regard. I started by referring to the 7,000 fatal home accidents in the course of every year. Now I am faced with a figure for last year of 8,096. We are now for the first time in possession of statistics for ten years, and we have the frightening figure of 73,220 deaths in the course of those ten years, which means a rate of death by accidents in the home running now at nearly one per hour for every hour in the year. I know that the Motion put down by the noble Lord dealt with deaths, but since he himself dealt also with injury (I think quite rightly), I propose equally to look at that side, because those who are injured form also an important aspect. Criticising the terrible position regarding children of under fifteen, I said in 1954 that there were more killed in the homes than died on the roads and from all other forms of accidents put together—a statement which the noble Lord has repeated to-day. The figure has risen sharply in the time that has passed, and we are now up to 899 deaths of that kind every year.
Reference was made to the cost of hospitalisation of people, and my noble friend Lord Stonham asked where the figure of £4 million to £5 million came from. I find that when I referred to it last time I had authority for saying that it was the official statement made in

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1949. If we are to take into consideration what has happened with regard to rising costs from then to now, it may well be that my noble friend is correct and that it is very much in excess of £5 million at this time. I then said that more than £1 million was due to burns and scalds treatment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, referred. Then the total figure of deaths was 700, and the injury figures were running at the same rate. Regrettably, deaths last year amounted to 833.
I was glad the noble Lord referred to fireguards, because experience which I and others have had shows that there is no point in having an excellent Act if you are unable to carry it out. We were all very glad when the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, in 1952, came forward with his Fireguards Bill, which we were glad to see come onto the legislative register. But, my Lords, if you try to buy a guard that fits in with the definition you will not be successful. I went round London trying, though I did not go to all the places others have gone to. The Spectator, in December, 1960, had an article by one Leslie Adrian who told of visiting numerous large stores in London and being unsuccessful. The fireguards which could be obtained by that writer were too light, and could be knocked over, or collapsed when people knocked against them.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents sent people round London in the last eighteen months, and of the 26 types of fireguard found in London stores three had the two hooks that the definition requires, two had one hook, 21 had no hook whatsoever; and not one of the 26 had the fuel trap door which would be in the effective fireguard which the noble Lord wanted when he first approached us on this matter. I am bound to say, in fairness to many of the mothers, that if they bought the fireguards they would not be able to fit them anywhere, because it is still true that in many local authority houses they would not be allowed to put screws into the walls, which are too sacred; and to hold the fireguards without the screws in the wall is completely and utterly useless.
The next thing the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and I discussed on that occasion was some of these beautifully
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coloured dangerous drugs. Lord Mancroft himself raised this point. He said that any father of small children would bear him out when he said that hay fever pills look remarkably like "Smarties". My Lords, has the position got any better? I should like to offer the noble Earl and the noble Lord who moved the Motion the opportunity of looking at this glass jar of coloured things that look like "Smarties". There are 22 there, and every one capable of killing a child. I am well aware there must be some differentiation of colours for the purpose of medical men who have to prescribe recognisable instruments of cure. But these glamour two- and three-colour drugs are not that at all. It is part of the kind of thing about which noble Lords have complained in the past—salesmanship.
EARL BATHURST: May I ask the noble Lord whether a bottle is sold with all those multi-coloured pills in it, or are they from different bottles?
LORD CROOK: These are from twenty-two bottles. They have been provided to me by the British Pharmaceutical Society's Chief Inspector, who was glad to make them available because the Society is so worried. It is the attitude of mind of the mother which is important. The pills are properly prescribed, but the mothers will not get rid of them when they have finished taking their proper doses. The accumulation in the average medicine cupboard in the average home would frighten the life out of anyone who went in, the home were not the castle. If someone would go into the little room and cast them into the water it would be a good thing. I had to guarantee that I would put these pills in the furnace fire of this House before I left to-day. What I am drawing attention to is the over-glamorisation of these drugs. They can cause illness, even to the people for whom they are prescribed. One of the great dangers is that people who have had an illness and found that the pink and blue pills did them good when they had that ailment, think that they have that ailment again and try to cure the thing they have not got by taking the pills again.
I find that I also made some reference to housing. I said that, astonishing though it might seem, the plain truth was that nobody was bothering much about that. I asked the Minister what steps

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had been taken to see that the improvement of design, from the point of view of safety, was brought home to local builders, now that they were once again entering speculatively into the production of housing. Very little has been done about that. I think the noble Lord had some justification when he said that they do things better in Scotland. The only thing I have seen is a booklet, Designing for Safety in the Home, which the Secretary of State for Scotland, through the Department of Health for Scotland and the Central Office of Information, issued in Scotland; but it is addressed only to members of housing committees and their officers—probably quite rightly from the 'point of view of the terms of reference of the Minister. But the people it should have gone to were other builders. I am bound to say that if only the local authorities in Scotland will take to heart most of the things the Minister has said there, there will be safer houses in Scotland than anything there has been in the past. I will not bore your Lordships with long extracts from this booklet. I do not know that we in England or Wales have done anything of the kind; and certainly Great Britain has not a book about it at all. Perhaps the Minister could say something about that.
The safe design of houses is an essential part of safety. For example, there must be proper surfaces and proper arrangements of surfaces, so as to avoid the carrying of hot liquids across the room, which not only causes fatigue but means that a person runs the risk of falling over children. There must be adequate ventilation, because bad ventilation causes a particular kind of fatigue, as anybody who has anything to do with factory life knows, and makes the risk of gas poisoning very much greater. Then there must be adequate storage of food and cleaning materials, utensils and tools. Lack of storage accommodation produces untidiness, and untidiness always produces risk of accidents.
Lighting and power points are other obvious things to which any Government looking at housing design should pay regard. I only wish there were people generally in local authorities who were as forthcoming in this matter as the L.C.C. I referred to them in appreciative terms last time, six years ago, when I pointed out that they were put-
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ting in balustrades, which eliminated footholds in encouraging children to climb. They are doing a valuable thing in their new scheme in Deptford where they are providing (to use an Irishism) two or three ground floors. In one new scheme to be developed in the next few years for old people—and this is always one of the difficulties since ground-floor houses are needed for old people—they are to build three-storey places which, with the runways built through the air, will provide shopping on the same floor on which the people live, even when it is on the third floor. I do not say that this can be done anywhere; but I do say that some councils are trying to apply imagination in architectural design, and this aspect is well worth paying regard to.
I cannot say enough in praise of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. Any one of us who has anything to do with them—and I have a lot to do with them; and apparently the noble Lord who moved the Motion also has his experience—would agree. They are embarking upon a new scheme in the Yvonne Payne Memorial Fellowship at Birmingham University. A research fellowship is to be provided to study housing design in the light of the needs of elderly people, a matter in which I am sure the noble Lords, Lord Amulree and Lord Beveridge will take a particular interest. I recall that only yesterday Lord Beveridge said that in his view old people need more thorough looking after than they normally get to-day. A Steering Committee is being set up by Birmingham University and the Birmingham Accident Hospital, the only really effective accident hospital that has existed for a long period of years, although one or two more are springing up now. They are going to find the right student, and all the relevant records and advisers; and when the scheme is finished the results will be made available to all local authorities for their help and guidance.
I was very glad to hear the noble Lord refer to the MacQueen survey. I had a look at the MacQueen Aberdeen survey, and again I was most impressed by what had been done there. That showed, of course, that more accidents occur in houses of four rooms or less than in any others of a larger size. But in particular it showed that it is the

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homes lacking normal facilities that show the highest accident risks: for instance, falls on badly lit stairs, when the only lavatory accommodation available is out in the yard, necessitating old people proceeding very often, on a cold Aberdeen night, over slippery stones. The survey lists as further sources of risk: cooking facilities on a landing; inadequate water supply—and, very often, as some of us know, no main water at all in certain places in Scotland, short of the communal supply, to be found near the lavatory, for a number of people who are living inside the places concerned. If things like this are cut out, some of the accidents to old age people may well be avoided.
The present improvement grants which are being given for conversion in respect of bathrooms and indoor sanitation and proper food storage are bringing great benefit. I do not want to look only at the black side of these things. I want to show clearly that fatigue is reduced, that tidiness is introduced and that automatically these things cut down accident risks. What is more, one of the big accident risks has always been the carrying of boiling water from an outside source to the bath in the kitchen. When you get bathrooms put into these old places automatically your risk is reduced.
Of course, there is a risk remaining in many private houses which has caused some of the fires to which my noble friend Lord Auckland referred—namely antique wiring. I believe that somewhere about 30 years is regarded as the moment to have one's wiring looked at, because of fire risks inside conduits. There are many people who would like to do that and would like to install something more modern—say, the 13-amp ring circuit—if they felt they could afford it. One of the disadvantages which influences them is that of expense, and I suggest that one way of helping the general housing position would be for the Government to consider extending improvement grants or loans to those who put ring circuits into houses where the wiring circuits are at the moment rather old. Obviously there would have to be expert inspection before anybody agreed to do that sort of thing, but I think there might be a general reduction in accident risks and in fire if that were found possible.
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I find that I then went on from talking about housing to talking about the sale of electrical goods—things like hair-driers, without accompanying warning; about the danger of their use in bathrooms, the sale of faulty washing machines and the like. I am glad that the noble Lord, in moving the Motion to-day, referred to some of these electrical goods. I have looked into some of these things fairly closely. Goods are being sold fitted with two pins, when anybody in his right mind knows that they ought to be sold with three pins; or they are being sold with no plug and with no explanation of the colours. Large quantities of the cheap goods on sale in electrical stores and in the cheaper stores are generally not made by reputable English makers, but are imported for the cheap trade and they have different kinds of colour indicators from the British system. Even a semi-lunatic, who often thinks that he is a clever electrician in the home, has got to know the British system; but he cannot be expected to know that the colours are opposite when the appliance comes from France, or something completely different when it comes from Germany.
The noble Earl may or may not be able to say, but I have heard rumours that we have been making, through international circles inside the United Nations machinery, proposals for agreement on a common colour code for Europe, perhaps for the world. It may be that in regard to such an agreement, as my information comes not from this country but from elsewhere, the Government are not in a position to make any statement. I will say nothing more than that, if the efforts in that connection have reached the stage when we can look forward to the abolition of that horrible mess, I shall be very glad. I repeat that British manufacturers are normally very good. If they find that there is an error and their attention is drawn to it, the reputable people will put it right. But there are, even in this country, less reputable people.
The Shoppers' Guide of the Consumer Advisory Council recently published a report on one electrical product which was defective not only in one respect, but in several different respects—in fact it was a total danger to anyone who used

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it. The Council went on, in January, to issue a general statement outside their ordinary publications, in which they said:
"The Consumer Advisory Council, from experience in testing goods for Shoppers' Guide, has found a real need for banning unsafe appliances. Shoppers' Guide has reported on a number of products which could have caused accidents or fires—among them 'do-it-yourself' electric blankets, electric fires, pressure cookers, inflammable nightdresses and oil stoves. In the case of the 'do-it-yourself' electric blankets, insulation was found to be very poor …"—
and the whole idea of leaving assembly of an article so dangerous as that in the hands of "do-it-yourself" people is quite shocking.
My Lords, "Do-it-yourself" was an inevitable thing in this country in the days of difficulty of labour and expense in respect of building and the like, and a very valuable piece of work is being done by those who are enthusiastically dealing with that problem. It seems to me that a little help could be given by calling attention to one or two of the very dangerous things that are being done—for instance, telling people to put indicator lights on cisterns in their bathrooms, and that they can make electric blankets a little more cheaply than they can buy them. These are matters that I think will have to be looked at by somebody, just as we shall have to have some of these pressure cookers looked at. The Shoppers' Guide gives an instance of a pressure cooker which exploded when it was overheated—a quite likely domestic lapse.
So bad were many of the consumer articles in this country that in the summer of 1959 the Government appointed the Consumer Protection Committee, which presented its Interim Report in April, 1960. That is the Report of the Molony Committee, as it was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Auckland. I want to say this quite frankly. After many years of being mixed up with Parliamentary matters, I do not understand why the Government did not include in the gracious Speech from the Throne in this House in November last provision for a Bill to be presented to Parliament during the current Session to implement the Interim Report of this Committee.
I think my criticism is made the more fair and firm when, on top of reminding your Lordships of the need for private intervention and private legislation
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about oil heaters, we now find that two honourable Members of another place have introduced Private Members' Bills, to which the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, referred, both of which are now being given Government facilities in their passage. No one wants to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I am glad that Her Majesty's Government repented when they found themselves at the stool; but they ought not to have to get to the repentance stool because of legislation of this kind having to be dealt with by, and depending on the whim of, a ballot for Private Members' Bills.
What is more, with all due respect to those honourable gentlemen whose Bills I shall be happy to support when they reach this place, we cannot expect people moving Private Members' Bills to have the facilities or the knowledge, or to have the chance of talking to people like manufacturers and thus getting the Bill put the right way round. These are essentially measures which are proper to Government, and that they are urgent was made clear not only by the appointment of the Molony Committee but by the terms of their Report, which says:
"Our proposals represent the imposition of requirements no more onerous than would be readily acceptable by the large body of manufacturers; the effect of their imposition would be to curb the irresponsibility of the few. We think that, with personal safety at stake, legislative interference is called for,"
and they go on to talk of:
"statutory power … to permit prompt and firm action"
which they have proposed in earlier paragraphs. They say:
"Our main recommendation is therefore that in order to safeguard the consumer against what appears to be an undue risk of personal injury there should be early legislation"—
and I would emphasise the word
"early"—
"empowering a designated Minister to prohibit by means of Regulations"
the kind of things to which they were referring earlier when they said:
"it is apparent that manufacturers in general have a high sense of responsibility and safety-consciousness in seeking out and eliminating potential dangers".
But they go on to say that there are a few other people and
"even though … ignorance or oversight is on a small scale, its consequence in terms of human suffering can be considerable. And hence … remedial action should clearly be

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prompt, effective and universal in its application. It is with those principles in mind that we have arrived at our conclusions and framed our recommendations."
That was urgent legislation asked for on important safety matters in April, 1960, and a Private Member's Bill now supported by the Government will reach us, I hope, and go on to its Royal Assent in this House before this Session ends. The same is true of the second aspect of safety, and again I do not understand why the Government did not do for themselves what a Member from the other side of another place did in moving the Home Safety Bill. That Bill involves the right of urban district councils and rural district councils to spend up to a penny rate on affiliation to the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents, the setting up of accident committees and so on. County boroughs, metropolitan boroughs and counties can all do that, and some of them do it—though not all of them, unfortunately. While a large number of those do so, these other councils are prevented. Their local authority organisations have been to Government and asked: "Will you let us have an easy piece of legislation to achieve this? It is only about a two-paragraph job." The Government did nothing, but I am glad to think that one of the Government supporters in another place moved that Bill and it is now going forward and will be on its way towards this House. I hope we shall get that on the Statute Book this year, notwithstanding that the Government did not put it in the gracious Speech last November.
Then last year I protested that the £2,000 a year grant which the Home Office had given to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents had been stopped. I went away comforted and feeling much happier, for although I could not get the £2,000 restored, the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, on behalf of the Government, promised that that Society would be given £1,500 a year for the next three years. I am wondering what is the present position. Unfortunately, I do not know officially, through any Government publication, any more than I know many of the statistics which I had hoped I should know officially.
In the course of my speech in 1954, I wondered whether any progress had
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been made in the collection and analysis of information on accidents. I paid tribute to the figures of the Registrar-General and suggested that, in addition, some further analysis of his figures was necessary by analysis of accident reports in the reports of health visitors and perhaps through reporting on accidents by district nursing associations, by extraction of details of accidents in the home from ambulance service reports, and possibly from reports by teachers on accidents in the home with which they became acquainted in the schools. I had a receptive audience in this House, not least from the noble Lord who was leading for Her Majesty's Government, who proceeded to say that I had made various suggestions about statistics and that he judged that those I had quoted had come from the Fourth Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Accidents in the Home. He said that that was a very important Committee co-ordinating the work of Government Departments. He commended that Fourth Report to your Lordships and copies were laid on the Table; and the noble Lord promised that some of the points I had raised would be taken to that Committee; and therefore we expected to hear something more.
On a number of occasions last year I asked for a copy of the next Report, but I have not received it. As recently as this week I asked the specific question of the Printed Paper Office: "May I have the latest Report of the Interdepartmental Committee?" I have been given it, and it is the same as that to which I referred in 1954—the 1953 Report, reprinted by Her Majesty's Stationery Office in 1958. I suggest to the noble Earl the Minister (and he will not mind my saying this) that Her Majesty's Government ought to do a little better than that in providing information of this kind.
I do not want to keep your Lordships unduly although I could go on for a long time on a subject about which many of us feel strongly. We feel stronger about it because in this House we are always having debates on accidents on the roads. The newspapers are filled with that subject. If there is a railway accident there is a special Question, and if there is an air disaster, there is a special inquiry. Let us look at the relevant facts. Last year 6,520

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people died on the roads, and 8,157 died from home accidents. Only 81 died in air accidents, with all their great front page drama. Everybody knows about those. Only 334 died through railway accidents, whether in actual accidents on the railways, which get big publicity, or accidents inside workshops. We hear a lot about factory accidents. The number of fatal factory accidents last year was 598. I think it is shocking when one is dealing with the position of dock workers and others killed in accidents.
But let us look again at these figures. The fatal accidents in the home totalled 8,157. So there is one a day on the railways; one every four days in the air, and 19 a day on the road; but in the home last year there were 23 a day. We are expecting this year's total to be one for every hour of the year. That is why some of us feel quite strongly, just as we feel strongly about the waste of hospitals as well as the suffering which takes place. Last year 2,700,000 injured people were treated, apart from those given first aid at home, of whom we do not know, and of them 1,330,000 were injured in the home against 327,000 on the roads. Do not let us get this problem out of proportion. The noble Lord was quite right in making clear that what we say about these accidents does not mean that we, for our part, do not denounce and worry and get concerned about accidents on the road. Of course we are concerned about them. But we must keep a sense of proportion when we have this problem of children under fifteen and the aged over 70, because they are mainly the people who are dying. We must have a look at their position as well.
We are a peculiar lot of people. If 2 million manpower days are lost in the course of a year from strikes there is a tremendous outcry and a debate in both Houses. But when it is possible for the noble Viscount, Lord Monckton of Brenchley, to suggest, as he did before he came to this place, that 20 million manpower days are lost by accidents, it does not seem to be anybody's trouble very much, except for one small amount of propaganda and one small amount of discussion in this House once in six years. My Lords, it is a sorry picture—a sorry picture which I leave with your Lordships in the belief and hone that the Motion which the noble Lord has moved
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was well moved at the right time and that it gives us an opportunity of trying to focus the attention of at least this House, and we think perhaps of a wider circle, upon one of the very great problems of this country to-day.
4.32 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has mentioned that the last time we had an opportunity to debate this subject in full among your Lordships was in 1954. The noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has therefore done a very good thing to put down this Motion now. The position following our last debate did not really show a great deal of change, as Lord Crook has pointed out. The one thing from which I think Lord Auckland can take some pleasure is that, whereas during the debate in 1954 it was Lord Crook, one other noble Lord and myself who contributed, now the number of speakers is rather greater, possibly showing that the interest in the subject is rather greater than it was then.
Before I continue with the few remarks I am going to make, I should like to express my own great appreciation of the work done by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. They do an enormous amount of good work; they are extremely helpful; they are willing to do what they can in the way of propaganda to make people more conscious of accidents. The noble Lord who moved the Motion dealt very largely with young people. It is my purpose to deal almost exclusively with the elderly people, who suffer as much as, if not more than, young people from accidents in the home. So far as I can make out from the figures I have seen, well over 50 per cent. of the deaths from accidents in the home—in fact, I think it is very nearly 70 per cent.—occur among people of age 65 and over. I think that is a very big and rather frightening proportion.
The accidents to which I want to refer are those caused by falls, those caused by burns, and those caused by accidental poisoning by gas. I am not going to take into consideration cases where the gas has been deliberately turned on and people commit suicide. One thing I think we have to accept is that when people grow old they are more inclined to fall, and, with the best means of prevention in the world, we shall not prevent a certain

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number of falls by old people, some of which will be fatal. That is something to accept as inevitable. But we can certainly do a great deal to cut down the number of falls involved, and so avoid a considerable number of the deaths and also a great deal (this is almost more important) of the large amount of sickness caused by these falls. The bulk of people who fall do not die from their fall, but it may lead to a very long stay in hospital, a great deal of worry and anxiety to relatives and a great deal of discomfort to the patients themselves, as well as—and again this is important—a great deal of cost to the Exchequer for the hospital beds for patients who have suffered accidents which could be prevented.
It is quite simple to know what kind of thing old people fall on. The bulk of falls occur upon stairs. That, I think, as Lord Crook has mentioned, is quite obvious when one considers that in many parts of the country, certainly in many parts of this town, old people live at the top of what were family buildings and have now turned into tenements with shaky, rickety stairs—buildings which should have been pulled down a long time ago. If not living in such places, old people often live in the basement or cellarage, where the staircase is dark and difficult to negotiate; and that again is very liable to lead to a fall. A certain amount of improvement can be done to stairs. They can be properly lighted. The people who run the property can, if possible, see that stairs are not covered with worn-out carpets or with worn-out linoleum; and it is possible for any landlord in charge of the tenants to see that the treads of the stairs are given a little rubber band on the edge; or some type of non-slip material can be put upon the treads which makes falls less likely. But, as is quite clear, it is a difficult matter in what is a tenement building where the stairs are nobody's responsibility and people have to go up and down them. Even if they get their friends to do the shopping they may have to go to the top of the building to get water and to visit the toilet on the ground floor—if, indeed, it is not in the back yard. So the position is very difficult indeed.
The other thing which causes old people to be particularly liable to fall
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is a step which they do not expect. They go into a room and find there is one step down, or in going across a passage there is one step up; and even if it is a step they have known for years they are apt to forget about it and they fall down or fall over it. Not much can be done in old buildings, but a great deal can be done in modern buildings for old people to ensure that there are no steps of that sort; that what steps there are shall be smooth, with a rise of the tread that is not too steep, and that they shall be well lighted—and this is very important, too, because the eyesight of old people becomes extremely dim.
The next point I should like to mention is the danger from burns. A good deal has been said about this matter to your Lordships this afternoon, and I do not want to repeat too much of it. But, here again, well over 50 per cent. of deaths from burns occur in people of age 65 and over. We had a certain amount of success with the Fireguards Act which was passed in 1952. But again there was a lot of difficulty over that Act. We first began discussing it in the cold, early spring of 1947, when I was not in the same capacity as I am in now, and it took five years to get that rather simple little measure on to the Statute Book. I know that it is practically impossible in the case of old fires, but I think that I am right in saying that if you go to buy a new fire, one made since 1952, you will find in the vast majority of cases that it is provided with a guard. It is not a guard to stop a person falling on to the fire, but it gives enough protection if one is walking past the fire with a dress of inflammable material, so that it will not catch fire. That is one thing about the Fireguards Act, for which I was responsible in your Lordships' House: it has done that amount of good.
I should like to support something which was said by the noble Lord, Lord Crook. I think it is quite often not practicable in local authority houses for guards which are bought to be nailed on to the walls by tenants, because they get into trouble for doing it. If the fireguard is not nailed on, it is no good at all when dealing with young people or old people or middle-aged people, because the guard gets knocked away and does not serve its purpose.

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I was also very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Crook, suggest that there was some possibility of some sort of standardisation in the colours of electric wires. It is only an idea, as he mentioned, but I hope that it will come about. It seems to me an extraordinary thing that we have not got more standardisation than we have. For example, take a basin with running water. We do not know on which side the cold tap is going to be, and we do not know on which side the hot tap is going to be. That is not perhaps a very important thing to most people, but to old people, who are perhaps sometimes foolish in their ways, it is. If you have a really violent hot water supply (and some can get very hot in a very quick time), and somebody who has been accustomed to a hot tap on the right side finds it on the left, it is quite possible for the tap to be turned on wrongly and for quite a bad scald to be the result. That, I think, does not infrequently happen in baths. One reads in the papers from time to time about elderly folk who, when having a bath, have turned on the hot tap and have got scalded in their bath before they could turn it off. I often wonder whether that is not because they are not quite sure, or have forgotten, which side the hot tap should be, and have turned on the wrong one.
The last matter I want to refer to is accidents resulting from coal gas. This is becoming a very frightening matter, because the number of people dying from accidental coal gas poisoning is going up every year. It has not yet reached an enormous figure, but it is going up steadily. There was a very interesting inquiry conducted not long ago by two young medical men, and they found out that old people do not appreciate the smell of gas like their young contemporaries do. Certain steps have been taken to assist in that. One is that the Gas Council now have a new form of gas cooker on the market with the kind of taps which do not remain on if somebody does not put a match to the jet. They somehow turn themselves off if the gas is not lighted. It is quite a common thing for an elderly person to turn a tap on and to forget to put a match to the gas. Very often they have their attention called away and, having attended to that other thing, they then
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sit down and, because they cannot smell the gas, they get asphyxiated. So one would trust that people who are building homes for old people will see that these precautions are taken, and will do the best they can to ensure that people do not get poisoned by gas in this w ay. There was a suggestion (I do not know whether it has been followed up) that the gas manufacturers might put a rather more pungent smell into the gas, a smell which would affect the nostrils of even those people who cannot smell very well now. It is an unpleasant suggestion, but it would make one rush to putt a match to the gas as quickly as one could; so it might be useful to pursue that idea.
What it really comes down to, if we are going to stop accidents to old people, or reduce them substantially, is a question of proper housing. That is at the bottom of so many troubles concerning the health and welfare of old people, and of the question of accidents of every kind. If we can get people properly or reasonably well housed, we shall immediately cut down their sickness rate; we shall immediately cut down their accident rate, and that will do a lot of good. For maximum safety, old people should live upon the ground floor, and they should have their sanitary conveniences on the ground floor. That does not mean that there cannot be blocks of flats going up above the ground floor, but old people should live on the ground floor and should not be subjected to stairs, darkness and all the difficulties which that sort of thing involves.
This, I think, would overcome in some way the tragedy of people living by themselves; because so many people, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, do have accidents when they are by themselves; and they may lie undiscovered for quite a long time. That is something that I have come across, and I can confirm that from my own personal experience. The delay has never been, in my own experience, for more than 24 hours; but 24 hours is long enough for an old person to be lying on the floor trying to make himself or herself heard. One of the troubles with these tenement buildings is that, because they are tenement buildings, people keep themselves to themselves more than normally. They feel that the door to their flat is the one piece of privacy they have, and they tend to

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keep it shut more than they would if they had a front door of their own and were living in some kind of self-contained flat.
A long time ago, in the middle of the 19th century, there was a very great public servant called Edwin Chadwick, who was the first to start the idea of better sanitation and the idea of environmental hygiene. His idea was based upon the enormous amount of infectious disease in the metropolis at the time. His words were not heeded: he was ignored, and eventually was thrown out of work. But, finally, his ideas in that kind of way got accepted, and to-day we have a wholesome water supply and a good sewerage system. His principles still apply to-day; but we must have people properly housed, and we must have the best environment. As I have said, we shall in that way cut down the accident rate, and people will live much more happily if they are more pleasantly and comfortably housed.
4.47 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I should first like to say that I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has said. My speech, I fear, will in some ways be a commentary on his, because if we look at the statistics we find that the problem as regards deaths due to accidents in the home is essentially the problem of old people. If we take accidents in the home as a whole, we find that the old people make up only about 10 per cent. of those admitted to hospital, whereas children under 5 make up 22 per cent. If, however, we take the fatal accidents, then the situation is, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said, that up to 70 per cent. of the deaths are of people over 65, whereas, thank goodness!, the young people show the remarkable resilience to which the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, referred; and among them only 12 per cent. of the deaths occur.
So, serious though the accidents to children are—and in terms of human suffering they are very serious indeed—in terms of deaths the great problem is that of the old people; and they really present a very difficult problem. It is a very difficult problem for Parliament to deal with legislatively, although we have had some interesting suggestions made,
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both by the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, and by my noble friend Lord Crook. I am sure that everybody who is interested in accident prevention—those in the great societies which deal not only with accident prevention but also with first-aid, and everybody in this House—is deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, not only for what he said but for the way he said it, and also for the great amount of factual material which, as always, he has taken the trouble to collect in order to give us a real picture of the gravity and seriousness of these accidents in the home.
Now one of the causes—and it is a strange cause—of accidents in the home (it accounts for about one-third of the accidents in the home, almost none of which is fatal, though quite a number are admitted to hospital) is collisions with household objects, such as banging into sinks and cracking ribs, and so on. I mention this because there is little that can be done about this sort of thing. It is apparently a sort of fecklessness in people. They do not watch what they are doing or where they are going, and they have accidents. Yet another cause, and an important one, although fortunately seldom fatal, is glass—accidents with glass windows and glass bottles; people screwing on the tops of bottles, the bottle breaking, and that sort of thing. Other causes are shutting fingers in doors, "kids" winding things into mangles and things of that kind that happen, though they tend not to be the fatal type of accident.
But when we look at the fatal type of accident, as my noble friend Lord Amulree was saying, we find that falls in the elderly are really the most important single cause, and they are a very difficult one to prevent. First of all, the fall is often quite a slight one. The person trips over a single step, over a loose piece of worn carpet, or what-you-will. He falls over, sustains a fracture, and then, unfortunately, as the noble Lord was saying, gets left unattended, develops pneumonia, and that may be the cause of death. Going downstairs is more dangerous than going upstairs. Most accidents occur while going downstairs. Particularly dangerous are those bedrooms where the stairs are straight in front of the door. For old people, those old-fashioned stairs are really very difficult, and these elderly folk often come

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to grief. The steeper the stairs, the greater the danger; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, was saying, the more worn the stair carpet and treads, the greater the danger.
One thing he did not mention was the use of slippers. Very often old people put on their shoes and do not do up the laces. They walk around all day long in a rather miserable state of—I was going to say disreputability; it is not really disreputability, but slipshod decay. Then these poor old souls go to the stairs, trip over their laces, and down they go, just because they are wearing unlaced shoes or worn slippers all the time. This is the sort of thing which is a great factor in the cause of 'accidents. Yet another is the use of new shoes without having the bottoms rubbed down. Of course, this is nothing to do with the Government; these are just causes of accidents, and very frequent causes, too.
My noble friend, Lord Crook, mentioned poisoning by mouth. Thank goodness that seems to be getting steadily rarer, particularly accidental poisoning by mouth, despite the great attraction of all the pills he mentioned and showed us. I agree with him that it is a very bad thing to keep these knocking about in the bathroom cupboard instead of throwing them away or handing them back to the doctor. If one is going to hand them back to the doctor, it is an advantage to him to see them, so that he knows what is being handed back to him.
With regard to burns and scalds, I think here we all owe a great debt to the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, and 'his colleagues for getting the Fireguards Act through, because it has helped, particularly with regard to new electric and gas fires. If one moves from one house to another these days and has the North Thames Gas Board (or whoever it is) come along to do the refitting of one's gas fires, they will automatically fit a proper guard. I have had recent experience of this—and very good guards they are, too, Half of the burns and scalds accidents are due to the spilling of liquids; for example, young children reaching up to saucepans. One-tenth of the accidents are due to falls into fires. Occasionally, there is an explosion in a gas oven, usually because someone has turned on the tap, forgotten it is turned
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on, as the noble Lord said, and then lit it. Occasionally one gets gas poisoning due to a blow-back of fumes from a coke stove, which happens when the wind is in a certain direction, the fire has been damped down, and the design of the chimney is bad; but I must say that most builders are pretty good about this nowadays, and it is a very rare accident.
I entirely endorse what my noble friend Lord Amulree said about the old folk and gas poisoning. It is getting more and more common as an accidental phenomenon. Sometimes it is thought to be a case of suicide. Old folk are very sensitive to cold. They are usually pretty poor, and so they want to conserve heat as much as possible. Therefore, if they have a ventilator in their sitting room or bedsitting room, they will bung it up with pieces of paper; they will not open the window so that a draught may be caused. They will turn on the gas fire, and literally forget to light it. Then everyone thinks they have committed suicide, because the ventilator is found to be bunged up, when in fact it is not so. The ventilator has been bunged up simply because the person in question wanted it bunged up to preserve him or her from the cold. I entirely agree with the noble Lord that these people have a very poor sense of smell and do not realise that their gas fires are on. What we can do about this it is difficult to see. I suppose it is a case against gas for old folk as a method of heating, if this sort of thing becomes more and more serious as we get more and more old people.
So far as the causes of these accidents are concerned, I believe there are really two factors involved. First of all, there is faulty equipment. Here it is very often, I am afraid, the householder or the person concerned who is at fault, not the manufacturer. It is the old, blunt tin-opener, the old blunt knife that the person uses to force a tin open and has thereby to use quite disproportionate force in order to open it. Consequently the knife slips and the person suffers a horrible cut. If he had had a decent tool he would not have suffered the accident. Similarly, there are the rickety chair which ought to have been thrown away and which slips when someone sits on it, the saucepan or the pan with the loose handle, and the worn carpets or lino. Very often they

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have not been replaced, either because of fecklessness or because of a sense of false economy.
That brings me to the second factor, the mental outlook of those who suffer accidents. Forget, for a moment, the very old and the very young. Those in between who have accidents seem to be rather lacking in intelligence as compared with the general population, and are rather more feckless. They do not, for example, read the directions on bottles, pots or equipment with regard to how to use the article concerned. They do not keep their minds on what they are doing, and that is a very common cause of home accidents. Naturally enough, in the very young and the very old, where the mind is either not developed or is beginning to fail, that same kind of fecklessness shows itself. Who are these people? Doctor MacGregor of the little Scottish town of Hawick, in 1953 made a wonderful study of his practice, in which he showed that the accident prone are also the sickness prone. They are the same group of people. He also showed that 50 per cent. of the doctors' work is caused by 10 per cent. of the people. They are the same folk over and over again who are both getting ill and having accidents.
Sometimes illness predisposes to an accident; for example, where a person is partially sighted or crippled. But more than that, it seems that this 10 per cent. are always in trouble. They are less physically and socially efficient. Within this 10 per cent. there is 1 per cent. of real problem families with a very high accident and illness rate, who also show, incidentally, a high delinquency rate, and other kinds of social deficiencies. I was struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Crook, said about the families in Aberdeen (I think it was), where it was shown that homes lacking normal facilities have a higher rate of accidents. I am sure that is absolutely true. It is not merely that those people are poor; they are also poor in equipping their homes, and poor in the running of their homes. They are socially and domestically incompetent.
What are we to do about it? I think the key people to do something about it are the health visitors. I think they
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are more important, in the prevention of home accidents, even than getting all the equipment right, which we ought to do. They are the only people who can teach domestic efficiency to the people at home as a part of looking after health. I think that most home accidents are due to domestic inefficiency. What can the Government do? It can stimulate the recruitment of health visitors and it can train them in regard to the prevention of accidents by domestic inefficiency; and, of course, to get more health visitors the Government have to pay them more. Above all, it is desirable that in any sphere where people work for others—such as health visitors, district nurses, and so on—there should be a chain of promotion which enables one to go on looking after patients without having to become a supervisor or an office worker in order to get more money. That has been assured in medicine, where we are able to go on doing clinical work, continue to look after patients and rise as high as, or higher than, we should if we had turned into administrators. In these ancillary fields, however, it does happen that a man has to "chuck" field work to get promotion.
The problem is one of what we call in industry good housekeeping, and it is good housekeeping in the home that is wanted. A factory with a low accident rate has everything nicely arranged, with clear gangways and so on; and it is exactly the same in the socially efficient home. A final word about first-aid in the home. There is a little that can be done here, and I recommend the ordinary factory dressing as being the best first-aid dressing for any serious cut. Last of all, when patients arrive at hospital it is important that they should be properly cared for by a good casualty service. Alas! we have not a good casualty service in a good many of our hospitals. But I will not mention that further, because we shall be dealing with that subject in another debate in three weeks' time.
5.1 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, it seems to me a remarkable coincidence that on the day we receive the news that the first man has been launched into space and brought safely back, your Lordships' House should be engaged in proving that home is the most dangerous place to be

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in. Although it may sound nonsense to make such a statement, I think it has been proved beyond question by every noble Lord who has spoken this afternoon. I think that the real reason is that the home is the only field in which we live that is completely unregulated.
We are all much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, for introducing this subject, for the great care and immense pains he has taken to obtain his material, and for the manner in which he has presented the case, particularly for the moving way in which he presented certain aspects of this problem relating to injuries to children. So far, every noble Lord who has spoken has been an expert on a particular aspect of the subject; but I am not. It seems to me that, so far, insufficient emphasis has been placed on what can be done by regulation, and I should like to devote my remarks chiefly to this aspect.
We all accept as a truism that accidents will happen; but we do not accept, as we should, the equal truth that most accidents should never happen. And it is from that point of view that I think this must be faced. We have had all sorts of campaigns to keep death off the road and to reduce accidents in factories, and it is certain (though we cannot prove it) that both campaigns have saved many lives and prevented uncountable accidents on the roads and in the factories. Though there are more fatal home accidents than the combined total of road deaths and factory deaths, we have as yet scarcely begun to combat this appalling loss. We do not even trouble to record the number of accidents, although the Registrar General records deaths from accident in the home. It is a dreadful thing that in 1959 there were 7,010 deaths, and last year 8,157, which shows that the number is rising rapidly. This is a distastrous position, particularly when, as has been shown, the greatest number of accidents involved young children and people over sixty-five.
The extraordinary thing is that the precise number of accidents is just a matter of conjecture. So far as we know, hospitals are treating over 2 million people a year for accidents at home, and I believe that the present cost of that treatment (although this is the least important aspect) is well over £10 million a year, as compared with £5 million
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which the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, mentioned for 1949. That means that at least one in 25 of the population have an accident at home every year. Then there is an untold number of additional accidents which are never treated in hospital, though many of them are quite serious.
This story of pain, of broken lives and of tragedy, which the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has unfolded, is recorded day by day in the newspapers, which report at least the most spectacular accidents. It is a story which, in the aggregate, exceeds the story of any other human disaster, at least in physical proportions; yet it never seems to arouse any serious public concern. I think that is because most of us feel that while it can happen to somebody else it will not happen to us. But, on the average, every one of us will be in hospital three times in a lifetime because of an accident at home.
Apart from accidents arising through ignorance—and they are many—perhaps most are caused through individual carelessness. I once saw quite a bad accident happen through someone trying to hang up kitchen curtains with one foot on the draining board and the other on rickety steps. That sort of thing is asking for trouble, and very often people get it. Indolence in dealing with things like uneven floors, cracked linoleum or protruding nails, which no employer would knowingly permit in a factory—because, if they caused an accident, he would be liable—are often the cause of accidents in the home. Going around a hospital, I have stood and pointed an indignant finger at certain things, which of course must be immediately put right, and then I have realised that there were things like that in my own home which, through indolence, had not been put right. We cannot eliminate human fallibility, but accidents due to carelessness could be greatly reduced by a sustained campaign of public education.
I hope that the Home Secretary will make a considerable additional grant to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, so that they can sustain a special campaign in which the kind of things which have been discussed in this debate, and many more, can be brought more persistently home to people. The way in which this can be done will soon be readily at hand, in the Home Safety

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Bill, which, when it comes from another place, I am sure your Lordships will pass readily to the Statute Book. This Bill extends to all local authorities the powers already possessed by local health authorities to pay out of the rates for education and publicity on home safety. The cost is marginal, derisory. Since local authorities will also have power to make grants to voluntary bodies, it means that all over the country a network of these public safety committees will be built up and will constantly carry the story to the public. I know that safety committees can only educate and exhort, but even this is of great value, if done persistently and intelligently.
In my view, by far the largest number of preventable accidents are caused through the foisting on an unsuspecting public of dangerous materials and equipment. It is all very well to say, though it may be true, that people use things and then, if they do not work, read the directions afterwards to find out why. But while they are at work it may well be that they cause an explosion or injury. That is quite true. Unhappily, it is also true that the number of dangerous materials and equipment is legion, and is growing. This is a field (I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, when he comes to reply, will deal with this point, in particular) in which the Government should have acted a long time ago. But they will have the opportunity when the Private Member's Bill, the Consumers Protection Bill, comes to us, and is on the Statute Book, because that will give the Home Secretary powers, which he does not at present possess, to make regulations and set up standards to deal with dangerous and defective consumer goods. Again, they are permissive powers, but they will not only permit of immediate action, but will also provide reserve powers to deal with new materials and dangers when they come to light.
Meanwhile, I would submit, leaving out the new and as yet undiscovered materials and dangers, that there are many things which should be the subject of regulation as soon as possible after the Bill becomes law. We should not tolerate a situation where more than 800 people, most of them elderly, lose their lives in a single year through domestic
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gas leakages. I listened with care to what my noble friend Lord Taylor said about stopping up the vents and turning on the gas without lighting it; and I know that, unfortunately, those things do happen. But the point is that when the number of deaths is so great every year, and is increasing, then safety precautions must be improved. It is not beyond the wit of skilled engineers to devise additional safety precautions.
Nor do I think we can go on allowing more than 600 people to burn to death every year through explosion of combustible material or from clothing burns. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, devoted so much time to this, and, in particular, mentioned the Proban method of proofing material, because again these fatalities are mostly the under-5's and over 65's, who are least aware of the dangers and least able to help themselves. The noble Lord referred to neglectful parents—of the kind who heard their boy crying and did not go upstairs—and to the child he saw in hospital who was nearly burnt to death; and he said that these parents were criminal. He also, quite rightly, praised the firm of Marks and Spencer for deciding that they would sell only proofed garments for children's nightwear. Personally, however, I am quite unsatisfied with that.
With respect, I do not think we can leave this matter to private choice. I feel that we must take the view that it is criminal that we should permit the manufacture and sale of inflammable children's nightwear, or cot trimmings or linings of cots which are flimsy, fancy and fatal and "go quicker than anything". If an untreated cotton or winceyette nightdress just catches in a flame, as it so easily can, the little child's body is enveloped in flame in seconds, and there is no chance at all. Even if the burns are not fatal, the child is physically and mentally scarred for life. Therefore I think that one of the first regulations to be made by the Home Secretary, when the new Bill becomes an Act, should be to lay on the makers of children's nightwear an obligation to use only proved flame-resistant materials. At present I understand that flame resistant treatment adds about 20 per cent. to the cost of the material. The noble Lord mentioned the cost of a packet of cigarettes, referred to by a friend of his. That

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would be a small price to pay for safety, and naturally the cost will be reduced, and may be reduced to nothing, if this use is universal. When they have to spend so much on research—I think the noble Lord mentioned £300,000—they are bound to charge a higher price; but if the use of this material is universal for certain purposes, then inevitably the cost will be reduced. I am not suggesting that a monopoly should be created and that manufacturers must use a particular approved flame-resistant process.
I feel that special attention should also be given to a whole range of electrical equipment and domestic gadgets, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Crook. The Interim Report of the Molony Committee drew attention to the dangers arising from imported electrical appliances in which the coloured wires do not mean the same thing as in this country. Again I do not think we should shilly-shally about with that; such imports should be prohibited unless they conform to our practice and safety standards. I know that this is not directly a matter for the Home Office, but is one for the Board of Trade; but since the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary is going to act through other Ministers, I hope he will consider this.
There is, I think, a strong case, too, for substantial additional grants to the British Standards Institution for all the additional testing work which will be involved, particularly with new products and the setting up of standards. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Auckland (or perhaps it was my noble friend Lord Crook), who mentioned the sum of £2,000 for such work. I believe that the sum at present spent by the British Standards Institution on these domestic consumer goods is £10,000. But £10,000 compared to the national economy for all equipment in industries, where perhaps the turnover is £300 million, and weighed in the balance against 8,000 lives every year, does not bear thinking about. Therefore a very modest additional sum could do a tremendous amount of good, particularly with new products and the setting up of standards for those products.
The British Standards Institution specifications in many cases have international authority; and since other countries are also becoming safety conscious
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it seems to me that now is the time—and the Board of Trade should lose no time—to try to get the United States, the Western European countries and Japan to agree international safety standards and codes of marking and practice. We could then with full justification, in my view, having tried to get this agreement, exclude the products of countries who refused to conform. Why should those products come into this country when our own industry is prepared to conform and when other countries are likewise willing to conform, thus risking the lives not only of the young and old, but of all of us? If we set up standards in the early stages and prohibit the manufacture or importation of unsafe goods it will be easier and cheaper than waiting until we begin to bury the dead. That has been the practice in the past. We have waited to find out just what these new practices would do, and only in the case of drip-feed oil heaters, when they became disastrous, did we act decisively in the matter.
I submit that these standards should be such that they allow for unfair treatment of the equipment. Pressure cookers, for example, we now learn, explode if they are overheated—with possibly disastrous results. It is useless for manufacturers to say, as they have every right to say, that they should not be overheated. The fact is that they should ensure at least that they will not explode when they are carelessly used. It is the same with children's electrical toys. We know in advance that they will be treated unfairly and taken to bits to see "what makes them tick". Since we know that, they must be made safe so that they will not cause serious accidents when they are treated unfairly.
The noble Lord, Lord Auckland, mentioned toys and removable eyes from teddy bears, and the like. There is a whole range of children's toys which needs looking into. There are the wooden and metal toys which the child automatically puts into his mouth. We should prohibit the use of lead paint or any dangerous finishes on such articles. We know that the child is going to suck them. Therefore we should not allow the use of dangerous substances like lead paint. Another more modern danger is electric blankets, particularly for old people, and especially the "Do-it-yourself" variety of blanket. I think

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it is essential that a British Standard should be established for them, and regulations governing safety qualities should be introduced.
Finally, there is the question of seals which are put on so much electrical and other equipment, and the so-called guarantees. It has been found that there are articles of equipment sold with a guarantee of safety which are completely unsafe. If a manufacturer does that, although it is not really fraudulent, it is criminal practice. I would argue that articles should have British Standards provided for them, and that there should be a seal or label on things like electric irons and washing machines, giving careful instructions. They should have labels testifying to the qualities and to the danger—because housewives can be deceived if the article bears a number of meaningless seals which they regard as guarantees either of quality or of safety. If the manufacturers would spend half the money they spend telling us which washing powder to use on telling us what to do and what not to do with the machines, there would be many fewer accidents. We must remove the illusions of a too-trusting public. We must set up safety standards for all goods involving an element of danger and permit only standard markings with clear instructions. I think we must prohibit the use of materials known to be dangerous to young and old people and must insist on the use of harmless alternatives. We must develop, expand and maintain a campaign to make our people home-safety conscious. When such a programme is implemented, not only will home be a much safer place in which to live but it may even become a place as safe as outer space.

FUTURE BUSINESS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, in view of the number of your Lordships who wish to take part in the Second Reading debate on the Road Traffic Bill, it has been agreed through the usual channels that the debate will be continued on Monday next. Therefore, we shall adjourn to-morrow somewhere between 7.30 and 8 o'clock, and continue the debate at 2.30 p.m. on Monday. It would be a great help in preparing the
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list of speakers if noble Lords who have any particular preference for speaking to-morrow or Monday would let me know.

ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME
5.25 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD CITRINE: My Lords, although my name is not down on the list of speakers, I hope, with the indulgence of your Lordships, to be able to make a contribution to this debate. First of all, the debate has emphasised once more the startling fact that there are as many, if not more, fatal accidents in the home as there are on the roads. That, of course, is known to informed people, but it passes almost without comment by the general public. Unfortunately, in treating with accidents in the home we are grappling with an element which is not normally subject to any kind of legislative treatment. As has been stated in the debate, vast numbers—60 per cent., I believe—of the accidents which take place are due to one cause only: falls.
It is rather singular that, if one analyses the accidents in industry, it will be found that the human element is by far the largest single contributor to accidents. In the electricity supply industry, with which I am connected, as your Lordships know, by far the greatest single cause of accidents is falls. I think that, if carried through, an analysis would show that that is not an uncommon factor. The inevitable accompaniment of human activities is carelessness. If we analysed what we do over our waking hours, we should probably find that although we are meticulously careful in the things in which we have been trained in our business, in our domestic life we are not nearly so careful, and that we incur quite a number of unnecessary risks. I noticed confirmation of that in the paper that became available in the Printed Paper Office. This is the Report of the Standing Committee which the noble Lord, Lord Crook, evidently regarded as not moving very fast, as it was published in 1953 and apparently has been reprinted without alteration. The following words occur in paragraph 12:
"The national domestic heating survey brought to light evidence of fairly widespread

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neglect of the simplest and most obvious precaution against burning accidents, the fireguard."
But precisely that sort of phrase is found in practically every Report that has been issued on the subject of accidents, whether in the home or elsewhere.
I often wonder whether risk-taking is not a natural characteristic in human beings. I have seen men standing in the most precarious situations on the top of a boiler shell 120 feet from the floor of a power station, where only three months before a man was killed in that precise situation. The men standing there had no safeguard whatever. They had no rope, no safety belt and nothing at all to protect them, although those things were available within a few feet of them. I myself actually saw that. So in considering the elimination of accidents, I am afraid we shall have to recognise the fact that there is only a limited sphere in which we can operate. Education and publicity have, quite rightly, been stressed as a means of inducing people to take those simple precautions which would prevent so many of the accidents that now occur.
I, like others, extol the work of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, and for the latest manifestation of the co-operative activity of the First Aid Societies such as the British Red Cross, the Order of St. John and the Order of St. Andrew in the National Campaign which the noble Earl, Lord Woolton, inaugurated quite recently. It is an excellent idea to aim at the standard that there should be in every household at least one person trained and capable of dealing with accidents. I went through a first-aid training myself in the 15rst works in which I ever worked as an adult, and I have tried to keep some contact with the first-aid movement ever since. It is a most valuable thing, and I am proud to say that in the electricity supply industry a very good record of numbers and activities is available.
The one point that has been stressed in the debate is to make apparatus safe. In the electricity industry a great deal of thought, indeed ingenuity, has been devoted to achieving that end. But you cannot make all apparatus foolproof. That has been found many times over. I know that even people in responsible positions can make mistakes. I remem-
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ber, for example, a power station superintendent, a man of high responsibility, who climbed on a transformer and touched the live side of the circuit. People will take these risks. Although he was acting, as he thought, to deal expeditiously with a certain fault, the net result was that he was badly injured, though fortunately he did not lose his life.
I was most interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and I thought his speech a most constructive one. I am sorry to say I did not hear the whole of it, but he was good enough to let me look over his notes, and one can see from them the very thorough manner in which he has gone into the subject. Lord Crook, in the course of his speech, dealt with certain hazards which are encountered in the use of electricity. I think the first thing to remember in respect of electricity is that its use is doubling every ten years; indeed, the period is somewhat shorter than that. It follows that with women going out to work, as they do to-day, more or less as the rule—although I am not sure I completely approve of the rule—rather than the exception, it follows that they will rely more and more upon apparatus of one kind and another to do the household chores which normally would be done by hand. So, as electricity happens to be an agency of almost universal application, the use of electricity and electrical appliances becomes more and more general. That is the thing that should be remembered when one is dealing with the absolute numbers of accidents which take place from direct electrical causes.
For example, twice during the course of the debate I have heard a reference made to the use of the electric blanket and the hazards that accompany it. That is perfectly true. It cannot be denied that the careless use of electric blankets, badly manufactured blankets in particular, can cause considerable harm. But it is rather singular that the analysis of fatal accidents which has been made by the electrical adviser to the Home Office—a published report, as your Lordships know—shows that only one fatal accident took place last year from the use of an electric blanket. I saw recently at an electrical exhibition, which, as I mentioned in the House on a previous occasion, was the biggest that has been held

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in this country and the biggest trade fair of its kind in the world, there were on exhibition certain new types of electric blanket. I was assured, not merely by the salesman of the firm concerned but also by those quite qualified to judge, that at least one firm has completely overcome the hazards referred to in the Molony Committee's Report—those hazards of folding the blanket and the blanket getting wet, and, as a consequence, the elements touching one another inside the blanket and so leading to its overheating.
I think the greatest problem we are up against in trying to make the handling of electricity safe for everyone is the handyman. How are we going to stop people doing what seem to them extremely simple electrical jobs? What law can deal with that? Could we have a form of inspection so adequate and widespread that in every home there would be periodical visits, presumably unresented by the occupants—a rather remarkable state of things? Could we have inspection of a character that would materially contribute to unskilled people not being allowed to use electrical apparatus, to install it, alter 'it, repair it, maintain it or whatever may be the case? I regard that as utterly impracticable.
I think most of us, in our way, would indulge in a little of the handyman work in one respect or another. The "Do-it-yourself" sort of campaign is an incentive, and a very good incentive, to people doing for themselves simple jobs instead of bringing in already overemployed people to do it. I, for the life of me, cannot conceive any remedy there. One can go into any Woolworth's stores and see a whole range of electrical appliances, some of them—I would go so far as to say most of them—seeming to be of good manufacture, and small instruction books which can be obtained by anyone, be they male or female, telling them how to do certain electrical jobs. If the instructions were meticulously carried out in every case, perhaps there would be no accidents; but I fear we shall never get rid of the type of fellow who does a thing without bothering to look at any instructions at all, quite confident, until he gets a shock of a severe character, that he knows all about it.
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That is an ever-present danger which I regard as incapable of elimination.
My noble friend, Lord Crook, asked whether any discussions are taking place with regard to imported appliances which do not conform to the standard colours used on the wires in this country. As your Lordships know, we use red for the so-called positive wire, black for the negative and green for the earth, and anybody who follows that line and connects them to the properly marked terminals incurs no risk. But with foreign apparatus, much of which comes in with quite different colours, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham and others have said, it is the easiest thing in the world to get the wires wrongly connected, with serious consequences. There is a body called the International Commission on Rules for Electrical Equipment, and consultations are taking place with that body through the appropriate electrical organisation in this country to see whether some measure of standardisation is not possible. One very simple means, a sort of stop-gap arrangement until such time as the colours of covering of the wires of imported appliances can be completely standardised, would be to put a sleeve over them which would be of some undetachable character and would conform to our standard colours. That is one way that has been suggested of dealing with that very troublesome and difficult problem.
I know that there is a general assumption that electricity contributes considerably to the number of accidents, fatal and otherwise, which take place. There are 13¾ million domestic consumers in England and Wales, and if one does a little arithmetic and multiplies that figure by the numbers in the average family, one sees what a large number of people are exposed to the hazard of some kind of electrical accident. Yet it is remarkable that, over a period of ten years, electrical accidents have been less than 1 per cent. of the total of fatal accidents that have taken place. Over a ten-year period the actual number of fatal accidents has been from 40 to 55. That compares with fatal falls, which I referred to a few moments ago, which total 3,400 a year.
A most careful scrutiny is given to accidents, and the numbers are published subsequently in statistical form by the

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Electrical Adviser to the Home Office and also by the Factory Inspector. I was rather surprised to find that, although the Factory Inspector has no jurisdiction of which I am aware in regard to the home, he includes in his accident statistics a category of accidents which take place in the home. I think there is some room for closer collaboration in regard to, or for simplification of, the statistics published by the respective sources (for instance, the Registrar General and the Chief Inspector of Factories) concerning accidents in the home, and perhaps something may be done in that respect. The number of fatal electrical accidents last year fell to 38. In 1959 there were 78 and in 1960 there were 38, only one of which occurred through an electric blanket. But I know very well that it would be dubious policy to trust to a single year, and to assume, as a consequence, that fatal accidents caused through electricity have fallen by half. Nothing of that kind is in my mind. None the less, it is significant that that reduction took place.
I think there is common agreement—I have here quotations, which I am not going to inflict upon your Lordships, to support the contention—that by far the greatest cause of accidents of an electrical character is not merely carelessness, but grave misuse. I could quote both the Molony Committee's Report and the, Report of the Electrical Adviser to the Home Office in support of that statement; but I do not propose to do so on considerations of time. I am sure that no industry has a higher regard for the safety and the efficiency of its products than has the electricity industry, and I include all its various sections. Time forbids my recounting the many methods which have been tried in order to secure the highest standard of safety as well as efficiency in the use of electrical apparatus. No one can be complacent, even though but a single person is killed; and the last people in the world to feel any measure of complacency are those employed in the electricity supply industry.
The debate has enabled all of us to review a problem which is remote from most people—they scarcely know it exists—and I feel sure that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, who introduced the debate, will be able to take some
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comfort from the interest which has been aroused.
5.45 p.m.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, in the course of the debate this afternoon I am sure all your Lordships were pleased a little earlier on to see our noble friend the Foreign Secretary in his place. No matter what our noble friend or my right honourable friend the Prime Minister may do on visits abroad, the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has brought us down to bare facts—that 8,000 people or thereabouts, probably more, will lose their lives in the home in the coming year. That needs some thinking about by us all.
Many of your Lordships have given us hard statistics. Behind every set of statistics are tragic and miserable cases of great tragedy. I, too, have any number of statistics. I would agree with the noble Lords, Lord Stonham and Lord Citrine, that it may well be that something in the collection of these statistics and in their presentation needs investigating, and I will certainly look into the difficulties that these statistics present. I want to mention just one more fact which has not so far been mentioned in the course of your Lordships' debate—namely, that 300 children under the age of 5 will die from suffocation caused by foodstuffs of one sort or another, from the bottle, or from the wrong type of food and so forth. Yet a large proportion of these deaths could be prevented.
All your Lordships will be grateful to my noble friend for introducing this debate in your Lordships' House to-day in such a thoughtful, calm and charming manner, as indeed he always does. He always speaks with such knowledge and understanding of everyday affairs as they affect everyday people up and down the country, and I cannot help thinking that probably my noble friend's charming wife had a great deal to do with some of the thoughts which he asked us to consider in the course of his speech. It is indeed fit and right that this debate should be taking place during First Aid Week—a most suitable and fitting occasion. But accidents will happen, as has already been said by many of your Lordships. First Aid Week, and all that first aid involves, may well, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor said, save life;

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and it may save some further injury after an accident has happened. But my noble friend and all your Lordships this afternoon are really concerned with the prevention of such accidents in the first place. Therefore, if in any way I do not refer this afternoon to First Aid Week it is not because I wish to minimise its importance. I believe it to be of the greatest importance, as indeed the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, and others have said.
My noble friend also mentioned fireworks. I will say, quite openly, that fireworks are the bane of the Home Office's existence. Year after year consideration has been given to what can be done in regard to fireworks. No one has considered that matter more often than my noble and learned friend who sits upon the Woolsack. I am advised—and I think it is quite true—that unless fireworks are banned altogether there can be no satisfactory answer. I doubt whether that would be popular; nor does it seem to me reasonable, because, let us remember, the vast majority—I should not like to give a percentage—of fireworks, when let off according to the instructions and by reasonably responsible persons, are perfectly safe.
We must remember, too, that hooligans well over the age of 13 can do just as much damage, both to themselves and to other persons and property, as can small children; and, in any case, small children will probably get hold of dangerous fireworks no matter what my right honourable friend might decree. Nevertheless, every year, before Guy Fawkes night, my right honourable friend seeks, and receives, the co-operation of all bodies of publicity in order to "put over" safety factors and helpful advice with regard to fireworks.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, perhaps Guy Fawkes really went to the wrong place and should have gone to the Home Office.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I will not comment upon the noble Lord's remark, but the Council with which he is so familiar and on which he has done so much have found no solution to the Guy Fawkes problem. Whether Guy Fawkes should have attended on the other side of the river at the same time
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I will leave the noble Lord to judge. My noble friend also mentioned toys. I am happy to be able to tell him that the British Standards Institution are already meeting this difficulty and have set up a Committee to consider whether a British Standard can be introduced for toys; and they are receiving the full help and co-operation of manufacturers. I believe that that will go a long way to solving some of the problems that have been mentioned.
It has been said that prevention is the best cure for accidents that take place in the home, and there is no doubt that an enormous percentage of them are caused by negligence, carelessness and ignorance. On that point, I would support what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, rather than what the noble Lord, Lord. Stonham, has said; but I shall return to that in a moment. I suppose that every household in the country is carrying out spring-cleaning at this time of the year. I wonder whether we could not go back to our homes and look round during the course of the spring-cleaning that is going on. I am certainly going to do so in this coming week-end, and I ask people up and down the country to do the same thing—to do it now, next week-end—to carry out a home-safety week-end, to have a look round to see whether there are any of these terrible and dangerous deathtraps, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and many others, to which I shall refer again. I think it will be surprising how many can be remedied quite quickly and, in the majority of cases, quite cheaply. I will return to that thought in the last part of my speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Crook, showed us a medicine bottle filled with coloured pills of one kind and another. Those pills are coloured, of course, for the very purpose of safety. I will ask my right honourable friend what is his opinion about multi-coloured pills, but I am quite certain that we can take to heart what the noble Lord said, and clear them out from the medicine cupboard when they are no longer being used, especially when they are of the colour of those in that frightening-looking bottle he had. All of your Lordships have said that falls represent the largest single group of accidents in the home, and that is quite true—to

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the tune of something like 3,900. I am informed that falls on the flat are the most serious which are suffered by old people, and no fewer than 1,200 of the cases involving falls which I have mentioned were falls by old people on the flat. Then there is another category—falls on the stairs.
LORD LATHAM: It is a question of learning to be bi-pedal.
EARL BATHURST: Possibly. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, will agree with me that there are causes in the brain for these terribly serious falls. The brain works in exactly the same way as a computer. God gave us a brain to make the kind of transactions computers make. In fact, the brain does that much better than the computers which are used in national banks, which cannot even give one a clear statement. Our sense of balance comes from the brain, through sounds transmitted from the ears, the muscles in the skin, the senses of the skin, the muscles at the back of the neck, and the soles of the feet. All these things enable us to keep a balance. As a person gets older, one or more of those senses gradually fails, and that must be a cause of this very remarkable increase in falls by old people. As I believe the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has said, we are preventing many deaths from disease and other causes, but now it is the turn of accidents to take their toll.
After falls, burns are the most serious and most tragic cause of deaths in the home, and the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Auckland, have told us how many patients are admitted to the hospital each year and of the great expense to which the National Health Service must be put in curing these tragic, often extremely serious, burns. My noble friend Lord Auckland has said that burning clothing causes 80 per cent. of deaths from burning, and obviously there must be particular factors causing clothes to ignite: the weight, fineness and type, and the design of the dress. Design must be a most important factor in relation to clothing catching fire. For these very reasons four timers as many women die through their clothing catching fire as do men, and one cannot but think seriously about these lovely, swirling dresses which are so much in fashion in this present season, made of the most beautiful flimsy
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materials; for they nearly explode if they are caught by a naked flame. I hope that those who wear these lovely dresses will remember that when they go out on festive occasions.
Your Lordships will not expect me to seek to dictate what our womenfolk are to wear, as fashions, from one season to the next, but Mr. Dimbleby gave on television a demonstration, which has already been mentioned (I think by my noble friend, Lord Auckland), of various materials catching fire. That was in connection with the fireguard campaign of two or three years ago. The demonstration he gave is remembered up and down the country, and I hope that more and more people will ponder upon it when they are wearing such dresses. The flame-resistant material, about which so much comment was made by my noble friend Lord Auckland, and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is certainly advancing, and we must all congratulate the Proban Company, and British Nylon Spinners, for the great work they are doing. A nightdress that is made of flame-resistant material will, it is true, cost more than one of ordinary material by about the price of a packet of cigarettes; but I do beg of mothers and those who buy such nightclothes to consider whether a life is not worth more than the 4s. My noble friend Lord Auckland and the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, were keen that there should be some method of subsidising these particular articles that may be made flameproof.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, will the noble Earl allow me to intervene? I did not suggest subsidising. I suggested increased grants to the British Standards Institution, and bodies of that kind, for setting up standards. I said categorically that, so far as children's nightclothes are concerned, I hope that when the Bill becomes an Act the Home Secretary will lay a regulation prohibiting the manufacture of children's nightwear from other than non-inflammable material.
EARL, BATHURST: My Lords, I am sorry. I thought that the noble Lord opposite was associated with my noble friend, because my noble friend definitely said that he would have liked to see some sort of subsidy for the efforts

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which firms are making in order to fireproof materials. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, was associated with that view. But I am coming to his point in just a moment.
We do not feel that it is the Government's job to spend the taxpayer's money in this manner. We believe that it is up to the producers of the materials themselves. Let us hope that, as science advances, there will be great and rich rewards for them, not only in this country but all over the world, when these materials really are at a stage of sufficient fireproof standard. I think it would be an almost impossible task for Her Majesty's Government to decide, first, what was a standard suitable to be subsidised and which firms, as against other firms, should receive such a subsidy or assistance. That does not mean to say that we do not wish to congratulate those firms that are doing such great work.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for just a moment? What I was really trying to suggest as regards Proban was not so much a Government subsidy. If the Minister for Science, who I believe controls the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, could afford facilities for that particular branch of work it would be of assistance—not only to Proban but to any other firms which have helped in this flameproofing. I Should like them to afford advice, facilities, consultation and, if necessary, finance for their work. I was not meaning to ask far a subsidy as such. I am sorry if I did not make myself quite clear there.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I appreciate what my noble friend says. I do not know what the position of the Minister for Science would be. I suspect that there is a queue for the sort of help which the noble Lord would like to see. But if he would ask his friends to put that on a piece of paper and send it to me I will certainly ask my noble friend what his reaction would be.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, mentioned the Consumer Protection Bill. Indeed, that will give power to my right honourable friend not only to ban certain materials but, I understand, to ban an actual article. Many people say that children should wear pyjamas—indeed,
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that is what the noble Lord, Lord Crook, said. I certainly do not know whether my right honourable friend could possibly make such a regulation, but I, for one, should like to see, if possible, that if children do have nightdresses they are made from non-inflammable materials. That would be possibly one of the benefits that this Bill would give us.
The noble Lord, Lord Crook, criticised Her Majesty's Government for not including that Bill and the Home Safety Bill in the legislative programme, and I can only say that the legislative programme is, as it is at all times, so very full. But I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and your Lordships that these two Bills will have the full support of Her Majesty's Government. Possibly they may go through faster than they would have done had they been introduced by Her Majesty's Government.
With regard to fires, which my noble friend Lord Auckland told us so much about, there is no doubt that the open fire is the most dangerous of all. I agree with everything that has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Crook and Lord Amulree, with regard to the fixing of fireguards. There was a little confusion there. The Heating Appliances (Fireguards) Act and its regulations affect only electric fires and gas fires and their sales. The fireguards, which were the subject of a "Guard that Fire" Government campaign, are not affected by these regulations, but there are many British standards for them. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Crook: it seems to me extraordinary that one cannot buy a proper fireguard in many of the shops. I will do my best to take up that matter and to make it known to the bodies and authorities concerned. But the old-fashioned Victorian fireguard, standing at about two or three feet, is impossible to find, and surely that must be the safest of all fireguards provided it is fixed to the wall. I should not have thought that any council, or any other prudent landlord, would mind fireguards being fixed to the wall, provided that that were done in a proper manner, with the walls plugged and so forth. But if the noble Lords, Lord Crook or Lord Citrine, can give me any information with regard to councils which refuse to have fireguards fixed to their walls I

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will, of course, pass that information on to my right honourable friend.
With regard to the regulations, I think we can be pleased that, while in 1951 there were 88 deaths from electric fires, in 1959 there were only 64 deaths, because that must obviously take into consideration the enormous number of extra fires that are being used up and down the country. The figures are good, too, for gas fires.
Then the noble Lords, Lord Amulree and Lord Taylor, drew our attention to poisoning from gas; and this is indeed a most serious and alarming problem. The number has doubled in the last ten years. As the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, indicated to us, 77 per cent. of the people involved are over 60. Surely, that is due to a certain amount of forgetfulness and carelessness, the reasons which Lord Taylor told us about. It is also no doubt probably due to worn-out appliances and to the pipe system in old houses. Let us hope that, as new houses become available, those old gas systems will gradually disappear.
The Gas Board are most concerned and worried over this situation. There are special stoves, and stoves with automatic lighters, which were referred to. But it is a fact that many old people prefer the stove they have and which they have become accustomed to; and it is impossible to make people use the latest and most safe gas stove merely by saying that it is better for them. I can assure your Lordships that wherever gas equipment is thought to be faulty, or is known to be faulty, the Gas Board fitters follow up the faults, on the information they receive, as quickly as is possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Citrine, intervened with regard to electricity, and we are most grateful to him for giving us, as one who has spent a lifetime in that industry, his comments about it. It is quite true that, in spite of this enormous increase in electrical implements, not only fires but implements of all sorts, accidents in the home from electric shocks, or any other damage from electricity, are remarkably few. I think that great credit is due to the appliance makers, to the electrical contractors who fit the electric wiring, and to the Electricity' Boards; and, if I may say so, the noble Lord opposite may take great credit for what the Boards have done.
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I can certainly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, said with regard to elderly mansions. I appreciate the problem there only too well, when an electric system has to be rewired. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, and the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, mentioned the colour code coming in from Europe. I am not quite sure whether they both agree with the colours on the code. It is quite certain that they disagree with the multitude of colours that are used at present. I find it hard to remember which colour one is supposed to attach to which point, and I, for one, would much rather that there were no colours; but that is only a personal opinion. In any case, I would leave all electrical fitting to the man who knows how to do it, and I think I can give no better advice than the advice which was given by my noble friend, and that is: do not fiddle about with your electrical equipment.
Now we come to the work that local authorities are carrying out with regard to home safety. Every year 50,000 people go into hospital as a result of burns and scalds. That was the figure quoted, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree. My Lords, the cost of healing those injuries is one that should not be necessary at all. The services which local authorities carry out are the provision of clinics and health visitors. That was a particular point brought out by Lord Crook, and I think these people may well be part of the answer to the problem of gas appliances. These visitors from the health clinics are experts with regard to home safety and gas appliances in particular, and there is no doubt that they must be able and are able to solve many of the problems with regard to gas dangers.
Then there are the housing improvement grants which, indirectly, must save a great many accidents every year. As the noble Lord, Lord Crook, said, every house that is modernised with the help of a housing grant is potentially less of a death-trap than it was. Then there is education, which again comes under the local authorities, by propaganda and the school curricula. Home safety comes into that, and all through the curricula of those training in domestic science and in crafts in schools, and in special subjects such as laboratory work and machine-shop work.

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At this stage I should like to draw attention to a special pamphlet that has been issued by my right honourable friend to all education authorities. It seems to me to have a wealth of information which every teacher would do well to know about—and I daresay that every teacher has read it. it is a book that is full of information upon the prevention of accidents, not only in the home but also in any institution with which the teacher may be concerned. Then there are the fire prevention officers and their services. They, too, must prevent accidents to an untold number every year as they go about their work. Finally, there are the health services and the committees which run them. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, gave us a preview of his speech in three weeks' time, and I have no doubt that my right honourable friend and my noble friend who will be replying will take good notice of what he was kind enough to say he will be chastising them about in that debate.
My Lords, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents must be the king-pin of accident prevention in the home. This Society, as the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and my noble friend Lord Auckland have told us, is responsible for the branches dealing with accidents in this country. It is a national organisation, and it has had as its President many noble and able Members of your Lordships' House. The present Chairman is Sir Charles Bartlett, who is well known all over the country for the great work he has done in the sphere of accidents. My Lords, ROSPA is completely a voluntary body. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, suggested that not enough money was paid to it by Her Majesty's Government. In fact, it is £1,500 by my right honourable friend in the Home Office and £1,500 by the Secretary of State for Scotland. It is not always true that a voluntary body works best if it has ad lib. subsidies and funds provided from a central source. I ask the noble Lord to bear that in mind. But there is no doubt that ROSPA has a very large circulation of friends and a very large number of subscribers, not only in local authorities and in private individuals but also in businesses.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, it is the case, I think the noble Earl would agree, that the local authorities contribute very
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much more than the Government to this Society.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, that is with regard to the committees, which I am just about to come to. The safety committees set up by the local authorities, with the assistance and guidance of ROSPA, are the people who actually spend the money in their own particular areas. That is probably the best and the fairest way of doing it: that the local ratepayer should have a say in and should contribute to the preventive measures that are going to be taken in his own particular area. That is probably better than having a vast central organisation run by my right honourable friends. In any case, there is no doubt that the work of ROSPA, combined with that of the local authorities and of the local safety committees that they set up, has been magnificent—end who can tell the number of lives and injuries they have saved? I can only commend your Lordships, and the general public, to take an interest in these safety committees, and if any responsible person is able to give service to that committee, or is able to join the local organisation, that would be a tremendous help to safety in his own area.
The noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Stonham, gave a list of various deathtraps that they thought existed in the home. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned windows and furniture in dangerous places, and the noble Lord, Lord Crook, mentioned "Do-it-yourself" electric blankets. My Lords, I can think of nothing more dangerous or unpleasant than a "Do-it-yourself" electric blanket. I can only advise that no noble Lord should buy such a piece of equipment. Stairs, and toys left by children on the stairs, are one of the most serious causes of accidents. Then there is electrical equipment in the house. It is unbelievable that somebody who has been working with a vacuum cleaner, for instance, for fifteen years should put her finger in it to carry out some minor adjustment before the plug has been pulled out and the machine has had time to stop, risking a very serious accident as a result. As to motor mowers, a person I know has used exactly the same motor mower for fifteen years, and it has been going perfectly; but for some extraordinary reason he put his hand into the blades in order to clean it—cit probably did not need cleaning, in any case—

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before the blades had actually stopped revolving.
My Lords, one can go on with the list ad infinitum, such as the use of floor polish; and stairs and carpets which have become worn out. All of them are potential death traps in the home. If in this coming week-end we can do something to stop these death traps, many accidents and injuries may be prevented. My noble friend has said that we have not enough publicity or propaganda. He congratulated my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland upon what he was doing in Scotland; and he is quite right. The Secretary of State for Scotland has some very fine accident propaganda and accident literature which has been published, but I should like to assure the noble Lord that all that literature and propaganda, including this design for safety in the home, which was mentioned both by him and by the noble Lord, Lord Croak, is freely available in this country from Her Majesty's Stationery Office, and is in fact published in co-operation with the Home Office. Any local secretary, committee or branch of ROSPA could obtain that information for the noble Lord, should he want it.
The noble Lord, Lord Crook, mentioned the Departmental Committee which meets every quarter, yet he criticised that Committee for not having presented a report since 1953. My Lords, that Committee, as I say, meets every quarter, but it is a fact that, with all the information which is available, we cannot find any new trends. By that, I do not mean ideas for prevention of accidents, but that we cannot find any new information which we think would help if it were published in the form of a report. I can assure noble Lords that I will ask the chairman of that Committee whether he thinks that some form of interim report might be published if that would serve any useful purpose. But that is my information; that the trends have not yet shown themselves. Possibly in another so many years a report should be published.
Both the Home Office and the Secretary of State for Scotland have arranged for films to be shown on B.B.C. Television and on I.T.V., and for sound broadcasting programmes, as often as is feasible. For instance, there were fourteen one-minute broadcasts on specific home danger points in 1960, with scripts
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provided by the Central Office of Information. They also have five separate films which can be shown at any time either on television or at film shows. I.T.V. showed two Ministry of Health "filler films" (as they are called) which run for about a minute or so at a time which is convenient to the programme, 130 times in the course of 1960. They have already been shown again during this year. We are also in touch with the producers and designers of the current most popular radio and television programmes, and we receive considerable help and support from them. A moment ago I mentioned Mr. Dimbleby, who had brought in home safety points with regard to clothing. There is also the: programme "Dixon of Dock Green", and other favourite programmes have indicated that they will help, and do help? whenever possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, indicated that the new inventions and gadgets of these days which are in such profusion make the pace of modern life so fast that it really passes some of the ability of the human brain to be able to comprehend the safety measures which are needed. I think the noble Lord most politely said that some people are socially and domestically incompetent—I think that was the noble Lord's phrase. I am afraid that I must say that some people—it does not matter who they are socially—are just careless, ignorant and stupid. I think that is the cause of a large number of accidents. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, would like us to believe that many more accidents are caused by failure in equipment or in material. There is no doubt that failures of this sort do cause accidents, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and I have the majority of the causes of the avoidable accidents.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, mentioned accidents to the old people. We cannot give special advice about such accidents, but I do hope that all families of these old people, when they make visits to them, will pay special attention to their appliances and to the safety of the homes of these old people, as, indeed, do the health visitors whom I have already mentioned. But you just cannot leave the problem of old members of one's family to health visitors; it is a responsibility which devolves on us all.
My Lords, I have said that spring cleaning is going on in our houses all

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over the country. Next week-end, the last week-end of First Aid Week, can be made a home safety week-end. We will find all these death traps—or a great many of them. There might be a competition run to see how many can be found. As I said, I believe that many of the problems will be much simpler and much easier to remedy than we had ever thought. I do say that all those who have any dealings with publicity, whether in the Press—and there is great publicity given to home safety in the Press—in television, on broadcasting or on films, whether it be straight editorial matter, or in constructing actual programmes, have a great responsibility to bring out these points about safety which your Lordships have mentioned. There are many others upon which ROSPA will be only too pleased to advise, and I hope that they will be able to do so, even more than they do at the present time, to their great credit. I know that all your Lordships would wish to thank my noble friend for bringing this interesting topic before us.
6.28 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, it is not my intention to make another long speech, but before I ask leave to withdraw the Motion standing in my name it would be ungracious of me if I did not thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, has done a tremendous amount in the interests of home safety, and I quite understand the fact that he is not present now, as he had to leave early. I was particularly impressed with his comments regarding these coloured pills which look like "Smarties". That is a point of tremendous importance, and I think something with which parents must deal carefully.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, gave a most valuable contribution as a person of experience, particularly with the aged. I should like to stress here that although, for my part, my Motion was concerned primarily with the young, it does regard with great concern the aged. It is only because I come into contact more with the young that I have emphasised that particular section of the community. But, of course, it is the old people who do suffer in large measure these accidents. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, always makes very generous remarks on my behalf. I would only say
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how extremely grateful I was, and I am sure the House was also, for his contribution on matters of this kind. I would suggest that he probably has no equal. He puts forward his case from his personal experience with tremendous conviction. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, made a most valuable contribution. He has done great work on hospital committees and I share his view regarding publicity. I welcome the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, who made a most useful contribution from his great practical knowledge of electricity.
To my noble friend Lord Bathurst, I would say this. I thank him sincerely for the kind remarks he has made about my wife, who has always been a great help to me, both in research for, and in preparation of, speeches for these debates. The noble Earl went to great pains to answer thoroughly every point which was put forward and I should like to express to him and his Department my deep gratitude for the help which they have given. I would also like to thank again Courtauld's, ROSPA and other organisations who, in a short time, rendered most valuable and courteous assistance.
As I said earlier, this is a combined operation, and various suggestions have been made about what the Government could do. I hope that the Home Office and any other relevant Government Departments will take note. The Press, both the popular Press and the more academic Press, do good work, and I should like to pay warm tribute to them for what they have done and for what I hope they will continue to do. Ultimately, however, it is the parents and the schools upon whom the responsibility lies. I did not put down this Motion to beat the Government. All Parties of all colours have contributed a great deal to the question of home safety. I feed that debates of this kind are extremely useful and should be held more frequently. For my part, this has been a very satisfactory debate and I should like to thank heartily all concerned in it and all organisations which have helped. With these words, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at twenty-seven minutes before seven o'clock.