HL Deb 12 April 1961 vol 230 cc277-307

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.

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 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 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 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- 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.