Lords Sitting of 12 July 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 Hereford
The Lord Iliffe—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

CHEMICAL SEED DRESSINGS
2.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure notification to them if seed dressings containing dieldrin, aldrin and heptachlor are used for spring-grown grain; and who will decide, and at what point, in various areas, whether there is such danger of attack from wheat bulb fly as to warrant the use of the foregoing chemicals for autumn and winter seed dressings.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have received undertakings from representatives of the manufacturers of these seed dressings, of the merchants who distribute and apply them, and of the farmers who sow the dressed seed, that they will not be used for spring-sown grain. We have no reason to think that these undertakings will not be faithfully observed, but the Departments will keep a careful watch on the situation and in particular continue the survey of unusual bird deaths should any occur. This will be done in cooperation with the societies concerned with wild life preservation.
On the question of wheat bulb fly, it is for the farmer to decide whether he must use one of these dressings to control this pest, but the Department's general advice is that he should not do so unless there is a real need, and then only in the autumn when the risk to wild
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life is negligible. The Advisory Services are equipped to give advice to farmers on the danger of attack in given areas.
A further meeting of all the organisations concerned will be held in June of next year to review the working of the arrangements.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to thank the noble Earl for his Answer. Is he aware that in the last few years we have come some considerable way in the right direction in this matter, but ought we not to take another step forward in this particular connection; that is, to bring the latest arrangements under some form of statutory control? Is the noble Earl aware that in the House of Commons on July 3 (I am now quoting a Minister, if I am allowed to do so), Mr. Soames, Minister of Agriculture, said (col. 989):
"We believe that these arrangements will work. If they do not work, we shall have to think again whether it will be necessary to bring in some statutory provisions, because we cannot have a continuation of the state of affairs which has existed this year."
Is not that last remark,
"we cannot have a continuation of the state of affairs which has existed this year",
a condemnation of previous policy in this matter? Why wait until the stable door has been opened and the horse has escaped?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I do not think I quite follow the noble Viscount's reasoning. It has been our practice to try to deal with matters of this kind by willing co-operation under voluntary agreement. The Voluntary Notification of Pesticides Scheme, under which these chemicals are being withdrawn, has worked very well and is faithfully observed by the manufacturing industry. As I said in my reply, we believe that these arrangements, which have been agreed to by all the parties, should be allowed to work. My right honourable friend in another place said merely that if they do not work—although he believes that they will work—he would, of course, have to think again. But I do not think we ought to use the sledgehammer of statutory procedure before we see whether reasonableness will not prevail.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, while welcoming the Government's

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belated action—as I regard it—in this matter (and the Minister will be aware that warning was given, and has been given, several times over the past few years), may I ask the noble Earl how he expects to ensure that he gets cooperation from merchants in the matter of the dressing of seeds, and whether he thinks that the Government ought now not to face the wider issue, which is that we need a much greater degree of fundamental ecological research in order to deal with this question, as we are still only tampering with a problem which may well be one of the great problems of the twentieth century? May I, finally, ask him whether in fact any level has yet been arrived at of acceptable contamination among animals from a human point of view in regard to these particular chemicals?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, with regard to the merchants, the merchants' organisations have been concerned in all these consultations, and we have their agreement. The National Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants are in agreement to work this voluntary scheme. The second question was about wider ecological research, and should really, perhaps, be addressed to the noble Viscount the Lord President of the Council. The third question was as to the acceptable level, as I understood it, for possible contamination of human beings. I am advised that the scientific answer to that is that there is no evidence at all that the amounts of these chemicals which could be eaten by birds would constitute a human risk.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I draw the noble Earl's attention to the words contained in the next Question, that of the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, in which he says:
"… since nothing can deter plans to yield private gain …"?
Should one not really apply that to the Question now under discussion, and apply statutory methods?
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, we have not reached the next Question; and, if we had, I should perhaps observe that statements of opinion are not customary when framing Questions.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether it is not the case that the pesticides mentioned in the noble Viscount's Question are very persistent in the soil and liable to contaminate root crops, particularly carrots? What protection has the consumer got against that?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I understand that these particular chemicals are persistent in the soil, but I am also informed that the research work that has been done to date does not give any indication that there is a risk to human beings.
THE EARL OF YARBOROUGH: My Lords, while being extremely grateful for what has been done about dieldrin, aldrin and heptachlor, I should think that the seed merchants, who, by and large, are decent and honourable people—though there are exceptions—will help in every way. But is it not a fact that although dieldrin, aldrin and heptachlor are the worst villains of the piece, all organic chlorines are dangerous to a certain extent? I ask this question because I myself, and many farmers in the part of the world in which I live, have been using a certain proprietary dressing and there has been a great deal of loss to wild life of every sort. I had this particular dressing analysed, and therefore I am asking my noble friend whether he will consider putting on the same restrictions on all organic chlorines as he did in the case of aldrin, heptachlor and dieldrin.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, this question will always be kept under review. I think that my noble friend is referring to benzine hexachloride and chlorinated hydrocarbons of that nature. All the evidence shows that they are not particularly toxic to bird life—or so persistent, or effective in controlling the wheat bulb fly—and that is why we are not at this moment asking that these should be discontinued.

SITING OF TALL BUILDINGS AND ADVERTISEMENTS
2.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: 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, since nothing can deter plans to yield private gain, they will indicate what action they will take to safeguard public enjoyment in cases where the Fine Art Commission might adjudicate, if empowered to do so, such as impairment of amenity which has occurred to the vista down St. James's Street, closed by the Gate Way of St. James's Palace and now altered by the relative bulk and height of the Shell Building; or as would occur if huge advertisements appeared over the screen of trees lining the garden of Buckingham Palace, on the roof of buildings under contruction on the site of the Stag Brewery.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, the visual effect is one of the factors which local planning authorities take into account when considering proposals for new buildings or for display of advertisements. In the case of high buildings this factor is of special importance; in the case of advertisements on high buildings it is usually the decisive factor. My right honourable friend is satisfied that local planning authorities have adequate powers of control and use them intelligently. There is always room for differences of opinion over æsthetic questions, and there have been several over the high buildings now springing up in London as in other great cities. But it has to be accepted that high buildings are part of the pattern of the future.
LORD AMWELL: My Lords, is there room for differences of opinion, if one looks from the middle of Waterloo Bridge on to this building and sees what difference has been made by the structure that has been put up behind it? If there is the power, why is it not exercised in some intelligent manner?
EARL JELLICOE: Yes, my Lords, there is the possibility of a difference of opinion over that, I would say.
LORD AMWELL: My Lords, there cannot be any difference of opinion about that. Have a look at it.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, would the noble Earl agree that in
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modern urban conditions high buildings are inevitable and presumably this constitutes the only method in which we can obtain open spaces in such areas?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord's first supplementary question, I would say, Yes; and in answer to his second, I would say, broadly speaking, Yes.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, while thanking the noble Earl for his answer, may I put a supplementary question? May I ask him to represent to his right honourable friend what I believe is the principle in this matter? It is to forestall an unsympathetic siting of buildings and advertisements by bringing in some concurrent opinion at an earlier stage.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I shall, of course, be very glad to represent that view to my right honourable friend, but perhaps I might just mention, in passing, that I think the building which my noble friend is worried about is not the Shell building but the Vickers building which he sees from St. James's Street.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: I apologise for that, my Lords, and may I ask a last question? Will the noble Earl consider whether it is not in the public interest to keep giant buildings free of advertisements or flashing signs at night? That is the first part of my second question. Is he not aware that for a similar reason sky-writing has been deemed odious? As to putting the public interest before private ownership, is he not aware of the 20-year ban on tree felling which can be imposed by county councils
on a woodland owner? I think that is an analogy as between public and private gains.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think that my noble friend's questions go a little wide of the Vickers building, but I shall be very glad to look at the points which he has made.

FUTURE BUSINESS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it has been represented to me that it would be inconvenient for a number of your Lordships to sit late to-morrow night, and it has therefore been agreed, through

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the usual channels, that we should consider the Licensing Bill until dinner time to-morrow and continue it on Monday, after the discussion on the Finance Bill, and again on Tuesday.

EYEMOUTH HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1936) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.

PARKING PLACES (EXTENSION OUTSIDE LONDON No. 3) ORDER, 1961
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that this Order be now approved.
Moved, That the Parking Places (Extension outside London No. 3) Order, 1961, be approved.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

THE COUNCIL ON TRIBUNALS
2.50 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH rose to call attention to the scope and powers of the Council on Tribunals and to its operation; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, before I address myself to the subject matter of the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, may I offer to your Lordships a brief word of explanation as to why there has been such a long delay between the time when a Motion of this character was put upon the Order Paper, which was in 1960, and its coming before your Lordships this afternoon. I put the Motion down upon the Order Paper, "To consider the First Report of the Council on Tribunals", just after the end of its first operative year, which was in 1959; but just as I was about to negotiate through the usual channels a fixed date for the Motion, your Lordships' House suffered a calamitous loss by the death of the Chairman of the Council on Tribunals, the late Lord Reading. I would here interpose a belated tribute of appreciation for what
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the noble Marquess did in the embryo stage of the work of this Council.
As was to be expected, the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor experienced a great deal of difficulty in finding a successor. So delay followed upon delay, and it was hardly worth while discussing a Report of a body such as the Council on Tribunals when it had not a Chairman. Then, when the Lord Chancellor found a Chairman, there was further delay in compiling the Second Report. I therefore came to the conclusion that events in this field of administrative law had gone so far ahead of a Report confined to the activities of the Council in 1960 that I would alter the Motion, and it now stands in these words:
"To call attention to the scope and powers of the Council on Tribunals and to its operation; and to move for Papers."
As your Lordships may know, the 1960 Report was published just two days ago. The question that I want to pose for your Lordships' discussion is: can the Council on Tribunals adequately operate in this vast area of administrative law, which is growing and growing? The figures given in the Report are impressive. There were 128,000 cases that came before tribunals and statutory inquiries last year. The warning which the Council give in paragraphs 25 and 124 is immense. For good or ill, this country has travelled very far along the road of administrative law. No longer can the ordinary citizen of this country rest assured that
"no one will do him wrong, because in the ultimate there are English judges who will see that right is done by him".
I do not claim any credit for those words of wisdom: they were uttered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Birkett, some years ago, and they have stuck in my mind ever since.
Who is there to take care of the interests of the ordinary citizen? I thought that the leading article of the Daily Telegraph of yesterday, when discussing the Report of the Council on Tribunals, was apt. This is what it said:
"To the average citizen the sheer burden of being governed is becoming too great to be carried without help. Within, and parallel to, the normal laws of the land and the courts which enforce them is a vast supplementary legal system which reflects the points of friction between the individual and Government departments."

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We stand in danger all the time, with this great growth of administrative law, of being turned into what has been called "the handmaiden of administrative convenience." We must be ever vigilant, because at the present time in many of the assaults upon the private liberties and the property of the ordinary citizen there is no recourse to the ordinary course of justice.
So what this country needs to-day—and it is illustrated, in my view, by the insistent demand that is ever growing—for the protection of the ordinary citizen against the incursion of the administrative bureaucracy upon his rights and his property is something akin to the Scandinavian Ombudsman. I wonder whether that is a correct procedure for this country. I wonder whether the Council on Tribunals can be moulded, and its powers increased, so that it can eventually fulfil the need that is so apparent, and become the English version of the Scandinavian Ombudsman. If the Council is going to do that, and if this administrative law is going to be so moulded that the citizens of this country have right done by them, then a lot of the cherished and accepted constitutional doctrines in this country will have to give way.
I would invite your Lordships to consider the history of the progress of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act through your Lordships' House. During its passage (which, as your Lordships know, followed the publication of the Franks Committee Report in 1956) there was inserted in the Bill what apparently at that time was considered to be a small Amendment, but that small Amendment revolutionised the whole of the Act of Parliament. As the Bill was presented to your Lordships' House, the Council on Tribunals was circumscribed and limited to strong procedural and other matters referred to it either by the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary of State for Scotland. The noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack does not need me to remind him of the stubborn fight your Lordships put up to have some teeth put into the Council on Tribunals. There was inserted in Section 1 (1) (c) a paragraph which gave the Council on Tribunals the right to consider any matters which it determined were important for its consideration. But what
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was more important, it gave the ordinary citizen the right to make reference to that Council so that it could see that justice was done to him.
As the Report says, that brought about a development which was hardly foreseen and which has opened up a huge field, on the development of which we can only conjecture. But the Council, in its Report, says that the majority of its time will be spent not so much on considering the procedure of tribunals as in considering the procedure, behaviour, and conduct of statutory inquiries. That is a matter which has engaged the Council almost predominantly during these last twelve months, and is the event which, I suggest, has overtaken the Report, which confines itself to a year gone by.
I should like to say a word about the membership of the Council. It is a body of persons, learned in law, and eminent in other spheres. It is a body which can, and I think does, command the respect of all. But there are one or two things in the evolution of its work in supervising the field of statutory inquiries that we must guard against. The last thing that it must do is to become professionalised and bogged down in detail, which I have the unhappy fear it may be in the future. I offer this suggestion in passing. I think it needs a larger expert staff. The independence of the executive is of supreme importance. It cannot become another Ministry, or an appendage of an existing Ministry. It must work quickly. Justice, like charity, is done better if it is done quickly. We have had the painful experience only recently of the Minister of Housing and Local Government taking nine months, after his inspector has issued a report, to give his decision. It may be another nine months before the adjudication and
examination of that case is completed by the Council on Tribunals. It must be borne in mind, as the Report quite rightly says, that the Council on Tribunals is a part-time body.
In discussing the matter which I am asking your Lordships to consider, I intend to confine myself principally to statutory inquiries. I think that we—and when I say "we" I mean Members of Parliament and the Government—must ask ourselves a few stern questions and provide some honest answers. What is the object of a statutory inquiry? Surely

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it must be that the ordinary citizen who objects to administrative action can feel that he has been given a fair hearing. Secondly, it must be the paramount duty of an inquiry to see that all the facts are marshalled, examined and cross-examined, so that the Minister who has to give his decision will be fully acquainted of all the facts of the case. It must not be regarded as just a piece of machinery to allow disgruntled objectors to "blow off steam". Do the Government realise that they have not only to satisfy themselves that they are doing right—which up to date has proved to be rather easy for them—but also to prove to the public at large that right is being done, which recent history has proved is a little more difficult?
So this matter now stands, in my view, at the cross-roads. During the debate upon Second Reading of the Bill which set the Council on Tribunals, the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack promised that there would be a code of procedure that would regulate the procedures not only of the statutory inquiries but, in some cases, of tribunals as well. We have not yet made the draft rules. Two-and-a-half years have now passed. I quite appreciate the reasons for the delay, because all the learned bodies have had to be consulted, and I hope the Government will see that Parliament is consulted. In this particular instance, Parliament cannot have a statutory instrument placed before it on the basis of "Take it or leave it; you cannot amend it". It is also important that Parliament should have the opportunity of considering this code of procedure for statutory inquiries before it is crystallised into a form which the Government cannot alter.
I would say, frankly, that such a code of procedure must give the Council on Tribunals complete authority to see that the procedure before the inquiry, during the inquiry and after the inquiry, is so modelled as to safeguard the rights of the citizen at all stages. I cannot see any reason why, when a statutory inquiry is held, and a Ministry has an interest, it cannot be compelled statutorily to attend that inquiry, to state its reasons in open court and to be cross-examined on the facts it adduces. A Ministry should not be allowed to by-pass a statutory inquiry and then, after the responsible Minister has given a decision,
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enter by the backdoor and give evidence that it has not given in open court.
My Lords, the first principle is that objectors to administrative action are entitled to have full knowledge of the case they have to answer, but there have been instances in which that information has been withheld. It was so in the ironstone case in North Oxfordshire, where, under Section 15 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government usurped the functions of a planning authority. If a Ministry usurps the functions of a planning authority it should also accept its obligations, and one of the obligations must always be that it should acquaint the objectors with full details of the case they have to answer. I would ask the noble and learned Viscount if he would take particular notice of these points, because there are cases in our knowledge where the procedure has been wrong.
There is another thing that I would ask the noble and learned Viscount to consider—it was argued in your Lordships' House right the way through when we were dealing with the Act, and it is one of the Franks Committee's recommendations that has not been accepted. That is, that on all these tribunals and statutory inquiries we should have independent chairmen and not servants of the Ministry which is interested.
I know the classic case against many of the arguments I am putting forward. But first of all I would ask the noble and learned Viscount to agree with me that it is fundamental that the citizen who feels he has been aggrieved should have the right to know at all stages of an inquiry the facts that are being cited against him. I know the bureaucratic reply. Your Lordships have only to peruse the evidence given before the Franks Committee, and I should like to quote just one sentence from the official report of the evidence of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government given on Wednesday, February 26, 1956, at page 75, paragraph 644. The Chairman of the Franks Committee was cross-examining the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, and he was asking why, before or after a ministerial decision, particularly after, the objector should not know the whole of the facts that had influenced the Minister's decision other than those

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that were given in open court. This is the question:
"… if considerations came in other than those heard at the inquiry and in fact determined the ultimate decision, he might be entitled to know? …"
The answer from the Permanent Secretary was this:
"… I do not think he is entitled to know."
In that one sentence we find the whole of the bureaucratic view on statutory inquiries.
My Lords, the citizen has a right to know everything at every time except in a case where that knowledge would endanger the safety of the Realm. I say that the Council on Tribunals must see that it has the authority to examine procedures before, during and after.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would allow me to answer one question. I think it was a slip on his part when he implied a moment ago that the chairmen of the tribunals, as opposed to the inspectors who hold inquiries, are not independent. I do not know of any chairman of any of the 2,000 tribunals who is not an independent person. If the noble Lord has any case in mind I will investigate it, but I think that he was really dealing with inspectors.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for his intervention, but I think I may not have said it. Perhaps the noble and learned Viscount did not hear me say it, but I said that I am dealing at the moment essentially with statutory inquiries. I am coming to tribunals in a minute. I am not implying that there is any lack of independence among chairmen of tribunals.
Again, it was admitted in evidence given before the Franks Committee that the chairmen of statutory inquiries, the inspectors, were servants of the Ministry. When statutory inquiries have reached the stage they have to-day, when counsel are briefed, Silks and juniors are briefed, on either side, it is more than ever important that the person who sits in authority should be experienced in weighing evidence and should ensure that all the facts are brought before that inquiry. We have only to take the two cases that are uppermost in all our minds: the chalk-
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pit case and the Oxfordshire ironstone case. If the evidence of the Ministry of Agriculture in the former had been given before that inquiry it might have saved a great deal of trouble that has been experienced since.
In the ironstone case—I do not want to go over it; you Lordships can read the whole of the facts as I have stated them in your Lordships House—a huge nationalised concern came to an inquiry and did not trouble even to present a case. Learned counsel said that he did not intend to bring any evidence. He claimed immunity for the members of the staff of the Iron and Steel Board because, he said, they ranked as civil servants. Then he went on to say—a quite improper statement—that he did not propose to have any figures produced to prove anything about the economic necessity but he would see that the Minister had those privately after the inquiry was closed. The man conducting that inquiry, armed with powers of subpœna, never said to him, "Are you going to produce any evidence?"
By a strange coincidence, two days before I raised that Question in your Lordships' House a Question was asked in another place. During the course of the evidence it was stated that unless the applicants were allowed to have planning permission £2 million of the taxpayers' money would be wasted, and a Question was asked in the House of Commons as to whether that was true. The Minister of Power answered and said:
"I have ascertained the facts. There would be no nugatory expenditure if the application was not granted."
It is a fair question to ask: why was not that evidence given at the inquiry? I have just cited these as examples. These cases are usually on the acquisition of land, and I can see no reason why the Government Department concerned should not come frankly before the inquiry and state its case, and the person presiding over that inquiry could then see that all the relevant facts were there. The inspector, unlike the chairman of the tribunal, has no authority to give a verdict; he can only recommend to the Minister.
In my view, the Council's powers of investigation must be increased. They must have authority, in my view, to call

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for papers; they must have authority to summon witnesses, and they must report without delay upon all matters considered under Section 1 (1) (c) of the Act, and that report should be laid before Parliament. After the inquiry, in any investigation which the Council on Tribunals seeks to make, the Minister of the Department concerned who has given the decision against which there is objection should state his own case: he should not have it stated for him by the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor. Responsible journals of public opinion have been devastating in their criticism of the procedure adopted in the chalk-pit case, and I would say, I think quite fairly, that the consensus of public opinion seemed to think that it was wrong for the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor to assume the position of defending his colleagues at all costs, laudable though that might be as a general principle. I must confess that this was particularly distressing, more than ever to those of us who hold the office of Lord High Chancellor of this country in such high esteem and the present occupant of the office in such personal affection. But with a proper procedure that would never have happened; and it should not happen in the future.
May I tell your Lordships, quite frankly, that I addressed the Question to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack last December, asking him if he would refer the case of the Oxfordshire ironstone inquiry to the Council on Tribunals; I asked him to consider whether I had made a prima facie case for such a reference. In three months' time the noble and learned Viscount gave his considered opinion, but that considered opinion was a detailed opinion that must have been given to the noble and learned Viscount by the Department concerned. One could not expect the noble and learned Viscount to have an answer to every query.
I hope he will not mind my saying—and I say it with great respect—that I think that on that occasion the noble and learned Viscount made a mistake. That was what the Council on Tribunals was there for. So I referred the matter to them myself. The Council must be given power to investigate and to report to Parliament, even, if necessary, right
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up to the point of stating its view and giving its reasons why a wrong decision has been made. It is for the Council to give to Parliament its opinion and advice and to state its reasons; and it is for Parliament to take action, if it so desires, since it is to Parliament alone that the Minister is responsible.
There is one other question that is raised, and raised very pertinently, and that is the heavy burden of costs that is placed upon the ordinary citizen. If I might again cite as an example the North Oxfordshire ironstone inquiry, when the livelihoods of small farms and workers were in jeopardy, it cost £5,000 of the ratepayers' and private individuals' money to fight that case, a case which it could be argued should never have been brought. Although counsel for the objectors made an application for costs, the inspector did not grant it.
I remember that in the course of the Second Reading of the Bill under which the Council operates the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor quoted the words of Magna Carta, that justice cannot be purchased. But justice is purchased to-day if one can afford in cases such as this to brief counsel. What chance does the ordinary impecunious citizen stand against the might of Government Departments with taxpayers' money, nationalised industries with taxpayers' money, to brief leading counsel and juniors to get what they want? I believe that there should be in this code of procedure some means by which an appeal can be made to the courts if an application for costs has been refused in the case of these statutory inquiries. I have finished with statutory inquiries.
There are only two cases to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention in the operation of administrative tribunals. I think that, by and large, we can say that tribunals have operated well. They have operated well because of the independence of the chairmen, and because a tribunal can give a verdict; and in the majority of cases there is an appeal to the courts on questions of law. But what I feel is that consideration should be given to whether or not, in all private cases, there should be an appeal to the courts on questions of fact and merit. As the Report points out in the case of the Rent Tribunal,

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unless there is an, appeal on fact there is virtually no appeal at all.
If your Lordships will allow me—I will deal with it briefly—I should like to bring out the point which the Report makes on the question of discretionary inquiries. The noble and learned Viscount will remember that during the debate we had on Section 1 (1) (c) he said that the only thing he wanted to take out of the subsection was when the Minister thought it necessary to send down one of his people to interview one of the objectors and to discuss some matter with him. He did not want that to be considered to be an inquiry. It is within my recollection that he said, "But that is the only exception I want to make." When the Bill went to another place that clause was amended, and there were put into the Bill words to the effect that a statutory inquiry for the purpose of Section 1 (1) (c) was an inquiry which the Minister had a duty to carry out. When the Amendment came to your Lordships' House I do not think it was in any of our minds that inquiries upon the scale, as the Report cites, of the Oxford roads inquiry, which was an inquiry at large, would be classed as a discretionary inquiry and therefore outside the surveillance of the Council on Tribunals. I do not see any reason why discretionary inquiries, as well as any of the others, should not come under the jurisdiction (if I may use that term) of the Council.
I should also like to direct your Lordships' attention to two other points which I think are important they are on the question of what I might call departmental obstruction to the Council's carrying out its statutory functions. One concerns the procedure under the National Health Service Tribunal. The noble and learned Viscount will have it in mind, as will many of your Lordships. On this matter the Council said:
"Meanwhile, the duty Parliament has laid on us can be exercised only on sufferance."
The other point is of more importance. I can only draw your Lordships' attention to paragaph 48 of the Council's Report, which states that the Minister of Pensions was asked in another place what steps had been taken to ensure that Members of the Council, in recognition of their special duties, were enabled to retire with members of the National Insurance Local
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Tribunals while they considered their decision. The Council add that in a Written Answer the Minister replied as follows:
"The answer to the first part of the question is 'Yes' and to the second 'None'."
The Council satisfies itself with the under-statement that
"It therefore appears that no further steps are to be taken by the Minister to enable the Council to fulfil their statutory duty."
I hope your Lordships will not think that the language I use is too strong when I say that that is a piece of arrogant ministerial insolence that ought never to be allowed by the Government.
I have delayed your Lordships too long, but I thought it would serve some purpose if I drew attention to public disquiet. I hope that I have not exaggerated in anything that I have said, and I hope that the Government, and all those whose responsibility it is, will see that the Council on Tribunals can fill that important rôle of the British equivalent of the Scandinavian Ombudsman. That depends not only upon the Government but upon the Council. Perhaps I may end by quoting one paragraph from one of the many leading articles that The Times has published on this matter. It is as follows:
"Responsibility as guardians of the public interest now rests with Lord Tenby and his colleagues. They will be looked to as the men who can insist on rules being laid down and kept to which will put the private citizen on a real and not a bogus equality with the bureaucrats. They must not allow themselves to be inveigled into accepting this or that privileged indulgence for Whitehall. Lord Tenby is likely to have a hard fight ahead of him. He may count in facing it on the widest public support."
My Lords, I beg to move for papers.
3.38 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I am sure you will all agree with me in expressing thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and to say how indebted we are to him for giving us the opportunity of discussing the working of these tribunals in the whole context of administrative law. I think it would not be too much to say that the focus of attention in regard to these sort of matters which, in the eighteenth century and the time of general warrants and John Wilkes, was upon the courts themselves as the guardians of liberty, is now beginning to be put, at any rate to some

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extent, on the Council on Tribunals. That is because, as the noble Lord has said, more and more the citizen comes into contact with the Government, and indeed with the law, through administrative provisions in Acts of Parliament rather than through the ordinary administration of the Common Law.
Therefore, it seems to me valuable that we should have an opportunity of discussing these matters against the background of the useful reports which the Council on Tribunals are now publishing. I hope that we shall have further opportunities of doing so as these Reports come out from year to year, because undoubtedly one of the most important things which we in this House can do at the present time is to keep these matters very much under review. As always, vigilance is the safeguard of freedom in these matters.
I believe that even more than inquiring into the actual work which the Council has done over the two years and more that that body has been in existence, it is necessary to inquire into the general problem of the scope of its work, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, has been doing, and to discuss whether the powers conferred upon the Council are wide enough and whether it is possible effectively to extend them—which is not at all an easy field of inquiry; because we have to remember that the system of administrative law in this country is a creature of comparatively recent development, at any rate in the mature or maturing form in which we now have it, and that it has grown up very much ad hoc, so that in all kinds of ways it is anomalous. The work of the administration which enforces it is also marked by quite a number of anomalies.
The method of administering this branch of the law has been, on the whole, completely unscientific. The control which has been exercised over it (if I may
say so, almost in parenthesis) by the High Court of Justice has been in a sense sporadic. Certainly, it has been marked by an extraordinary complication of procedure and in regard to the law it has been an exceptionally expensive affair which has not encouraged the ordinary citizen to enlist the help of the courts. Nor when, from time to time, he takes his financial courage in his hands and has recourse to the courts
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does he find on the whole that their assistance is sufficiently effective to give him what he, at any rate, regards as justice or, indeed, to allay the widespread public uneasiness which undoubtedly exists. I have not the slightest doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, is right when he underlines that particular element in the situation.
The machinery at the disposal of the High Court, derived as it is from an earlier age, and for the control of very differing types of authority, is not really adequate to the tasks imposed upon it and it has always seemed to me, as it did to a famous predecessor of the noble and learned Viscount—Lord Haldane—that it was really time we took stock of the situation and tried to devise a more scientific and up-to-date system. I believe it was the realisation of this which led the Franks Committee to recommend the setting up of new, more effective and more economical machinery within the scope of the Council of Tribunals, the works of which we are discussing this afternoon. This was not in any sense to solve this problem, of course, for it is altogether bigger than anything the Council can do. But it does pursue a very typical English method of easing the shoe where it pinches particularly badly.
The Council have very limited powers and it is no good expecting from them very radical solutions of these problems. But within the severe limitations of their potentialities, which are fixed by the Statute which sets up the Council, the Council, it seems to me, as it seemed to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, have the possibility of doing some very useful work. Indeed, I believe they have already done a good deal. In their Reports (one of which fortunately came out just in time for this debate) the Council have pointed out a number of anomalies. It is not very clear how far those have been cleared up, since the time is short; but one is hoping that the noble and learned Viscount or another speaker for Her Majesty's Government will be able to tell us whether some of the anomalies pointed out in the Report have been or are in process of being cleared up. That this has, to some extent, been done appeared from Answers to Questions which have been put in another place.

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I suggest that it is our job this afternoon to have that side of the matter very much in mind and to press the Government to give us clear and sincere answers in regard to these particular aspects of the problem. In the first place, of course, there has been a good deal of grit in the machinery of administrative law. There has been no kind of uniformity in the rules of procedure and this has led to a good deal of heart-burning and to numerous anomalies; and the job of providing uniform rules is one of the tasks which the Council have been given to get on with. I believe their first Report showed that a very useful start had been made on that work, and it seems clear enough from the second Report that they have been getting on with that work. Of course, they can go only some way with it. It is not a job which can be done quickly. But it seems to me that, so far as the work has gone, the Council are deserving of our congratulations and thanks. On reflection it seems astonishing that in the past, over the twenty, thirty or even fifty years during which this administrative law has been building up, it should never have been the business of anyone in Government to see that this was done before. We can only express gratitude that at last, in 1959–61, it is being attended to.
Next, and more important, is the supervision of the actual work of the tribunals and of the holding of the inquiries which are going on in hundreds all over the country all the time, and which some of my friends who appear before tribunals tell me is very uneven in character; while some are very good others are not so good. Clearly, the Council are taking this part of their job seriously and it is interesting to see that the members have been going up and down the country, sitting in at hearings and getting a really practical idea of what is going on, instead of relying on what they are told, which is always a temptation in a situation of this kind. Again I am sure it will be found that that is much the best and most effective way of handling this problem.
On the whole the Council seem to be satisfied with what they have seen, but there are in the Reports quite a few reservations. Unfortunately, those reservations are couched in very vague
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terms, so that perhaps in the end one is left wondering a little whether or not they are pulling their punches. I hope not and I hope that we shall be reassured on that particular point. If I may make a criticism, one of the difficulties is that the Reports are written in what one might call typical "Whitehall English" of the kind that Sir Ernest Gowers used to criticise so effectively. It occurred to me that it would have been helpful if Sir Ernest Gowers had been given a preview of these Reports and had been able to put them into rather more terse and clear English.
It seems to me that in the Second Report the strictures on the work of some of the tribunals are distinctly stronger—may be because the Council were not satisfied that what they said in the earlier Report had been sufficiently attended to. I hope I am not taking too severe a view of it, but it seems fairly clear to me, at any rate, that in a minority of cases the Council feel that the situation is not really satisfactory. I wonder whether the noble and learned Viscount will be able to tell us if specific cases have actually been brought to the attention of the Minister responsible for the particular tribunal, or to his own attention, because that, probably, would be more valuable. We know that he has been taking a great personal interest in this work. I can quite understand that the Council do not wish to pillory in the pages of their Report any particular tribunal which they are not satisfied is operating well, but I think we ought to be assured that where they have in fact found grounds for criticism, then these criticisms have been brought to the attention of the proper authorities in detail, so that action can be taken; and that where weaknesses have been found they can and are in fact being remedied.
Now so far so good, and no doubt some civil servants will think that so much good is good enough, and will be content that the whole matter should rest at that point; but, of course, this was only a rather minor aspect of the matter from the point of view of the Franks Committee. The Franks Committee wanted to go a good deal further and to have matters dealt with by the Council which were basic to the whole problem which they had been set up to inquire into and to report upon. It seems to me that the real object of the Franks

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Committee was to reassure the public, who were suspicious that these inquiries were camouflage. The Committee themselves found nothing very much wrong, but they also found that the people of England as a whole had formed a very different view.
We had had a long period during which Whitehall had been denounced by very eminent judges. We all remember the late Lord Hewart's book, The New Despotism; we had had Crichel Down, and we had had all the events which had led to the setting up of the Franks Committee. It is a view commonly held by the ordinary man in the street that civil servants are avid for power. Lord Hewart had told them that that was so, and the sort of things which happened at Crichel
Down persuaded them that Lord Hewart was right. They therefore took the view that these inquiries were very often just camouflage, in order to make people think that justice was being done, but that the real decisions had often already been taken in bureaucrats' offices in Whitehall, and that the whole decision had been "cooked" from the start.
My Lords, that is not the sort of view which I have ever taken of this problem. I do not myself believe that civil servants are at all avid for power. I think civil servants are a very hard-working and able part of the community, who are concerned to get their job done—one of the most important jobs that any part of the community has to do in the modern, complicated State. But undoubtedly, in the course of getting that work done, the less interference there is with them the easier it is for them to get on with the job and some of them have undoubtedly, from time to time, behaved in a way which is perhaps not so scrupulous as we should all like it to be. That was what the Franks Committee were anxious to safeguard against as far as possible. It was for that reason, I think, that an independent tribunal with adequate powers was set up, for such a tribunal could show up that sort of conduct if it in fact occurred: and provided it had adequate powers of inquiry, and power to have all the matters which were relevant brought before it, the setting up of such a Council on Tribunals would be likely to prevent the very happening of conduct of this sort.
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When the proposals to set it up were brought before Parliament, as my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth has pointed out, it was not found to have a very good set of dentures, and your Lordships insisted on more teeth being put into its jaw, if one may put it that way—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, deserved our thanks for acting as a very capable dentist on that occasion, and for taking a particularly active part in tightening up the Bill. To-day, one of the main points with which we are concerned is whether the Government have not been doing their best to pull out some of the teeth which we put in on that occasion: fortunately not painlessly, because the reaction of the Council has been a pretty quick one, which shows that the nerve has been touched. I am sure we all hope that they will continue to react strongly to the tooth-pulling process which seems to have been going on.
This brings me to the Buxton case, which seems to me to be a test of the sincerity of the Government in regard to this matter—perhaps the acid test. What happened in this chalk-pit case? It is so familiar that I do not propose to go over it. What happened from Major Buxton's point of view was that he gave his evidence and called his witnesses at a public inquiry, and thought that he had gained a victory. If it had been in a court of law, then he would have gained a victory. But then he saw it snatched from him behind the doors in Whitehall. My Lords, it seems to me that the attitude of the Government in regard to this case has been thoroughly insincere. If the Government had said, "It is our policy that there should be ample chalk or lime for agricultural purposes, and the amenities of the people who live in Essex must give way to that policy", then I, at any rate, would have respected them, because the policy of the Government, which they have been put into power to carry through, must be the essential thing throughout these problems.
Whenever the recommendations of an inspector are contrary to the clear policy of the Government, most of us, I am sure, would not in any way blame the Minister in question for overriding the report of his inspector: but, of course,

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Ministers have never taken that particular attitude in this case. What they in effect said, sitting in Whitehall and consulting other experts behind doors, was, "We are satisfied that on this question of amenities the inspector, who spent days down there going over all the land, listening to the expert witnesses who were called before him, listening to them being very carefully and stringently cross-examined, was wrong, and that the people who had never visited the place and never been called at the inquiry, who wrote opinions on bits of paper which passed backwards and forwards between one Ministry and another in Whitehall, were the people who were right." That is the sort of thing which entirely confirms the suspicions which the general public had and have as to the way these things are done, and really, in a sense, makes the whole of what one would regard as the major activities of the Council on Inquiries almost a footling and futile procedure.
All that the noble and learned Viscount has said in defence of the Minister of Housing, in my view, has just deepened the suspicions of the public. It is sometimes almost a trap to have a great advocate at one's call. It encourages people to take up a position which is obviously an indefensible one, because they say: "Well, we have Mr. So-and-so, and he is one of the ablest men, if not the ablest man, at the Bar, and he will persuade the jury"—or the judge, as the case may be—"that we have a good case, although we know perfectly well we have not". It is perhaps unfortunate that the noble and learned Viscount, whose astonishing ability in matters of this kind is well known, has been relied on, so to speak, by the Minister of Housing to pull his chestnuts out of the fire in this way.
We have all heard on numerous occasions—and I feel a little diffident about using the phrase again—that justice must not only be done, but must be clearly and manifestly done. It seems to me, and must certainly seem so to Major Buxton, that not only has justice not been done in his case, but that it has clearly and manifestly not been done. It would have been so easy, if this sort of line of action was going to be taken in the Ministry, to have reopened this inquiry and put these people, these technical civil servants
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from the Ministry of Agriculture and from the Ministry of Housing, into the box and let them give their views about this matter in public, and subject themselves to cross-examination—that very powerful weapon which has not, so far as anyone here knows, ever been used to check upon the evidence which these people gave to the Minister, and upon which the Minister took action in overthrowing the report of his inspector.
The whole of what has gone on in Whitehall has, as is always the case, been wrapped up in secrecy and in equivocation. Where, for example, is all the
correspondence which must have passed back and forth between the Council and the Minister, and the Council and the noble and learned Viscount, which obviously ought to be made public so that we know what has been said? When questions were put only a week or so ago (perhaps it was a little more than a week or so ago) in another place, the Prime Minister himself said—actually, I think he slipped up—that the correspondence had been made public. So far as I know, it has not; but the mere fact that the Prime Minister himself said it had shows that he felt that it was reasonable and right that it should be made public. If that is so, surely that ought to be done.
I am quite sure that the noble and learned Viscount's heart is in the right place with regard to this matter. He showed that during the discussions which were held when the Franks Committee Report was being debated here, and when the Bill to set up the Council was before your Lordships. His heart is in the right place, on the side of justice; but here, as has been very aptly said in the current number of Public Law, that important and admirable British journal of administrative law, in the debates on this case in your Lordships' House he has been wearing his ministerial hat and not his judicial wig. That seems to me to be a very apposite view of the matter.
My Lords, I should like to finish my speech by quoting from the editorial comment on the noble and learned Viscount's speech in this House, when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, I think brought this matter up before. The editor says:
"Does not the Lord Chancellor see that his argument sounds completely unreal to the ordinary complainant? If the only question

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was one which was apt for extensive examination at the inquiry, then that examination and the recommendation based on it should surely be accepted. Everyone agrees that the Minister may properly not follow his inspector's recommendation for reasons (such as policy) not apt for examination at the inquiry. But the inquiry must and will appear farcical (and no earnestness on the part of the Lord Chancellor can prevent this) if the evidence of experts A, B and C at a public inquiry, with rights of cross-examination, is accepted by the inspector and then set aside, because of the evidence, on the same point, of experts D, E and F, which is given in private and not open to examination. Perhaps the inspector ought not to be required to make any recommendation but merely to collect the evidence. Perhaps his report ought not to be published. Perhaps there ought not to be any public inquiry at all. Any of these solutions would be more logical than a procedure which looks like a clumsy façade to conceal the reality of Departmental power."
My Lords, that seems to me to sum up the matter very succinctly and in a forthright way. It seems to me that unless the Council on Tribunals can get some reasonable answer and some satisfaction from the noble and learned Viscount and from the Government in regard to these matters, it will lose that confidence which it must have if it is to do a good job of work in the interests of justice and of the public in this country.
4.8 p.m.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, this is a very important subject, and I think we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, for his classical disquisition on this matter. I will confine myself here to the question of planning appeals and the subject of compulsory purchase. I speak subject to correction, but I understand that rules have been drafted for inquiries in connection with planning appeals and inquiries in connection with compulsory purchase by local authorities. I am not completely conversant with Parliamentary procedure, but I hope that when these rules have been finally settled they will be laid before Parliament in order that they may be properly considered.
In the first place, will your Lordships allow me to refer to the old and rather dreary subject of the method of appointment of inspectors and other persons who are required to hold inquiries? There is a feeling that the inspector and other people appointed to hold inquiries should be appointed by the Lord Chancellor's Department and not by the
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Minister. It is the old story not only of justice being done, but of its appearing to be done. I make no criticism of any inspector or of any Government Department in this connection; I have no doubt that they all act perfectly fairly. But, unfortunately, people appearing at such inquiries might think that an inspector appointed by a Minister does not enjoy that degree of independence which is essential to the exercise of judicial or quasi-judicial functions.
Another point, which I hope is dealt with by the draft rules, relates to what is known as "discovery of documents". It is submitted that a local planning authority should be obliged to provide a list of the documents to which it will refer at the hearing and should be obliged, on request of any parties interested, to produce and provide copies of any documents and plans relevant to the matters which are the subjects of inquiry. And, conversely, it is only fair to say that a local planning authority ought to be entitled to call upon the appellant, and any person who has indicated his intention to appear, to provide a list of the documents and plans to which he intends to refer at the hearing and to produce and provide copies.
Another point relates to answering questions by a Government Department. I understand the position to be that a representative of a Government Department cannot be called upon to answer questions directed to matters of Government policy. On the face of it, this appears to be a highly desirable form of restriction. However, it might be carried so far that it would exclude ministerial directions which, strictly speaking, are not in the nature of Government policy. This is a matter upon which I should like some information.
Although I have been speaking about planning appeals, I may say that exactly the same observations relate to the draft Rules which are being prepared in relation to the compulsory purchase of land by local authorities. Finally, I have been asked to mention a matter in connection with agricultural land tribunals and the discovery of documents. It is submitted that the procedure of the discovery of relevant documents should be the same as that in ordinary court actions. These are only a few and rather sketchy points, but I know that your

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Lordships' House abounds in veritable Justinians, who know a great deal more about this and every other subject than I do. With these few observations, I will resume my seat.
4.12 p.m.
LORD DENNING: My Lords, your Lordships are dealing this afternoon with an important new experiment in our constitutional system, the Council of Tribunals, set up to safeguard the individual against the State, against the Government Departments, in these days when the growing power of the Departments is an anxiety. When the Bill, which is now the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1958, was before your Lordships' House I ventured to describe it as a Bill of Rights—not the whole Bill of Rights, but the first chapter—because there are three chapters in this Bill of Rights.
The first chapter deals with tribunals—that is, the bodies that deal with what I may call justiciable disputes, disputes as to the right and wrong between an individual and the State: how much a man is to have as a pension if he is invalided during war service; how much industrial injury benefit is he to get; how much National Assistance he is to get. All these matters go before tribunals, which are now part of our regular judicial machinery, but not staffed by judges or by courts—staffed by tribunals. That is the first chapter. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack did a great deal in initiating the Franks Inquiry and this Act. So far, much has been done.
There are two further chapters needed to our Bill of Rights. The second one is as to inquiries, inquiries where there is a great deal of what I might call justiciable matter—finding out the facts in a matter where the eventual question is one of a policy decision by a Minister, such as a planning appeal. This was almost left untouched in the 1958 Act. It has to be worked out by the rules procedure.
The third chapter, not touched at all, is what I might call maladministration: bad administration, misconduct by a Government Department or its officers, where it is accused by an individual of wanting in fair play, such as in the Crichel Down matter, or of giving a con-
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tract to one person or of favouritism to another. Misconduct by officials, maladministration, was the whole motive which led to the setting up of the Franks Inquiry, but it was excluded from their deliberations because they already had enough to do. Dealing with accusations by the public against Government departments and their officers, the third chapter of the Bill of Rights, has not been touched. To some extent, the tribunals and inquiries were dealt with in the last Parliament and I was hoping that in this Parliament we could have dealt with maladministration.
If I may, I will deal first with the chapter on tribunals. May I say that the Council on Tribunals, from their Reports, have done a really magnificent job in seeing that the rules of procedure will be governed by the rules of ordinary fair play? And with reasoned decisions having to be given for appeals already made, if need be to a higher tribunal, and on points of law to the courts, there is very little now wanting in our system of tribunals. On this chapter, I have only one matter to raise—and it was raised by the Council themselves; that is, that they are confined to tribunals which have been actually set up. There are a large number of decisions still taken by Departments and Ministers which ought to be the subject of tribunals and which are not, and the Council ought to be authorised to consider whether some of these decisions ought not to be put before the tribunals.
Let me give your Lordships only two instances. One simple and homely instance is where the parents of a child, it may be a handicapped child or an ordinary one, wish to select a certain school for him, but the local education authority say that they do not approve of their selection, because it will be too expensive to send their child there or because in some way they do not consider the school suitable. Such a dispute between parents and education authority is decided by
the Minister or by his Department on paper. Ought not that to go to a tribunal for decision? At present, the Council of Tribunals cannot do anything with it.
Let me give another, a commercial, example. It concerns a cotton manufacturer who wanted to instal in his factory new machinery which was to

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come from Germany at a cost of £150,000. If this machinery was technically superior to anything we could make in this country, it could be imported duty-free, but if we had equally good stuff here then he had to pay duty on it. The machinery manufacturers here said that they had machinery just as good. The issue to be decided was whether or not it was as good. Let us see what the Minister of State, Board of Trade, said in another place when he came to deal with this matter. He said:
"Very often the Board of Trade have to decide cases where the makers and importers do not see eye to eye and it is the duty of the Board of Trade, which has no axe to grind in this matter, to adjudicate on these difficult questions. It is an unpleasant duty and one which, for my part, I would gladly shed."
There is a decision which is very suitable for a tribunal. But the Council on Tribunals has not any place in saying that it should go before a tribunal; it is still with the Minister. So on this first chapter which is on tribunals I would suggest (it is rather indicated in paragraph 31 of the second Report) that the Council on Tribunals should have the power to say that certain decisions of Departments should not be made within the Department, but should be made by an independent tribunal. There I leave the chapter on tribunals.
Next I come to the chapter which I may call the chapter on inquiries. As I said, there were only four or five lines in our 1958 Act about inquiries. But, indeed, the method was dealt with then for inquiries on a Governmental circular, saying how inspectors would behave. How glad we were that they were to give a Report; that the Report was to be made available to the parties; and, in addition, that if there was any new evidence given to the Minister after the inspector's report it should be made available to the parties! So was the Government circular. But, in truth, there have been two cases, at least, as your Lordships will know, which have given grave anxiety about the procedure at inquiries.
Under the 1958 Act rules of procedure are to be settled by the Lord Chancellor after consultation with the Council. But in regard to these inquiries I would point out two weaknesses in the present rules that need to be remedied. First, who is an aggrieved party? Who can
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complain of one of these decisions? Take the case of Major Buxton, who had his farm and his animals near to land where a chalk-pit was going to be opened. He said that the working of the chalk would affect the wellbeing of his animals and livestock. Was he a party aggrieved? He went to the courts of law, and the Judge said that any ordinary person would think he was a party aggrieved, but the judge held, under the legal decisions, he was not a party aggrieved because he had not what is called a "legal grievance". That case was not taken further. I believe that recently the Privy Council have widened the meaning of "party aggrieved" so as to include a person who has a genuine grievance because an order has been made which is prejudicial to his interests. If we depart from the old narrow definition (as I hope we have done), then a "party aggrieved" means, for instance, a person like Major Buxton, whose interests are prejudicially affected, and interested bodies. That is the question as to who can appear at these inquiries.
But the point on which more emphasis has been placed in regard to this chalk-pit case, as it is called, is that after the inquiry was held by the inspector and he reported in favour of Major Buxton and the applicant, consultations were held by the Minister with another Minister, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Let me say one thing in favour of what was done in 1958. Nothing of what happened would have been known but for the steps which this House took then. It is only now that we have reasoned decisions that we know what has happened. So we did a very good thing in getting as much information as we have. But now comes the question which has been raised as to how far the Minister can take advice on expert matters, on matters of fact, as distinct from evaluating the weight of evidence.
It was my duty when I was the Judge hearing appeals from pension appeal tribunals to consider this very matter, and Mr. Parker (as he then was) argued many of the cases before me. I should like to give your Lordships an illustration of how we decided it. There was a naval captain who at the age of 66 rejoined the Navy for his service during the war. He was subjected to great anxiety and

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worry and then suffered from a severe disease of the eyes, glaucoma. When he put in his claim for his pension it was supported by expert evidence of naval doctors and specialists that this disease would be affected by worry. But the Ministry said, "No"; they did not think glaucoma was affected by his war service. But they called no evidence.
The only material that they had for rejecting it was the advice of the medical member of the tribunal. Rightly or wrongly, it was held by the court over which
I had the honour to preside that that was not admissible. It was not merely the evaluation of or giving advice on the weight of evidence: the medical member was not merely doing that, but was giving his own expert opinion without the party having an opportunity of commenting upon it. So the captain was awarded his pension. If the principle in that case (it was the case of Starr v. Minister of Pensions, 1946) were to be applied in the case of Major Buxton, there might 'be room for the opinion which the Council themselves expressed. One does not know their view until one sees it in the Annual Report. They expressed the opinion that:
"Prima facie it appeared to us that Major Buxton's feeling of injustice might well be justified".
So it is vital in this second chapter of the Bill of Rights, in rules of procedure for inquiries which are to be submitted to the Council on Tribunals, that all those things should be put right so that there should be fair play. That is all that is needed but it is what one expects: fair play in the conduct of these inquiries.
May I say that I should like to go further? The powers of the Council in regard to inquiries are far less than those in regard to tribunals. They are entitled to hold tribunals constantly under review. They have no power, however, and no right to hold inquiries constantly under review, but only in such matters as may be referred to them or such matters as may be brought up specifically on occasion. I should like to see the Council on Tribunals have power to keep inquiries constantly under review and to deal with the procedure; and, indeed, not merely confine themselves to a Report which we only see annually, but make reports (the Act contemplates it)
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to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor or another Minister at the time. Surely it is more effective that this House should be able to see the report at the time, than to have to wait until it is commented on in the Annual Report. So there is room for great improvement in the second chapter.
What about the third chapter, maladministration, as in the case of Crichel Down, which set the whole thing into being, and about which we have done nothing? When Government Departments or their officers go wrong occasionally (it does happen, although not very often) and there are complaints against them, if they allot one contract unfairly or if they allot land as in the case of Crichel Down, what remedy is there for the citizen? The only remedy at the moment is by Private Questions in your Lordships' House or in another place, by a Motion on the Adjournment or by an ad hoc inquiry specially set up as in the case of Crichel Down or of the policeman, John Waters, of whom your Lordships may have read the other day. Is that machinery sufficient for the needs of the day? Is it not time we considered further machinery? I would not supplant the old well-tried ones, or necessarily go so far as the Scandinavian Ombudsman, but there is a parallel already, for the Comptroller and Auditor-General on the financial side, as I think my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth said, puts the fear of Parliament into Whitehall. Perhaps even the Council on Tribunals, strengthened, could receive accusations of misconduct made against Government Departments and could deal with them. At the moment the Council has no executive authority and has no deciding authority. It deals only with procedure and ensures that there is a fair procedure in tribunals and inquiries. Its functions are only advisory. It is our champion, but it is like a David with a sling and no stones.
We need this third chapter—what I may call the "Crichel Down chapter" of the Bill of Rights—to be investigated and implemented. Those are the three matters. Whilst we are grateful to the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor for the great work he has done on the first Bill of Rights, and to the Council on Tribunals for the work

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it is doing on tribunals and inquiries, there is a great deal yet to be done before the rights of the individual are adequately safeguarded in these days of the omnipotent State.
4.32 p.m.
LORD AMPTHILL: My Lords, my main purpose in rising to intervene in this debate is to draw attention to the responsibilities laid upon the Council on Tribunals in respect of statutory inquiries. These are referred to in paragraphs 18 to 22 and again in paragraphs 91 to 94 of the Council's Second Annual Report. To my mind, paragraph 91 is the most important, because after setting out the Council's powers under Section 7A of the Tribunal and Inquiries Act, 1958, they say this in the last sentence of that paragraph:
"We take this to mean that in suitable cases we have the power to consider the administrative procedures both before and after the inquiry."
My own experiences have convinced me that the Council have indeed a very important part to play in those directions. They are, of course, handicapped by the absence of the draft rules to which they refer in paragraph 93, but in the meantime the procedure to be followed in cases of compulsory acquisition of land under the Defence Acts is covered by the statement made in another place on March 6, 1959.
Anyone who, like myself, has been involved in one of these appeals will realise the truth of what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, said in opening this debate—in a speech with which I find myself in complete agreement—about the difficulties and frustrations which face an appellant. Therefore I think I can best assist your Lordships' House in considering this matter by briefly recounting some of my own experiences which will reinforce all that has been said, not only by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, but by all other noble Lords who have spoken.
I must at once disclose my personal interest, in that my wife and I are co-trustees for a very small estate of under 300 acres in Dorset, known as Ringstead Dairy Farm, which lies on the coast in Ringstead Bay, just East of Weymouth and to the West of Lulworth. My wife's uncle, the late Captain Ernest Lane, died in January, 1958, and left this portion
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of his estate to our son, appointing my wife and myself trustees until the boy reached his majority. At the moment he is only eleven. On taking over as trustees early in 1958, we found that not only were the Air Ministry still continuing their war-time occupation of 130 out of the 278 acres, but they were giving serious consideration to acquiring permanently some 60-odd acres in order to erect some sort of installation for the United States Air Force. Whether it was radar or wireless was not clear at that time.
Despite the fact that this beautiful and hitherto unspoiled bay was within that part of the Dorset coast which had only quite recently been designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act as an area of natural beauty, we found that the Air Ministry had, in fact, already obtained the consent of the Dorset planning authorities, while in August, 1957, we were to learn that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government had written on the 15th of that month—that is August 15, 1957—
"the installation would not gravely injure amenity as the site was in a relatively isolated hollow and was sheltered by the existing plantation."
In parenthesis I may add (and this becomes relevant later on) that at that time the Air Ministry and the United States Air Force were considering a different type of installation from that which appeared later. At that time it was what was called an ionospheric forward scatter station that was proposed. This comprised a large number of comparatively short masts; and the meadow in which these masts were to be erected is, in fact, the site of the ancient church and village of Ringstead.
Thanks to a subsequent change of plan, I am pleased to say, the Ministry of Works, with our glad consent, have now scheduled this particular part of Ringstead as an ancient monument. It is a beautiful spot, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goddard, who knows intimately, and loves every inch of that lovely coast, has told me that it was from this spot that the last of the Roman legions sailed away from this country. This is the spot of which the Minister of Housing and Local Government said the amenities would not suffer by the installation of this ionospheric station! In short, my Lords, the pass had really been sold

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before my wife and I came into the picture as trustees.
It is very difficult to find out exactly what was going on during these critical summer months of 1957, and in any case it is not relevant to the case I am trying to make. But I can say this. On April 8, 1957, Captain Lane received a letter from his land agent in which the latter reported receiving a communication from the Regional Land Commission stating that the Commission now understood from the Air Ministry that they did not propose to acquire permanently the 67 acres on which to erect a number of radio masts. Captain Lane and his agent were thus lulled into a sense of false security until, in August, 1957, there was some Press publicity about the proposed wireless station at Ringstead. On August 30, 1957, Captain Lane's agent telephoned the Air Ministry, and an official of that Ministry told the agent that the first he had known of the station going ahead was when he heard it on the 9 o'clock news on the Saturday night; and he added that, so far as he knew, they were still waiting for plans. They were still waiting for plans when Captain Lane died in January, 1958; and they went on waiting for them for some time to come, as I shall show.
My wife and I, as trustees for a minor, were not able to accept this, to us, unsatisfactory state of affairs, and in April, 1958, I wrote to the then Secretary of State for Air requesting further information. I pointed out inter alia that if indeed it was proposed to erect a wireless or a radar station at Ringstead, the 20 acres of amenity woodland included in the area were of no sort of use for that purpose. This correspondence with the Secretary of State dragged on until March, 1959, in which month my wife and I were invited to meet Air Ministry officials who would show us what was proposed. We met them. I have been a factory director for twenty years and I am used to dealing with drawings, but I have never seen such rough and unsatisfactory sketches produced as were produced at that meeting. There were also some photographs of a similar station in Greenland or some other remote spot.
It was very disturbing to us to find at this meeting that the United States Air Force had not yet provided the Air Ministry with final details of their re-
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quirements, but it horrified us also to learn that the scheme, as then laid out, entailing cutting down a large number of trees at the seaward end of one of the woods. The only satisfactory feature of that meeting was that by this time the actual acreage required had fallen from 68 to 14. This was in part due to the American Air Force deciding to have a tropospheric station instead of an ionospheric station, and in part, I suspect, due to the pressure which we were bringing Ito bear on the Air Ministry. The actual site had by this time been transferred to another meadow which is not an historical monument.
Early in April, shortly after this meeting, the Air Ministry served notice to treat for 14 acres and there was some "to-ing and fro-ing" between them and our agents. On May 7, 1959, the Air Ministry wrote a letter to our agents in which they said:
"The Minister will consider any reasonable objections submitted in writing within"—
my Lords, within—
"twenty-one days from the date of this letter."
I mention this because a statement in another place laying down the procedure stated that objections should be submitted
"within a specified time, which will be not less than twenty-one days."
We have never found out under what powers the Ministry stated we had to answer "within" twenty-one days. We had to obtain a short extension of time in order to brief counsel, and our agents duly submitted our reasoned objections. On June 2, 1959, we submitted our reasoned objections and finally the inquiry sat on November 30, 1959.
Before giving your Lordships a brief account of the actual inquiry and its results, I must explain the difficulties under which the trustees and their advisers laboured in preparing their case, because to a large extent the same difficulties must face any private citizen who seeks to oppose a Government Department and, in particular, the Defence Department—more particularly a Defence Department acting for a foreign power. In the first place, we were dealing with a site for a new secret system of signalling, the details of which were known only to the technical experts of the Air Ministry—and how much they knew I do not know—and obviously

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something must have been known to United States Air Force technicians, and even they were unable to provide us with final details.
Our professional advisers pointed out to us that in their opinion our objections would virtually have no chance of success unless it was possible to put forward at the inquiry alternative sites which would be as good as, if not better than, Ringstead for this highly specialised purpose. Therefore we had to try to find out from the Air Ministry what were the special requirements and why Ringstead was regarded as so suitable. This was a slow and painful process, like drawing teeth, I think partly because it had to be referred back to our American allies.
Meanwhile, we had found a consulting engineer familiar with this type of equipment—it was not easy, but we did find one—and on August 12 we wrote to the Air Ministry for the information we required to prepare our case. On September 9, and later that month, the Air Ministry sent us certain information but it was not until October 13 that the Ministry sent a written statement of their reasons for proposing to acquire the land. They would not accept our suggestion that their experts should collaborate with our consulting engineer in finding alternative sites, nor would they give us any information regarding the frequencies or wave-lengths on which the station was to operate. The consulting engineer whom we had retained fortunately had a good idea of the wave-lengths and frequencies which would be used, and he and our land agent toured the South Coast making many tests with suitable apparatus, as a result of which they located three or four possible alternative sites, which included Portland Bill.
Then, just before the inquiry, which was on November 30, the Air Ministry relented and provided details of wavelengths. This, of course, was too late to be of any real service to us. Thus, as your Lordships will see, we were gravely handicapped in the, preparation of our case, not only by the absence of vital technical information but also because without Air Ministry co-operation, which had been refused, our consulting engineer was very much restricted in his efforts to find alternative sites, because,
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of course, he could not get entry into the many areas on the Dorset Coast which, as your Lordships know, are occupied by the Service Ministries.
Little wonder, then, that at the actual inquiry our suggestions for alternative sites were "shot down", in the words of the ultimate report:
"One, because of interference with Army activities; one, because the terrain was unsuitable; and one because the degree of damage to amenity at Ringstead although grave"—
they got round to admitting that the damage to amenity was grave—
"and to be deplored would not justify the much heavier financial outlay which would be needed."
The fourth suggested site of Portland Bill I will refer to later.
I must come to the actual inquiry itself which opened at the Guildhall, Weymouth, on November 30, 1959. The inspector, or "appointed person", which I believe is the correct name, to hold the inquiry was that eminent Queen's Counsel Mr. J. T. Molony, who was in fact appointed by the noble Viscount on the Woolsack. I have absolutely no quarrel at all with the way in which Mr. Molony conducted the inquiry and, if I may say so without presumption, I think it was absolutely admirable.
After nearly two days' hearing in Wey-month the inquiry adjourned until a further hearing could be arranged in London, because the inspector, or appointed person, wished to hear further legal argument about the Ministry's powers compulsorily to acquire land from private citizens for the use of the Armed Forces of a foreign power. This is where we had a justifiable complaint, because I think the Ministry should have come to the inquiry prepared to answer that question, for obviously counsel representing the trustees was going to press for information on that point, and in fact he did so. The Air Ministry counsel confined himself to saying that the Ministry's powers could not be precisely determined. For this reason we had to have a third day's hearing, which was more expense, and, for reasons of illness, including my own, the further hearing could not be held until February 12, 1960.
Thereafter we heard nothing for some time, but when I visited Ringstead in August that year, 1960, having heard nothing, I found contractors for the Air

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Ministry already at work. I reacted very violently and very quickly. But shortly after that, a week or ten days later, in August, the manager of the hotel where we were staying brought me a copy of the local evening paper which had banner headlines, "American Wireless Station at Ringstead to go ahead. Lord and Lady Ampthill lose appeal". Two days later I received, forwarded from London, dated August 15, a letter from the Secretary of State for Air, and this letter, in accordance with the procedure announced in another place on March 6, 1959, gave a summary of the appointed person's findings. Among those findings was one that the proposed station would impose noteworthy damage on the amenities of Ringstead. So much for the Ministry of Housing and Local Government's view expressed three years earlier!
The inspector made six recommendations of which I shall quote only three, because the others deal with roads, fences and such details in the event of acquisition. The three main recommendations were:
"A. The proposed compulsory purchase at Ringstead should not be proceeded with for want of legal power.
"B. That Portland Bill offers the opportunity of accommodating the United States Air Force installation without appreciable detriment.
"C. If the legal opinion stated at (A) is not upheld the compulsory purchase at Ring-stead should be proceeded with only if and when the possibility stated in (B) (i.e., Portland Bill), has been explored and negatived by an authoritative high level inter-Service decision."
My letter went on to say that the Secretary of State had decided that compulsory purchase should be proceeded with, that the Secretary of State had the necessary legal powers, and that Portland Bill was unsuitable because the available sites were too small and/or would obstruct and interfere with Admiralty establishments.
In view of this letter, all I felt I could do was to put down a Question for Written Answer in your Lordships' House seeking information about these legal powers claimed by the Secretary of State for Air, and this I did. It was during the long Recess last year. I gave the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack private notice of my Question and he, with great courtesy, gave me a full reply in advance of the
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Answer which was printed in the record. It was, in fact, printed in the record of proceedings in your Lordships' House for October 25, 1960 [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 225, col. 1085]. In the face of this reply, the trustees felt they must accept the decision. Moreover, they were not financially able to test the matter in the High Court. Nevertheless, my Lords, we have achieved something. The fenced area will be only about four acres, with a further three acres on the seaward side which is restricted; we cannot plant trees or build houses on it. This is better than losing 67 acres, including 20 acres of amenity woodland. But it has taken three years of hard fighting and it has cost a very considerable sum of money which the estate can ill afford.
In view of the terms of the inspector's report, or rather the Air Ministry summary thereof, which is all we have been allowed to see, we asked the Air Ministry for our costs or at least a contribution thereto. We drew their attention in particular to paragraphs 321 to 326 inclusive, and in particular 323, of the Franks Report. In due course we received a letter signed by an Assistant in the Solicitors' Department of the Air Ministry rejecting our application. Therefore, within the last few weeks we have referred this question of costs to the Chairman of the Council on Tribunals, for which reason I must say no more on this subject, though in paragraph 122 of the Second Report of the Council on Tribunals I think they rather expect that my submission to them may be only the first of many.
I apologise for taking up so much of the time of the House in giving an account of our experience in the Ring-stead case. I felt justified in doing so because I believe that this Ringstead inquiry was the first public one to be held under the procedure announced in another place on March 6, 1959. Therefore, in a sense we were the guinea pigs. I can only hope that it will be possible for the Council on Tribunals in time to clear away the frustrations and difficulties which we faced. To my mind it is very important that this detailed code of procedure should be introduced as soon as possible, because then, and only then, will it be possible for private citizens to have some check on their Ministries.
I have, by implication and possibly directly, said many hard things about the

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Air Ministry and other Ministries involved, but I should like to say that now that work has started at Ringstead we have received the maximum co-operation from the Lands Department of the Air Ministry in an attempt to preserve the beauty and amenities so far as possible. They have succeeded in resiting the station slightly so that no trees will have to be cut down. For the same reason the Air Ministry have insisted that the two 120 foot masts should be brought down in sections. If they had not arranged that, we might have had to cut down something like 100 trees. For all this the local residents and we trustees are grateful. None the less, it is sad to see Ringstead Bay go the way of Tyne-ham and Lulworth and other lovely places on the Dorset coast. I beg to support the Motion so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth.
4.58 p.m.
LORD BIRKETT: My Lords, in another department of our way of life, and a very important department, too, when the last batsman comes to the wicket, it is an accepted doctrine that he is not expected to make many runs. There is another very comforting reflection that comes to me at this moment: that in that situation he is not supposed to last very long. Therefore, coming as I do at this moment in the debate, I could not pretend to supply anything new to the subject matter. However, I still should like to add just a few words—and they will only be a few words—if only by way of endorsement of many things which have been said by previous speakers, and notably by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, who introduced this subject. I know that it is quite a conventional thing to congratulate the mover or introducer of the debate on the selection of the topic, but I think I voice the feelings of everybody in the House when I say that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, is really to be congratulated with sincerity because of the importance of the choice of subject which he has made to-day. And I would add, for my own part, that I think he is to be congratulated also upon the manner in which he surveyed this wide field of administrative law, as he termed it, and put forward his various submissions.
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It is always said, and I think with very great truth, that one of the great tests of the civilisation of any country is the way the laws of that country are administered; and that, of course, applies not merely to the High Court of Justice and to the magistrates' courts, but wherever judicial decisions are being made; and therefore it applies most notably in this wide field to which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, has drawn our attention. I think the heart of the matter lies here; that the subject matter for debate is,
"To call attention to the scope and powers of the Council on Tribunals and its operation."
I think the central and essential matter which is contained here is to see, in so far as it is humanly possible, that in all these tribunals (and there are now, I understand, over 2,000 of them; and the number is growing every year), and in the statutory inquiries, to which quite different considerations apply, there should be a procedure which not merely commends itself to the people who are brought into immediate contact with the tribunal or inquiry, as indeed Lord Ampthill in his survey of that particular case has shown us, but also commands the confidence of the general public. I think that can be achieved only if, as Lord Lucas of Chilworth, I think, emphasised right at the outset of his speech, the decisions approximate to that thing that we call justice.
I am bound to say that I always use the word "justice" with some hesitation. The Royal Courts of Justice are in the Strand; but they are also called the Law Courts. In my judgment, there is a great difference between the settled law and the thing we call justice. I have quoted before, I think, in this House, but certainly on many occasions, because I feel that it is a most important thing to keep in mind, a saying of George Eliot:
"Who shall put his finger on the work of justice and say 'It is here'? Justice is like the Kingdom of God: it is not without us, but it is within us, as a great yearning."
Therefore, when I use the word "justice" I recognise all human fallibility; I recognise the different standards which are applied in different countries and in different places. But I think we all understand what we, in our English speech, mean when we say "Let us have justice as the supreme objective and the supreme attainment."

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I am glad to think that in this Report, the Second Report on the Council on Tribunals, that element breathes through the whole of the text. I heard my noble and learned friend Lord Chorley speak about "Whitehall English". I sometimes think that he has a slight Whitehall complex, because I read through this document with the greatest interest—and, if I may say so with all modesty, I am a great lover of the English speech—and it did not strike me as being something that Sir Ernest Gowers would condemn. I should like to quote two passages on the immediate point that I am making. One is in paragraph 8, where the Report says:
"It seems probable that before long this work will be exceeded in volume by work brought to the Council by members of the public. If this proves so, it will show that there is indeed a need for an impartial body to handle complaints and to look constantly for ways of meeting the public demand for high standards of administrative justice."
In that language I can find nothing of which to complain. Then there is another passage to which I should like to call attention, in paragraph 21:
"Subject to these considerations, however, our general task in relation to inquiries is much the same as in relation to tribunals—to see that standards are applied which satisfy the ordinary person's sense of justice and that these procedures bear those characteristics of openness, fairness and impartiality which the Franks Committee laid down for tribunals and inquiries."
Again, I have no complaint with language of that kind, either from the point of English or from the point of good sense.
I do not know who compiled the document, but I, for my own part, should like to congratulate the compiler or compilers upon the production of this Report, for I think that it presents the problems which have to be met in the sphere of the tribunals and in the sphere of statutory inquiries, with great fairness, with great force. And it also, as I submit, in all its sentences, breathes that air of saying, "What we are concerned to do is to have such powers that we can produce the procedure that will produce the results which will be appreciated by those who are brought into contact with the tribunals or the inquiries, and by the general public at large."
It is a mistake to think that procedure by tribunals or inquiries is something
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new. We are rather apt to think that it has all come into being because of the silent revolution of the twentieth century which resulted in that thing which we call the Welfare State. No doubt it is true that so much has been taken over by the State in recent years that it has become absolutely essential that some method should be provided whereby disputes between the citizen and the State should be successfully decided. It has always been the proud boast of the English judges, certainly since the Act of Settlement in 1701, that they have stood between the citizen and the State in order to see that there is no interference with the rights and the liberties of the citizen unless they are justified by law. I think exactly the same spirit is manifest in this Report with regard to the tribunal.
But the fact is that for many centuries the central Legislature has been delegating its powers. There was the great Statute of Henry VIII which gave the Commissioners of Sewers their immense powers—practically making them dictators. That delegated power lasted for 400 years, and even down to 1930 the modern commissioners of sewage and drainage boards acted on the authority of that great Statute to make their by-laws. So it is no new thing. In the eighteenth century, when the Commissioners of Excise were appointed, there was a great outcry, and Dr. Johnson himself referred to those worthy gentlemen the Commissioners of Excise, as
"Those wretches hired by those to whom the hated excise tax is paid."
They have survived, too; and although they are not what I would call exactly popular heroes in these days, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, certainly so far as my knowledge goes, do their work very fairly indeed and with immense efficiency.
But the great revolution—almost greater than the revolution of the twentieth century which we have lived to see—was certainly the revolution of the nineteenth century. After 1832, it is amazing to think of the immense field of private and public matters—public health, child welfare, factories, criminal law: almost every subject one can think of—that was dealt with by the Parliaments of the day. We hear in modern days how difficult it is to find Parliamentary time to pass some small measure

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which is so much needed—for example, an amendment to the National Parks Act, and matters of that kind. It is amazing to think how the Parliaments of the nineteenth century managed to get through all their work. So it would be wrong of us to think that this situation of to-day is novel or new.
The all-important thing is that it is now recognised almost universally to be essential. There was a time when the delegation of powers to tribunals was regarded with very great suspicion, particularly in legal circles. But the work of the tribunals—and I must add the work of the Council on Tribunals—has been such that I believe everybody is pretty well satisfied that this particular form of activity has come to stay and can be made to be a most beneficial thing.
There are just one or two matters to which I would refer in a sentence or two. This tremendous interest which is referred to in the Report by members of the
public is, I think, all to the good. I believe the more people are interested in the administration of the law, in whatever form it takes, the better it is; because the law ultimately rests upon the pressure of public opinion and therefore I feel that that is good. But the danger I fear is that it may so grow in volume that the present system of part-time members may become really rather difficult. I should be exceedingly sorry, for my part, to see any departure from part-time members at the present time. It may, of course, become necessary but, as I believe the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, said in his speech, it would be a very great pity for the thing to become professionalised at this stage. I agree that it would.
The example of magistrates is a very wonderful example. When we speak of the administration of the law we are apt to think of the High Court, the assizes, the Old Bailey, and all that. But the real administration of iaw takes place in the magistrates' courts and it is essential that the spirit of justice in those courts should be in the tribunals, and I hope very much that the part-time membership will not be dispensed with—certainly not at the moment. I believe that if the procedure of the Council is followed (and it is obvious from the Report that it will be) great attention must be paid, first of all, to the quality
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of the members we are to have on the court of first instance. We do not necessarily need people who are expert in some particular field, but people who are knowledgeable and wise and have the gift of judgment. We always used to say that a High Court Judge needed a little law but he needed more than anything else a great deal of common sense; and I think that that is certainly true of tribunals which come so closely in contact with ordinary men and women as these 2,000 tribunals do. Therefore the greatest possible care should be taken to see that our court of first instance, to which the public first come, shall be of the highest possible quality.
In that respect I cannot emphasise too much the necessity of having the right chairman. I feel that that is an immensely important matter. May I refer to a little past history? I see that the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, has left the Chamber, but he would recall that there were appointed certain chairmen—the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, was one—dealing with very difficult topics before the Advisory Committee on Regulation 18B. All kinds of difficult questions arose and it was because of men like the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, that that very difficult task was able to be accomplished without any public unease as a result. Therefore in these matters affecting so closely the lives, conditions and well-being of ordinary people I think it is very important that the chairman should be a man of outstanding ability. Emphasis has been laid in this Report on the important part taken by the Clerk. Clearly, in one or two instances the part played by the
Clerk was regarded by the Council as being too predominant. But speaking of the scope and powers of this notable Council I am sure that the gravest attention will always be paid to the quality of that first court.
Then for my own part I always think there ought to be a court of appeal, certainly upon questions of fact. I have brought with me to-day a short quotation which I should like to read to your Lordships. It really goes back to that revolution of the nineteenth century about which I spoke, Lord Justice Bowen (who later became Lord Bowen, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary) in 1893 made
some observations which I think are very

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apposite to-day on this matter of appeals. There was a case (and the facts do not really matter now) where some parish overseers had tried to prohibit an appeal to the courts on an assessment they had made to the poor rate. When it got to the High Court, Lord Justice Bowen said this:
"In a free country the very essence of such a system must be that there should be an appeal to some body who can say whether what these officers are doing is just. If no appeal were possible 1 have no great hesitation in saying this would not be a desirable country to live in where every parochial officer might do as he liked in the matter. It is quite true there is enough difficulty in appealing as it is but if there is to be no appeal at all the circumstances would be intolerable."
I think, therefore, there is no doubt that the ends of justice as I have tried to define them should be met and there should be, in addition to this carefully selected first court, an adequate and efficient court of appeal. In my opinion there should always be in the last resort an appeal to the courts of law on any point of law arising. No doubt the tribunals could be carried out by the writ of mandamus or certiorari, the ancient writs, but I think it is exceedingly important that the spirit which is manifest in this Report, which I think derives from our judicial experience in years past, should be maintained in the highest possible degree. Clearly, as this Report desires, the tribunals should have an appeal.
I think that is all I want to say about that, but I want to say just a word about the difficult matter of statutory inquiries. That is really very difficult and I appreciate every word that the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, said. I hope what he said will be taken note of, as I am sure it will be, particularly by the Council themselves. As I see it, the difficulty is this. We are dealing with a state of affairs where the inquiry ordered by the Minister is a part of the Minister's discretion, a part of the making and forming of the Minister's discretion for which he is answerable to Parliament. It seems a hard thing to say, but I believe it is true to say that the Minister cannot hope to be an impartial person in the sense that a Judge is impartial. He cannot make an objective decision as a Judge can. In the long run as a Minister of the Crown he is a member of the Government and must do that which is in
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conformity with the Government's wishes and the policy of the Government. In the long run it frequently becomes a matter of expediency as to what the Minister shall do. That is the grave difficulty.
I have felt that over the years in inquiries dealing with the National Parks. I remember that when the proposal was made to lift the waters of Ennerdale to provide water for the atomic factory at Sellafield, we, the Friends of the Lake District (of which I was President at that time), presented a most reasoned case and supplied the alternative sites where water could be obtained for those purposes. During the hearing, the inspector was obviously very much impressed, but the decision by the Minister was to turn down all our arguments, largely, I think, on the ground that the Government's policy was to support their procedure with regard to atomic factories at that time. But it is manifestly a situation of very great difficulty, and I agree that the suggestion which has been made—that instead of an inspector going down there should be some perfectly impartial person—is certainly worthy of consideration.
I must confess that this afternoon I was a little astonished at the freedom with which the case of Major Buxton was discussed, and I kept looking at this Order Paper, which refers to
"…the scope and powers of the Council on Tribunals…"
I think that in another place (I do not mean the place we usually designate as "another place", but in a court of law) there might have been some question from the Bench as to whether certain matters were really relevant. Because in this very Report, while the history of the matter is set out (and some very strange history, I quite agree), it is also set out that after the inspector had heard all the evidence, and decided that the appeal should be dismissed—that is to say, that the original ban should be upheld—the Minister came in and said, "On the contrary, I allow it". That is a very difficult situation; and I think that something really will have to be done to try to meet what is admittedly a very awkward and very difficult situation.
My Lords, let me end by saying that I find it very difficult to work myself up into, I will not say a passion, but indignation about Whitehall, about "behind

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closed doors", "bureaucracy", and language of that kind, because all the time there comes into my mind a picture, let me say, of the Minister of Housing, my good friend Mr. Henry Brooke. I happen to know how anxious he is in certain matters with which he is concerned to do that which is right and just according to the evidence before him. Therefore, all that I will permit myself to say this afternoon on the Major Buxton case is that it is a very curious situation. But the position being, according to this Report by the Council, that further discussions are going on between the Council and the noble Viscount who sits upon the Woolsack, I am quite content to leave the matter there. I content myself with pointing out how strange an anomaly it is that there should have been an inspector sent down, all the objectors giving their evidence before him, the inspector coming to a conclusion and the Minister—as he is entitled to do—turning it down and disregarding all the recommendations made. My Lords, I am afraid that I have kept you a little longer than I intended, and I apologise for it; but I am very glad to think that this matter has been raised, and I am quite sure that good will come from it.
5.24 p.m.
LORD CITRINE: My Lords, before the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor replies to this debate I should like to make a short intervention, though I have just discovered that our Deputy Leader wishes to follow me. My intervention is simply on these grounds: that what we are trying to do in grappling with this subject is really to adjust the liberty of the subject, which everyone must be anxious to preserve, to the growing needs of the community as represented by the State, and it is in the achievement of that adjustment that our difficulties are bound to arise. In reading through these two Reports of the Council on Tribunals it seems to me that they have been given a completely impossible job. They are a body of persons engaged in all kinds of pursuits, able to give only of their spare time to deal with this problem. We are told in their First Report that they are required to supervise—"review", I think, is the word—the constitution and the working of over 2,000 different kinds of bodies. I say that if they were working full-time they could not discharge that job ade-
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quately; and therefore we should not deceive ourselves into assuming that, whatever Reports finally come from this body, they can deal adequately with the subject. At best, they can only grapple with principles.
They are to be concerned with the procedure not only of tribunals but of all statutory inquiries; and I am perfectly certain that there will be a constant increase in the number of statutory inquiries as the work of the various Government Departments and the Government expands. The Reports make a clear distinction between the functions and the constitutions of tribunals and statutory inquiries, but I do not for one moment believe that the average man and woman in the country knows that difference. I believe that when they read of an inquiry being held by someone on behalf of a Minister they assume that in some way that body is analogous to a tribunal. The tribunal adjudicates after hearing evidence: the inquiry is advisory.
An inquiry is held on behalf of the Minister, and he must, in the nature of things, have the final decision. Just how many of the documents the Minister reads and just how many consultations he has before he reaches that decision, is something which I hope the Council on Tribunals will say more about; but I am not one of those who believe it is possible to carry on the functions of government and, at the same time, reveal all that takes place inside the mechanism of the administration of Government. Nothing has been said in the First Report about inquiries. I say "nothing": they are mentioned by name, but there is no description of anything that they are doing. We are told in the Second Report, twelve months after the First Report was issued, that the Council are still awaiting the draft rules of procedure—and this, twelve months after their First Report was issued.
After those general observations I want to refer briefly to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, which is mentioned in the Report. This body deals predominantly with workpeople and with questions upon which many workpeople feel very deeply. It deals with industrial injuries, for example, which were formerly dealt with by courts of law. They are now dealt with by the

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tribunals set up under the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance. The Council on Tribunals makes the significant observation—significant to me, at least, as a trade unionist and one who has had a good deal of contact with the minds of working men—that the officer of the Ministry sits adjacent to the members of the tribunal. Small as that may seem, perhaps, to some people who can draw distinctions and have clearness of mind and no prejudice on this subject, the Council took the view, which I personally very much endorse, that that procedure may easily give the impression that in some way the officer is a member of the tribunal which is really engaged in investigating an appeal against his judgment.
In paragraph 48 of the Second Report, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, mentioned at the outset, and which I did not recall after first reading the Report, with the same clearness as followed from his statement, something seems to me to be missing. I looked at paragraph 121 of the First Report with regard to this matter, and the text of it, in part, is this. It says:
"But in a few cases, and notably in the case of National Insurance Local Tribunals, the rules of procedure are so framed that for the purpose of arriving at their decision or discussing any question of procedure these tribunals are required to order 'all persons not being members of the tribunal, other than the person acting as Clerk to the tribunal' to withdraw from the sitting of the tribunal. The effect of this is to exclude entirely any Member of the Council and to deprive the chairman of the tribunal of any discretion to invite a Member of the Council to be present during discussion of these matters."
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, quite properly drew attention to what had happened to that observation, and in paragraph 48 of the Second Report we find that the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, when asked what steps he had taken, said, as Lord Lucas of Chilworth mentioned:
"The answer to the first part of the question is 'Yes' and to the second 'None'".
Now, what was the second "None" in reply to? The question was: what steps had he taken to ensure that members of the Council, in recognition of their special duties, were enabled to retire with members of the National Insurance local tribunals while they considered their decision? The Minister, in the Written
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Answer which has been referred to, said:
"The answer to the first part of the question is 'Yes' and to the second 'None'".
I do not know, but I can hardly believe that such an abrupt and extravagantly official answer—for that is what it is—which gives no information to anyone, could be the whole of the case. There must have been some correspondence, some letters, some observation, between the Council on Tribunals and the Minister before that answer was given. I hope that the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor will be able to tell us whether such a communication took place, or whether in fact consultation took place, and, if so, the nature of that consultation. When one talks about the liberty of the subject, I really think that a Minister in Parliament who can so ride off on a subject of so much importance to many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our people, is sitting pretty tightly upon what we have in the past been glad to call the liberty of the subject.
5.35 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Birkett, has been deprived of the privilege of being "last man in". Neither my noble friend who has just spoken nor I have given our names as possible speakers. In my own case, I had not thought I should be able to be here, and I was disappointed that I should not have the opportunity of saying something on this subject in which I have taken a very great interest in the past, and of which I have some little experience. The House has been deprived of more of the noble and learned Lord's speech than would otherwise have been the case. We were all charmed to hear him, and those of your Lordships who had the pleasure of hearing his discourses on the B.B.C. recently on "Seven Great British Advocates" will realise what we have missed.
The debate has ranged over a wide field, and we have had some very valuable contributions. I do not propose to go over those contributions in any way, except to say that I am quite certain that both the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack and the Chairman of the Council on Tribunals will have benefited from the debate we have had

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here. For that, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, for introducing the subject and for his constant interest in the question of tribunals and inquiries. Indeed, he has almost constituted himself as an unofficial Ombudsman, and we very much appreciate that.
The Report is a very helpful Report. It gives full information about what is being done in the field of inquiries, and it is rather startling to discover that last year no fewer that 122,000 cases were dealt with by tribunals, and that there were 5,700 statutory inquiries. Most of these statutory inquiries, by
the way, were dealt with by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and I would inquire, in passing, though perhaps I should not, how many of these he has been able to deal with personally. Obviously, most of these inquiries are dealt with at a much lower level. Perhaps it is unfair to judge the Minister personally on the decisions which sometimes emerge, for which, of course, he has to take responsibility but about which, in most cases, he cannot possibly know anything. A good deal has been said this afternoon about the chalk-pit case. I do not propose to say any more about it than I have already said in the past, except to repeat that I wonder whether in fact, at the time the Minister gave the decision, he was aware of that case or was not aware of it. It is quite on the cards that he knew nothing about it, and I am bound to say that, at the time when it called for a decision, it did not seem to give rise to very vital questions of policy, or the possibility of public controversy, which arose, of course, very much later.
I propose to limit what I have to say to the subject of the 5,700 statutory inquiries, relating mostly to town planning appeals and to objections to compulsory purchase. I have no personal knowledge, as has my noble friend Lord Citrine, about the tribunals, and I cannot say, therefore, how they are conducted, but I am aware, and have had considerable experience, of the town planning appeals arid these objections to which I have referred. I should like to say, first of all, that I am full of admiration for the quality of the inspectors who conduct the inquiries. They are a fine body of men—I do not think there are any
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women inspectors—and I have never heard the slightest criticism about the conduct of these inquiries, or even about the procedure at them.
I was a little distressed to hear the other day, when we were discussing the inquiry on Oxford's roads, the condemnation and the criticism of Sir Frederick Armer. He may be right or he may be wrong in his decision—this is not the time to discuss that—but in my view to criticise him personally for his decision was grossly unfair. He took an immense amount of trouble, and there is not the slightest criticism about the procedure or conduct of the inquiry. To criticise a man because you do not like his decision seems to me utterly wrong.
Incidentally, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that I think he was misinformed about the position of the inspectors. Perhaps the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor will reply in more detail, but the Lord Chancellor has a considerable voice in the appointment of inspectors, and I understand that they cannot be dismissed without his authority. I think think that this should be better known. It is understandable that there might be some feeling of doubt if it is not clearly understood that the inspectors are really the voices of the Ministers. In fact, pan inspector's duty is to report to the Minister concerned and to give him all the information which, in the nature of things, he could not possibly ascertain for himself. Therefore, the inspectors are servants of the Minister. But it should be clearly understood that in conducting pan inquiry, everything is being done to ensure that the inspectors carry it out with independence and objectivity. And I am satisfied myself that they are successful.
Such criticism as has been given voice to has not been about the reports of the inspectors, or about the way in which inquiries have been conducted, but about what has happened to the reports of inspectors after they have been presented to the Ministers. We had a full debate on the problems that arise, when we discussed the chalk-pit case, and I do not wish to repeat at any length anything I have said. But the public are entitled to feel a little apprehension at the fact that decisions are inclined to be incalculable. Obviously, when an

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inspector is reporting to a Minister and he is acting as the Minister's eyes and ears, it must be for the Minister to decide for himself what should be the decision. But normally one would expect that he would disagree with his inspector only on one of two grounds.
One ground is the question of policy. The inspector, looking at things purely as an issue on its own, might take one view. The Minister, looking at the broad question of policy, having a much wider overall picture, might feel justified in taking a different view. But is it not fair that those who appear before the inspector should be informed of that policy at the time? Is it fair to an appellant that he should go on making a case without being clearly notified of the policy of the Minister in relation to the particular matter before the inspector, so that he may be fully acquainted and be prepared to deal with it? Let me give one or two examples. It is the policy of the Minister of Housing and Local Government not to permit development within a green belt. That should be made perfectly clear at the outset. But it should also be made clear that there are possible exceptions, and that the Minister himself has recognised that there may be exceptions to this general rule. There is also the policy of discouraging the building of offices and factories in certain areas. That policy, and the limits of that policy, should be made abundantly clear at the time of the inquiry, so that the person who appeals should be fully aware of them.
The other ground on which the Minister may set aside the views of the inspector is that the recommendation of the inspector is against the weight of evidence. That is not a question of a Minister receiving new evidence to override the evidence which his inspector has had before him, but a question of considering the evidence which has come before the inspector and seeing whether, on that evidence, the recommendation of the inspector is justified. The Minister may call for advice on the significance of the evidence, but it is for the Minister, and for the Minister alone, to decide whether the weight of evidence is sufficient to justify him in overruling the recommendation of his inspector.
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There is one other matter, on which the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, obliquely touched, which I think is of some importance, certainly from the point of view of the outlook of the general public—that is, where the Minister is called upon to make a decision in a matter in which he has a departmental interest. In the normal case—say in a case where a local authority is seeking to acquire land compulsorily and an owner objects—the Minister can safely be relied upon to act as arbiter and to make a decision. But what happens in the case where the Minister himself is seeking to acquire land, or (as in the case to which the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, referred) where the Minister is seeking to do something, there has been an inquiry and the Minister himself is called upon to decide.
When I was Minister of Town and Country Planning, I was myself in that position. I was responsible for designating an area of land which was to constitute the area of a new town. If there was an objection to that designation, there was a public inquiry. The inspector heard the objections and then reported to me. I was then called upon to decide. Well, it would be perfectly natural and understandable that one should have a bias in favour of a designation which one had oneself made. One would be more than human if one felt, at the end of the day, that a case had been completely made out for rejecting what one had already done. I believe that no such case ever was made, although the results of the inquiries were that in a number of cases particular areas were modified. But it is putting too great a strain on the objectiveness of an individual in an important case of this kind, or even in the kind of case which the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, quoted, to expect him always to be absolutely objective in his dealings.
Furthermore, even if he is (the noble and learned Lord, Lord Birkett, paid tribute to Mr. Henry Brooke, and I would pay the same tribute to him; I have worked with him for many years on the London County Council and I have the highest opinion of his integrity), it is perfectly understandable that the general public, who have a decision of his on a matter in which he has a personal interest, a decision which they do not like, should feel some kind of doubt

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as to whether that decision was arrived at independently. I wonder whether it would not be possible (the Franks Committee did consider this) in cases of that kind for a decision to be given by somebody who has no departmental interest in the particular subject matter.
I want to refer quite briefly to two other matters. The first is the increasing complexity of these inquiries. Often they are in the nature of High Court actions, with expert witnesses on both sides, and it is increasingly difficult for an individual to appear on his own behalf, especially when he is confronted, as he may well be, with an array of learned counsel on the other side. Inevitably a person who has something at stake will have to employ a solicitor and counsel, and this can be very expensive because some of these inquiries range over several days. It seems to me unfair that the burden of cost should fall upon the person who appears. In some cases the objection may be a frivolous one; but in others, even when the decision goes against the individual, it is nevertheless quite proper that his objections should be heard and he should have a full opportunity of stating his case; and I feel that he should not be penalised for having done what is perfectly proper.
I would suggest to the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor that there ought to be some machinery for defraying the costs of people who appear at an inquiry, quite properly, and put before the tribunal facts which ought to be put before them in order to arrive at a decision. It does not mean that in every case it would be right to award costs, but it means that this power should be exercised fairly freely in proper cases. The case quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, which was to my mind a perfectly legitimate case in which to make representations, would in my view be one where the party or his trustees should not be penalised.
The last point I want to make is one referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning—namely, the question of who, other than the actual parties to the appeal, is entitled to make representations. Under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959, for the first time interested parties were given the
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opportunity of being informed of an application and they can make written representations to the local authority. What happens to those representations they never know. They cannot even be certain that they are considered, because in due course the local authority give their decision to the person who has made the application but to nobody else. It is left to those who are accepted as interested parties to find out for themselves what has been the result, if any, of their representations.
Then we come to appeal, and here they are entitled to appear. But, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, pointed out, their status is a little equivocal. They can appear and make their statements, and I believe they can even call evidence, but they are not officially recognised as interested parties. I am not sure whether they are entitled to receive even the actual text of the decision or whether they have to find that out in some other way. But even if they get the decision, if they have a grievance and feel that the conduct of the inquiry is such as to call for the attention of the court, they have no right to appear before the court to make these representations. I understand that the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack is looking into this to widen the scope of those who are interested parties.
Obviously this cannot be extended to everybody, but I should think it would be quite possible to draw a clear line as between those who have a general interest and a public interest in the matter, such as some of the amenity organisations, which could not be entitled to go to the court and claim to be interested parties, and those who are personally concerned, such as Major Buxton. I look forward to hearing the result of the Lord Chancellor's review of this, and whether he has now been able to make up his mind on whether the scope of persons who are personally interested can be widened.
I am afraid that my remarks have gone a little wide of the subject matter before us this afternoon, but a debate of this kind gives us an opportunity of conducting what is called a "grand inquest" on what is becoming something of tremendous importance to the people of this country. I am sure that nobody would grudge our taking a rather wider

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view of this matter than would be justified by the terms of the Motion which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, has put before us.
5.57 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like first of all to join with other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, for putting down this Motion and for the great care he put into the preparation and presentation of his speech. I join with him in saying again how much we regret the death of our old friend Lord Reading. I should like to tell the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, that during the interregnum Sir Hugh Rose, whose manifest capabilities are known to many of your Lordships, was good enough to act as Chairman, and the work was carried on with great care and efficiency during that time. And all his old friends in the House will agree that I was very lucky to be able to secure the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, as a successor.
There is one preliminary point that I want to mention, and that is to assure the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that I have no intention of practising any dentistry in pulling out the teeth of the Council. It is true that he may have seen from Who's Who that I am a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, but I assure him that this is purely honorary and on condition that I never use the knife. I am just as anxious as any of your Lordships that the Council should have teeth and should do its work forcibly, as well as accurately and carefully.
I think the first major point which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, had in mind, was whether the increasing burden of work now falling on the Council might tend. to put it mildly, to affect its efficiency. I have considered that point, but I think everyone this afternoon has agreed that it is essential that the members of the Council should be part-time members, men and women with great experience in other fields of life. Although the noble Lord suggested a larger staff, I think it was implicit in his whole approach that it would be undesirable if the work of the Council were to be done through a large body of officials. The value of the Council lies in the fact that
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the public have the assurance that the activities of professional administrators and members of tribunals can be scrutinised by a body of persons who have no axe to grind and who bring to their work a wide experience gained in other fields.
The noble Lord, Lord Citrine, was, I think, more anxious than anyone else on that point. May I remind him again that of course it is not the function of the Council to sit as an appellate body over the results of either the tribunals or the Minister or the inspectors. They have to see that the composition—and that is my responsibility—is right. They have to see that I carry on my responsibility aright. They can ask me how the composition is dealt with; they can suggest better methods and, perhaps it might be, a wider field of recruitment; and they can, of course, go and see that this can be done. I think the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, will agree from his vast experience that it can be done by a spot check; they can see how the tribunals of various sorts are being carried on. Therefore I hope that we shall not change the character to make this the head of a large body of officials. I have various ideas in mind. One, of course, as the noble Lord mentioned, is to enlarge the Council and still keep it of the same kind. I hope to discuss that with my noble friend Lord Tenby when we have had an opportunity of assimilating what has been said in this debate.
May I put this thought to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and, through him, the general public? There is another side to this matter. I am very anxious that no member of the public should feel barred from going to the Council and making his complaints. But, on the other hand, if you take a body of fourteen men and women who are doing this work part-time in order to serve their country, and if you throw at them an inspector's report, debates here or in another place, and notes of evidence at some inquiry, and say, "We do not like the result", obviously it is a very difficult task for fourteen part-time people to go through that maze of documents. I appeal to everyone who wants to make complaints to try reasonably to formulate what these complaints are, and to make them clear to the Council. I do not think that is an unreasonable request, and I hope that the public will follow it.

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Now may I deal with a point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, in which he was supported by my noble and learned friend Lord Birkett? That is the question of an appeal on facts from tribunals, and particularly rent tribunals. Again I ask your Lordships to believe that I am not fencing with this problem or putting up a debating case. I ask your Lordships to look at the social background of the work of these tribunals. Their prime duty is to fix reasonable rents for furnished lettings, and their decisions are therefore essentially matters of opinion. They are experienced in the work of their areas and in many cases—in fact I should think in all cases—they have inspected the premises. On that, they form their opinion as to what is a reasonable rent. Fixing rents for furnished premises with a maximum rateable value of £40 a year in London, and £30 outside, is not an exact science. That is work suitable for someone applying common-sense to conditions he knows in a regular way.
My first difficulty—and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, to consider it with an open mind, as I am sure he will—is why should an appellate body be able to form a better opinion of what is essentially a matter of practical opinion and local knowledge? My difficulty does not stop there. You have to consider the people who are mainly involved. What we want to provide for them is that the tribunals should be cheap, speedy and informed. As soon as you introduce an appeal, the process is protracted and, of course, if legal representation is widely introduced, or professional witnesses, it will become more costly. As I said, the rateable value is not exceeding £40 in London and £30 in the provinces. Nearly all the cases are with regard to the letting of a furnished room or rooms, and on the whole the tenants are poor and inarticulate, and include a large number of immigrants. In these circumstances, as I say, the danger of an appeal is that it makes the process protracted. On the other hand, if you were to put any costs sanction on to it you might frighten these people off from going and getting their rights.
I hope the noble Lord will agree—because he is always so fair-minded—that these are real difficulties as to appeals on
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fact. Of course, as he frankly said in his speech, there is, under Section 9 of the Act, an appeal on law. Any party may appeal to the High Court, or require the tribunal to state a case for the High Court and, in addition, they have the procedure certiori and similar remedies. That deals with the exceptional cases. It also deals with the case where they found on no evidence at all, because that is a question of law. I feel that that is a point which we ought to consider very carefully. It is so easy in this field to make the best the enemy of the good that I should be grateful if the noble Lord would consider it once again. I certainly shall. I have put my difficulties, but that does not mean that I shall shut my eyes to what the noble Lord has said. I shall consider what has been said by everyone, and by my noble and learned friend.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, raised the question (and the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, also dealt with it) about the position of my right honourable friend the Minister of Pensions. I think the noble Lord, Lord Citrine, spoke on the first point, namely, that it is mandatory under the existing regulations that the tribunal must—I repeat, must—order everyone out. I just want to add, however, that that was imposed on the express advice of the National Insurance Advisory Committee, which was appointed to advise the Minister in 1948 when the Act came into force.
The other point is that for some time (the noble Lord, Lord Citrine may have had these days in mind) the public were not admitted to these hearings. But that situation was changed some years ago, so that the public can now come to the hearing; and so, of course, can the members of the Council. But difficulty has arisen over permitting members of the Council to retire with the members of the tribunal when the latter are coming to their conclusion. As I say, this is not permissible under the present regulations; and to make a change would involve amending the regulations. Under the National Insurance Act this would have to be submitted to the same National Insurance Advisory Committee who originally advised against it; and it would also, of course, have to come to the Council on Tribunals.
I think there is here a difficulty which we have to balance. When one retires one has a very frank discussion—I think

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that well applies to any body of which I have been a member—and it is difficult for members of a tribunal to have as frank a discussion with somebody on the council rather watching and estimating whether or not they are talking common sense; and the Minister tells me that there is some difficulty on that point. Of course I will consider it, but I hope that noble Lords will see that it is not just an arrogant assumption of ministerial power; it is consideration of something on which the Minister has been advised on very high authority in the insurance fields and on which he feels members of his tribunal might be in some difficulty.
LORD CITRINE: May I interject on that point? First, the Council has the job of reviewing the work of the tribunal.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: A statutory job, a statutory obligation.
LORD CITRINE: It has that job—very well. But so far as we can see, it has no facility whatever for doing that job except such facility as is possessed by any member of the public: in other words, of being present at the actual hearing. But during the other part, which is even more vital, when the conclusions are being reached, its members are excluded; and they are excluded, apparently, under a decision made ten years ago, before this tribunal was appointed, before this Council was appointed. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, and I asked: was it not an arbitrary way to deal with the question merely to say, in the first part of the question, Yes, and in the second part of the question, No? Had an explanation been given such as the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has now given I certainly would not have raised the question as indicating discourtesy on anybody's part.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think I ought to continue for one moment, and then I think I shall have satisfied, or at any rate explained the matter to, the noble Lord, Lord Citrine. Now members of the Council can of course listen to everything that goes on. The tribunal has to give reasons for its decisions, so the Council members can compare what they heard and the reasons. The only
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thing that has not been done—and I think this is where the difficulty arises—is to permit the members of the Council to retire with the tribunal and listen to its discussions.
Let me take an example—and I do so only to illustrate the difficulty. As your Lordships know, one of the matters in which I am most interested is the functioning of magistrates: it comes into my life every day. I am always trying, especially with the appointment of new magistrates, to see that they appreciate the responsibilities of the position, that they are the best to do it, and that they get experience of the law. But I think any magistrate would feel I was going a bit far if I sent my Secretary of Commissions to retire with a bench of magistrates considering an actual case to see whether the young entry to the bench talked sense during their private discussions. I will consider the matter and consider what the noble Lord said, but it is not as easy as it at first appeared, and I hope that noble Lords will acquit my right honourable friend of being peremptory, as was said.
I am not going into the question raised on agricultural tribunals, by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. I told him that I would look into the question of discovery and I need not detain your Lordships on that matter.
I now come to the point raised by my noble friend, Lord Ampthill; and may I say, entirely without prejudice to the position, how fully I understand, appreciate and sympathise with his approach to the matter and his desire to preserve the national beauties of the countryside which means so much to him. The procedure which he mentioned, the procedure announced by the Secretary of State for War on March 6, 1959, was one that was invented to deal with the difficulties of the Service Departments. And that, I think, takes it out of the general category in which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, put it, of the Minister deciding in his own cause; because he will understand that it is very difficult, when a matter of high security, or a new installation of high security by a Service Department, is concerned. For in such a case there is really nobody else except that Department which can give the final word. Even the Ministry of Defence is in a different position.

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Therefore, in order that matters of high security can, if necessary, be dealt with in secrecy, we invented the procedure by which the Minister can authorise the compulsory acquisition under the Defence Acts of any interest in land; but he has to inform those concerned of his intention and to tell them that he will consider any reasonable objection. If any objector persists, the Minister must offer to the objector an opportunity to appear at an inquiry held by a person appointed by me. I think your Lordships will agree that is a reasonable approach to the difficult question of secrecy. I am sorry that there were these various points. Of course the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, gave a completely candid account of the matter, and there were really two points after the inquiry which, if my noble friend will allow me to say so, he took very well and did not try to make any false point out of at all. One was that the appointed person found that Ringstead should be spared on amenity grounds, if it were possible to establish the installation at Portland Bill; and of course he also took the view that it was impossible to bring the proposed acquisition within the terms of the Defence Act, 1842.
On the locality point, my right honourable friend was convinced that no suitable site could be found at Portland Bill and therefore that the construction at Ringstead should proceed. On the other point, the Law Officers and I myself disagreed with the view taken by the distinguished Queen's Counsel who held the inquiry that there was no legal power and that it was impossible to bring the proposed acquisition within the terms of the Defence Act. My noble friend was kind enough to say that I wrote to him in the middle of the then current long vacation and I tried to make as clear as I could why I thought there was legal power; and I referred him to the various Statutes. That is the position. I should like to deal with the further question of costs rather separately. As I say, I am sorry that the noble Lord had the difficulties he spoke of, but I have not been able to think of a better procedure for dealing with potentially security matters. I thought of all these things a great deal at the time and discussed them with all the relevant Departments. But if my noble friend, after his rather sad cause of reflection, can think of any improvement, I hope
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he will come and see me and have a talk about it. I shall be very pleased to consider it.
May I go from this to the question of costs? That is a very difficult matter and I am not going at this late hour to read out the paragraphs, but those of your Lordships who are interested will find costs dealt with in regard to one part of the matter in the Franks Report at paragraphs 323, 324 and 326. Summarising the Franks suggestion, I would say that it was that in compulsory acquisition cases in clearance schemes reasonable costs should generally be awarded to successful objectors directly interested in the land, but should be awarded to unsuccessful objectors only if the initiating authority had acted unreasonably, and costs should be awarded against an unsuccessful objector only if he acted frivolously or vexatiously. Your Lordships will see, even from the point of view of my noble friend, Lord Ampthill, that the Franks Committee test was not whether my noble friend was reasonable in putting forward his objection, but whether the inquiring authority was unreasonable in any course, and that just shows the sort of difficulty that arises in this field of compulsory acquisition.
There are also great difficulties in planning appeals, and my feeling is still, as I said to your Lordships before, that as any alteration in the present practice in regard to award of costs before both tribunals and inquiries presents real difficulties, before any change can be made the matter would have to be very carefully reviewed by the Council on Tribunals. I have had it in mind for some time—I warn my noble friend Lord Tenby—to refer this matter to the Council as soon as they are free to take it up, when they have finished with the matters which we all know they have in hand at the moment. I think that would be the best way, because it really requires working out in some detail.
May I say one or two words as to the general position. I think everyone who has spoken has put accurately the position with regard to departmental inquiries. The Franks Committee dealt with it in paragraphs 262 to 277, and everyone who has spoken agrees that the Franks Committee were right in saying that they had both a judicial and an administrative aspect. It has been said in the discussion

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that the danger is that what has been done since the Franks Report to emphasise the judicial nature of these inquiries has tended to obscure their function as essentially a part of one process, the object of which is to enable the Minister to be in the best position to reach a conclusion in a particular case. Of course, that conclusion, as your Lordships have pointed out again and again, may be affected by policy considerations.
I agree with what has found favour with your Lordships: that whenever possible there ought to be a statement of policy, so that people understand what are the limits within which they can put their case. But there arises the real difficulty in regard to this subject: when you are dealing with a compound like that, a compound of the judicial and the administrative, how are you going to get the constituents rightly mixed? The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, spoke this afternoon, but when I showed some objection a few months ago to discussing the merits of an inquiry before the inspector had arrived at his conclusion and suggested that that was analogous to the position of a case that is sub judice, the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, told me that I was over-stressing the judicial side of these inquiries, and he was strongly supported by The Times newspaper.
Yet, when I gave my view—some of your Lordships did not agree with it—that you can draw a distinction between the evaluation of evidence and the tendering of new evidence, then everyone went the other way and said I was not considering this difficult problem from a sufficiently legal point of view. I make no complaint. We are dealing with a new subject matter. I am most anxious we should get it right. I hope no noble Lord will ever for a moment think I mind criticism; I welcome it as helping towards getting a better state of things and a better procedure. But the fact that I should have had those two forms of criticisms within one month, shows how difficult is the subject matter. That is all I ask your Lordships to agree: that it is difficult, and on that basis we will try to improve it together.
May I just say one word about inspectors? I am not going over the old history. It was made clear by Mr. Butler, as early as October 31, 1957,
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that he proposed that in future the Minister would appoint inspectors only after consultation with the Lord Chancellor, and would be free to dismiss them, should such a necessity arise, only with the Lord Chancellor's consent. I want to assure your Lordships that that has not become a matter of mere "rubber stamping" the appointment of inspectors. What happens is that I am represented on the selection board for the appointment of inspectors. That is not an empty formality. The members of my staff who sit on the board are concerned to see that the candidates chosen are likely to have a judicial outlook. The Ministry representatives are concerned mainly with their technical ability. So far as our ability is concerned to judge by being in this field, I am satisfied that the inspectors are not under the thumb of the administrators.
The other point is the draft rules and procedure. There will have to be considered the two important points that have arisen—on the one hand, the question of what is new factual evidence, and on the other hand, the class of people who are entitled to come into the matter by reason of their position. What happened was this. The first thing I had to do was to collect the views of the sections of the Government which might be affected. We got out some draft rules and we had an informal consultation. It was before my noble friend Lord Tenby came, but Sir Hugh Rose was good enough to see the representative of my Department and to tell him that he thought it would help the Council on Tribunals better if I consulted the professional bodies and then brought back the rules amended in the light of that consultation.
That takes a considerable time. I am not blaming anyone for a moment—not even myself. I think that we had to consult them. We have not had all the replies. We shall do some redrafting and then bring them back before the Council on Tribunals. I would only say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, that sometimes delay works for our benefit. In this case, it gives us a chance to consider this difficult question of new factual evidence, on which I do not think anyone realised there could be such bitterly held differences of opinion until we had the chance of considering this case, into which I am not

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going to-day, and the other point that I have just mentioned. Your Lordships have been, as you always are, most kind to me.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, before the noble and learned Viscount leaves this question of the new rules, I quite appreciate what he has said—I think I myself said, "Let us turn the delay into good"—but what I should like him to do is to give the House the assurance for which I have asked: that, when all the consultation is over and Parliament is asked to pass and ratify these new rules of evidence, they will be presented to Parliament in such a form that Parliament can freely criticise and make suggestions, and Parliament will not be presented with them as a statutory instrument which can be prayed against only in toto.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to consider what is the statutory position, because I have not applied my mind to that. But the noble Lord will see that what I am saying is going to be the process is this: they will come from the professional and other bodies to me; they will then go to the Council on Tribunals, and the Council on Tribunals will state their views. So there is no question of this suddenly emerging from Whitehall like Pallas Athena out of the head of Zeus. Publicity must be given to them, and of course the Council on Tribunals, if they think we are making a big mistake, can take up the matter. So I should like to assure the noble Lord that nothing is going to be hidden in regard to the matter. I would rather he did not tie me on the statutory procedure until I have looked into it.
There was one other point on which I think your Lordships are entitled to a pronouncement, if your Lordships' patience will stand it. The noble Lord, Lord, Lucas of Chilworth, said that the Council on Tribunals should really act, or might be brought into the position of acting, as an Ombudsman. I have considered carefully all the arguments in favour of Ombudsman, which are really that there is insufficient machinery for investigating individual complaints which cannot be brought before a court of law; that there is no method by which an aggrieved individual can attack a piece of bad administration where there is no tribunal or inquiry—that is the
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sort of Crichel Down position; and that Members of Parliament feel they have certain limitations, especially in regard to the action of local authorities, nationalised industries and provincial police forces. I have summarised it shortly.
The difficulty is that if we are going to get into the Ombudsman procedure we must look at the powers that that needs. That would mean that the Council would need to be able to call for departmental records and to call civil servants before them for cross-examination. Tins method is used in relatively small countries with a population of four to six million. If you think of my right honourable friend having to initiate that procedure in the case of a country with 50 million, you realise that it would require a very large staff indeed; I do not see how it could be avoided. Secondly, it would mean a fundamental change in the position of civil servants in relation to their Ministers, and of course in the Ministers' responsibility to Parliament. If your staff are liable to that, then you must have a responsibility to the Ombudsman which, of course, is quite different from the present position of responsibility to Parliament.
It would also effect a change in the status of Members of Parliament. I notice two or three of your Lordships who have even longer experience of the Back Benches in the House of Commons than the fourteen years' experience which I myself have. One of the glories of the position of a Private Member is that he can, on behalf of his constituents, find a way of showing where the shoe pinches and make a complaint about it, and broadly—and as I say, I have seen it from both ends of the gun—I think it is effective. But what would be terrible from the point of view of our country would be if your Lordships were to substitute a new procedure which would take away that duty and responsibility from the private Member of Parliament.
I give your Lordships only one other matter, which will be amusing to those of your Lordships who have been Ministers of the Crown. The Parliamentary Question, although known in Scandinavia, is not much used; and according to my information, in each country something like 100 to 150 Parliamentary Questions are asked in a year. I can see noble Lords thinking

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of one day in another place when they have had to answer at least 40 Questions. I have had to do so, and I am sure other noble Lords have been in the same position. Therefore, that is something we have been able to develop and which I think must be taken into account, in addition to the differences in the law and our other procedures. Nevertheless, I hope that your Lordships will not think that, because I have put the difficulties, I have closed my mind. I am glad to think that a study of this Scandinavian procedure has been taken by the
Organisation of Justice. We hope to get their report in the autumn and I will consider it.
There is one other point of the extension; that is really the chapter 3 mentioned by my noble and learned friend Lord Denning, and also by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth. If I may put it in much less poetic terms, it is an extension to inquiries in respect of which there is not a duty under a Statute for a Minister. That again is a point which deserves great consideration, but I would put to noble Lords this fundamental fact. We must not so slow the government of this country that it becomes ineffective, just as I have said to your Lordships over and over again that if you insist on the most perfect and legalistic procedure for these inquiries, and increase the time from six to eight months to sixteen to eighteen months, on the whole you will have committed an injustice. Similarly here, if your Lordships are going to make difficulties for a Minister who wants to be fully informed before he takes an important decision, or reports his view of an important decision, by saying that he cannot have an informal inquiry in order to consider the point, then I think you are in danger of causing great difficulty in his doing his work.
Where do we draw the line? Clearly, if he asks AB to go and look at something on behalf of his Department, that would not be an inquiry, and I do not think anyone who has spoken to-day would want to prevent that. If the Minister says, "Collect people from three of my sub-departments to go and consider this together, or ask someone from another Department to come in and help" those would be informal investigations which I think should be left to the Minister.
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Your Lordships will agree that I had many points put to me, and that if I was to deal with them I had to occupy a considerable amount of your Lordships' time; but I apologise for doing so. I simply ask you, in conclusion, first of all to bear in mind the figures we have heard to-day—that there are 2,000 tribunals dealing with 122,000 cases and 6,000 inquiries. I do not want to be complacent, and I do not want any Government Department to be complacent. But I believe that it would be unfair to those who give their time as members of the tribunals, and broadly to the inspectorate of whom the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, spoke so highly, if we were to allow the relatively few cases that go wrong to blind us to the good, quiet, solid work that is done all over the country every day.
The only other points I want to make are these. I am quite sure that the experience the Council have gained in the past two and a half years is invaluable, and that their reports, in turn, will be invaluable to us who have been concerned with the business of government. The Council must attract and be staffed by men and women of the same high quality and the great experience that its members hitherto have had. It is with real sincerity that I ask my noble friend Lord Tenby to convey to his colleagues, and to accept himself, my deep gratitude and the gratitude of Her Majesty's Government and of every part of the House.
6.46 p.m.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, may I express my gratitude to the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack for his extremely courteous reply to a highly critical speech of mine. I expected a courteous reply, and I had it; and I am grateful to him. I am grateful also to noble and learned Lords and noble Lords who have made valuable contributions to this debate. I am also glad that the Chairman of the Council of Tribunals has seen fit to sit right through this debate, and I feel that the collective wisdom of the future will take us another step along this road on which, as the noble and learned Viscount says quite correctly, we are all learners; but let us be willing to learn. With those words, I beg your Lordships' leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

RIVERS (PREVENTION OF POLLUTION) BILL
6.47 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AILWYN in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [River Board's consent for pre-1951 discharges]:
VISCOUNT SIMON: This is a very simple Amendment and is really only for the purpose of clarification. It was always the intention and meaning of Clause 1 that it should be possible for applications to be made and dealt with as soon as the Bill becomes law. But it has been questioned whether the conditions attached to a consent given before the appointed date could be enforced before that date, in view of the fact that it is only after that date that the first subsection of Clause 1 becomes effective and declares a discharge without consent to be illegal. This Amendment therefore makes it plain that conditions may take effect before the appointed date, subject of course to subsection (6) of Clause 1 (which suspends their operation for three months or until an appeal is determined), and further makes plain that once these conditions are in operation they may be enforced under subsection (8) of the same clause. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 15, at end insert ("and where consent is granted before that date subject to conditions, those conditions may, subject to subsection (6) of this section, take effect before that date")—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 [Protection while applications are being dealt with]:
VISCOUNT SIMON VISCOUNT SIMON moved, in subsection (2), at the end of paragraph (d) to insert:
"or
(e) paragraph 32 of the Third Schedule to the Gas Act, 1948, or section sixty-eight of the Public Health Act, 1875 (which relate to pollution from gasworks)"
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The noble Viscount said: This Amendment and Amendment No. 4 are really on the same lines. Your Lordships will have observed that in Clause 2 we provide that once an application has been made for consent the applicant is protected from prosecution under certain enactments until the application has been dealt with,
either by the river board imposing conditions or by the Minister after appeal. It has been pointed out to us that there is a specific provision in paragraph 32 of the Third Schedule to the Gas Act, 1948, which imposes an absolute prohibition on Area Gas Boards allowing any waste products at all to flow into a river. That being so, the Gas Council have made the request that we should introduce this Amendment, and add to the enactments under which the applicant is protected from prosecution paragraph 32 of the Third Schedule to the Gas Act, 1948, and Section 68 of the Public Health Act, 1875, which also relates to pollution from gasworks. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 40, at end insert the said new paragraph.—(Viscount Simon.)
EARL JELLICOE: I fear I rather missed my cue on the last Amendment. I should like to make it clear that this Amendment, like the last one and the other Amendments which my noble friend will be moving, has the full support of Her Majesty's Government.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT SIMON: This Amendment arises from the fact that some doubt was expressed, both by river boards and also by industry generally, about the effectiveness of the clause as it now appears. This clause provides that in certain circumstances the protection given to applicants may be withdrawn, and the circumstances are,
"If…the applicant has since the making of the application failed to use, or to repair or maintain, any purification plant".
It was felt that in one way this was too wide, because "failed to use" might merely mean that it was used but was not used efficiently. The river boards felt that that was inadequate. On the other hand, industry felt that "failed to use" might mean that you had got to have full and continual use of the plant,

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and that a discharger might lose the protection of the clause where normal variations in the quantity or character of the discharge made it unnecessary and perhaps impossible to run the plant at capacity all the time. So the proposal is put forward that we replace those words by the words "make proper use of". I would just point out that the question of whether or not proper use has been made of plant, which is obviously a question of fact, would be decided, not by the river boards but by the magistrates' court, and it is only if proper use has not been made of the plant that the magistrates' court may decide, on an application, to withdraw the protection given to the applicant. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 2, leave out ("use") and insert ("make proper use of").—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [Protection for persons complying with conditions]:
VISCOUNT SIMON: This is an exactly similar Amendment to Amendment No. 2, dealing with the protection of the discharger once conditions have been laid down by the river board. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line. 20, at end insert—
("or
(e) paragraph 32 of the Third Schedule to the Gas Act, 1948, or section sixty-eight of the Public Health Act, 1875").—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5 [Review and variation of conditions governing discharges and new outlets]:
6.55 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: This Amendment has been submitted at the request of the river boards. They have pointed out that from time to time they may be asked for a purely temporary consent. For example, when a plant is being washed out once a year there may be a temporary consent for a particular type of discharge, and it is felt that it would
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not be at all appropriate in that case for all the formula prescribed in the First Schedule to be attached to the consent, and for there to be a rule that it could not be altered for two years. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 18, at end insert—
("(4) Subsection (2) of this section shall not apply to a consent or notice. which, in consequence of the temporary nature of the discharge to which it relates or for any other reason, will be spent within two years from the date on which the consent takes effect or the notice is given, and no notice shall be given under subsection (I) of this section varying the conditions of any such consent or notice except with the consent in writing of the person making the discharge.").—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clause 7 [Other provisions relating to discharges and new outlets]:
VISCOUNT SIMON: These three Amendments—Nos. 6, 7 and 8—all run together, and I hope that it will be to the convenience of the Committee if I speak to them together, although I understand that we have to deal with them separately. I am afraid they are a little difficult to follow, and perhaps I might be allowed to read to your Lordships how the clause will run when these Amendments, if the Committee agree to them, have been added. The clause will then read:
"If the occupier of land or premises from which effluent passes or may pass to a stream by two or more ways meeting at the outlet, or a point short of the outlet, gives his consent for the purposes of this subsection. the power to impose conditions under this Act or section seven of the principal Act as to effluent discharged from the land or premises shall thereafter (and notwithstanding any change of occupation) include power to impose conditions as to the nature and composition, temperature, volume or rate of discharge of effluent passing in each or any of those ways separately. A consent given for the purposes of this subsection shall be recorded in the register under subsection (7) of section seven of the principal Act but may be withdrawn by agreement with the river board or the Minister."
This is a rather complicated point. You sometimes have discharges running from two or three pipes into a common outlet. It may suit a discharger to have those three discharges tested and sampled separately. It was originally

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provided in the Bill that this could be done by the river board at their discretion, but it is now proposed that that procedure can be adopted only with the consent of the discharger. It is understood that in many cases it will in fact be suitable to the discharger to do it, and in those cases where it is not suitable it would not be at all appropriate to do it. I beg to move the first of these three Amendments.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 22, leave out from beginning to ("stream") in line 25 and insert ("If the occupier of land or premises from which effluent passes or may pass to a").—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I beg to move Amendment 7.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 26 after second ("outlet") insert ("gives his consent for the purposes of this subsection, the power to impose conditions under this Act or section seven of the principal Act as to effluent discharged from the land or premises shall thereafter (and notwithstanding any change of occupation)").—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I beg to move Amendment 8.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 29, at end insert—
("A consent given for the purposes of this subsection shall be recorded in the register under subsection (7) of section seven of the principal Act but may be withdrawn by agreement with the river board or the Minister.")—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 7, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Estuaries and tidal waters]:
VISCOUNT SIMON VISCOUNT SIMON moved to add to subsection (1):
("but as if, in relation to any tidal waters or parts of the sea to which the provisions of the said sections two to five, or any of them, are first applied at a time after the commencement of this Act, for references to the date appointed under section one of this Act there were substituted references to a date twelve months after that time or such earlier or later date as may be specified in the order applying the said provisions")
The noble Viscount said: This is purely a technical Amendment, designed to correct a drafting omission. Certain
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orders may be made by the Minister, after the Bill becomes law, under Section 6 of the Act of 1951, which will have the effect of extending river board control of existing discharges to tidal waters to which it does not already extend. The Amendment before your Lordships enables the Minister to fix an appointed date in respect of any such Order. The reason is that if an order were made after the Bill had come into force, it might even be after the appointed date in the Bill, and it would be necessary to appoint a special appointed date to deal with the particular order. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 18, at end insert the said words.—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
7.2 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON VISCOUNT SIMON moved to add to subsection (2):
"and the said Act of 1960 shall apply to any such tidal waters or parts of the sea as are not controlled waters but are waters to which, at the commencement of this Act, any of the provisions of sections two to five of the principal Act apply by virtue of an order made, or having effect as if made, under section six of that Act as it applies to controlled waters".
The noble Viscount said: This is again a purely technical Amendment to correct a drafting defect in Clause 9. The intention of Clause 9, broadly, is that the first three clauses of this Bill—those dealing with existing discharges—will apply, in tidal waters, only to those waters which are already, or may become, subject to an Order by the Minister under the Act of 1951. All the other parts of this Bill, much of which relate to new discharges and which amend the Act of 1951, apply to all those tidal waters to which the Act of 1951 applies, and they are the waters which were referred to in the Schedule to the Clean Rivers Act, 1960. It was thought that those waters in respect of which special Orders had been made were all included in the Schedule to the 1960 Act. It has been found that, in fact, there are a few which are not covered. There is one on the Yorkshire North-East coast and there are five in the Hull and East Yorkshire River Board area, and the purpose of this Amendment is to enable the Bill to apply to those six small tidal areas. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 18, at end insert the said words.—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 10 [Samples of effluent]:
VISCOUNT SIMON: This is a very small drafting Amendment. As your Lordships will see, Clause 10 provides for the river boards to exercise their powers under the River Boards Act, but it has been pointed out that the Lee Conservancy Catchment Board exercises its power under a different Act, and that is the reason for this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 35, after ("1948") insert ("or under any other enactment").—(Viscount Simon.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11 agreed to.
Clause 12:
Restriction of disclosure of information
12.—(1) If any person discloses any information which has been furnished to or obtained by him in connection with the execution of this Act or the principal Act he shall be guilty of an offence, unless the disclosure is made—
(a) with the consent of the person by whom the information was furnished or from whom it was obtained; or
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "the execution of" and to insert, "any consent or any application for a consent under". The noble Lord said: Clause 12 was inserted into the Bill in the other place during Report stage at the request of industrial interests, who felt that the existing law did not adequately protect a trader against leakage of information about industrial processes which river boards might acquire, and it is right that in the Bill the responsibility of river boards should be that better provision is made for the protection of the trader. I have no objection at all to the Federation of British Industries' view that there should be confidential retention of information which deals with industrial processes, and that there should be no danger of rival concerns gaining commercial advantage through information disclosed by river boards.
But the effect of this clause, as at present drafted, is very much wider than that. As at present drafted, this clause would prevent river boards from giving any information about any subject which has to do with the operation of the Act. River board officials act not only in connection with river board matters, but also as protection officers for fishing; and when they are so doing it could be said that they are acting under the principal Act. If that be so, and there were a thousand or ten thousand poisoned fish, the river board officers would be unable to give to those responsible for trying to keep our rivers clean any details of matters as were revealed by such poisoning.
I am sure that the promoters of the Bill do not wish to prevent a river board from co-operating with riparian owners and others in the prevention of pollution and the full exercise of riparian owners' Common Law rights. Since the war, three Government Committees—the Hobday Committee, the Armer Committee, and, a few weeks ago, the Bledisloe Committee—have all recommended that the civil law in relation to pollution should be retained as a valuable supplement to statutory law. In other words, those, whether individuals or fishing clubs, whose waters have been polluted should retain the right to claim damages against the polluter, and, where appropriate, seek an injunction. A river board has no power except to impose a fine, whereas the riparian owner can get action in the way of an injunction and in the way of damages.
For many years, there has been happy co-operation between riparian owners and river boards in fighting pollution. Samples of polluted water and dead fish are frequently taken by riparian owners and handed to river boards for analysis. The river board may or may not take criminal action; that is for the river board to decide. But when the owner claims damages under civil law, he certainly needs analyses of the samples to prove his case. And, indeed, if I read one paragraph of the Bledisloe Report to your Lordships, your Lordships will see that my contention is borne out. On page 52 of the Bledisloe Report, paragraph 191 says:
"…For the purpose of removing any doubt there may be, we think it should be made clear that in a Common Law action any

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sample taken by a river board official should be admissible as evidence."
As the clause is at present drafted, that would not be possible.
I quite appreciate the general purpose of Clause 12—to prevent the divulging of trade secrets which a river board official may discover in the course of his duties—but I must say that I think it is rather a remote contingency, as pollution has gone on for years past, and it was only at the Committee stage in another place that any fears were expressed. I regret very much that this clause was inserted without any consultations with interested parties such as the Anglers' Co-operative Association, which represents the interests of millions of men of all classes who fish all sorts of waters in this country. It would have been so much better, I think, had those responsible co-operated at the beginning.
The purpose of the two Amendments—and I move the first one; they are alternatives—is to provide industry with adequate protection while, at the same time, allowing the co-operation which has existed in the past to continue in the future, and also to allow the riparian owner to retain his civil law rights, assisted in their fulfilment with the help of the river boards, such as has occurred in the past. It seems to me quite unnecessary to impose such a complete ban on intercourse with outside people or bodies as this Bill at present proposes, and my first Amendment seeks to confine the ban to information that may be obtained as a result of consent or an application for a consent for the discharge of an effluent. I think that it is an eminently reasonable Amendment which I hope will find approval with the promoters of the Bill and also with the Committee. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 36, leave out ("the execution of") and insert ("any consent or any application for a consent under").—(Lord Balfour of Inchrye.)
7.11 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: This Amendment is not quite so simple as the noble Lord has tried to make us believe and as I am sure he believes himself. Like all your Lordships, I have only had an opportunity of seeing this Amendment this morning and there has not been a great deal of time to look at it, but,
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so far as I am advised, in the principal case that he has brought before the Committee the noble Lord has been misdirected. It has been pointed out to me that the power of sampling derives from Section 16 of the River Board Act; it is not derived from this Bill at all, and therefore Clause 12 would not prevent the passing of a sample, if, in fact, that is what is done. This raises a rather wide issue. I was not aware of this practice and I do not think that your Lordships would generally agree that it is a good idea for a public body to be given powers which they can then use to support a private person in claiming damages from some other private person. That seems to me a rather curious thing, but I understand it has been going on, and I am advised that this clause as it stands would not prevent its going on.
Generally speaking, I prefer the wording in the clause, perhaps because one always prefers the wording one has been brought up to, but. I do not know whether there is a great deal of difference in what is now proposed. I have to point out that the wording of the Amendment would need to be looked at, not only because applications and consents are affected, but also because the case—I think it is in Clause 1 (5)—where no application is made and the river board has to impose conditions would somehow have to be brought within the Amendment. I would ask your Lordships to accept the clause as it stands, and perhaps between now and the Report stage I could have some further conversations with the noble Lord—we have not had any talk together except a brief one in the House this afternoon—and see whether I can satisfy him that his Amendment is unnecessary or whether, between us, with the interests concerned, we can find an Amendment which could be accepted.
EARL JELLICOE: I think that at this stage the waters we have been discussing have become a trifle murky, even polluted. I confess that I am still not really clear about the full implications of my noble friend's Amendment, despite his lucid exposition. At first blush, I confess I also share some of the hesitation which my noble friend Lord Simon has just expressed. Therefore, I would hope that my noble friend Lord

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Balfour of Inchrye will not press this Amendment at this stage, more especially since he raised the question of consultation. On this Amendment there has been no chance of consultation with interested parties. I may add that before the existing clause was incorporated in the Bill, there was full consultation, at least with the River Boards Association. There has not been much time to consider this rather complicated Amendment. I should hope that we could go along with the suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Simon—namely, that if my noble friend could see his way to withdraw his Amendment at this stage, we could have a look at the whole matter between now and Report stage.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: I always want to respond to an appeal, but I must make one or two remarks—first of all, with regard to the strictures as regards shortage of time. Perhaps these would be better addressed to those who promoted the Bill and did not take into consultation the fresh water fishing and anti-pollution interests, but dealt so promptly and efficiently with large industrial enterprises.
EARL JELLICOE: I thought I had explained to my noble friend that there was full consultation with the River Boards Association, who surely deal with fresh water.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: Yes, but river boards vary very much and do not all have the interests of anti-polluters in mind in the way some of us would like. It would have been much better if the Salmon and Trout Association and the Anglers' Co-operative Association had been brought into the picture at an earlier stage, and that is the reason why there is such a shortage of time—I was only told about this at a later stage.
I will withdraw my Amendment provided the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, comes with me in the general intention that co-operation between all the interests aimed at keeping our rivers clean shall continue unprejudiced in the future as in the past. I was not much attracted by the noble Viscount's words when he spoke about a "curious thing". There is nothing underhand in a river board giving the result of an analysis to
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a fishing club or to a riparian owner. After all, the river boards are paid for
by the public, and I think it is only right and natural that they should render that service. If the effect of rendering that service enables someone to obtain damages, that is a matter for the judiciary to decide. But if the noble Viscount will come with me in trying to work out an Amendment—and I think he has a valid point with regard to my Amendment when he says that it covers the case where no consent is asked for—with the wish to co-operate in arranging that the liaison which has existed in the past should continue in the future and that the riparian owner's rights of redress by way of injunction for damages should not in any way be affected indirectly by the Bill, I shall be glad to withdraw my Amendment. Otherwise, I feel it is an Amendment upon which noble Lords could well express their views.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I do not wish to delay the House as late as this by dividing on this Amendment. I should certainly like to go with the noble Lord in the spirit of co-operation. I hope he will not ask me to sign my name to the rather long sentence he gave to me, which, I am afraid I have not got in my head. The only thing I would say is that I feel the co-operation must be not merely with the Salmon and Trout Fishing Association and the Anglers' Cooperative Association, but also with the River Boards Association and the Federation of British Industries—in fact, with all the interests concerned in the Bill. Provided that we have the cooperation of all the interests concerned in the Bill, I will gladly give the noble Lord an assurance that I will go with him to try to find a mutually acceptable Amendment.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: With that assurance, and with freedom to come back to the subject on Report stage, if necessary, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed.

HIGHWAYS (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
7.23 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Molson.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved, after Clause 3 to insert the following new clause:
Rights of certain councils to maintain county roads
". In subsection (2) of section forty-five of the principal Act (which precludes the council of a non-county borough or urban district council who failed to make a claim under section thirty-two of the Local Government Act, 1929 from making such a claim under section forty-live of the principal Act) the words ' not being a county road with respect to which they might have made such a claim under section thirty-two of the Local Government Act, 1929, but failed to do so within the time limited by that section' shall be omitted and in paragraph 1 of Part I of the Eighth Schedule to the principal Act (which prescribes the period within which claims may be made by the councils of non-county boroughs and urban districts under the provisions of section forty-five of that Act to maintain county roads) the words 'for the first time' be omitted."
The noble Lord said: In rising to move the Amendment standing in my name, I regret that this is rather a technical matter and I shall not be able to put the case before your Lordships in quite the same snappy way that the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, has been familiarising your Lordships with in connection with the last Bill. This Amendment involves Section 45 (2) of the Highways Act, 1959, and in order to explain it I feel that I must remind your Lordships of the provisions of that subsection. It says:
"Where a non-county borough or urban district has a population exceeding twenty thousand, the council of the borough or district may, within the period specified in that behalf in Part I of the Eighth Schedule to this Act, claim to undertake the maintenance of any county road within the borough or district, not being a county road with respect to which they might have made such a claim under section thirty-two of the Local Government
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Act, 1929, but failed to do so within the time limited by that section."
Your Lordships will observe that by the words of that subsection
"… not being a county road with respect to which they might have made such a claim under section thirty-two of the Local Government Act, 1929, but failed to do so within the time limited by that section",
the non-county borough or the urban district council who failed to claim under Section 32 of the Local Government Act, 1929, is precluded from making such a claim under Section 45 of the 1959 Act. Further, paragraph 1 of Part I of the Eighth Schedule to the 1959 Act specifies the period within which that claim under the provisions of Section 45 of that Act may be made by the council, again of a non-county borough or urban district, to maintain county roads within their districts, in the following words:
"In a case where the population of the non-county borough or urban district is found by the Registrar-General's preliminary report on any census taken after the commencement of this Act Ito exceed for the first time"—
I ask your Lordships to note those words—
"twenty thousand and the road is a county road at the, date of the publication of that report, the claim may be made within twelve months from that date."
There are 23 urban district councils (and I should say that this Amendment and the others down in my name are being moved on behalf of the interests of the urban districts) which for a variety of reasons either failed to exercise the right to make such a claim under Section 32 of the 1929 Act on the occasion when the population of the district was first reported to have attained the qualifying number or, as an alternative, accepted responsibility for the maintenance of county roads under agreements delegating such powers from the county council or under agreements by which the district council acts as agent to the county council.
By reason of the limitation of the opportunity afforded to make a claim as of right to exercise the functions of maintenance of county roads these councils have lost, apparently for all time—at any rate, subject to some new Act of Parliament—irrespective of how much the population may be in excess of 20,000, the right to exercise the functions of maintenance of county roads within their districts. Of these 23 urban

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district councils, no fewer than 12, I understand, have expressed a keen desire to have the further opportunity to claim to exercise the functions of maintenance of county roads as of right within their districts. According to the Registrar-General's Preliminary Report on the recent census, a further 28 urban districts have for the first time attained a population exceeding the 20,000 mark, and there is no doubt that many of these councils will be exercising their rights under the Statute to maintain county roads within their districts.
It is not the desire of these urban districts, so I am informed, that such councils shall be permitted to exercise the right of claiming to maintain these highways at any time after the attainment of a population of 20,000, but that they be empowered to exercise the right after each census and within a period of twelve months after the publication of the Registrar-General's Preliminary Report on the census, and not be limited to the first occasion when the Registrar-General's Preliminary Report on the census reveals a population exceeding 20,000. These limitations, I suggest, are altogether cramping. It is obviously very easy to miss the chance, so to speak, and then, apparently, one misses it for all time. It is quite simple to put this right by the deletion from subsection (2) of Section 45 the words
"…not being a county road with respect to which they might have made such a claim under section thirty-two of the Local Government Act, 1929, but failed to do so within the time limited by that section."
and from paragraph 1 of Part I of the Eighth Schedule to the Highways Act, 1959, the words,
"for the first time".
If these words were taken out the whole situation would be righted. I hope your Lordships will agree that this would be a reasonable thing to do and that this is a convenient opportunity for taking this course. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 3, insert the said new clause. —(Lord Chorley.)
7.30 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: I think I should point out to your Lordships that the form the noble Lord's Amendment takes is to move a completely new clause into the
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Bill. He has told us he does this with the support, or at the instigation, of the Urban District Councils Association. I think that is what he said. What worries me about this, in the circumstances, is that they are not the only authority involved. I do not think I need follow the noble Lord into a great deal of technical detail about which he told us in moving the Amendment because of the rather important matters of principle which are involved.
If this Amendment should be accepted, the urban district councils would receive certain powers, and those functions would be taken away from the county councils. Obviously, therefore, it involves material alteration to the present situation in technical, financial and administrative responsibilities as they are at present divided between the two kinds of highway authority. I feel the noble Lord will understand, and not think that I am being unfriendly, when I say
that the matter which is the subject of his Amendment is one that has not hitherto entered into our proceedings. It did not come up on Second Reading, and his Amendment was put down only yesterday. I think it would be wrong to accept an Amendment of this kind without full consultations having taken place between the authorities involved. I understand that that has not been done, but my noble friend Lord Molson will no doubt confirm that or otherwise.
What interests me a little more is that, so far as my right honourable friend's Department is concerned, there are some important questions of principle involved as to whether the efficient and economical maintenance of the highways will be promoted by this measure. Frankly, 24 hours is quite an inadequate time to consider such a matter. As I say, I do not wish to be unfriendly to the noble Lord—I merely mention that as a fact. Having regard to the factors I have mentioned, that there have not been full discussions between the various authority associations, and certainly not time for us to consider whether this would be beneficial for road maintenance, I must advise that this Amendment be not accepted.
LORD MOLSON: It was only at a few minutes to four yesterday afternoon that I learned from the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that he was intending to put down this Amendment. Your Lordships

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will have listened to his exposition of the extremely technical and difficult problem which is raised by this Amendment, and clearly there has not been time enough for this matter to be fully considered during that time. After all, there was ample opportunity for this matter to be raised in another place. I have managed to get in touch with the County Councils Association who were responsible for the drafting of this Bill, and I have asked their views upon this Amendment. It appears that the Urban District Councils Association have not been in touch with the County Councils Association upon the matter. It was briefly discussed last winter, but there is no agreement between the local authorities upon the subject.
There may be many occasions when it is necessary for this House to decide between the conflicting interests of local authorities, but I venture to suggest to your Lordships that it would be most unwise for us to come to any conclusion upon so complicated a matter as this at such very short notice, when there has been no proper discussion between the two associations concerned. For that reason, I hope the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw the Amendment, but in any case I hope your Lordships will not accept it.
LORD CHORLEY: I am much obliged to the noble Lord who represents the Ministry of Transport, and to the noble Lord, Lord Molson, for what they have said. I should like to explain that I was told that the Committee stage of this Bill would not be until the middle of next week. I have been away at quarter sessions, and I have not had time to turn round. I quite appreciate that this Amendment was put down very late in the day, but if the Government will give us so little time, it is more their fault than anybody else's. However, I appreciate that this is a matter in which the county councils have an interest, and as they have not had time to consider the matter and to consult with the other local authorities concerned I would ask your Lordships' leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clauses 4 and 5 agreed to.
Clause 6 [Power to fill in roadside ditches, etc.]:
7.37 p.m.
LORD BURDEN LORD BURDEN moved, after subsection (3) to insert:
"() Before exercising any of the powers of subsection (1) of this section in relation to a ditch within the area of a river board (not being a ditch to which section three hundred and eight of the principal Act is applied by the last foregoing subsection) the highway authority shall consult with the river board.
() Nothing in this section or done there-under shall prejudice or affect the operation of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, or permit the doing of any act which would have been unlawful by virtue of the provisions of the said Act of 1951 if this section had not been enacted or no works thereunder had been executed, and accordingly every pipe substituted under the powers of subsection (1) of this section for a stream within the meaning of the said Act of 1951 shall, for the purposes of that Act, be deemed to be a stream within the meaning of that Act."
The noble Lord said: I appreciate that this Amendment is also a late arrival on the Marshalled List, but I think that in this instance there have been discussions between interested parties and the Ministry. The Ministry is not unaware of the points involved in this Amendment—at least, I am so advised. At the outset, I have to say that this Amendment has been put down at the request of the River Boards Association, and in those circumstances I have to declare an interest. Like some other noble Lords, I have the honour to be one of the Vice Presidents of that Association. River boards are concerned with the works to be carried out under Clause 6 of this Bill from two standpoints: first, land drainage and, secondly, pollution. The position so far as the first is concerned, as I readily agree, has been to some extent met by the applying of Section 308 of the Highways Act, 1959, bringing in that section by subsection (3) of Clause 6. But it will be noticed that Section 308 of the Highways Act, 1959, applies only to main rivers as being the only watercourses under their jurisdiction.
The problem with which this Amendment seeks to deal is this. Few, if any, of the ditches within the scope of Clause 6 of the Bill would be of sufficient size and importance to justify being designated as main rivers. Therefore, as the Bill stands, unless this clause is amended, the river boards would have no control at all over the operations of the highway authorities. Without in any way

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reflecting on the admirable work of local authorities and highway authorities, I am advised that experience has shown the necessity for some measure of control, because in the past highway authorities have used pipes of insufficient capacity, resulting in flooding of the surrounding land. The Association believe that it would be in the interest of both parties for consultation between the highway authority and the river boards to take place. All that is asked for is consultation. Obviously the last word will have to rest with the highway authority if they take action against the advice of the highway authority.
There it is. There is nothing which the river board can do in the matter. But surely it is not too much to ask that, before action is taken which may result in damage and loss to very valuable agricultural lands, perhaps owing to inexperience in the problems involved, the river boards' wealth of experience should be placed at the disposal of the highway authorities. I should emphasise that it is consultation only that we are asking for in this Amendment.
So far as the second part of the Amendment is concerned the interest of river boards from the pollution angle is to ensure that no polluting effluent is discharged into the substituted pipe which from there finds its way into a water course. A highway ditch is of course a water course for the purpose of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, but a substituted pipe for a water course would not be a water course, as I am advised. That means that the
situation which the river boards particularly wish to guard against is this. No connection is made to the pipe which is substituted for the water course by another pipe draining the adjoining land. As matters now stand such a connection if made to a water course would require the consent of a river board. In other words, this clause, as it stands, by converting a water course into a piped method of disposal lessens the powers of authority of the river boards and there would be no opportunity of taking action under Section 7 of the 1951 Act if anyone discharged polluting matter into a drain, if I may use that term, which ultimately found its way into a river.
It seems somewhat strange that the Bill which we were discussing before dealing with this Bill is one for the prevention of pollution to rivers and the case which I have endeavoured to submit to your Lordships is that this Bill as it stands now without the Amendments which I beg to submit to your Lordships will actually provide opportunities for the increase of pollution to rivers. Or, to put it in another way, this Bill as it stands withdraws or lessens the powers of authority of river boards to prevent pollution. That is the case which I venture to submit to your Lordships and I sincerely trust that, if it cannot be accepted now, there may be some opportunity between the Committee stage and Report stage to see whether some measure of accommodation can be reached. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 43, at end insert the said subsections.—(Lord Burden.)
LORD MOLSON: I hope to persuade your Lordships that this Amendment, which falls into two separate parts, is really based upon a misapprehension. I am quite sure that we are all extremely anxious to ensure that this Bill does not in any way impinge upon the provisions of the Bill which has just passed through its Committee stage, and we are all most anxious to make certain that there is no pollution of the waters.
The first point I would make is this. Clause 6 widens the powers of the highway authorities only in order to enable them to do in the interests of road safety what they have always been able to do since the passing of the Act of 1959 (which, in this matter, re-enacted a provision of the Act of 1835) for drainage purposes. Therefore it is important to consider whether it is desirable to introduce special provisions in respect of this very minor extension of the existing powers when those safeguards do not exist in the case of the major exercise of those powers. So far as I am aware—and I have made inquiries about this—there has been no ground for complaint in regard to the operation of Section 308, which, as I say, has in its present form been in operation since 1835. Therefore I very much doubt whether there is any need for a provision of this kind.

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As regards the matter of pollution, I am advised that it would not be the case, after a ditch had been enclosed and the flowing water was passing through a pipe, that it could then be argued, or at any rate that the courts would uphold the contention, that the authority which had done so, or the landowner, was entitled to do through a pipe what he had not been entitled to do at the time when it was an open ditch. In any case, there is nothing in this Bill which affects the operation of Section 2 of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act, 1951, which reads as follows:
"Subject to this Act a person commits an offence punishable under this Section—
(a) if he causes or knowingly permits to enter a stream any poisonous, noxious or polluting matter…"
Now it is not, I am advised, the case that, because the ditch is replaced, is filled in, and a pipe is inserted to carry the water, that will have any effect upon that general provision. And that being so I submit to the noble Lord that there is no need for this Amendment.
As regards the matter of consultation, that is at the present time normally the rule and the practice. Again I am told that there has been no complaint on this score in the past, and I venture to suggest therefore that there is no need to provide for it. I would also point out that this clause does not give any right of entry, so that it would be necessary to obtain either the consent of the landowner or an order from a court; and therefore I think that this matter is abundantly covered. I hope that, with that explanation of what I am advised is the present law, the noble Lord will not press his twofold Amendment.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: I wish to rise in support of the River Boards Association's desires. I therefore declare my interest, like the noble Lord, Lord Burden. I am not convinced by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, because I feel that unless this Amendment is added we, the river boards, will be prejudiced in our action, because we can deal only with main rivers: this pipe put us out of court, and we must have the power to track down the various flows of water down which the pollution is seen to have come. Therefore, I am afraid I must strongly support the Amendment so well moved by the noble Lord, Lord Burden.
7.52 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: I think I ought to intervene at this stage, because there is another aspect of this Amendment to which I should draw your Lordships' attention. That is, if we were to accept the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Burden, we should be creating an anomaly in the legal position. It is not a very big one, but it is an anomaly none the less; and I am sure that noble and learned Lords, and noble Lords generally, will agree that anomalies in the law are undesirable. The noble Lord, Lord Burden, explained Section 103 of the Highways Act and drew our attention to the effect of Section 308. But one must regard the provisions of Clause 6 of the Bill as being only a very minor extension of the powers of Section 103. If we did what the noble Lord asks, and this Amendment were accepted, the protective provisions over the minor extension would be greater and wider than they are over the major powers already contained in Section 103. I hope I have made that clear. On that ground alone it is undesirable that this Amendment should be accepted. That applies, of course, to the Amendment as a whole.
Perhaps I may, as the noble Lord did, divide it into consultation and pollution—that point, of course, applies to the consultation. But I should like the noble Lord to think of this: that it would be a matter of normal sensible day-to-day administration for the highway authority to consult the appropriate river board as a matter of common sense, even if they need not do so. They would have everything to gain by doing so. if they do not, and if their efforts should cause flooding—which is really the fear in this case—the floods will do one of two things: they will either damage the adjoining land, in which case the authority will run the risk of a claim for compensation from the landowner; or they will damage the highway and they will have to put that right themselves. So they have everything to gain by consulting as a normal sensible process. It is the intention of my right honourable friend's Department, if this Bill becomes law, to issue an explanatory memorandum to highway authorities, which is a thing we always do when there is new legislation concerning highways; and among other things we propose to emphasise the great desirability of prior

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consultation with river boards before such work is undertaken. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that from me as sufficient safeguard in the case of consultation.
On the question of pollution, I do not want to go into the technicalities. I listened very carefully to what my noble friend Lord Molson said about this, and I am bound to say that I, too, am advised that, broadly speaking, the fears of the river boards on this are not well-founded. I am advised that in point of fact the legal argument advanced by the noble Lord is not quite right. So far as I can see, it is extremely doubtful how any pollution that took place, even through a pipe, could avoid the penalty for an offence under Clause 2. The noble Lord mentioned Clause 7 as well, and I would go so far as to say that there may be (perhaps I might call it) the shadow of a point in this. But in any case it seems to me that prosecution could still take place under this clause, since it would be a question of a pipe having been put in the ditch and the landowner having put another pipe into the ditch pipe. If it was not possible to prosecute him when it came out of the first pipe, it would be when it came out of the other—if I may put it like that. The argument the noble Lord has put forward is not quite correct, I think, and I hope that he will not press his Amendment.
LORD BURDEN: I am bound to say I am still absolutely unconvinced. The noble Lord, Lord Molson, said that no complaints have been made. But against that I put the statements of the River Boards Association—and those statements are made as a result of meetings and correspondence, and so on, from responsible officials of river boards—that flooding and other damage has taken place as a result of faulty small pipes being connected by highway authorities without prior consultation. I understand that these points have been put to the Ministry. The noble Lord, Lord Chesham, says that it is only a minor extension of the powers of highway authorities under this Bill. Why not give a minor extension to the powers of the river boards? What anomaly is created there?
There is the consultation in regard to main rivers; the noble Lord will agree
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with that—that is provided for. Why not provide for this consultation when similar work is going on? The noble Lord is quite illogical in regard to it, giving a minor extension of powers, on the one hand, but saying, "Oh, no, you create a legal anomaly if you give it to somebody else." That is the noble Lord's position.
LORD MOLSON: May I intervene? The noble Lord's Amendment will not in any way affect the powers exercised under Section 103 of the principal Act.
LORD BURDEN: I agree. The point is this. I was dealing with the expansion of the powers of highway authorities which is admittedly taking place. That is a minor extension under this Bill. The noble Lord has told us about that one extension. What the river boards are saying is, "All right, but at the same time as that minor expansion takes place, and not because we want work, we say it is in the public interest to safeguard agricultural and other land", and so on.
Look at the position in which landowners and farmers are put! Supposing there is a small faulty pipe and the farmer gets his land flooded and there is loss as a result. Look at the consequences to the farmer! The highway authority and local authority have to be prosecuted; he has to prove his case. If there had been time, some of us would have gone to the Ministry of Agriculture and asked them to say, "We have to safeguard the production of corn and other things in the national interest, and not stand on a sticky point about improving minor powers, expanding them to one and taking them away from the other."
The next point concerns a section of the 1951 Act which was read by the noble Lord, Lord Molson. He pointed out that action can be taken against a person who causes polluted matter to run into a river. The inference from that was that, if polluted matter flows from a pipe into a river, action can be taken—if it can be proved that it is polluted matter that is flowing in. From the noble Lord's remarks I draw the clear inference that my contention in regard to pipes and so on is not valid. I could not say that it would not "hold water", because we are talking about it holding something other than water. Supposing the highway authority connects a pipe

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which allows polluted matter to flow into the main pipe. Is the river board to take action against the local authority?
That is the sort of dilemma with which one is faced. As I say, I am absolutely unconvinced in regard to this matter. If there were more time to look at it in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture, whose responsibility it is to safeguard agriculture, I am sure they would say that these two Amendments are put forward by responsible people, knowing what is necessary in order to safeguard the interests which are entrusted to their care. I do not withdraw the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Clauses 7 and 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Supplementary provisions as to removal of obstructions from highways]:
8.3 p.m.
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: On Clause 9 there are three manuscript Amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney.
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY moved, in subsection (1) (c), to leave out
"except where the obstruction was caused by some other person".
The noble Lord said: I must first apologise to your Lordships for putting down a manuscript Amendment at such short notice. This was due to certain misunderstandings. There are three manuscript Amendments and, with your Lordships' permission, I will take all three together. As there are not many copies, I think I should read out the Amendments. They are to Clause 9, at page 7, line 17, to leave out from the beginning to "recover" in line 18; in line 19, after "caused" insert "or contributed to"; and in line 24 to insert at the end
", so however that no such expenses shall be recoverable from a person who proves that he took reasonable care to secure that the thing in question did not cause or contribute to the obstruction."
The effect of these Amendments is that paragraph (c) will read:
"recover from the owner of the thing which caused or contributed to the obstruction"—
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and so on to the end of the paragraph—
"conferred by this subsection, so however that no such expenses shall be recoverable from a person who proves that he took reasonable care to secure that the thing in question did not cause or contribute to the obstruction."
The Amendments raise a small but I think not unimportant point. It was a point which was referred to on Second Reading by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. Clause 9 deals with the question of the obstruction of highways, and paragraph (c) deals with the recovery of the cost of removing the thing which obstructs the highway—it may be a tree or a fall of earth or a dry stone wall, or something of that kind. Under the Bill as it stands, if a tree falls, or there is a cloudburst and a lot of earth is brought down on to the road, or some motorist knocks down a wall and the stones are in the highway, and the highway authority decides to recover the cost of removal, the owner has no defence unless he can put the blame directly on to some other person. Therefore he may be liable to pay for something for which he is in no way responsible. I feel that this is contrary to the general principles of Common Law and equity.
These Amendments seek to ensure that if the highway authority seeks to recover the cost of removing the thing, the owner of whatever causes the obstruction will not be liable if he can prove—and he has to prove it—that he took reasonable care to secure that the thing in question did not cause or contribute 'to the obstruction. In fact, if what happens could not have been foreseen or was caused by circumstances outside the owner's control, then that would be a defence to the owner against a claim by the 'highway authority for the cost of removal. I shave tried to make myself clear. It is a rather complicated point. I beg to move the first of my manuscript Amendments.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 17, leave out from beginning to ("recover") in line 18.—(Lord Amherst of Hackney.)
LORD MOLSON: I think the noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, has made out a strong case for the acceptance of this Amendment. It was one of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on Second Reading. At that time 1 was inclined to doubt whether it was in accordance with the existing principles of the law. And I believe that

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with a Bill of this kind we ought, so far as possible, to try to maintain the general principles of the law that applies as regards accidents of all kinds. I am now satisfied that this Amendment is generally in line with the existing law. I feel that it would be a hardship upon an individual, where he has taken all reasonable care to ensure that an accident does not happen, and what could not have been reasonably foreseen happens; and I see no reason why he should be penalised in that way. I hope your Lordships will accept the Amendment which has been moved by my noble friend.
LORD SILKIN: I do not think it is necessary for me to speak on this, because this is the very point I advocated on Second Reading, and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lard Molson, has had the good sense to accept it.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: I must declare an interest in this matter as I have trees on the verge of a road. I am in favour of the Amendment: it seems to me very sound. But as a matter of precedent, it appears to me that a manuscript Amendment of this very considerable importance moved in Committee requires some explanation. Surely we could have had some notice of the Amendment, since it was mentioned in a Second Reading speech, and if that was impossible it could have been put down for the Report stage. As something of a stickler for precedent, I must criticise the fact that we are faced with a manuscript Amendment in this matter, and I hope that we may receive some explanation.
LORD MOLSON: Many of us have protested this afternoon at the short time we have had for our Amendments. I do not know where the blame lies. If any attaches to me I will gladly accept it, but we have had to do a good deal of rapid thinking. There has been consultation between the people concerned. I have certainly been willing to be convinced by what I believe to be sound reasoning. I apologise to my noble friend Lord Iddesleigh. I entirely agree that the moving of manuscript Amendments is extremely undesirable, but in view of the fact that an Amendment of this kind had been advocated by the noble Lord, the Deputy Leader of the
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Opposition; that it had been pressed by the Central Land Owners' Association; that it proved to be acceptable to the Government, and that I was convinced that it was just—for all those reasons it seemed to me to be a case where we should use both the flexibility of our minds and of the procedure of this House and accept the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD AMHERST of HACKNEY: I beg to move the second Amendment in my name.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 19, after ("caused") insert ("or contributed to").—(Lord Amherst of Hackney.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY: I beg to move the third Amendment in my name.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 24, at end insert, ("so however that no such expenses shall be recoverable from a person who proves that he took reasonable care to secure that the thing in question did not cause or contribute to the obstruction.").—(Lord Amherst of Hackney.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 10 agreed to.
8.15 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved, after Clause 10 to insert the following new clause:
Adoption of private street after execution of street works
". The proviso to subsection (1) of section two hundred and two of the principal Act as hereby repealed and the following subsection shall be inserted after subsection (1):—
(1A) If within the period aforesaid the owner of the street or, if more than one, the majority in number of the owners thereof by notice to the authority object to the street being declared a highway maintainable at the public expense, and the objection is not withdrawn, the street works authority may, after the expiration of that period, apply to a magistrates' court to appoint a time for hearing and determining the objection so made within that period and shall serve on the objector or objectors notice of the time and place so appointed. The costs of any proceedings before a magistrates' court in relation to such objection shall be in the discretion of the court."
The noble Lord said: The object of this Amendment is really to alter the proviso to Section 202 (1) of the Highways Act of 1959. This subsection is in these words:
"When any street works have been executed in a private street, the street works authority

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may, by notice displayed in a prominent position in the street, declare the street to be a highway which for the purposes of this Act is a highway maintainable at the public expense, and on the expiration of the period of one month from the day on which the notice was first so displayed the street shall become such a highway provided"—
and this is the proviso which I suggest we should amend—
"that the street shall not become such a highway by virtue of this subsection if, within the said period, the owner of the street, or, if more than one, the majority in number of the owners thereof, by notice to the authority object."
Your Lordships will observe that by the proviso a street works authority can, by the mere formality of the service of a notice of objection by the owner of the street, or, if there are more than one, a majority of their number, be precluded from adopting a private street as a highway maintainable at the public expense. The Urban District Councils Association take the view that arbitrary action of this kind should not in fact be available and that a measure of independent adjudication should be provided to determine any such objection. They suggest—and this is what, in effect, appears in the Amendment—that the appropriate body to determine such an objection is a magistrates' court who, by Section 178 of this Act, are authorised to determine objections made by owners of premises to proposals of a street works authority to carry out private street works, and therefore appear to be the right authority to determine a dispute of this kind. I hope your Lordships will make this reasonable Amendment to the Bill and on that basis I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 10, insert the said new clause. —(Lord Chorley.)
LORD CHESHAM: I wonder whether I may be allowed to step slightly out of order and ask your Lordships' leave to say something on this Amendment and say it only once, because it is the same as I was proposing to say on the next Amendment, as and when the noble Lord comes to move it. Of course, I could say the same as I said earlier about the noble Lord's first Amendment on the Paper appearing rather late, but I do pot do so because fortunately this Amendment does not raise the same kind of rather important point of principle as was raised by his first Amendment.
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All I have to say is that I believe your Lordships consider this Amendment is acceptable and that the provision which it makes is probably quite useful, even if not to the extent that I greet it with the most tremendous enthusiasm. But certainly I do not know of any reason for not accepting this Amendment, although I am sorry I must say that if your Lordships do see fit to accept it then the drafting, I think, will require a little attention. It is a little suspect. It may be necessary to consult with the noble Lord about putting down a redrafted Amendment if your Lordships accept it at a later stage, but for drafting reasons only.
LORD MOLSON: With some difficulty because of the shortness of the notice, I have consulted the County Councils Association about this Amendment, and although they show no great enthusiasm for it and doubt whether there is any great need for it, they have no strong objection to it. Therefore I am happy to accept this Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and I hope it will prove acceptable to your Lordships.
LORD CHORLEY: I am very grateful for the reception which this Amendment has received. If not enthusiastic, it is at any rate sufficient to carry it through. I need hardly say, in respect of the drafting, that if there is anything wrong with it I shall be very happy indeed to accept the advice of the Government's draftsmen. May I ask whether it would be better to withdraw it now and put it down at the next stage, or should it be accepted now?
LORD CHESHAM: I think the more customary procedure is to withdraw it, on the undertaking that the drafting will be looked at, and to put it down more or less formally at a later stage.
LORD CHORLEY: In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.22 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved, after Clause 10 to insert the following new clause:
Contribution by street works authority to expenses of street works
". In subsection (2) of section two hundred and ten of the principal Act (which empowers the street works authority to bear the whole or a portion of the expenses of any street works

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which would otherwise be apportioned on or to the owner of any premises of which only the rear or a flank fronts the street) the word 'only' shall be omitted."
The noble Lord said: This is really an Amendment which I put down some time ago to another Bill but which the Government spokesman felt would be more appropriate in this Bill, which was known to be coming along. Therefore, on the basis that it would be acceptable later, I withdrew it then. The point concerns the contribution by street works authorities to expenses incurred in street works. Subsection (2) of Section 210 of the Highways Act, 1959, is in these terms:
"Without prejudice to their powers under the foregoing subsection, a street works authority may at any time resolve to bear the whole or a portion of the expenses of any street works in their area under the code of 1892 or the code of 1875 or under a provision in a local Act relating to such works, being expenses which would otherwise be apportioned on, or to the owner of, any premises of which only the rear or a flank fronts the street, and where an authority so resolve the liability of the owner of those premises in respect of those expenses shall be treated as discharged or reduced accordingly".
Your Lordships will observe that, as at present enacted, the power of a street works authority to contribute to the expenses of an owner of premises fronting a street under this provision is restricted to the expenses of an owner having only either a rear frontage or a flank frontage. There is a good deal of experience which has shown that, by reason of the direction of the boundary line of a street, an owner of premises liable to apportionment and street works charges may have both a front and flank frontage to a street, but by reason of the limitation of the provisions to which I have referred—that contributions may be made towards 'the expenses of an owner of premises having a flank frontage only—no contribution can be made to an owner in such circumstances towards the expenses of his flank frontage; and it is desirable, it seems, that a contribution towards the flank frontage may in these circumstances be made at the discretion of the street works authority. This could also be achieved by the slight amendment of deleting the word "only" from the provisions of subsection (2) of Section 210 of the 1959 Act. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 10, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Chorley.)
LORD MOLSON: There is an expression in colloquial conversation, "climbing on to the bandwagon". I have never quite known what a bandwagon is. I do not know whether it is a wagon which contains or carries a band; and, if so, I do not know why people should want to climb on to it. But anything in the nature of a Miscellaneous Provisions Bill tends to' be treated in both Houses as a bandwagon, and I am very glad indeed to think that the noble Lord, who has had this Amendment in mind for a long time and who was unable to get it incorporated in another Bill, should have been, as I hope he will be, more fortunate in the case of my Highways (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. I am very anxious indeed to provide transport for all good passengers, and I shall be very pleased if your Lordships will agree to the addition of the new clause moved by the noble Lord.
LORD CHORLEY: I like the noble Lord's bandwagon, and am very pleased to climb on to it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed.

POLICE FEDERATION BILL
Amendments reported (according to Order).

PUBLIC AUTHORITIES (ALLOWANCES) BILL
8.28 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lindgren I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into a Committee on the said Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Stonham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AIREDALE in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 6 agreed to.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH moved, after Clause 6 to insert the following new clause:
Reports on payment of expenses and allowances
". It shall be the duty of the appropriate committee or clerk of each local authority to report, not less than quarterly (in the public agenda and report of the council), the payments of expenses and allowances to members of the council and co-opted members of committees."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Amendment Which stands in my name, and perhaps I ought briefly to explain its purpose. What I want is for local authorities, or public authorities, to be required periodically, not less frequently than once a quarter, to report to the council the claims which have been made by each member of the council, and for there to be a rough classification of the heads under which each member of the council makes that claim. It is perfectly true that a local government elector can go to the council offices and effectively demand the right to see particulars of the various claims, but it is rather a labour for him if he is going through them all, and there will be very few electors who will take the trouble to-day. It is quite true that, by the same means, a local newspaper could go—indeed, a few of them have done so—but, in the main, there is not much trouble taken about it. Therefore, I think this requires to be made mandatory, and to be part of our effective law.
It may be argued that it is not quite right for councillors' receipts under these local government expenses to be divulged to the public, possibly to cause controversy about them, but I think that would be an ineffective argument. The salaries of Ministers of the Crown are widely known, and the salaries of Members of the House of Commons are widely known—it is £1,750 a year. It is also widely known that your Lordships receive three guineas a day attendance allowance so long as you attend. Therefore, we are in the light of day; everyone knows the recompense or expenses which are allowed; and I do not see why that should not be so with local authorities.
On the whole, we can be proud of our local government: it is straight, honest and upright. But there have been a few cases in various parts of the country
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where either there has been criticism or the district auditor has surcharged—and not all cases have reached a final conclusion. I admit that I am a Puritan in local government. I like British local government not only to be upright, but to appear to be upright. Therefore, I think it is desirable that there should be discouragement of members of local authorities, even though there are few who go wrong, overcharging or charging illegitimately either as against expenses they have not incurred, or against expenses which it is not reasonable to charge. I think this matter should have statutory provision. It is true that the local authority itself can do what I ask in this Amendment it should be made to do. I have no doubt there are some who do it, but there are many who do not, and I think they should all be required to do it. There have been, as I have said, a few cases of abuse, and I think that, if this Amendment were carried, it would discourage members of local authorities from being naughty in this respect, because the light of day would be shed upon expenses claimed and paid.
It is true that there is another difficulty. It may be said that surely the clerk to the authority, or the treasurer, as the case may be, can examine these claims, and if he has reason to feel that they are illegitimately made he can question the member about it and, if necessary, refuse to pay. But chief officers of local authorities do not like to get into controversy with members of the council, who are their masters in matters of this sort. Therefore, I understand the general practice is that no check is made on the legitimacy or accuracy of the claim. The only thing that can happen is that the district auditor may surcharge, and then the member concerned can, if he so wishes, appeal to the Minister against the decision of the auditor.
I hope very much that this Amendment will commend itself to your Lordships' House. There are no Party political aspects about it whatever. It is a question of good administration and of doing everything to keep our administration upright. It is not an undue interference with local government. We need not be afraid of this as an affront to the local authorities, or as an interference with their autonomy. Because, as I have said, in the case of Ministers, Members

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of the other place and Members of this place, everybody knows what we get, and there is no reason why that should not be so in the case of local authorities. Therefore, I earnestly trust that my noble friend Lord Stonham will see his way to accepting this Amendment, and that the Government will feel that they can give it their blessing. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 6, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Morrison of Lambeth.)
8.33 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth has declared himself a Puritan in local government. I must confess I have always tended to look on him rather more as a Cavalier than a Roundhead; but in this particular matter we must all have sympathy with his objective, and that is that, when public money is spent on expenses properly incurred by representatives of local authorities, and indeed by other bodies mentioned in this Bill, then the public should have the right to know how the money is spent and by whom it has been received. However, I must confess that I cannot see, if my noble friend's Amendment were accepted, how the public would know any more about it than they do now, because, as my noble friend has said, it is open to anyone now to go and inspect the register or the accounts on payment of one shilling. Indeed, small provincial newspapers, such as those which I direct in South Wales, do that regularly; and how delighted the citizens of Swansea are, for example, when they read in their local newspapers precisely how many pounds, shillings and pence each member of the Swansea Council has received by way of expenses in a given period! Any newspaper, as my noble friend suggested, can do the same.
My noble friend's Amendment in fact says that:
"It shall be the duty of the appropriate committee or clerk of each local authority to report"
quarterly on the payment of expenses. That would be on the agenda and reported to the council; but the members of the public would not know anything about it unless they happened to attend the council meeting or unless the reporter of the local newspaper reported it. This can be done now. The other point is
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that the present regulations do permit of the publication of the minutes of the council on expenses in far greater detail than my noble friend has asked for in his Amendment. Therefore, particularly in view of the fact that under the 1948 Act the Minister had power to make regulations in this precise matter, I cannot see that what my noble friend asks for is really necessary or is going to convey any more information to the public than they already have the right to obtain. In those circumstances, I hope he will not regard the Amendment as strictly necessary and that he will not press it.
EARL JELLICOE EARL JELLICOE Perhaps I may add a word. I, like the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, have considerable sympathy with what I take to be the broad aim underlying Lord Morrison of Lambeth's Amendment—namely, to close a possible loophole in our local government accounting machinery which may lead to abuses in certain isolated cases, and thus prevent any erosion of the standing of local government in this country. I am sure that that, as an aim, is something which we all share. But that said, I must say that I share most of the inhibitions which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has about this particular Amendment. In the first place, there is the point which he has made and to which the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, also referred, that under present arrangements local authorities do keep records of payments to their members, and these records are open to inspection by the local government electors. As I understand it, that requirement is laid upon local authorities. I think the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, suggested that they did it only if they felt inclined to do so.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: No; it is an obligation. There is an obligation to have them open to inspection by an elector, if that is what the noble Earl wants.
EARL JELLICOE: Yes. Well, let that rest. There is, as we agree a clear obligation at the present time. There is a slight technicality Which I found a little difficult in the noble Lord's proposed Amendment. His clause refers to reports being made
"not less than quarterly (in the public agenda and report of the council)…"

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I am not clear exactly what he has in mind there. Except in certain specialised contexts, I understand that the council "receive" reports from their committees and their officers, rather than "make" them, and the agenda seems scarcely the suitable vehicle, at least to me, for the publication of information of this sort. As I say, though, that is only a slight technical difficulty. But I suggest to your Lordships that there is more than a technical difficulty standing in the way of accepting this Amendment, with the aim of which we all agree. I do not think that we should take a step of this sort without careful consideration and consultation with the local authorities' associations, and there has not been the chance for that.
Finally, I would draw the noble Lord's attention to the fact that under Section 117 of the Local Government Act, 1948, the Minister has power to make regulations providing for the publication in the minutes of the body concerned, or otherwise, of the details of payments of allowances. His existing powers seem quite wide enough to permit my right honourable friend to make regulations of the sort the noble Lord seems to have in mind. I do not think, in view of the arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that further regulations are needed, but we share the aim of the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, and in the light of his remarks I will naturally bring the points which he has made to my right honourable friend's attention with reference to his existing powers under the Local Government Act. In the circumstances, I would add my voice to that of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, and hope that the noble Lord will not press his Amendment to-night.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: I am in a little confusion over this matter. We have, on the one hand, an argument from the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, that so many means already exist for the public or Press to see the expense sheets that no action is necessary. Then we have a statement from the Government Front Bench that the right honourable gentleman will have his attention called to the matter and that he will still consider the propriety of using his powers to make regulations on this matter. I am not sure that I know where I am.
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As between the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth and Lord Stonham, I can only say that your Lordships' House have always paid great deference to admitted experts. No one in the world knows more about local government than the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, and I very much hope that great attention will be paid by Her Majesty's Government to anything which the noble Lord has to say on this subject.
EARL JELLICOE: Before the noble Lord replies, I should like straight away to give him the assurance for which he has just asked.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: The Parliamentary Secretary was a little more progressive in this matter than my noble friend Lord Stonham who I thought did not move much further. It may be that my drafting is wrong. I admit that I drafted it out of my own head.
LORD STONHAM: This is a Roundhead not a Cavalier Party.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: I never quite understood the difference. But the drafting could be put right on Report stage, if the Government would help in redrafting. My noble friend says, and the Minister agrees with him, that already a local government elector can go and get information. My answer is that about one in a million may go—and that perhaps for an unworthy purpose. But good luck to them, if they go! Some newspapers pick it up, but they have to dig it out. Surely the better thing to do is to have a quarterly report in which it is all served up ready for any citizen to be able to discuss it and make his criticisms. Surely this is a very different thing from the existing somewhat hole-and-corner method of going to the town hall or county hall and digging it out.
I am rather sad that my noble friend Lord Stonham, for whom I have a high regard, should be rather resisting a furtherance of publicity for money received out of public funds. That is a sad state of affairs, which almost shocks me. I admit that the Minister has put an argument, as did my noble friend, that this
could be done by an amendment to regulations, but I should like the Minister to be more forthcoming about amending

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the regulations. I do not think that we ought to get the consent of the local authority associations to do it. That is quite wrong. By all means consult them about the drafting, if you like, so that they can consider it; but do not ask them for their consent. It is a sheer question of public interest, and it is the duty of Parliament and the Minister to protect the public interest.
My own view is that the best way of doing it would be by regulation. I explained earlier on what I want. I want the payments to each councillor to be returned and the classification made between one subject and another. There is a great deal to be said for amending the regulations, which would have the advantage of not delaying this Bill, which would perhaps cause some inconvenience to my noble friend and his honourable friends in another place. But I think we are entitled to a more forthcoming and sympathetic consideration from the Parliamentary Secretary. The Government probably had a sight of this Amendment by Monday afternoon and they have had time to think about it. If I were the Parliamentary Secretary in this situation, I would advise him to "chance his arm" and be a little more forthcoming. I am sure that the Minister would not throw him over or ask the Prime Minister to fire him. This is so obviously right, in the public interest. I want to make it more difficult for people not to play the game, and not to make it relatively easy, with not much risk—though, as I have said, I do not think there is much abuse, Therefore, before I agree to withdraw my Amendment, I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give me a little more encouragement about dealing with this by way of amending the regulations and I hope that my noble friend can do so, too.
LORD STONHAM: That is precisely the reason why I have risen to my feet. I am impelled by my noble friend's view that I have shocked him and that I supported any kind of secrecy in this matter. I tried to make it clear that in my private capacity, in the newspapers in which I have an interest, we give publicity to these matters, because it is highly desirable and necessary. I wish to make only two points to my noble friend. The first is that the regulations
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which have been referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, say that everybody shall keep records of all payments to members made under Part VI of the Act 'of 1948, indicating the amounts paid to each member and the heads under which they are paid, and that such records shall be open to inspection at all reasonable hours by any local government elector for the area of the body. These are conditions which now exist.
The point which my noble friend is asking the noble Earl to consider is: in what way can this information be conveyed more readily to the public of whom, as my noble friend says, perhaps only one in a million bother TO go and find out the present situation? If the noble Earl could convey to his right honourable friend that we think that there should be some consideration of changing the regulations, I think that what we have in mind and my noble friend's point would both be covered, and he would be able to withdraw his Amendment with much better heart.
EARL JELLICOE: I find it difficult to resist the siren song of the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, but I feel that it would probably be wise for me to be a little careful about following him along the primrose path he has sketched out. However, I should like to say this. First, of course, he is quite right in saying that there is no Party point here. Secondly, again I emphasise that, so far as the aim is concerned, we are all agreed that it is merely a practical point of the best way to go about it in the light of the Parliamentary timetable and our general desire to get this Bill, which is helpful in many other ways, safely on the Statute Book. What I should like to say to the noble Lord is that not only will I bring this matter to the attention of my right honourable friend, as I have already said, but I will represent to him the views which have been expressed not only by the noble Lord, but also by the noble Lord who is sponsoring the Bill this afternoon.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: I am obliged to the noble Earl and to my noble friend. I am glad that my noble friend and I are in agreement that it is desirable for this to be done, and that the noble Earl opposite understands that to be so. The noble Earl has spoken with perhaps a slightly greater degree

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of sympathy and understanding of my point of view, and therefore I hope he will present the matter to the Minister in the most favourable light that he can. It is the case that the great bulk of local authorities do not report these matters to the council, and it is a way of drawing attention to the payments made, which are not criminal in themselves, and are wrong only if they go wrong. It is right in principle that this should be done: and so is the Bill. But a council chamber is a good way of getting publicity if people want to find out. These reports can be seen in all public libraries, and it is desirable that this should be done. On the understanding that the noble Earl, while entering into no form of undertaking, will explain the situation adequately, and not without sympathy, to his right honourable friend, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed.
Bill reported without amendment.

CROWN ESTATE BILL
8.54 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty The Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Crown Estate Bill, has consented to place Her Majesty's interest, so far as it is affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purpose of the Bill.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this Bill is intended to complete the reorganisation of the administration of the Crown Estate following the report of the Committee on Crown Lands in 1955 of which Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve was Chairman. The Crown Estate Commissioners who were appointed under the Crown Estate Act, 1956, were asked, as one of their tasks, to review the Crown Lands Acts so that these might be brought up to date. The existing Crown Lands Acts under which the Commissioners operate go back over the years to 1829. They set out in some detail how the Crown Estate should be
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managed. The present Bill repeals these detailed Acts. It sets out the general duties of the Commissioners and gives them authority to manage the Crown Estate on behalf of the Crown without being tied down to detailed control over their management either by the Statutes or by the Treasury.
The Crown Estate is primarily an estate in land and the Bill provides that it should continue to be so. However, there are also valuable urban properties, some of an historic or artistic nature, in and around Landon, such as the Regent's Park Terraces, Regent Street, Carlton House Terrace, Richmond and Blackheath. The agricultural estates in England and Wales cover some 180,000 acres and in Scotland over 100,000 acres which include considerable areas of hill and moorland. There are also over 11,000 acres of forest land, the bulk of it in Windsor Forest.
The Crown Estate Commissioners have a really formidable task and I am sure the House will agree that we are indebted to Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve and his fellow Commissioners for the service they have rendered since 1956 in managing the Crown Estate. We now seek in this Bill to help them in the full and proper discharge of their duties, by giving them up-to-date powers rather wider than they now have and by removing some of the restrictions that have hampered them in the general management of the Estate.
Clause 1 puts them—for the first time—under the general statutory duty to maintain and enhance the value of the Crown Estate and the return obtained from it, though with due regard to requirements of good management. It also re-enacts the provisions of the 1956 Act under which the Commissioners are subject to the directions of the appropriate Ministers—at the present time my right honourable friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Scotland.
While the Bill in general gives the Commissioners the independence recommended by the Committee on Crown Lands, Clause 2 incorporates provisions designed to enable Parliament and the Treasury to know how they are discharging their responsibilities. These include the making of Annual Reports to Her Majesty and to Parliament, the

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keeping of proper accounts and the submission of these to the Comptroller and Auditor General and to Parliament, and the supply to the Treasury of any information they require.
Clause 3 deals with points of management. The most important is the requirement in subsection (1) that the Commissioners shall not dispose of an interest in land
"except for the best consideration which in their opinion can reasonably be obtained, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, but excluding any element of monopoly value attributable to the extent of the Crown's ownership of comparable land."
Although the provisions and powers are largely based on existing provisions and powers, there was some criticism in another place on the grounds that the general duty of 'the Commissioners to maintain and enhance the Crown Estate, which is the new provision I have already referred to in Clause 1 (3), coupled with the instruction to obtain the best consideration which can reasonably be obtained under Clause 3 (1), may lead 'the Commissioners to be unduly exacting or avaricious in the course of their duties. This is not in fact a fair interpretation, and that is made clear by a number of important qualifications incorporated in the Bill.
First, the general duty is itself subject to the qualification that there must be due regard to the requirements of good management. There may be cases, for example in the letting of farms, where it would not necessarily be good management to take the highest bid because, like any good landowner, the Commissioners would have regard to the general competence of the bidder, his ability as a farmer, his farming programme, his financial standing and his reputation. Secondly, in applying the requirement to obtain the best consideration, the Commissioners must have regard to all the circumstances of the case and this would include, for example, the use to which the land is to be put, whether for a commercial undertaking or not, and whether, and if so to what extent, that use might benefit directly or indirectly the Crown Estate.
Thirdly, any element of monopoly value is to be excluded. This arises in particular out of the difficult problem of valuing rights to use the foreshore and
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the bed of the sea which are part of the Crown Estate, and where the Crown Estate may appear to have a monopoly or a near monopoly. The application of the Commissioners' general duties when dealing with foreshore and seabed cases has
been very closely examined by the Government and the Commissioners. Where any appreciable sum of money is involved such cases will be referred by the Commissioners to the Valuation Office who will advise the Commissioners as to what is a reasonable consideration in the circumstances of the case, after giving the valuers of the intended purchaser or lessee an opportunity to express their views. The Commissioners have agreed that they will be willing to accept the figures assessed by the Valuation Office on the basis of instructions that the Commissioners have agreed with the Government.
There are also certain qualifications contained in the following clauses of the Bill. Clause 4 enables the Commissioners to make grants of land at less than the best consideration, or to make contributions for certain public or charitable purposes provided that this would be in the interest of the Crown Estate or of persons residing or employed on the Estate. Clause 5 defines the Commissioners' special duties in regard to the management of the Windsor Estate. In this case the duty is to continue the present policy of preserving the character of the Windsor Estate as a Royal Park and Forest. But the Commissioners will be entitled to dispose of land for public use in exchange for land of a similar acreage contiguous to the Windsor Estate.
The rest of the Bill is to all intents and purposes either a re-enactment of existing statutory provisions—since this is a consolidating as well as an amending Bill—or a tidying up of the present position. Clause 7 which
deals with the powers of the Minister of Works in Regent's Park comes into the tidying up category. It may not be generally known that the Zoological Gardens occupy land which is at present divided in regard to management between the Minister of Works and the Crown Estate Commissioners. This clause will now have the effect of putting all land occupied by the Zoo under the management of the Minister of Works. My Lords, I have dealt with the main provisions of this

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Bill, but, of course, if there are any points which other noble Lords would care to raise I should be only too pleased to clear them up in so far as I am able. In the meanwhile, I commend this Bill to your Lordships on the grounds that it carries out the recommendations of the Committee on Crown Lands, gives the Commissioners the up-to-date powers they need to carry out their duties of looking after the Crown Estate with maximum efficiency and at the same time greatly simplifies the statutory provisions. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. (Lord Hastings.)
9.6 p.m.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, my noble friends on this side of the House approve of this Bill as the logical completion of the reorganisation recommended by the Trustram Eve Committee, and we hope that it will facilitate the task of the Commissioners. There is a curious old-world flavour about some of the Bill. It traces the Crown Estate back to the Domesday Book, the Schedule to the Bill repeals part of a Statute of Charles II, and the part about the Crown ownership of the foreshore and the seabed up to the three-mile territorial limit has an old-world ring about it. I wonder, incidentally, whether this ownerships of the seabed has been a factor in consideration of the international negotiations on limits of territorial waters.
One point on the management of the properties causes one some anxiety, and I wonder whether the noble Lord can give us any enlightenment. He drew your Lordships' attention to the fact that the Commissioners are charged with the maintaining and enhancing the value and the returns from the estate with due regard to the requirements of good management, and they are told to sell only at the highest price. Those are difficult requirements to meet at the present time. There are a great many estates where it may be that they manage them well and profitably, but very much to the detriment of the general public by indiscriminate building and commercialisation of the properties. We know that the Crown are not subject to planning legislation, and it would therefore be perfectly within their rights, it seems
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to me, for the Crown Estate to follow the deplorable example of the Minister of Aviation in allowing advertisement on buildings on London Airport. If the Commissioners are really to follow their instructions and make the maximum revenue out of the property—which I suppose is what is meant by "good management"—what is to restrain them from lapses of taste such as we have discussed in your Lordships' House to-day or yesterday?
Then there is Clause 1 (4), about the directions that can be given by the Ministers to the Commissioners, and I hope the noble Lord will tell us that the Ministers would have no hesitation in giving directions to the Commissioners to ensure that the Crown estates generally are managed and developed with due regard to the public interest, to the common good and the general amenities, and to the requirements of good planning and development.
I must say that it gives one great hope that the Commissioners do act in an enlightened way when one sees what nay have done to Regent's Park Terraces. It was a long time ago when the Gorell Committee made the first recommendations for those Terraces, and I think it was the Government of which my noble friend Lord Attlee was Prime Minister which authorised the first steps for restoration. I see that work is going on actively now in restoring the Terraces, and a particularly ingenious piece of restoration and reconstruction has been done in Park Crescent whereby the front elevation of the Crescent has been reconstructed as an exact replica of the original, and yet behind it there are eight storey blocks of flats in the luxury class, which I imagine will bring in considerable revenue to the Crown Estate.
I think the Nash Terraces as a whole have been most excellently dealt with by the Commissioners: they have acted in the most enlightened way and have taken the best advice; and that encourages us to hope that they will act in an equally enlightened way in the future. But, all the same, there is a conflict between the requirements of good management and those of good planning and the Minister's power to give directions. I hope that that reserve power will never have to be used, but I see it is there in reserve so we may be confident that

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the estates will continue to be managed to the best advantage of all of us.
9.12 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for welcoming this Bill on behalf of the Opposition and I will try to reply to the points he made, in particular about the question of economics clashing with the public interest. Of course, as the noble Earl has pointed out indirectly, and as everybody knows, the revenue from Crown estates go to the Exchequer, and they are run on behalf of Her Majesty for the public benefit.
When it comes to planning, I think that the Commissioners really find themselves in much the same position as a private landowner. The landowner normally will sell only land which will not interfere with the natural and better development of his agricultural estate. He may, on occasions, have to sell land for economic reasons, but he will be very careful where he does so. But once that land is sold, of course, the people who buy it come under planning control. The same position arises with Crown estates. Although they are not themselves subject to planning control, they become subject to planning control when people take the building leases on them. The Commissioners always seek to co-operate with the planning authorities and expect to conform to provisions contained in development plans. I hope that will satisfy the noble Earl sufficiently because the Commissioners do take great care in this matter and, as I have said, the people who take over the land, whether they have bought it or leased it, are definitely subject to planning control.
I am sure the Estate Commissioners will be grateful to the noble Earl for pointing out the fine work they have in fact done in Regent's Park Terraces. They have always taken very great care of the historic buildings in their charge and, I think quite rightly, claim to have a very good record in that respect. As to questions on direction by the Minister, as the noble Earl said, reserve powers
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are there and can be used, but I think that it will probably not be necessary. The Crown Estate Commissioners are a body of very experienced and reputable people who have done a very good job, and I have no doubt that under this new Bill they will be able to do an even better job than they have done in the past. I am most grateful to the noble Earl for the welcome he has given this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

MANCHESTER CORPORATION BILL
Returned from the Commons with the Amendments agreed to.
PORT OF LONDON BILL
Reported, with Amendments.