Lords Sitting of 20 June 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 Birmingham

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
2.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF SCARBROUGH: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty The Queen signed by her own hand. It is in these terms:
"I have received your Address praying that the International Tin Council (Immunities and Privileges) Order, 1961, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament.
"I will comply with your request."

ORDNANCE SURVEY MAPS REVISION
2.36 p.m.
EARL FORTESCUE: 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, in view of the reported completion of the revision of one-inch Ordnance Survey maps, a revised issue of half-inch Ordnance Survey maps may be expected, and if not, whether a reduction of the one-inch map to half-inch scale can be issued in lieu.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, the first publication of the new one-inch Ordnance Survey map is almost completed. We have already made a start on the publication of the half-inch map and, since the noble Earl last raised this subject a year ago, one more sheet has been published, bringing the total to three out of a series of fifty-one. Two further sheets will become available this year but, because of the increasing demand for published one-inch maps
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and, in fact, for Ordnance Survey maps generally, it has been necessary to retard the production of the half-inch series. I am afraid that, for technical reasons it is not possible to produce a half-inch map which would be legible by simple reduction of a one-inch map.
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his reply.

WHISKY ADVERTISEMENT AT LONDON AIRPORT
2.38 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what authority gave permission for the advertisement for White Horse whisky recently erected on the roof of a new building at the centre of London Airport to be put there; and whether, for the sake of architectural decency and to avoid injury to our national prestige, they will secure its immediate removal.]
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the advertisement was sanctioned by my right honourable friend the Minister of Aviation. The rent offered was substantial, and my right honourable friend has an obligation to make our airports pay.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, while commiserating with my noble friend on that Answer, may I question him further? Why do the Government employ a distinguished architect like Mr. Gibberd to design their buildings, and then disfigure his work by such an architectural outrage? Is my noble friend aware that other trading nations, and some of our chief competitors, take great trouble over the architecture, design and appearance of their airports, not only for their own sake but because the resulting prestige is good for trade? Before they allowed this advertisement, what estimate did the Government make of the loss in trade that would result from treating our principal airport in this way?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, that is quite a lot to answer. As regards my noble friend's first supplementary question, it is my understanding that, before

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the erection of this particular advertisement was sanctioned, the firm of consulting architects to London Airport were consulted, and approved the design. As regards my noble friend's second supplementary question, I am aware that other countries—and this country, too—pay close attention to the design of airport buildings. I think the design of the main buildings at London Airport has a great deal to commend them. As regards my noble friend's third supplementary, I am not aware that any such estimate was made beforehand.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, could the noble Earl say what is the amount of the financial benefit the Government receive from this advertisement?
EARL JELLICOE: I understand that, as I said in my original reply, the rent offered was quite considerable. But I think—and I say this with all deference to my noble friend—it would be contrary to established practice to disclose the details of a particular contract.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, would it have met the Minister's approval if Messrs. Guinness had approached him and had asked him to erect an advertisement declaring that, "Guinness is good for you"? Would he have approved that?—because the principle is the same.
EARL JELLICOE: I think that is an hypothetical question.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, would the noble Earl say whether, however appalling an advertisement is, if it will bring in more money than an advertisement the design of which is more acceptable, the Government will certainly accept the more appalling and the more offensive advertisement?
EARL JELLICOE: No. The answer is that that would not necessarily be the case.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether it was not necessary to get planning approval for this advertisement? He has referred to the approval of the Minister of Civil Aviation. Did not the local planning authority also have to give permission, and did they do so?
EARL JELLICOE: I am afraid that, frankly, I do not know the answer to that question, but I will look into it and will let the noble Lord know.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, since Mr. Gibberd, the distinguished architect of these buildings, who is himself a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission, is outraged by what has been done to his buildings, could we have the name of the firm of consulting architects who approved this advertisement?
EARL JELLICOE: I do not know whether I should disclose that, but the arm which approved this was, in fact, Mr. Gibberd's own firm.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, would the noble Earl draw the attention of his colleagues to the great opportunities for revenue-raising that exist in Central London, such as at Wellington Barracks and the Horse Guards?
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he would be willing to approach his right honourable friend with a view to contacting the airlines and finding out, through their information services at London Airport, the views of the passengers which use London Airport? I understand that there have been quite a number of complaints as to the general appearance of these bottles of whisky. Would the noble Earl not agree that they are completely out of proportion to the buildings themselves, and in extremely bad taste?
EARL JELLICOE: I would certainly agree that it is possible to have æsthetic reservations about these particular advertisements.

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS AND COMMON LAND
2.45 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: 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 if they will introduce immediate legislation to enable Government Departments, when compulsorily acquiring land, to suspend commoners' rights, instead of being compelled to extinguish such rights, as under the existing law.]
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, the Government have in course of preparation legislation designed, among other things, to give effect to the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Common Land that, if Defence Departments and water undertakings acquire common land which they do not need permanently, they should, wherever possible, arrange to suspend any common rights but not to extinguish them. This legislation will be introduced as soon as Parliamentary time permits.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer, and I am glad to hear that something is likely to be done. But is he aware that these commoners' rights are being extinguished almost daily—for example, at Fyling-dales Moor at the present time? Would it not be possible to introduce a one-clause enabling Bill empowering a Government Department to suspend commoners' rights in suitable cases, and could not such legislation be put into force in a matter of weeks?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I have great sympathy with what my noble friend says about commoners' rights, but it is really a question of the Parliamentary timetable and Parliamentary time. All I can say is that as soon as possible this legislation will be introduced.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, can the noble Earl give an assurance that, if it is introduced, it will be carried through during this Session of Parliament?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I was rather surprised to find myself answering this Question at all, and I think that what the noble Lord asks goes rather outside my province.

SOVIET GOVERNMENT AND NUCLEAR TESTS
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question, of which I have given Private Notice, as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of the Soviet Government's new attitude and policy at the Geneva Conference, they will make a statement.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, since the publication
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of the Soviet Aide-Mémoire which was given to President Kennedy in Vienna, discussions have continued in the Geneva Nuclear Tests Conference on points covered in it. There has, I regret to say, been no progress. The Western position has been clearly set out in the United States Government's reply to the Soviet Aide-Mémoire, which was published on June 17, on which the United Kingdom Government were consulted, and with which they are in full agreement. Her Majesty's Government have been working very hard, and for a long time, to try to achieve success in these negotiations, and we are most disappointed that in recent months the Soviet side have not responded, and have, indeed, moved backwards—for example, by introducing the Troika principle into the administrative machinery necessary for inspection. We shall continue to do everything possible to work for a successful outcome to these negotiations, even though the present prospects are clearly not good.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his reply, and I think that noble Lords in all parts of the House will share his disappointment that the near success of the Nuclear Tests Conference should have been imperilled by the new attitude and policy of the Soviet Government. May I ask the noble Earl three supplementary questions? The first is: Is it still the aim of Her Majesty's Government to achieve at Geneva a permanent test ban treaty, open for signature to all nations, the implementing of which should not be made dependent on securing other agreements in the field of disarmament? The second question is: Is it the desire of Her Majesty's Government that the Geneva negotiations should go on, and that a further effort should be made to persuade the Soviet Government not to persist with what are tantamount to wrecking conditions? And thirdly: In the event of the Conference breaking down, is it the policy of Her Majesty's Government that the West should not be the first to break the existing voluntary moratorium on tests?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, in answer to the first question, it is still the aim of Her Majesty's Government to achieve a test ban treaty open to signature by all nations; and I think the

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other point which the noble Lord emphasised was that this should be an agreement which is independent of any further action which might be taken in the general field of disarmament. I can answer that question categorically: Yes, that is our intention. That we should make a further effort to achieve an agreement, the answer is also: Yes. Then the noble Lord asked me about the resumption of testing. None of us wants to resume testing, and, indeed, I hope we should not have to do so. But I might just ask the noble Lord to bear in mind that there is no way of checking up whether or not the Russians are testing, and it could be that the West, in certain circumstances, would find themselves at a serious military disadvantage. But, subject to that, we do not want to resume testing.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, do I understand that the last reply of the noble Earl takes into account what has recently been appearing in the Press with regard to the United States' position—interviews with this one or with that one—as if they were considering resuming the tests? Perhaps the Foreign Secretary has later knowledge than we have on the matter.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, nobody wants to resume testing. Although I cannot answer for the United States Government, I am sure this is as true of the United States Government as with our Government. No one wants to resume testing as long as useful discussions continue at Geneva, and it is our intention to keep the Geneva Conference going, and I hope it will not break down. The only thing is that I think it is necessary to enter a caveat that, in certain circumstances, the West might find themselves at a military disadvantage, and I suggest that we keep that in the back of our minds, although, as I have said, none of us wants to resume testing so long as there is the slightest chance of getting agreement.
LORD REA: My Lords, does that mean that we reserve the right to resume tests if we have suspicions that these things are going on in other parts of the world?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I should not like to prophesy too far ahead, and I do not think it is profitable to
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take it too far for the moment. I am only giving warning that there might be certain circumstances in which the West might find itself at a military disadvantage, and we must bear this in mind, although none of us wishes to resume testing while there is the slightest chance of agreement with the Russians.

MR. KHRUSHCHEV AND WEST BERLIN
2.50 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I beg to ask Her Majesty's Government the second Question of which I have given them Private Notice. It is as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in view of Mr. Khrushchev's statement on Soviet intentions regarding West Berlin, they will make a statement.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government, in concert with their Allies, have over the years made a number of comprehensive proposals for the just and equitable solution of the problem of Germany and Berlin, culminating in the Western Peace Plan presented at the Geneva Foreign Ministers' Conference in 1959. All these proposals have been rejected by the Soviet Government, who prefer instead to manufacture an artificial crisis for the purpose of gaining their own ends. We and our Allies have certain obligations in Germany, and we do not intend to betray them. Among these obligations is the preservation of the freedom of the people of West Berlin. The Soviet Government must come to realise that we intend to defend this, and that we cannot countenance proposals inconsistent with it. If they wish to discuss the issue with us, we are prepared to do so, but they must understand that it can be done only on the basis I have described.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl for his reply. May I ask him whether he is aware that Mr. Khrushchev, in his recent television and radio report of his talks with Mr. Kennedy, made the following statement:
"Western Berlin will be a free city, free from all the results following the surrender of Hitler Germany and the resulting occupation rights."
Does the noble Earl agree that there can be no unilateral abrogation or alteration

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of the Four Power Agreement governing the status of Berlin? I welcome the noble Earl's reaffirmation that the Western Allies have no intention of sacrificing the free population of West Berlin. I take it that he would also have in mind that there is no question of surrendering our own rights of access to West Berlin. Will the noble Earl reaffirm that any change in the status or in the rights and obligations of the Four Powers can be made only by Four Power agreement? And would he agree that this position is an essential part of the basis for any new negotiations on Berlin to be successful?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, in answer to the first of the noble Lord's supplementary questions I would say this. The Soviet proposals for a free city, so far as we know them up to now, refer only to West Berlin. I am not advocating any change in the existing situation, but if there were to be a change, then I think it would have to apply to the Eastern as well as to the Western sector. Secondly, the noble Lord asked me about rights and whether they could be abrogated unilaterally. My answer to that must be, No. First of all, the Allies have a right to be in Western Berlin and, secondly, that right is surely reinforced by the wish of the people to have us. And so long as those two conditions hold, then I think we have a perfect right to stand where we are. Any negotiations that may take place about the future of Berlin, if there are any negotiations, must take account of three things. First of all, as I said, it is essential to preserve the right of the people of Berlin to choose their own way of life, which incidentally Mr. Khrushchev mentioned in his Aide Mémoire, though he contradicted himself in almost his next sentence; the right of the Allies to be in Berlin and the right of access to the city. If these three things are understood, then, as I have said in an earlier reply, we are always ready to talk about the future of Germany. But it must be clearly understood that these bases for negotiation hold.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, does the noble Earl appreciate that the points I have put are to emphasise the importance of standing for the rule of law?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord.

POLICE PENSIONS BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.

CALF SUBSIDIES (ENGLAND, WALES AND NORTHERN IRELAND) SCHEME, 1961
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, in moving that this Scheme be approved, may I say a few words about both Schemes? My noble friend Lord Craigton will be moving the Scottish Scheme, which is identical in all material aspects. These Schemes, which were laid before Parliament on June 8, extend the arrangements for the payment of calf subsidy for a further period of three years, which is the maximum period permissible under the Calf Subsidies Act, 1952. We do not make an annual scheme—this saves Parliamentary time, especially when the scheme remains unchanged, as it does this year—but if any changes are necessary (such as rate of subsidy) we can make a Variation Order, as we did in 1959, raising the rate of subsidy for steer calves from £8 10s. 0d. (as in the 1958 Scheme) to £9 5s. 0d. The rates of subsidy under the present Schemes are unchanged. They are £7 10s. 0d. for heifer calves and £9 5s. 0d. for steer calves. Neither the rates nor the conditions under which they are paid are altered by the proposed Schemes.
As your Lordships know, the purpose of the subsidy is to encourage the rearing of calves for beef production. Since the subsidy was introduced in 1947, there has been a significant increase in the numbers of steer calves retained, particularly from the dairy herd which were previously killed when only a few days old. The figures for June, 1961, I am afraid, are not yet available, but on June 4, 1960, there were 1¼ million steer calves and 1½million heifer calves under one year old in the United Kingdom. This is an increase of 183,000 steer calves and 96,000 heifer calves over the figures for June 4, 1958, the year in which the current scheme came into operation. The calf subsidy has been operating for rather over thirteen years and is generally accepted, I think, throughout the

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farming community. It is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to encourage the production of home-produced beef, and I am sure that this scheme is a valuable means of obtaining this objective. I therefore commend the scheme to your Lordships' House with confidence.
Moved, That the Calf Subsidies (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) Scheme, 1961, be approved.—(Earl Waldegrave.)
2.58 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, the noble Earl has said that this scheme will not come up for annual revision in the ordinary way, and for that we are pleased, because it shows that there will be three years' stability, at any rate, in a subsidy which is of importance to the agricultural industry. The noble Earl also mentioned that this stability will remain unless the subsidies are raised. The calf subsidy scheme is highly desirable and I do not think that anybody who has the prosperity of agriculture at heart will disagree with it. As the noble Earl has said, subsidies have been given in the past for steer and heifer calves of specialised breeds and high standard, and these have enabled breeders and rearers to show a small profit on their efforts which otherwise they would not have shown. According to the last Review figures the cost of the scheme was £18 million. That tells its own tale of the direction of the agricultural industry, because this figure has increased from £16½ million in the previous year lo £18 million last year and the number of calves have increased accordingly during that time. It seems to me that the fact that £18 million has been put into the industry has meant at least an average of £100 per annum to small and large farmers, taking into consideration the numbers of farmers who would be breeding and rearing calves.
As the noble Earl has said, the subsidy is for the grading of our young stock, and a calf of a certifiable standard is more likely to be acceptable and of better quality on maturity than an inferior breed and badly reared animal. The young stock of to-day becomes the beef of to-morrow, and in days when some of us are persistent in our desire that our farmers should "breed British" and our consumers should "buy and eat
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British", whether it be beef or bacon, any lowering of the standard of production or consumption of high-grade home products would be detrimental to the national health and national economy. We want to aim at putting on the market the best that money can buy, at prices which satisfy the producer and the consumer, and any aid to efficient breeding of our cattle and livestock in the first instance, such as this subsidy gives, may perhaps serve a beneficial purpose even beyond its cost to the taxpayer and remuneration to the producer. We on this side welcome this scheme and are glad that it is likely to prevail, even at present prices, for the next three years.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask a short and simple question? The Order is to cover three years. Is that three years to be inviolable even if we enter the Common Market?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, the Scheme is laid for three years, but if necessary it can be varied. I perhaps ought to mention that the noble Lord, Lord Wise, said that he rather took my remarks to mean that it would be varied only if the subsidy rates were to he moved upwards. I did not say that. It could be varied if the subsidy rates were determined to be too high or too low. As for the point about the Common Market—this is a three-year Scheme. I do not want to go further than I should, but I understand that if any negotiations are started with the European Economic Community, there would be in their agricultural policy a very long transitional period (which, I suspect, would be much more than three years) during which subsidies of this kind would go on as before.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CALF SUBSIDIES (SCOTLAND) SCHEME, 1961
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON): My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Calf Subsidies (Scotland) Scheme, 1961, be approved.
Moved, That the Calf Subsidies (Scotland) Scheme, 1961, be approved.—(Lord Craigton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SHERIFFS' PENSIONS (SCOTLAND) BILL
An Amendment reported (according to Order).

LOCAL AUTHORITIES (EXPENDITURE ON SPECIAL PURPOSES) (SCOTLAND) BILL
3.4 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 Craigton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Amendment of s. 339 of 10 & 11 Geo. 6., c. 43]:
LORD HUGHES LORD HUGHES moved, in the proposed new subsection (1 A), in paragraph (c), to leave out "in Scotland or directly affecting persons residing in Scotland". The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name. The purpose of this Amendment is quite simple. It is to restore in its entirety the powers which Scottish local authorities had prior to 1956. Your Lordships will recollect that on Second Reading we were informed that the need for this Bill arose from advice which the Secretary of State had received in 1956, when local authorities sought to make contributions for Hungarian relief. The advice was that it could not properly be done out-with their own immediate areas.
The Bill, among other things, makes it possible for local authorities to contribute to funds raised in certain circumstances, but limited to Scotland itself. It is only in that direction that the Bill does not restore the powers formerly possessed by the Scottish local authorities. Your Lordships may recollect that on Second Reading I said that I thought the Bill was not necessary and would not have been necessary if the Secretary of State had not been badly advised in 1956. I have had the most unexpected, but strong, confirmation of that point of view only yesterday upstairs, where I am sitting as a member of a Committee. In justification of a clause of a Bill which is before your Lordships' House counsel stated:
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"The words 'in their opinion' are put in for this reason. If those words were not in, if it just read"—
so and so—
"then it would be open to anyone to challenge that in the courts, because it could be said in this particular case it was not for the proper discharge of their duties, and therefore an uncertainty is created in regard to that. There is a lot of precedent for these words. If the words 'in their opinion' are put in, provided the authority acts bona fide, then you cannot go behind them. If, of course, it does not act bona fide in this, then you can go behind it; but putting in that precludes everything in fact being capable of being challenged in the courts."
I have drawn counsel's attention to-day to the fact that the Secretary of State was advised five years ago that these words, in Scotland at any rate, do not have the importance that apparently attach to them here.
I am afraid that, so far as the special purposes in Scotland were concerned, it has gone beyond redemption. I therefore appeal to the Minister to accept the Amendment which I have proposed. The only argument advanced against it in another place, and on Second Reading, is that it is desirable to place the boundary somewhere. It struck me that "boundary" had another meaning than just geographical, and I looked up the exact meaning in the Library. It is quite simply defined as:
"That which serves to indicate the limits of anything; the limit itself."
This power is limited in other ways. In the first instance, the local authorities can do these things only provided they receive the consent of the Secretary of State. That is the first limit which is imposed. Secondly, they can do so only provided the expenditure for this purpose and on purposes (a) and (b) of the section, and for the other purposes of Section 339 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947, are all comprised within a limit of a twopenny rate. That is the second boundary which is applied.
It therefore seems to me that there is no reason to import this third boundary, because the geographical boundary is one which is quite unnecessary in this day and age, surely as between England and Scotland. When the Scottish Office, in the memorandum which was issued, consulted the Scottish local authority associations about their intention to seek amending legislation, the attention of local authorities was directed to the fact

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that the Secretary of State proposed to retain the limitation of the twopenny rate and retain the limitation that he must approve expenditure—at least, so I am informed. But I am also informed that in that memorandum there is no indication at any place of the Secretary of State's intention to import a limitation within the Scottish border. So that, from that point of view, the local authorities in Scotland have not been consulted. It would therefore be quite improper to suggest that that is what they want. I believe, that it would be reasonable to do as my Amendment proposes.
I do not imagine that the Scottish local authorities are going to start throwing their money about, left, right and centre, for English objects, no matter how desirable they may be: it is not believed that that is quite in the Scottish character. But there have in the past been occasions when in Scotland we have wished to show our support when considerable disasters have taken place outwith our own borders. What I envisage taking place in that connection is that, as has frequently happened in the past, on those occasions when the Lord Mayor of London finds it necessary to open a National Fund the Lord Provost of Edinburgh will open a Scottish equivalent to which many local authorities would wish to contribute.
I do not wish to suggest to your Lordships that the contribution made from the rate funds to these disaster funds are a major part of the monies ultimately realised. For instance, the Broughty Ferry Lifeboat Disaster Fund, brought in not only from the area involved, not only from Scotland or the United Kingdom, but from all over the world, a sum of money which, within a period of five weeks, when the fund closed, approached £100,000. The contribution which the local authorities made from the rate fund, which was made immediately, within twelve hours, of the disaster taking place, was —2,000—only 2 per cent. of the total. But its importance lay in the fact that it gave an immediate lead to the generosity of the citizens from whom the bulk of the money for these funds must come. I am quite certain that if such a move were made in Scotland on projects such as I have indicated, the lead which would be given
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by the local authorities would be followed by the citizens, by the prominent companies and firms, and the like; and at the end of the day what the local authorities put in would have value, not from the amount of their contribution but from the lead which they had given. In those circumstances I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, will find it possible to accept this Amendment in the spirit in which I have moved it.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 20, leave, out ("in Scotland or directly affecting persons residing in Scotland")—(Lord Hughes.)
LORD CRAIGTON: I have listened with a great deal of sympathy to what the noble Lord has had to say. Although this is a comparatively small matter, I can assure him that since he raised it on Second Reading it is one which has given us much anxious thought. But in supporting the Bill as it stands, I think I must first satisfy your Lordships that the Scottish local authorities need have no fear that they will be in any worse a position, so far as the general law is concerned, than the local authorities South of the Border. I think I should, therefore, make clear what the English position is. The general power of local authorities in England and Wales to contribute to other bodies is contained in Section 136 of the Local Government Act, 1948, and is limited to the making of contributions to bodies carrying on activities within the area of the authority concerned. Some local authorities have taken powers in private Act which are in rather wider terms. Furthermore, under Section 228 of the Local Government Act, 1933, the Minister of Housing and Local Government may sanction items of expenditure which might otherwise be disallowed by the district auditor because they were contrary to law. Sanctions of this kind are granted only where the circumstances are exceptional and have only been granted for giving to England and Wales. That is the English position.
The noble Lord is correct in saying that the restriction which he seeks to cancel was not mentioned when the local authority associations were consulted about this Bill, although the omission, I can assure him, was certainly not an intentional one. But the matter was fully ventilated during the Second Reading in

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another place and neither his friends nor mine sought to put down such an Amendment in Committee. We could assume from this that there was no pressure either way from the Scottish local authorities, but after the noble Lord raised the point I have taken steps to ascertain the local authorities' views. The noble Lord, with his great knowledge of local authority work in Scotland, will know that I could obtain no more than an indication in the time available.
The County Councils' Association, whom we have consulted, say they would be opposed to his Amendment, and three of the cities would be opposed, because they were opposed to any extension of Section 339. The City of Glasgow, whom we consulted, appear to take the same attitude towards this Amendment as they did to the Bill as a whole: they cannot be said to be either for it or against it. Although there has not been time for him to consult his members, the Clerk of the Convention of Royal Burghs, with whom we spoke, considers that the burghs would not agree with the noble Lord. One provost of a large burgh with whom I talked endorsed this opinion.
My Lords, what is the real position here? Section 339 deals with the spending of ratepayers' money within the area for the many small purposes not covered by other Acts, and, after this Bill is passed, the spending of ratepayers' money for charitable purposes within the area and within Scotland. There is no suggestion that money should never be given to charities and disaster funds outside Scotland—only that Section 339 is not the right channel. If the local authority feels that money should be given, many of them have a common good fund. If they have not, or if they feel so inclined, the councillors can themselves promote activities to gather special funds for the purpose. Clearly a line has to be drawn somewhere between the case where the majority of ratepayers generally will want their council to contribute from the rates and the case where local feeling is sufficiently satisfied by individual contributions from those who feel specially concerned. In the case of a Scottish Bill it does seem right to draw the line at the Border. My Lords, that is the
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position. The majority of Scottish local authorities do not want this Amendment. For this and for the other reasons I have given I must advise your Lordships to reject the Amendment; and I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw it.
LORD HUGHES: I am sorry, I do not with to withdraw the Amendment. In the first instance, I am quite certain that the consultation which has taken place has not (because time has prevented it) been other than a consultation with officers of the three local authorities' associations. The difficulty of having consultation with some 300 burghs, some 30-odd county councils and the members of the Association of Counties of Cities has made it impossible for the views of any of the local authorities to be ascertained. I should think the nearest approach to the real ascertainment of local authorities' opinion, was the opinion of the provost of the burgh who was personally consulted by the Minister. I am not surprised that the Minister has not accepted my Amendment, because I did not fail to notice that the next stage of the Bill, as printed in Business for this week, is the Third Reading on Thursday, not a Report of an Amendment. So there was an assumption that there would be no Amendment to report. I therefore cannot express any astonishment. All I can do is express regret that what I have put forward as a perfectly reasonable position, one with which the local authorities were perfectly happy from 1947 until 1956, when the power was suddenly withdrawn from them, should not now be restored to them by the amending legislation. I feel that I should not be doing my duty, as I see it, if I withdrew my Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.

DEPARTMENT OF TECHNICAL CO-OPERATION BILL
Read 3a, according to Order, and passed.

CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL
3.21 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, in the fourteen years it has been my privilege to be a Member of your Lordships' House I have sought on a number of occasions to direct attention to dangers and accidents in the home, but I am afraid it has been merely a question of words, trying to arouse interest. To-day I am more fortunate in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, because I have the opportunity of doing something that is positive. It is the Bill to which I referred in the Accidents in the Home debate on April 12 last. It was introduced in another place by a Private Member. Having obtained an early place for his Bill in November last, the honourable gentleman secured a Second Reading on January 22 and its reference to Standing Committee C of the other place. There it was submitted to a long and careful scrutiny in four sittings throughout February and March; finally it was brought up on Report on May 5 and on Third Reading on June 9; and last week your Lordships gave it a First Reading. I give your Lordships these details to show that the Bill has been subjected to very careful scrutiny and to all the tests which Members of the other House desired to apply to it.
The Bill is based on the Interim Report of the Committee on Consumer Protection, which was referred to as the Molony Committee by a number of noble Lords in the debate on Accidents in the Home. Its main purpose is to protect the consumer against the known hazards from faulty and dangerous appliances, which I think is really a broad statement of the main clause, Clause 1, and I particularly direct your Lordships' attention to the main principle in Clause 1 (1) (a) and would emphasise the last line of that paragraph: that the action of the Minister is to deal with goods with a view to preventing or reducing the risk of death or personal injury.
Perhaps, rather than try to take your Lordships through each clause of the Bill, it would be better if I endeavoured to give the background of the Molony Committee Report and quoted certain
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relevant paragraphs from it. The Committee was appointed by the President of the Board of Trade on June 30, 1959, with terms of reference:
"To review the working of the existing legislation relating to merchandise marks and certification trade marks, and to consider and report what changes if any in the law and what other measures, if any, are desirable for the further protection of the consuming public."
The Committee's Final Report is not yet available, but the valuable Interim Report on which the Bill is based was issued on March 24, 1960, and in issuing the Interim Report the Committee explained the reason. They point out that on March 18 last year it had been indicated to them that in considering the action to be taken in the light of the recent report of the Joint Fire Research Organisation on the effects of draughts on the burning of oil heaters, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs had indicated that he would welcome the assistance of an Interim Report of the Committee on the general issue of the safety of consumer goods. In their Report, in paragraph 3, the Committee point out that they had in fact at an early stage of their deliberations decided to give immediate attention to the hazards to life and limb which consumer goods might create, and had caused Press announcements to be made in October, 1959, with a view to securing evidence from all persons concerned.
One of the first considerations which the Committee had to enter into—one which your Lordships will want explained to you in connection with the applicability of the Bill—was what was their definition of the "consuming public". They decided for the purpose of their Report, and that goes for the purpose of this Bill, that they would regard a consumer as
"one who purchases or hire purchases goods for private use or consumption".
Their next stage was to determine what products were dangerous, or dangerous enough at any rate to justify remedial measures. The folly of the consumer after the purchase, or his own neglect to take the necessary steps in respect of dangers inherent in the product, were obviously not things for a Committee of this kind. They confined their inquiry to the articles which appeared to them to involve undue risk of personal injury, either because they contained a concealed danger or could develop such a

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danger or because they might expose persons to danger in the event of ignorant or inadvertent mishandling which could reasonably be anticipated on the part of the purchaser. Within that definition, they had to pay regard to the special cases of children under five and of the aged, whose hazards might be greater and who might deal with things which presented a hazard to them while not presenting one to the rest of the community.
Perhaps it would be as well if I quoted to you the general conclusions they reached, which then lead to the basis of the drafting of the Bill. In their paragraphs 9 and 10 they say:
"We have found no evidence to suggest the marketing on any widespread scale of consumer goods from which recognised hazards have not been eliminated as far as is reasonably practicable. On the contrary, it is apparent that manufacturers in general have a high sense of responsibility and safety-consciousness in seeking out and eliminating potential dangers; and we think that the few exceptions to this rule can generally be attributed more to ignorance or oversight than to any cynical or culpably negligent disregard of safety considerations.
"But even though such ignorance or oversight is to be found only on a small scale, its consequences in terms of human suffering can be considerable. And hence when a serious and hitherto unsuspected hazard is brought to light, remedial action should clearly be prompt, effective and universal in its application. It is with those principles in mind that we have arrived at our conclusions and framed our recommendations."
The Report then goes on in paragraphs 11 to 40, to deal with the respects in which legislative intervention might be desirable in the interests of safety. Then they point out that these are
"of diverse character and individually might not be found deserving of the Parliamentary time which separate legislation for each item would inevitably consume."
But their proposals, they state—and I quote here from paragraph 41
"are of diverse character. and individually might not be found to be deserving of the Parliamentary time…but represent the imposition of requirements no more onerous than would readily be acceptable by the large majority of manufacturers; the effect of their imposition would be to curb the irresponsibility of the few. We think that, with personal safety at stake, legislative intervention is called for."
They go on to say that they had very much in mind the fresh hazards that
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might appear in established goods or the new consumer goods that may come on the market at a time after the passage of legislation, and they say
"It is our view that statutory power to deal with such situations should exist in advance of the demonstrable need, so as to permit of prompt and firm action as soon as the need is manifest."
They go on to say that there would be many practicable difficulties in devising the main means of removing the risks, all of which would take time. But they offer the view that
"the existence of a power to prohibit the sale of unsafe goods and to enforce remedial measures would,…markedly accelerate these processes"
and in some cases would probably mean that statutory intervention in the final event was no longer necessary.
Then they say that in recommending legislation their main idea is to safeguard the consumer against what appears to be the undue risk of personal injury; and they think that there should be early legislation to empower some designated Minister to prohibit by means of regulation either the sale, or the sale on shire purchase, of these forms of dangerous goods.
My Lords, those are the main recommendations of general principles of a valuable Report which covers nearly 6,000 words. This Report was presented in March last year and the Government did not include any proposal with regard to it in the gracious Speech, as many of us had hoped they would do. Some months ago I offered some criticism that the Government had not done so. It is criticism which I would not offer this afternoon. Indeed, I am now glad to think that the Government did no such thing. After looking at the delay and the tangle in legislation which has taken place, I now realise that by leaving the matter in the way that the Government did, we have got quicker results, because, as it happens, the work of the sponsors and of members of all Parties in another place, and the happy cooperation of the Home Office and in particular of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, present me with the opportunity this afternoon of offering to your Lordships a Bill in the confident hope and belief that you will support it and speed it to a Royal Assent during the present Session.

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Your Lordships well may ask whether legislation is justified. I could not do better than quote, in a short summarised form, to save time, the arguments in favour of the Bill which were advanced by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. He said that safety in general involved four things: first, that one should take care of oneself; secondly, that one should help others to take care; thirdly, that care should be taken in design on the part of manufacturers and sales organisations; and fourthly and finally, that suppliers could be made to take care by means of legislation.
The first two—taking care of ourselves and trying to help others to take care of themselves—we in this House and honourable gentlemen and right honourable gentlemen in another place, have dealt with in various debates. The third—care in design—depends upon the manufacturers. I should like to say straight away in respect of industry in this country that we can rely upon most manufacturers here, although not all of them. For instance, a large range of articles is dealt with under definitions of the British Standards Institution. That is becoming more and more so, and reputable organisations are more and more consulting and joining with the B.S.I., are devoting themselves to their standards, and are selling their products with certification that the standard of B.S.I. has been lived up to.
Similarly, the electricity supply industry of this country and the electrical manufacturing organisations have always set a very high standard. As your Lordships know, they have their national scheme for approvals for domestic electric appliances. The co-operation of the oil producers and the manufacturers of oil heaters was readily forthcoming when faced with the outcry last year, very much related to the Report of this Committee and the presence of this Bill, which led to the Oil Burners (Standards) Act, 1960, which will be incorporated into this Act if your Lordships give it a Third Reading and it finally secures the Royal Assent.
To take the fourth example, the British toy industry, as soon as it read the criticisms about toys in the detail of the Molony Committee Report, proposed to secure, with the co-operation of the British Standards Institution and of the
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Home Office, some defined standards. This has to do with such things as the buttons which serve for eyes in teddy bears and are pulled off in the mouths of children, and the cutting pieces of metal on toys, and the like; and I believe that the manufacturers are getting on with the job. But these are voluntary standards laid down by reputable manufacturing organisations for the guidance of their own people and for the benefit of the public. It does not deal with the danger of the lower quality imported goods sold by suppliers who are not so careful; nor does it deal with the efforts of the less reputable manufacturers.
Under this heading comes imported electrical equipment which does not conform to the British code of practice which is so carefully relied on by the United Kingdom electricity authorities. I remind your Lordships that I have referred in this House in the past to the fact that Continental imports have their three wires differently coloured. I believe that we are about to face an international agreement which may cure that difficulty. But that has been one of the great dangers of cheap stuff bought in some of the stores. There is an increasing number of children's toys and playthings which come into this country from Hong Kong and which are dangerous. One oil lamp which I have had brought to my attention actually carries a beautifully coloured printed label stating that it is safe, but it is not worth the ink which is used to print the piece of card which hangs round the neck of the lamp. The evidence from the Home Safety Committees which has come before the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents makes it clear that some of the recent fires were caused by oil-burning heaters imported from Greece, Germany and Holland.
So to deal with these hazards the fourth item of legislation is necessary. Parliament has never hesitated from time to time to intervene to provide for the imposition of statutory standards and prohibitions where the safety or the health of the individual was at stake. As long ago as 1913 the Fabrics (Mis-description) Act was passed, and in succession your Lordships, with right honourable and honourable gentlemen in another place, have dealt over the years with lead paint poisoning in 1926, the control of petroleum in 1928; your

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Lordships passed the Pharmacy and Poisons Act in 1933; and in more recent years many of us can remember the passage through this House of the Rag Flock and Other Filling Materials Act, 1951, and the Heating Appliances (Fireguards) Act, 1952, as to which some Members of this House played a leading part, and so on. In addition, the Road Transport Act, 1956, gave the Minister power to make regulations dealing with such things as crash helmets, the use of rear lights, and so on. In the earlier cases I referred to special Acts of Parliament; in the latter, I referred to generality Acts which gave the Minister powers to make regulations, powers which he has seized and used.
The proposals now before your Lordships provide for endowing the Minister of State with powers to enable him to deal with hazards as they arise, or, alternatively, to amend regulations which have already been made. As the Molony Committee say, the well-established precedent of legislative action is with regard to goods on which the life and limb of the ordinary individual may depend; and they say in paragraph 40:
"The case for such intervention on a broader scale than hitherto is supported in principle in the submissions made to us by a large number of responsible organisations, representative of trade as well as non-trade interests, and it is a view from which we have found very little dissent."
I invite your Lordships to note those words. They refer to the considerable volume of support they have had from organisations representative of manufacturing industries and the very small amount of dissent. Indeed, my friends in another place tell me that one thing which makes this Bill outstanding is that from the publication of the Bill on November 23 of last year, up to its Third Reading on June 9 of this year, they were subjected to no barrage of propaganda to cause them to ease up on this measure; and the large number of your Lordships who spent some time in the other place will know how completely strange such a state of affairs is. It is indicative of the very general support that this measure finds.
The truth is that the good organisations have reason to believe that this is in their interests as well as in the interests of the public. They will see set down, if necessary by regulations,
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standards which at the moment are merely voluntary standards which they accept and of which their less reputable competitors take no notice at all. Incidentally, they also know that they may rely upon the proper operation of the Act (if, as I hope, this becomes an Act) by the Home Office, accustomed as they are to using powers of Acts of this kind. Indeed, the honourable Gentleman the Under-Secretary for the Home Department, speaking in another place on the Second Reading of this Bill and in support of it, on January 27, 1961, said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 633, col. 508]:
"…the Government accept the Bill and that, if the House sees fit to enact it, we shall be prepared to make wise use of it when the need arises. We do not expect that that need will arise very often—and I am sure that the House hopes that it will not arise very often—but, when it does arise, we shall make wise use of this measure."
Finally, may I refer to a few points which were raised by honourable Members in another place during the Committee and Report stages of the Bill? The first was about consultation, not unrelated to what I have had to say. The sponsors of the Bill were quite happy to rely upon what they regarded as normal consultation which the Minister and his Department in their own good sense would take. But there were some who were concerned that that was leaving it to the Minister's good will, and they wanted to make it very clear in the Act (if there was to be an Act) that the Minister has to do these things. So one difference which your Lordships will find between the Bill as the sponsors first presented it last November to the other place and the Bill before your Lordships to-day lies in Clause 1 (5), which says:
"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State before making any regulations under this section, to consult with such persons or bodies of persons as appear to him requisite."
That met with the unanimous approval of the other place, and I commend its inclusion in the Bill to your Lordships at this stage.
Then there was a small question about administrative costs. They are dealt with, as your Lordships will see, in Clause 4. So far as administration is concerned, it will involve no new officers; it will be possible to take care of it within the local government machinery.

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The draftsmanship of the paragraphs about the local government machinery in the Bill as now presented to your Lordships again differs from that of the Bill as presented to the other place last November. The phraseology has been changed so as to provide a system to be adopted within local government which marries into the system proposed in the Weights and Measures Bill, which was before your Lordships' House. This is being done in the interests of good administration and economy of administration in local authorities. To the extent that there is expense to be met, the Government have indicated that if this Bill goes through all its stages to Royal Assent they will move the necessary financial Resolution in the other place, which will provide that the sums payable in respect of rate deficiency grant or Exchequer equalisation grant will be dealt with by the necessary payments. That is the explanation of the way in which Clause 4 is presented to your Lordships.
One other query which was raised was about the opportunity of defence offered to the small shopkeeper, or the manufacturer, for that matter, who finds himself faced with the threat of prosecution. There I would point out that the very extreme opportunity of defence is offered in Clause 3 (2), at the end, where the words regarding defence are:
"if he proves that he had reasonable cause to believe that all such requirements were satisfied."
That is a very broadly worded defence providing great opportunities to any person reasonably believing himself to be innocent. I am told by my friends learned in the law that there is no broader opportunity of defence to be found in British law and, in fact, this is a better defence in law than is generally given in criminal prosecutions.
My Lords, I have sought not to detain your Lordships unduly by submitting any of the detail about the Molony Report or that behind the general drive on this matter in respect of home accidents and the like, both because I have had a good deal to say on that in the past and, in addition, because I know there are to follow me one or two noble Lords who have displayed a particular interest in this subject. I have no doubt they will be able to say in their own way, very much
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better than I would, some of the points in favour of the Bill. This Bill was introduced in another place by an Opposition Member. That Opposition Member had the good sense to go to his Whip, and his Whip had the good sense to go to the Government Whip with one objective in mind: to consult with the Government so that the premier place that had been won in the ballot by a Member of the Opposition might be used for a Bill of paramount importance to the community as a whole.
It was in the belief that that description applied to this Bill that the Member of the other House who had won the top place in the ballot moved this Bill, which I now confidently commend to your Lordships. The sponsors, in getting the Bill thus far, as the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department has said, owe it to the fact that not only the Opposition as a whole but vast numbers of Members on the Government side, and also the Government themselves, were in favour of action on this Bill. I would go on to add what the Under-Secretary obviously could not himself add: that the sponsors owe a great deal to him for the excellent job which he did on behalf of his Department. So I commend this Bill to your Lordships as one which gives the Government a useful reserve of power to provide a valuable protection to the public, and I move its Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Crook.)
3.51 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, may I start by saying that I entirely welcome this Bill? In fact, I am on my hind legs only to give the noble Lord, Lord Crook, the earliest possible notice that I intend, on the Committee stage, to move certain Amendments which I hope will improve the administration of the Bill when it becomes an Act. I am not going to argue the Amendments—in fact, they are not drafted yet—but I should like him to know as early as possible the gist of the Amendments that I propose to move, so that he can think about them and, if necessary, discuss them with me. As this affects two of the Amendments I shall be moving, may I point out to your Lordships that when this Bill becomes an Act there are two Acts of Parliament that will be repealed

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by it: the Heating Appliances (Fireguards) Act, 1952, and the Oil Burners (Standards) Act, 1960; but—and this is the point—the Regulations now in force under those Acts will continue unless amended at some later date under this Bill.
Now may I say a word about the Amendments, or the points of the Amendments, that I shall move? The first one is to Clause 2, subsection (1). I have a feeling that the words in that subsection, "or have in his possession for the purpose of selling", are not quite adequate, and I think there will have to be some words dealing with evidence of possession. The second Amendment that I shall be moving deals with subsection (3) (a). That is the subsection which takes agents out of the operation of the clause. I take it that "agents" includes second-hand dealers and auctioneers. I should like to see that paragraph (a) taken right out, but certainly restricted to auctioneers. There have been many cases where secondhand fire appliances, which did not conform to the terms of the Act, have caused serious accidents, some of them fatal. I think we should look at it to see whether, in fact, the exemption of these agents in this present Bill is not too wide, particularly as regards second-hand dealers.
The third Amendment I shall move is to Clause 3, sub-section (2). It seems to me that the Bill in its present form does not adequately cover the problem of a contravention due to the fault of some other person, and I would suggest that one might put in an Amendment on the lines of Section 113 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1955, subsections (1), (2) and (3). That is what I have in mind at the moment.
I should also like on the Committee stage to move an entirely new clause, giving power to the courts to order the forfeiture of goods which do not comply with the requirements of the Regulations made under the Act. There have been quite a few cases where proceedings have been instituted under the Heating Appliances (Fireguards) Act, a conviction has been obtained and then the appliance which has been the subject of the court proceedings has been put up for sale again without any altera-
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tion to it. I shall suggest that the courts might have power to confiscate the goods. I am mentioning these things to-day only to give my noble friend a full warning of what I shall be doing. I do not, I may say, expect an answer from him to-day on the points I have raised. Apart from those small points, I very much hope that the Bill will become law.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I say that I welcome very much the general support that the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, has given to the Bill. But if the Bill is to become law this Session, as all friends of the consumer very much desire, I hope that we shall not have such a long, drawn-out discussion upon these technical questions as will delay the passage of the Bill. That is why I welcome very much his general support, but if, as soon as possible, he can negotiate with those of us who are interested in the Bill, we might let him know what can be taken and what cannot. Certainly some of them are not uncontroversial, looking at the trade outside as a whole, although in many cases I think that what he has said will appeal to the general consumer. I think we ought to have quite early discussions on that.
LORD DERWENT: I am in entire agreement with the noble Viscount.
3.57 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Crook, upon his admirable exposition of this Bill. He has moved it with sincerity and with conviction, as indeed it was moved in another place by the honourable gentleman the Member for Bilston. As the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has said, it received almost unanimous support in another place. I should like to echo the words of the noble Viscount who leads the Opposition, who expressed the hope that the passage of this Bill would not he unduly delayed, although I agree that at first sight the Amendments which my noble friend Lord Derwent proposes to move seem to have some substance in them. But, my Lords, this is a Private Member's Bill; it is a Bill of the utmost importance, and its passage should be facilitated this Session.
As your Lordships know, both the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and I myself

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have recently spoken in this House on the subject of safety in the home, and on this particular subject the Consumer Protection Bill does a great deal towards suggesting what can be done about this terrible menace. Both in the home and on the roads, as has been said before in your Lordships' House, the accident toll is lamentably high, and anything which can be done to offset this, either by Government legislation or by Private Member's legislation, will be welcome. This Bill seeks to give some reasonable impartiality towards both the consumer and the manufacturer. The recommendations of the Molony Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Crook, has said, have been closely followed.
I should like to point out one very important point, which was mentioned in another place on Second Reading by the sponsor of the Bill; that is, that in Sweden and Norway, and also in America, there are Ministries which are entirely connected with consumer welfare. I am not suggesting that we in this country should necessarily have a "Minister for Consumer Welfare"—I do not go the whole way with the honourable gentleman who moved this Bill on that matter. But I do think that the Home Office, in connection with the Board of Trade, could establish a great deal more liaison in this field. We are moving into a scientific age. Electricity is becoming more and more in use in the home, in the garden, and elsewhere. As science progresses, electricity is made a good deal safer But accidents can occur and do occur. Of course, neither this Bill nor any other Bill will legislate against the person who is obstinate, and who will take no notice of good advice which is given to him.
Electric blankets, for instance, are dealt with at some length in the excellent publication, the Shopper's Guide, issued by the Consumer Advisory Council. One blanket manufacturer sold some of these electric blankets made of a cotton material; and although he was advisd that they were dangerous, he said, referring to the Shopper's Guide: "I don't give a damn for these people". Nobody wants to harry the manufacturers—indeed, I am quite certain that the vast majority of manufacturers in this country will welcome this Bill. We are at present trying to increase our export trade, and a Bill of this kind will give more and more
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incentive to manufacturers to produce really high-quality goods, and thus increase our export trade. Of course, this Bill was not introduced to increase exports, but I think that is a valid point.
I will not weary your Lordships by repeating the points which I made during the debate on accidents in the home, but I should like to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Crook, said about toys. The standard of toys to-day is very much better than it was some ten years ago. Having young children of my own, and occasionally buying toys myself, I have had some experience both of seeing the quality of toys arid of talking to shopkeepers about them. One of the previous Bills, the Mock Auctions Bill, I think, has done a great deal of good towards stamping out shoddy goods. There are, of course, a number of goods which could be covered in this Bill and which were not mentioned in another place—for example, floor Polishes, and certain foodstuffs under the Food and Drugs Act. Indeed, the Motion last Thursday of the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch, on the contamination of food could conceivably be discussed under this Bill.
One or two suggestions were made by the Consumers' Protection Committee which I might mention to the noble Lord, Lord Crook. In Clause 1 (b) of the Bill, it is suggested that reference by name to some of the ingredients should be given, in addition to warnings and instructions. This could conceivably relate to goods such as toys and crayons—because a number of these contain harmful ingredients. Children have a habit of putting crayons in their mouths, and toys as well; and if they are coated with lead paint, this can sometimes lead to very unpleasant results. I am not going to detain your Lordships any longer on this Bill. There is a lot of legislation to be discussed to-day, and many relevant matters have already been discussed in the Home Safety Bill and in others. I hope that your Lordships will give this Bill an enthusiastic Second Reading.
4.6 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT: (EARL BATHURST): My Lords, I, too, would add my words of congratulation and thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Crook,

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for moving this Bill in your Lordships' House, and also to congratulate his friend, the honourable gentleman in another place, Mr. Edwards, who introduced this Bill to Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Crook, has explained the purpose of this difficult and complicated measure, with the lucidity which we always attach to any speech or comments which the noble Lord makes.
Before I go further, I should like to acknowledge what my noble friend Lord Derwent has said, but at the same time I must say, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, that we must take careful note of what the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition has also said. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Crook, and my noble friend that I will look most carefully into what my noble friend has said. If it is possible to work with the co-operation and help of the noble Lord and his friends in another place, something may be done, but I do hope that my noble friend will in no way prejudice the chances of this Bill becoming law in this Session.
My noble friend Lord Auckland asked that certain mention should be made in Clause 1 of ingredients of certain materials. I am sure that your Lordships will appreciate how difficult this would be. I should like to assure you that if there are any particular ingredients or materials—the noble Lord mentioned two, crayons and toys—I imagine that the Consumer Council would say that they did not like those particular ingredients. They would then go to the British Standards Institution, and in time a standard might be worked out for such materials. If there were still manufacturers who insisted on putting either shoddy materials, or poisonous or any harmful ingredients, upon the market, then the noble Lord's Bill would start to take operation. I wanted to make it clear that, in spite of the lack of any mention of ingredients, I think my noble friend's points are met by the noble Lord's Bill.
The House has devoted much thought and time to accidents in the home and to the safety standards of goods and services which the public buy in ever-increasing quantities as the standard of living rises. My noble friend Lord Auckland paid particular attention to that problem. There is no doubt that,
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as science advances, and as wealth increases, more and more potentially dangerous machines, materials, and so forth are coming upon the market, and are being bought.
I will go all the way with the noble Lord, Lord Crook, that there are four fields of action. Personally, I should like to rearrange the order of his first and second points. I would put first education, and training in the prevention of accidents; education in the schools, in the Press, on the television and radio, and by all the means of propaganda that are available in these modern times. But it is just my personal opinion that point one should come first. Second, comes our own personal help to old people and to children, to prevent them from becoming victims of accidents the risks of which they are not able to appreciate. Then thirdly, as the noble Lord said, there is the point about careful design of household goods and machinery. The British Standards Institution and the manufacturers themselves have won our confidence in the high standards of the materials which are put upon the market. In fact, British manufacturers are household names with regard to the goods which they put on the markets of the world.
Then, finally, comes legislation. As the noble Lord said, his Bill comes into this No. 4 category. The noble Lord has explained how his Bill will work and in what circumstances. It is, of course, the result of the Interim Report of the Molony Committee. The noble Lord has said that his Bill is a positive measure; and that is quite true. On the other hand—and I am sure the noble Lord will agree with me—I doubt that it will, in fact, have a great effect upon reducing this tragic number of some 7,000 deaths caused by accidents in the home. We have to remember that so many of these accidents happen to old people—something like 70 per cent. of the deaths by accident in the home relate to people over the age of 65. And so, my Lords, it would be unfair to expect that this measure will have a great effect upon this tragic toll.
This is a legal long-stop. I would also call it a Parliamentary umpire at square leg, whereby action can be taken if goods are marketed persistently which would cause harm or accident to the

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buyer. As the noble Lord has said, British manufacturers are second to none with regard to the attention they pay to safety factors. I want to pay a tribute to them. I also want to pay a tribute to the way in which so many of our best manufacturers rapidly remedy any defects that may come to light in the course of time in a new product or due to now processes. I would remind your Lordships that should any products fail to come up to the standards—woe betide them! Of course this includes all foreign produce and manufactures which would be coming on to our market.
The British standard, with the kite trade mark, is known and acknowledged throughout the world. The Institution will have a leading part to play in carrying out the provisions of this Bill. In fact, if the British Standards Institution's advice is followed it is not anticipated that we shall have to use the powers in this Bill except on rare occasions, as Lord Crook has pointed out. It is the unscrupulous manufacturers who must beware, as Lord Crook and the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, have told us.
The noble Lord has explained his Bill admirably and I want only to draw your Lordships' attention to the novel and serious point which is embodied in Clause 3. That, of course, is with regard to failure to comply. Clause 3 (1) says that failure to comply with safety requirements will be a breach of statutory duty for the purpose of civil proceedings by a person who suffers injury or loss in the consequence of the failure. That is, of course, a very serious measure for those who may be caught under the regulations of this Bill.
I would remind your Lordships that these serious measures are taken following the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord du Parcq, and the longstanding criticisms of his colleagues in the legal profession. They have wished for a long time that Parliament should make its intention clear when introducing legislation. In fact the noble and learned Lord went so far as to suggest—and I quote
"that those who are responsible for framing legislation might consider whether the traditional practice—which obscures, if it does not conceal, the intention which Parliament has, or must be presumed to have, might not safely be abandoned."
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My Lords, this is a legal mouthful. As a result of that comment, the noble Lord's friends in another place with the help of my right honourable friend have drafted this measure in this way. I would remind your Lordships of the defence which the noble Lord, Lord Crook has mentioned in Clause 3 (2), where the operative words are "reasonable cause to believe". I believe that is a reasonable and fair defence for this measure. All I can do now is to commend the Bill to your Lordships, thank the noble Lord for his lucidity and his clear explanation, and wish the Bill good luck and a smooth passage on to the Statute Book.
4.18 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, may I rise to thank the noble Lords who have made their contributions and thank them also for the warm support which has been given and for the nice things that have been said. There have been a number of suggestions—I make it a total of five—upon Amendments that might be moved. I welcome the suggestion of my noble Leader, that we who are concerned in trying to get this Bill on to the Statute Book in this Session might take an opportunity of getting together with some of our honourable friends in another place to see what we can do before the Committee stage is taken in your Lordships' House on Monday next.
I am bound to say that, whatever the Amendments are, I shall not feel happy about any of them, for what I think to be a very good reason. I explained to your Lordships in opening that there was a long Second Reading in January and a protracted discussion in Committee C. There was, in fact, a seven-hour discussion in Committee C. The whole of one Private Members' day from eleven until four o'clock was occupied on the Report stage and the start of Third Reading. I think it would be true to say that the long consideration was due to the desire of a few people who, for their own reasons, were quite blatantly and without any hesitation trying to obstruct the Bill by making long speeches and holding up the proceedings. I should not like to take any steps next Monday, or at any later stage in this House, which when the Bill got back to the other place gave to the three or four gentlemen in question such an opportunity to exploit that a difficult Amendment might give

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them. It is for that reason that I welcome the advice of my noble Leader and the suggestion of co-operation that was given by colleagues on the other side of the House. I hope we may have an opportunity, perhaps to-morrow, to get together and know where we are going.
I will not keep your Lordships any longer—there is no need, when I have had such kind and friendly speeches in support of the Bill. I hope to have the same co-operation on Committee stage on Monday, and on Report stage and on Third Reading as soon thereafter as may be possible.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE BILL
4.20 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time. May I suggest that any further discussion should take place on the Motion, That the Bill do now pass?
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I wish to raise what in another place would be called a point of Order, but as there are no points of Order in your Lordships' House, I suppose that I must call it a matter of procedure. I do this advisedly at this stage of the Bill, after consultation and in full agreement with my noble friend Lord Salisbury, who I know had hoped to be here. The point I wish to put to the noble and learned Viscount the Leader of the House is this. What is the custom and practice of this House in the moving of Amendments on Third Reading? I am well aware that the Standing Order (there is only one that deals with this; No. 43) provides:
"No amendment, other than a privilege amendment, shall be moved upon the Third Reading of a Public Bill unless notice of the amendment has been given to the Clerk not later than the day preceding that on which the amendment is to be moved, in sufficient time to enable the amendment to be printed and circulated in the form in which it is to be moved."
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That is all there is in the Standing Orders, but those noble Lords who have been long in this House will, I am sure, agree that for generations, certainly for decades, this House has treated the moving of Amendments on a Third Reading as a very exceptional procedure.
I well remember that before the war, when I was in charge of a Bill in your Lordships' House, there was a matter which the whole House very much wanted to amend on Third Reading. It is true that notice had not been given of the Amendment and as we were then on Third Reading, the written notice technically required could not he given. I remember that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, the father of my noble friend, said to the House on that occasion that although the whole House wanted to do this, and although it would clearly have been for the convenience of the House, and the whole business we were considering, that it should be done, the Amendment was such an exceptional matter that we ought not to make any exception to the normal procedure. The House, although it would very much have liked to make the Amendment, felt the force of that argument, and I did not press my proposal.
I have noticed, in this Session in particular, that there has been a sort of tendency to treat a Third Reading as though it were a Committee stage or Report stage. That is entirely contrary to what has been the practice of the House as long as I can remember, and as long as any noble Lord can remember. I think that my noble friend who sits behind me, who has been here a long time, would bear me out. I have nothing to say about the merits of the Amendment which is on the Order Paper to-day. It may be an admirable Amendment. But I think it is true that this is a matter of which there has been ample opportunity for discussion on Committee and on Report stage. I believe that the subject matter of it was discussed on at least one of those stages and on one of them was voted upon.
What I should like to put to the noble and learned Viscount the Leader of the House, to the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, and to the whole House is whether my noble friend and I are right in what we believe has been the past practice in this House. Of

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course, the House can make any change: it is entirely master of its own procedure. But die procedure we have adopted in the past, not just by Standing Order but also by convention, has generally been the result of what we have found practical and convenient and broadly in the general interest. If the House wants to make a change in what has been the common practice in the past, then I venture to suggest, with respect, that we ought not just to slip or slide into this; we ought to do it after a full consideration. If our practice is to be changed, it should be considered by the House fully as a matter of principle and practice, probably after the matter had been considered by the Committee on Procedure and a Report by that Committee made in the House. Then, if we have to lay down a change in what has been our practice—though not, I agree, in the form of a Standing Order—the proper course is that the House should pass a Resolution to do whatever it feels right to do in discussing a Bill, and that should be enshrined in a Standing Order.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am very interested in the argument the noble Earl has put to the House, and there is a good deal of substance lying behind it. In regard to the Bill now under final discussion, I would say that the circumstances of this Amendment are somewhat different from the case of the Amendment which was put down by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, on a Third Reading, when I myself protested. On that occasion, there was plenty of time for an Amendment to be considered by the Government and accepted. But this is a somewhat different case. This Bill has already passed through the House of Commons and has been discussed at great length in your Lordships' House. Due notice has been given from this side that the Amendment which stands in the name of my noble friends and myself would be raised. Notice was first given during discussion on Report, but it was not pressed at that time, in view of the speech that was made by the Government spokesman. It is being raised again on Third Reading because it was perfectly plain to us that the Government had been moved in the direction of agreement by what was said on Report stage to such an extent that some steps had been taken. What we want to ensure, there-
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fore, is that in this final stage of the Bill, which has already passed through the House of Commons, we may get the point we are pressing for established in the Bill before it goes back to another place. I think that that is quite reasonable. On the other hand, on the general argument put by the noble Earl, I think that there is sufficient substance in it to have a discussion of it in the Committee on Procedure.
4.29 p.m.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, my noble friend Lord Swinton told me a short time ago that he was going to raise this point, and I am grateful to him for having done so, though I have not really had time to study the precedents fully. I think that before I said anything very definite, it would be desirable that I should study them. Therefore, I can only answer the matter as of first impression, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I should turn out to be wrong.
I should like, first of all, quite candidly to admit that the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Molson on the Road Traffic Bill had eluded my vigilance. I was not aware of it before I entered the Chamber on that afternoon, and had I been consulted I should have advised him against it. This is not to prejudge the issue on this Bill, but I think I must obviously accept the responsibility, although I was not aware that the Amendment was going to be moved. I would deprecate an Amendment on a small matter of that kind (acceptable as it undoubtedly was to the House in principle) at that late stage, and I think that in such a case it would have been more convenient if the Amendment had been composed, either by the Government or by a private Member in another place, especially as on that occasion, at any rate, there was doubt as to the future progress of the Bill.
I think I should candidly say that I think it was a mistake. I do not think there is any doubt about that, and I should accept that view. I myself have always deprecated, as a general rule, Amendments here on Third Reading. The Committee and Report stage ought ordinarily to be enough for Amendments,

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and I do not think the House would like to approve any general licence to regard the Third Reading as yet another opportunity for discussing matters which have largely been gone into on Committee.
At the same time, I would say that, as a matter of first impression, I thought my noble friend slightly over-stated the case against Amendments on Third Reading, and I myself would not have treated the precedent which he cited of the late Lord Salisbury as directly in point, because, as I understand from his account of the matter, on that occasion a Standing Order had not been observed; and that materially alters the case. In this case, the Standing Order has been observed, and I would personally think, as a first impression, that although Third Reading Amendments are to be deprecated, this House would not willingly abridge in advance the right of Members who observe the Standing Order to put down a notice of Amendment in the proper way and to have it discussed, subject, of course, to any comments the House may make about the propriety of a noble Lord's action in any particular case. I think it is one of those matters which probably the House can manage for itself, and would not wish to abridge its rights in advance.
Whether or not this Amendment is a good one or ought to have been moved, I would not myself express an opinion. I had thought that the noble Lord who put it down had fairly fully canvassed the subject both on Committee and on Report. But this is a matter for the House. The noble Lord is in order in doing what he has done. I would not wish this afternoon to say more than that. I fully accept the view of my noble friend, who can either ask me a question, when I have had time to consider and take advice on the nature of the procedure, or pursue the matter further on the Procedure Committee.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, if I may say so, I am completely satisfied. I would not dissent from anything the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has said. I think it would be convenient if this matter came up at the Procedure Committee. It does not need a formal Motion; they could consider it, and if they thought fit they could report to
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the House. That would be entirely satisfactory to me and, I am sure, to Lord Salisbury also.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I think this is the sort of matter which can be conveniently discussed in the Procedure Committee. On first impression this afternoon this is the answer that I would make.
On Question, Bill read 3a, with the Amendments.
4.34 p.m.
LORD STONHAM LORD STONHAM moved, after Clause 20 to insert the following new clause:
Director of After-Care
". The Secretary of State shall appoint a Director of After-Care who shall have the status of a Prison Commissioner and shall be responsible for official after-care and for co-ordinating statutory and voluntary after-care."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am not an authority on the Rules of your Lordships' House. The one Rule that I have had invariably impressed upon my mind in the short time I have been here is that we should be courteous one to another. I should regard it as the ultimate discourtesy if I intentionally wasted your Lordships' time with matters which had been fully discussed at an earlier stage. I gave complete and adequate notice of my intention, in that I mentioned it during the Report stage, and I hope to convince your Lordships that the matters of which I shall now speak have certainly not been anything like wholly discussed, and that they are matters of importance which ought to be discussed before we finally part with this Bill.
In moving this Amendment, I am asking your Lordships to support a fundamental change in our penal system. At present our interest in an offender, which begins when he is sent to prison, virtually ends when he comes out. We want to change this because it is not only socially and morally wrong, but stupidly and fabulously expensive. A great part of the £15 million annual cost of the prison service is caused by the 20 or 30 per cent. of offenders who keep going back for more. Those of us who have worked in this field know that many of these men, given a chance, will make decent citizens. Instead of a burden on society, they would be an asset. But for this we must have an efficient and a sufficient after-care organisation.
There is a service in existence whose members are well-meaning and devoted, but the service itself, compared with the need, is so grotesquely inadequate as to be almost useless. I am not—and I must make this very clear indeed—attacking the men who run it. For example, Commander Hague who, in his one person, combines the functions of the statutory Director of the Central After-Care Association and the General Secretary of the voluntary National Association for Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, does his gallant and excellent best with pitifully inadequate resources. You do not blame a man if he fails to push back the tide with a mop; you blame the method chosen for the job, and you blame the people who gave him that job. That is the position with regard to the organisation that I have mentioned.
My Lords, 40,000 men and women come out of prison every year, and after-care for all but 700 of them is the responsibility of 37 local discharged prisoners' aid societies and their National Association. Half the local societies' expenditure is paid by the Treasury. In a typical year only £20,000 is spent on actual assistance to prisoners—£20,000 for 40,000 people, an average of 10s. a head, enough for a poor night's lodging and a cup of tea. Two out of every five long-sentence men have no home to go to when they leave prison. With such financing, it is not surprising that in a case I quoted last week an ex-prisoner wrote three times, over a period of three months, to the National Association for help in getting working clothes, and in the end all he got was a letter to the W.V.S. I am not criticising their devoted officers when I say that the very existence of these organisations in their present form is harmful to ex-prisoners, because the public is deceived into thinking that they do something effective for them.
What of the public departments who administer the Welfare State? These are the facts, not from prisoners, but from the Ministers who have been good enough to reply to me in response to my inquiries. When a man who has saved as much as £1 leaves prison, he is given half-a-crown and a railway warrant, and also an insurance card which is a means of identification and a passport to possible security. But the card is unstamped, so few employers will look
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at him. He is in a foreign country without a visa. He goes to the local employment exchange, but they wilt not register him for benefit because he has no place of residence. If he still has his £1 when he goes to the National Assistance Board, they will not give him any money; but they will give him a voucher for a lodging house. Of course, it is at this stage that he begins to think that he was better off in prison.
Next day he returns to the labour exchange, and the manager makes him sign a document so that the prospective employer can be informed of his prison background. Mr. John Hare, the Minister of Labour, has been kind enough to assure me that this is not normal practice when sending a man to manual employment. Similarly, Mr. Boyd-Carpenter assures me that emergency cards can be issued by his local officers to prisoners who have not been given a regular card. Yet ray man was refused one. No, these things are obviously not in the rules but they happen to ex-prisoners—dogs that anyone can kick with impunity. We are, in fact, my Lords, kinder to stray dogs than we are to ex-prisoners: for example, the man who was discharged without an insurance card. A girl at the insurance office refused his plea for a bit of paper to say he had applied for a card; the labour exchange refused registration because he had no home. Rowton House refused him a bed because he had no card and his prison discharge papers were not regarded as sufficient proof of identity. When he walked into a police station to get the proof he was a dog without a collar. A dog would have been fed and sent off to Battersea, and, in due course, someone would have given him a home.
When a man walks out of prison his punishment should end and not be just beginning. We want more welfare officers in prisons and we want them to have a higher status and the power to relate a man's training to the job he is going to when he comes out of prison. We want men to go straight to a job with cards and papers free of the prison brand. We want homes and hostels to get the homeless prisoner over the first few difficult weeks. We want after-care officers to advise, direct and encourage; and, above all, we want a Director to co-ordinate the whole business—not only

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the proposed new set-up but the work of Government Departments so far as they relate to ex-prisoners. In my submission, on the grounds of economy, common sense and humanity, the case for this programme is unanswerable.
The noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack does not in fact dispute it. His only material objection in my view to our earlier Amendments is that it would be prejudging the work of the Advisory Council. I am somewhat puzzled by this objection, first, because much that we are asking for was in fact recommended by the Maxwell Committee, and the Lord Chancellor has told us that eight years ago, as Home Secretary, he accepted those recommendations. Does he now expect the Advisory Council to say he was wrong to accept those recommendations, or that the present Home Secretary was wrong not to have implemented them? Surely not.
My second reason for bewilderment in this matter was the Report that came to me that the Home Office had already appointed a Director of After-Care, which we asked for in the Amendment. Naturally I knew that if the Lord Chancellor had been aware of it he most certainly would have mentioned it when he replied to the debate last week. So I checked yesterday with the Prison Commission. The Secretary of the Commission told me that—and I quote:
"It is quite true that Mr. C. J. Cape, an Assistant Commissioner, was recently relieved of his educational duties and is now in charge of welfare."
Incidentally, the Prison Commission always calls "after-care", welfare. When I asked for an interpretation of what had developed in the last few weeks, I could not be precisely told that this change had been made. And then when I pressed for further details I was told that Mr. Cape was now—and again I quote:
"responsible for the Prison Commissioners' relations with the Central After-care Association, the National Association of Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies, and the local discharged prisoners' aid societies."
I suggested that this meant that he was, in fact, Director of After-care, but I was informed—again I quote:
"The Commissioners did not claim that title for Mr. Cape."
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The position, therefore, is still very obscure, but it seems obvious that Mr. Cape has part of the job without the title. It is equally obvious that the Home Secretary has been doing good by stealth. But now that he has partly braved the displeasure of his Advisory Council the main objection to the Amendment has been removed. But we cannot be fobbed off with a pretended substitute for a real organisation. We still need the Amendment, because the Director must have status equal to that of a Prison Commissioner and he must have something to direct. Above all, the various contributories to after-care must have their activities co-ordinated.
I should emphasise, my Lords, that if ex-prisoners are to be given a chance, the statutory and voluntary forms of after-care must not only be co-ordinated but have the scope and be in the form that we have suggested. I say this because the Lord Chancellor expressed the view last week that if my Amendment were accepted it would defer the Bill's provisions for statutory supervision until after a Director of After-care had been appointed. Yet that objection now seems to have all but disappeared. But I must remove any possible doubt about what we regard as necessary.
This Bill, as it now stands, will eventually increase to 12,000 a year the number of ex-prisoners who will come under statutory after-care. The Lord Chancellor has defined this as
"a form of obligatory acceptance of supervision as a condition of discharge, which carries with it liability to recall to confinement for a breach of any condition of the supervision."
It is, therefore, supervision, not aftercare. I do not object to it, but it underlines the need for the co-ordination asked for in the Amendment, so that the aids to rehabilitation shall be equally available to the 12,000 prisoners released under statutory and the 30,000 more who will be released under voluntary aftercare. It also establishes the need for a co-ordinated after-care service in addition to the probation service. Without it, so-called after-care would be a mere façade, a dodge to throw extra burdens on the probation service.
At present the probation service of about 1,500 officers is some 300 under strength for the proper discharge of its existing duties. Statutory supervision

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duties and the work of providing the courts with Streatfeild-type reports would involve a 50 per cent. increase in the present strength of the probation service. Now this has a direct bearing on our case because it makes it abundantly clear that if we are to have a proper system of after-care and give convicts a chance to become citizens it must be a separate service, it must be co-ordinated, and there must be central direction. In their speeches the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary and the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor have assured us that they want our penal system to include both the certainty of punishment and the promise of reform. Acceptance of this Amendment will give statutory form to that promise.
My Lords, as was disclosed before I started, this is the third time during the passage of this Bill that I have raised this subject. As a result, the facts have been fully exposed. Last week, on my noble friend's advice, I deferred a Division to enable those facts to be fully considered and to enable more noble Lords to take part in the eventual decision, and I am encouraged to believe that this was the right course—I mean no discourtesy, but I think it was the right course—and I am encouraged in that view because I understand that the noble and gallant Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, intends to make his maiden speech in support of this Amendment; and, if I may say so, he has the reputation for making adequate preparations to ensure victory. However encouraging that support, I am painfully conscious that this is the final appeal, the last time in this Bill that we shall be able to make an appeal for a fair deal for the most vulnerable, defenceless and friendless people in the whole country. It is not a Party matter; it is a question of justice and humanity. And I ask you, my Lords, the highest and last court of appeal, for justice for the lowest and least worthy, and the most forlorn in the land. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 20, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Stonham.)
4.51 p.m.
VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY OF ALAMEIN: My Lords, this is the first time that I have had the honour of addressing your Lordships' House, and
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I should like to apologise in advance for any atrocities I may commit. I can assure your Lordships that everything I say will be completely uncontroversial. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, mentioned just now certain techniques that I adopted in war time when fighting the Queen's enemies. I would remind him that there are battles and battles. It is one thing to fight the Queen's enemies in war time; it is another and very different thing to fight the politicians. They are totally different things, as I know very well, having had experience of both. In the first case, provided that you have a good organisation and adequate resources: that you know your job, and that the morale of your soldiers is high, you win. It is just like that—you win. In the second case, however good may be your organisation, however adequate may be your resources, however high may be the morale of your supporters, you lose. I have noticed with great interest some of the battles that have taken place here in your Lordships' House. They always end in the same way: the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack rises, takes three paces to his left, makes a speech and you lose. I must admit that he is generally pretty good.
Against this background I should like to consider this problem. Last week my noble friend Lord Longford said that he had worked with me in the War Office, which is very true; and he said that while there he had learned from me certain words; and that also is very true. He used three of them—I am certain he learned more really, but he used three. He described the organisation for this matter, the after-care of prisoners who have been discharged, and he said that from his experience of working with me he was sure I would have used three words to describe the organisation: a "shambles", a "nonsense" and a "mess". If what he said about the organisation is true—and I would emphasise that—I do not think that any of those words would do. If what he said was true, I would say that the organisation looks like being a complete "dog's breakfast". It may be that some of your Lordships will not knew what is meant by a "dog's breakfast"; and you will not find it in the dictionary. But it is exactly the opposite to the "cat's whiskers". I came to the conclusion

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that there must be something wrong with the organisation—there must be. It is a tremendous human problem, and it is for that very reason that I have felt impelled to speak. I am sure that this problem must be tackled at once. If it is not tackled at once, I feel that the effect of these discharged prisoners wandering loose in the nation could be very bad on the young people of our land, who are greatly influenced by example, as we know.
I will try not to be controversial, but I served for ten years in the Western Defence Organisation, during which time I was in very close contact with all the nations of the Free World, all the Governments. My experience of them was that Governmental action in the Free World is seldom taken at once; there is generally a good deal of delay, and if the problem is difficult it is handed over to a committee of experts to examine and report. The moment that is done, complications creep in and simplicity disappears out of the window. I also learned in my Continental life in Europe that political leaders seldom act on their own judgment and make decisions. Their decisions are always based on what they are told by their advisers. They are very prone to hand the problem over to a committee to collect ideas, and I have a feeling that in this country we are committee-ridden. A clergyman friend of mine told me the other day that he was trying to explain to a Chinaman the doctrine of the Trinity, a very difficult thing to explain to a non-Christian, and this Chinaman could not get it. Finally, his face lit up, and he said, "Ah I see—English, committee". That is what he said.
Knowing this background, I decided that I would go into battle on this particular problem; and I hope, of course, that when the noble and learned Viscount moves three paces to his left it may be the one battle that I have ever fought with the political body in which one does not suffer total defeat—in peace, not in war. My Lords, I can claim to have some small knowledge of the handling of men—indeed, I think it has probably been the mainspring of my whole adult life. I have been brought up in my profession—I am a soldier—to face up to a problem, however difficult it may be; to analyse it; to sort out the things that
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matter from the things that do not matter (and it is an extraordinary thing what a lot of things do not matter); to make a decision and to take action: in other words, to do something. That is what I have been taught to do. But I have learned by bitter, very bitter, experience that if you make a decision in Whitehall you are ruled offside at once; it is one of the things you do not do; and a free kick is awarded against you.
I am convinced, from what I have heard and what I have read, that everything in the organisation for handling this matter is not as it should be; I am convinced of that. It may be that that is an understatement. In this problem, which I think is urgent, we need decision and action; and while there are a great many things that need looking at, I think that there are probably two things which are fundamental to the whole business: first, a very good and sound organisation, and secondly the right people to operate it.
As to the organisation, I am not myself convinced that this problem will be solved simply by creating a Director of After-Care. I would say, from what I have heard here in your Lordships' House, and from what I have studied, that the whole structure of the organisation needs a thorough overhaul from top to bottom, to make certain that it is exactly right for doing what must be done. Then, having examined the whole structure, I believe that next we must have the right people to operate it. Here I think there is room for much improvement. A good organisation is useless without the right people to handle it—a well-organised army cannot succeed without good Generals. I well remember that in a conversation during the war with Sir Winston Churchill I said to him. "You like Generals who win battles." His reply was quite short, "You're telling me!" The same applies here. I think that the people selected to operate this organisation must be those who really care for their fellow men.
When I was very small one of the first hymns I was ever taught was that called "Once in Royal David's City". There is a line in one of the verses which has had a profound influence on me all my life. That line was:
"And He careth for our sadness."

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I think it was that which had a great effect on me from an early age—because when I was young I did not really have a happy youth; and later, when I became a soldier in the First World War of 1914–18, I saw the whole horror of modern war descending on the shoulders of British soldiers, and I think that what really started me off on my great affection for the soldier was that line:
"And He careth for our sadness."
I believe that these good men, when found, must be paid properly. It seems to me that there are two key jobs in this organisation: one the prison welfare officer, and the other the after-care officer. I would describe them as lynchpins in the set-up; and if they are not men of the very best steel then the organisation could collapse—the one inside the prison and the other outside. Those two must be a team and they must be whole-time regulars, not retired men paid a small salary for part-time work—underpaid. That would be quite useless. I was most interested last week in seeing Dr. Beeching speaking on television of the Transport Commission set-up. He said that he was going to bring in some good young men at the top, and that he thoroughly realised that he would have to pay them well. I think that it is essential that the people who are brought in, who really care for their fellow men, should be paid really good salaries. Only in this way will good men be obtained.
Finally, I should like to say that I believe it will be a tragedy if we have to divide the House on a most human problem like this. It is inconceivable that all of us in this House should not feel the same about it, wherever we sit. I used to sit on the Cross Benches, but I got crowded out by Admirals of the Fleet, Law Lords, Judges, and retired members of the Diplomatic Service, and I came up here. Last week my friend Jo Grimond wrote and said that he thought I might with convenience sit on the Liberal Benches. There would certainly be more room there! But I thought I was safer up here. If we divide the House, it will merely make those people whom we so badly want to help think that we do not know how to do it, or that we are making this a matter of Party politics. Of all the problems that I have ever heard discussed in your Lordships' House—and I have been a Member here for about fifteen or sixteen
538
years—I would say that this one is quite definitely non-Party, and is a matter for all of us who really care for the sadness of these people—men and women.
I would urge—perhaps "urge" is not the right word: I would plead that Her Majesty's Government will give an assurance that the whole matter of aftercare will be reviewed in the light of the discussion that has taken place in your Lordships' House—both the organisational structure and the people who operate it, and their fitness to do so. I hope that during that investigation noble Lords who know a good deal about this subject, such as my noble friends Lord Longford and Lord Stonham, would be consulted, which I am informed has not happened so far. If Her Majesty's Government would give this assurance, I should hope that the Amendment would be withdrawn. I think the last thing we want to see is noble Lords going into the Division Lobby on a subject on which, basically, we must all agree in principle. It may be that some of us disagree on methods, but I should have thought that methods could be sorted out by consultation and discussion, and not by clearing the Floor and rolling up our sleeves on what is really an intensely human problem.
5.8 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am happy that it should fall to my lot to follow the noble and gallant Field Marshal who has just addressed your Lordships' House. He and I know each other—in the old days quite closely, but of late somewhat from afar. I think he has made an extraordinarily good maiden speech. From a man of his character and experience one would not expect to hear a speech which did not reveal some of his own personal qualities. Some parts of his speech this afternoon have revealed these in an excellent manner. I thought he was going strong at first on action, which he has always regarded as the great thing to do in life. His approach to a problem has always been: study it, work it out and then act. But in this particular case the Advisory Committee have been in action for about six years. Now that we have proved, I think, that there is a great need for this aftercare service to be better organised, and to be directly under the control of a Director, we want to make sure that the

539
decision of this House in regard to this matter is recorded in the Bill, and that such a Director will be appointed.
At the opening of the noble and gallant Field Marshal's speech, I felt that he was giving some excellent advice to individuals to praotise in certain circumstances—excellent advice. He quoted a line from "Once in Royal David's City", which appealed to me very much indeed. But I think that what we need in a State like ours, which has set up a great Welfare State, is to see that we do everything in every department of our experience which will not make the Welfare State dependent upon something the State does for the individual, but which results in the whole community of individuals putting something in to help the State. It is something like Emerson said in one of his Essays: that the State must follow in the long run the character and conduct of its citizens and that the law which is instituted is really only a memorandum of the character and the conduct of the citizens.
The lines that occurred to me when the noble Viscount was quoting the hymn, and that I should have thought might have been, and may well have been, one of his inspirations in his great career, come from an American poem, Vandyke, in The Builders:
"Four things a man must learn to do,
If he would make his record true:
To think without confusion, clearly,
To act from honest motives, purely,
To love his fellow men sincerely,
And to trust in God and heaven securely."
I think that my noble friends Lord Longford and Lord Stonham have been inspired during the whole of their examination of this Criminal Justice Bill to try to get that into operation, so that even the downcast, the guilty, the punished, can be capable of redemption, and redemption which brings them back to making a contribution to the State, however collective it may be in its provisions for education, for security, for social advancement—to bring even the outcast and the punished back, to making his or her contribution to the welfare of the State.
It is because we think that the aftercare is so vitally important with regard to discharged prisoners that we want to secure what has been in our minds since
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we raised this matter in the earlier stages of the Bill: that a Prison Commissioner should be made into virtually a Director of After-care. That we want to establish in legislation. I hope that the noble and gallant Viscount, if he will excuse me for saying so, does not want a long interregnum for another consideration, another inquiry, in order to avoid a Division on an Amendment in this matter. Because, as I say, for six years there has been an Advisory Committee; this Criminal Justice Bill has been before the other House for months, and we have had it up here for considerable investigation. We have made the case perfectly clear; and I think, therefore, that we ought now to put it into the Statute.
I want to make it quite clear, so far as I am concerned, as I think my noble friend made clear, that we do not want a Director who is working a system which is in any way going to detract from the noble and self-sacrificing work of so many voluntary institutions. I think that was made quite clear by my noble friend Lord Stonham. And, if I may say so, after-care for those who have passed through the courts in some form or another or served in prison is much wider spread in the voluntary associations than many people recognise. Only last Saturday I was speaking in Essex to Central Home, promoted by the West Ham Central Baptist Mission, and there were there lads who had been through the courts and been found in need of care and protection, being looked after for some years. I am glad to say that place had the support of the Carnegie Trust, and there was a fine house built for them to be brought up in. So far as I know, in the years they have been working not one boy who has been in that place has afterwards returned to any kind of failure. If that can be done at that age, it can be done, as has been proved in many cases, in after-care for the discharged prisoners, if they get a really human deal.
Nobody knows better than the noble and gallant Viscount the Field Marshal who has just spoken that, if we are to follow what he has advised, you must have a Director and you must pick the right one. That is what he has indicated to us. There is no reason why we should be deciding who is going to be the Director. What we want is only that the

541
principle that a Director be provided should be established in the Statute, and I think the time has come now to act and to take a decision. If we do that, I would say to the noble and gallant Viscount that not only have we had good advice about action, but we shall be very pleased to hear him discourse upon it at greater length in the future.
LORD FRASER OF NORTH CAPE: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I want to say a few words. I am a sailor, and we do not talk, perhaps, quite so much as Field Marshals; but my solution, which is a Royal Navy solution, is just this. All you need to do is to appoint a Commander-in-Chief, After-care; tell him to get on with the job; and if he does not, chuck him out!
5.17 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it is, I should like to say, a very happy occasion for me to be speaking on the Motion which has attracted the first speech of the noble and gallant Viscount who has addressed us on this Amendment. I hope that, now that he has broken the ice (because it would be quite wrong in his case to say that he had broken his tongue), he will plunge in often again and that we shall have many opportunities of hearing his wisdom and advice.
With regard to the present Amendment, I must say that, having replied to it twice already (and on one occasion, I must tell the noble and gallant Viscount, the proposers of the Amendment took us into the Division Lobby and the House rejected their view by a two to one majority), there is a certain difficulty in getting one's mental and oratorical forces together for the third time. But I shall do my best, and I should like to assure the noble and gallant Field Marshal on two points. He first of all asked: were the facts put forward in support of these three Amendments (shall I say?) accurate? They are not accurate. He then asked that the whole matter should be the subject of a thorough overhaul. In that he was following the noble Earl, Lord Longford, who suggested that it should be the subject of an inquiry. That is exactly what there is going to be. The difference between the supporters of the Amendment and those of us who have hitherto opposed it is that we want to
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see the matter the subject of a thorough inquiry and overhaul before the course of action is decided upon. Those who are supporting the Amendment want to decide upon a course of action before that inquiry. So, really, I feel, in view of the noble and gallant Field Marshal's words, that I have his support, although he rose to speak for the Amendment.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: May I interrupt the noble Viscount? He has been good enough to refer to me as desiring that there should be a further inquiry, if I understood him aright, into this matter. I am not quite sure what he is quoting from me to that effect.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: If the noble Earl will give me a moment, I think I shall be able to give it him. Yes; the noble Earl, under the alias under which he then operated, was the mainspring of the Pakenham-Thompson Committee; and the Pakenham-Thompson Committee itself said that it would be satisfied if a Departmental inquiry were to be ordered to examine the field which they had covered, and to recommend specific and detailed action within, say, twelve months. That seemed to me to concede that an inquiry was due; and it leaves only a difference between the noble Earl and myself as to whether the proper body is a Departmental Committee or the Home Secretary's Advisory Council. I think the proper body is the Home Secretary's Advisory Council, because they have already done such good work in this field, and I am sure they will give us an admirable Report. So I do not think that I was overstating the principle. I am very glad to be able to assist, and to give the noble Earl the information he was seeking.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: Perhaps I can add a word after the noble Viscount has finished on that.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Of course. It is the usual procedure, when an Amendment is moved against the Government, for Opposition speakers to speak before the Government speaker, so that the Government speaker has an opportunity of dealing with all the points raised, because then he can deploy the Government information and forces; but I have far too much respect and political affection for the noble Earl to insist on that point. If he wants to speak after

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me and do his best to tear me to bits, I do not mind, and the House will make its judgment. I am merely saying that the usual procedure is to allow the speaker for the Government to meet all the arguments, and not to try to "sandwich" him, but the noble Earl can do what he likes.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: In that case, perhaps I might interrupt the noble Viscount. It was merely that I did not want to interrupt his flow at this point, and thought it might be more civil to make a comment afterwards. At the moment, I have nothing in my mind to say afterwards, except to remove any idea that when we drew up the Pakenham-Thompson Report last year we expected that the Advisory Council, or some such body, would delay from November to May before meeting to discuss it. We wanted an immediate inquiry. As I am not going to speak again, perhaps I may now take the opportunity of congratulating with all my heart the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am sorry, because, as I say, my general affection makes me hesitate to say anything against the noble Earl, who is not only a fair but a frank and friendly debater. But for the first time I have heard him make a remark about the Advisory Council which I think, on reflection, he will feel is tinged with a lack of generosity—something which, usually, he is the last to show.
He has talked about the delay, and the failure to mobilise the Advisory Council, between November and May. I think that that is a little ungracious when it is remembered, first, that the Council had only just concluded a lengthy and particularly difficult inquiry; and, secondly, that other matters in connection with the treatment of offenders were engaging the Government's attention. It was necessary to decide which of those should be referred to the Council. In the event, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary decided to refer to the Council two other questions: preventive detention and non-residential training centres—and I need hardly remind the noble Earl of the feeling which he himself showed on the subject of non-residential training
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centres. It then became necessary to appoint additional members before the Council could constitute three sub-committees to deal simultaneously with these two matters and the matter which we have already discussed, and which has been referred to. So I hope that it will not go out from this House with the imprimatur of the noble Earl that there has been any delay in using the Advisory Council or, which would be much worse, that there has been any delay or hesitation on the part of the Advisory Council itself.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: As I have been referred to again, and as I am not allowed to speak later, perhaps the noble Viscount will allow me to intervene once more. We have several times alluded to this delay between November and May in the coming together of the Advisory Council. My imprimatur is worth nothing anywhere, but if it were worth anything I would say with conviction that there has been a rather shocking delay in the coming together of the Advisory Council.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: If the noble Earl says that there is a shocking delay after what the Council has done in the way of the Reports we have seen on these three important subjects, then all I can say is that what shocks him does not shock me into anything except admiration for the assiduity of the Advisory Council.
Now once again I ask for your Lordships' all-enduring patience to put once more the answers to this attack which I made before. In 1951, my predecessor appointed the Maxwell Committee to deal with this subject. I received their Report in October, 1951, a few months after I became Home Secretary, and, as I have told those of your Lordships who were good enough to listen, I accepted that Report. Now strangely enough—not strangely enough; I do not think that the noble and gallant Field Marshal can have known of it, although it is not strange that the two minds should go to the same point—the Maxwell Committee took the view which the noble and gallant Field Marshal has expressed today: that the first important point was welfare officers inside the prisons, and so they recommended to me. My Lords, we got on with it; and although the task is not complete—in one sense, my Lords,

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a task like this is never complete, because that would mean complacency—there are 51, not 30, welfare officers at the moment. Furthermore, there are only three local prisons now without a resident welfare officer, and all three should have one by the end of the year.
It is not easy to recruit for that service. It requires a high spirit of devotion and a vocational spirit, as well as efficiency; but I do say that recruitment for that service is not helped by the depreciatory remarks regarding it which have come from those supporting these Amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that after eight years there were about 30 such officers. He was only roughly 50 per cent. or 100 per cent. out in the number, or 60 per cent., depending on how you calculate it. Then he said that they had virtually no training and precious little status. My Lords, that does not help recruiting. As I say, it is a difficult matter, but we have recruited. We have got up to 51, and there are only three prisons without them—and those we hope to fill by the end of the year.
My next point, and here I come back to the noble and gallant Field Marshal, is that the Maxwell Committee, as he did, having dealt with the first point of welfare officers inside the prison, said that the next important matter was to have a service for discharged prisoners. Having set free workers from the societies who had previously been engaged inside prisons, they were then set to deal with the prisoners after they had come out.
Now, my Lords, one thing distressed me; that the impression made on the noble and gallant Field Marshal who has listened to our debates should be that these voluntary societies are—whether it is a "dog's breakfast" or anything else—not doing a good job. As the noble and gallant Field Marshal may remember, I have an interest. I have myself been president of one society. I have appealed for them, and so on. But he may take it from me that, apart from the bad cases, which are, quite naturally, marshalled on an Amendment of this kind, there are a vast number of good cases where good, kind efficient, and dedicated people do a great deal of good work. I believe that one ought to say that, and I am very glad that the noble Viscount who leads the
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Opposition dissociated himself from any criticism of the personnel of the kind that I have described. The next point of time I am taking quite generally was about four years after the Report, when it was decided to extend the after-care to a much greater number of prisoners. Therefore in 1957 the way that should be done was referred to the Advisory Committee. They recommended an extension of statutory after-care to further classes, not only prisoners but those in detention centres.
My Lords, that is the substance of the part of the Bill which deals with the supervision after release from prison. Were politics and legislation as susceptible of speedy action as the field which is the noble and gallant Field Marshal's own, one might criticise a delay of two years. But at some time—I am not going to give a lecture on it now—I shall explain to the noble and gallant Field Marshal, if he will listen to me, the course that it takes to get an idea into a Bill under our legislative system. He may take it from me that to produce a Bill in a couple of years is well up on the average. And so this Bill was produced, and now having extended the problem under the Bill, my right honourable friend felt that it was right, as I have said, to refer it to his Advisory Committee and to get the best possible advice before he builds up his new machinery for a different set of circumstances. That is the situation for which, indeed, the noble and gallant Field Marshal asked: that there should be a thorough overhaul. That is what is going to be done.
There is only one other point. I do not want to spend a great deal of time on it, because it is an individual point as to the position of 'a civil servant. But as there seems to have been some surprise that I did not deal with it earlier, I should like to explain what it is. Until April 4 of this year the gentleman in question was the Assistant Commissioner for Education, Welfare and Civil Defence. On that date he was relieved of his responsibility for education to allow him to devote the greater part of his time to welfare—and, of course, your Lordships will appreciate that welfare is a wider subject than after-care. It includes dealing with a prisoner's welfare problems during sentence. It also

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includes matters such as the system of prison visitors and the provision of prerelease training courses.
There is included in that work an element of after-care, but it did not seem to me to be a reply to what I was being asked for—that is, to set up a separate sub-committee—to put forward that here was a gentleman who was dealing with a variety of subjects but not that subject alone. If the noble Lords think I was wrong in not dealing with it, I accept the responsibility. But it did not seem to me to be the answer. The real answer seemed to me to get the best advice on our new problem, and that we are going to do.
I have tried to deal with the various problems that have been put up to me for the third time. If I might just remind the noble and gallant Field Marshal of the points, I say that there has been put before the House a greatly exaggerated picture which minimises the good work that has been done, and an account of what has happened in the past which gives a totally incorrect figure. But on the main point, we are prepared that this new problem which this Bill puts up should be reconsidered, and it is because my right honourable friend the Home Secretary wants to have the best advice possible that he has asked for this course to be taken. It would really be—I want to choose my adjectives with care—an injudicious course to embark on a new scheme of action which the Bill lays down by asking the most expert body you can to advise upon it, and then anticipate that advice by accepting the Amendment which is put before us to-day.
If your Lordships will allow one personal reminiscence on having to deal with it three times. I remember that once, when I had concluded what seemed to me a certain important speech. I was asked if I would repeat the end of it for Moscow Radio. So at eight o'clock in the morning I went into a completely empty room and did my best to work up my peroration again for the benefit of
Moscow Radio. As I was just finishing it for the second time, one of the team who were taking it down tripped over the connecting cable. So that ruined Number 2. Then I had to start again, even colder, even more depressed, to do it for the third time, so that Moscow Radio might have this great enjoyment of hearing me speak. Then I managed to do it. All I can ask your Lordships is that, having borne with me three times, you will support me for the third time as your Lordships did on the first.
5.40 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am most grateful to those who have taken part in this debate and who have supported this Amendment. I will not keep your Lordships, but I hope you will allow me to join, with others, in thanking the noble and gallant Field Marshal for his characteristic, kindly, and human speech. I will not deal with anything that the noble and learned Viscount has said, except this. I made three speeches, all of them different, and I appreciate, for reasons of economy, that all his three speeches have been the same; but none of them has answered what I said. The only other thing is that he alleged I had grossly exaggerated. I reject that suggestion. He made only one point, and I will not pursue it because there will be another opportunity. But I would say that the case has not been answered. And, really, no attempt has been made to answer it.
Since, unhappily, the Government will not accept the Amendment, I ask your Lordships, in the interests of these people, not to wait until we get a "jolly good Report" from the Advisory Council, but to help us act now for these people who are coming out of prison, with little help being given to them. I would ask your Lordships to support this Amendment in the Division Lobby.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 34; Not-Contents, 67.

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Kilbracken, L

Alexander of Hillsborough, V.

Cranbrook, E.

Latham, L.

Amwell, L.

Crook, L.

Lawson, L.

Attlee, E.

Fraser of North Cape, L.

Lindgren, L.

Citrine, L.

Henderson, L.

Listowel, E.

Colwyn, L.

Hughes, L.

Longford, E.

Lucan, E. [Teller.]

Ravensdale of Kedleston, B.

Taylor, L.

Macpherson of Drumochter, L.

Rea, L.

Terrington, L.

Ogmore, L.

Sinha, L.

Walston, L.

Pethick-Lawrence, L.

Stonham, L. [Teller.]

Williams, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Summerskill, B.

Williams of Barnburgh, L.

Wise, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Albemarle, E.

Dunleath, L.

Milverton, L.

Auckland, L.

Ebbisham, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Baden-Powell, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Morris of Borth-y-Gest, L.

Balfour of Burleigh, L.

Foley, L.

Munster, E.

Bathurst, E.

Fraser of Lonsdale, L.

Newall, L.

Bethell, L.

Freyberg, L.

Newton, L. [Teller.]

Blackford, L.

Gage, V.

Northesk, E.

Bossom, L.

Goschen, V.

Rathcavan, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Gosford, E.

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Buckinghamshire, E.

Grenfell, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Carrington, L.

Hailsham, V. (L. President.)

Salisbury, M.

Cawley, L.

Hastings, L.

Sinclair, L.

Chesham, L.

Hawke, L.

Spens, L.

Clwyd, L.

Horsbrugh, B.

Stonehaven, V.

Colville of Culross, V.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Strang, L.

Colyton, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Strathcarron, L.

Conesford, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Stuart of Findhorn, V.

Craigton, L.

Jessel, L.

Swinton, E.

Davidson, V.

Kilmuir, V. (L. Chancellor.)

Teviot, L.

Denham, L.

Margesson, V.

Torrington, V.

Denning, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Waldegrave, E.

Derwent, L.

Melchett, L.

Digby, L.

Merrivale, L.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

5.50 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in rising to move that this Bill do now pass, I hope that your Lordships will not take it amiss or consider it discourteous on my part if, after the very full discussions we have had on the Bill, I limit my remarks to a most genuine expression of gratitude to all noble Lords who have taken part in our deliberations. They have shown, if they will allow me to say so, the most obvious care, attention and study in raising the various matters, and I am most grateful to them. I can assure them that the background, the content and the spirit of what they have said will all be taken into account by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, even though we have not been able to include their Amendments in the Bill. With that expression of thanks, I hope that your Lordships will allow me to move formally that the Bill do now pass, but of course I shall be delighted to deal with any specific points about which noble Lords may ask me.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
5.52 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, the noble and learned Viscount could never be discourteous, and he can be, and often is, generous. Certainly those who have taken part in these debates will wish to join me in thanking him for what he has just said about our exertions and also for the extraordinary trouble he has taken in replying to difficulties. I seem to remember the Home Secretary describing this Bill in the House of Commons as "a modest instalment of penal reform," and I suggest that that is how it has been presented by the noble and learned Viscount, by the noble and learned Viscount the Leader of the House, and by the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, who is not with us but to whom I should also like to pay tribute, along with the other noble Lords, for his courtesy and care. From this side we have treated the Bill as good, so far as it goes, though it does not go very far.
In the few remarks I shall offer today, it will be rather from the point of view of what it does not do than from the point of view of what it does that I would make a few criticisms and point to one or two inadequacies. The discussions we have had strike me as having

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been conducted at a high level. I hesitate to say that because I have played a small part in them, but leaving out my little rôle, I feel that some of the speeches that have been made—particularly those of my noble friends Lord Stonham and Lady Wootton of Abinger, who is in Japan, where I am sure she is instructing very effectively in the secrets of criminal justice—are bound to be of great assistance to the Home Secretary.
As the House knows, I have taken a particular interest in what has come to be known, very properly, as the Henriques Plan. Many of us were disappointed that nothing has been actually put into the Bill about that plan. I fully realise the considerable difficulties, which were set out sympathetically by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Hailsham, and I hope that in time to come—and before too long—we shall see a plan of non-residential training embodied in the law of this country. For that reason alone, if not for many others, I think that these discussions may deserve to be remembered.
When we look at the gravity of the crime situation—though none of us exaggerates it or falls into the trap of supposing that most people have now become delinquent—we must all ask ourselves whether something larger than this was not possible at this time. Without ranging too far afield, and while appreciating the difference between legislation and administration, and that this is, of course, a piece of legislation, I feel bound to remind the noble and learned Viscount and the House of the unfortunate factors which at the present time make the prison situation a source of such grave disquiet. It would be wrong not to pay tribute to the Government and to the Home Secretary for the size of their building programme. But, of course, the benefits of that programme are not with us yet. Having said that, I must remind the House—I do not think I need give any figures beyond those I have already given on Second Reading—that when the present Home Secretary assumed his office four and a half years ago, there were 2,000 prisoners sleeping three to a cell, and there are now 7,400. Of course, that is the product of the crime wave. But it supplies the back-
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ground for our discussions, and while that situation continues we must ask ourselves seriously whether something more ambitious could not have been attempted than the modest affair before us.
There is one aspect of the prison situation to which I alluded on Second Reading and to which I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I return to-day, because I have received further information. I refer to the under-staffing in our prisons. I hold in my hand a letter, of which the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has received some small notice, a letter from the Secretary of the Prison Officers' Association. With the leave of the House, I will read one or two extracts, because, after all, all these plans for improving the treatment of prisoners, for the correction of prisoners and even for the punishment of prisoners, will come to naught, will be verbiage and waste paper unless they are accompanied by some effective steps to increase the size of prison staffs. I will not say anything to-day about probation officers, although we know that the shortage there is very grave. I mentioned that point at an earlier stage and my noble friend Lord Stonham spoke about it earlier to-day.
Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to quote some extracts from this letter from the Secretary of the Prison Officers' Association. He points out:
"The, staffing situation in the prisons and Borstal institutions is now extremely critical"—
This is an officer of many years standing, writing in the knowledge that these words will be published—
"and there is hardly an establishment which has its full complement of staff. During the recent trouble at Dartmoor, the staff was seven officers under strength and there were another three officers away on training courses".
I did not look up this point, but I think that the Government, when asked a Question about Dartmoor, were under the impression that there was no shortage there. The letter goes on to describe the serious situation at Pentonville, and it then proceeds:
"According to the reports which have reached us over the last two or three days, the situation has sharply worsened at several establishments."
Then he gives the details of that. Now this is something which, without trying

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to make any sort of Party or Opposition point, should be fairly and squarely before the House. The writer goes on:
"The position will be further aggravated later in the year, since the Home Secretary has already announced that five more new establishments are to open before the end of 1961—with several more planned for 1962/63".
That certainly is a solid point on which we should do well to pause for a moment. We are rather apt to assume that we necessarily improve matters—and that is by and large so—by increasing the number of establishments. But from the point of view of the staff, that represents extra labour and makes understaffing worse. At any rate, this is the report. I will not read the whole letter, though I shall be glad to do so if the Lord Chancellor wishes. It goes on:
"I have never known the morale of the staff so low"—
and this is not a stray officer writing, but a very responsible official—
"and this is, I am sure, due to the excessive hours that the staff are working and to their complete inability to order any kind of social life owing to additional attendances in the evenings and to the loss of their rest days in order to meet the requirements of the establishments.
Yours sincerely,
H. Cronin."
Of course, it is a difficult problem. I have no doubt that if the Lord Chancellor and his colleagues were able, even by a stroke of the pen or by simply signing the bill, they would take immediate steps to rectify this. This situation is similar to that which we find in the Services when recruiting is bad. We are now faced with the task of somehow or other making this service far more attractive if we are going to do the job that all of us, irrespective of Party, want to see done.
I will not dwell on the position in the Probation Service, which in some ways is worse, considering the enormous increase in the responsibilities which is rightly involved. But in this connection, and in the wider connection of social work generally, I cannot help throwing out the idea that the time has come when a comprehensive inquiry ought to be conducted over the whole field of social service. In that phrase I include the police, the prison officers and the probation officers, besides all those who are ordinarily referred to as social or welfare workers. Various inquiries
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have been held—the Lord Chancellor and others are fully familiar with them. There is one going on at the present time into the Probation Service. The conditions of the prison officers were looked at not so long ago, and we debated in this House last year the Younghusband Report, which was concerned with various categories of social work.
It seems to me, however—and I say this in the conviction that the noble and learned Viscount will consider it seriously, though he can hardly answer it precisely today—that some comprehensive look must be taken at all these services and a national policy formulated. It may be that, because of these other inquiries, or for other reasons, the Government cannot see their way to undertaking a comprehensive inquiry of that kind. In that case, I should hope that the noble and learned Viscount might express goodwill towards such an inquiry. I should like to see one of the great Trusts undertaking an inquiry of this sort. It would not be the first time that one of the great Trusts has undertaken an inquiry blessed by the Lord Chancellor, as I have every reason to know. But I feel that we have reached a serious stage in trying to give effect to penal and social reform. If the Welfare State breaks down, it will break down through the shortage of welfare staff, and I would say that there is no field in which the danger is more acute than the social field we are now discussing.
I should like to end by saying a word—and I hope I shall not he accused of lack of generosity on this occasion—about the present Home Secretary. He has now been Home Secretary for rather more than four years, and I think that most of those interested in penal reform would say that in the lifetime of all of us there has never been a Home Secretary more genuinely addicted to penal progress. Yet it would be impossible to say that the situation, for which he bears at any rate a titular responsibility, is improving. I would say that under his inspiration the treatment in our prisons is growing steadily more humane; and I give him full credit for that. But the material side, including the staffing position, seems to be getting worse and worse. Certainly it is still far behind our modern ideas of what is appropriate.

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I cannot help wondering whether the Home Secretary—I have paid my tribute before to his humanity and idealism, and I pay it again—would need to rely quite so heavily on various Committees and Advisory Councils if he had all his time to give to the work of his great office. We know that he is a man deeply burdened with other things. If he were not Home Secretary he would, I am sure, be doing more work than most of us do in our various vocations. I myself believe—and this is my last thought on the Bill—that this is a good Bill, so far as it goes, but that it lacks imagination, breadth and scope. It does not cope with the main problems before us, and I cannot help feeling that, if the Home Secretary were free to concentrate on the tasks of his office, he would go down in history as one of the greatest Home Secretaries. And that, I believe, is something of which as a nation we should all be proud.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I did not interrupt the noble Earl, but I hope that this kind of breadth of discussion on the Motion "That the Bill do now pass" is not treated as a precedent. This is the Third Reading of the Bill, and this should normally be restricted to matters which are in the Bill. This wide disquisition on penal administration on the Motion "That the Bill do now pass" would not, I should have thought, be something which we should repeat. I did not interrupt the noble Earl, because I know how deeply he feels about this matter, and I did not want to give the impression that I was seeking to stop the flow of argument. But I feel that this is not a good precedent.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, if I have offended against the good sense of the House, I apologise.
6.8 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Longford, I agree that this is a very useful Bill, although we regret that our efforts to make it go further than it does have failed. Nevertheless, we wish the Bill very well indeed. But to a large extent its value will depend upon the vigour and sense of urgency with which its provisions are implemented.
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I have three short points I want to address to the noble and learned Viscount, all of which, I believe, are directly related to the Bill as it stands. The first is in connection with the girls' detention centre. The noble and learned Viscount will remember there was a good deal of discussion when I said that there would never be more than twelve or fifteen girls in a detention centre at one time, and the noble Earl, Lord Bathurst, thought there would be some 25 to 30. The fact is that when you deduct the fine-defaulters and the young prostitutes from the average of about 150 girls under 21 who are sentenced to prison, there are only about 50 who are sentenced to terms of less than six months every year. So the number in a detention centre at one time cannot be more than twelve to fifteen. My question on this point is therefore this. Since the fine-defaulters certainly go to prison, as I understand it, and since the noble and learned Viscount has assured us that prostitutes will not go to a detention centre, can we know how we are going to deal with prostitutes? Are they going to prison or to some other haven, and is the noble and learned Viscount also satisfied that, considering these small numbers, it is still desirable to proceed with the original plan?
The second point—and it is a very brief one—is concerned with the noble and learned Viscount's statement that the Government intend to implement the Streatfeild recommendations within the terms of this Bill by administrative means. I have to inform the Lord Chancellor that although the National Association of Probation Officers welcomed his statement last week on the Streatfeild recommendations, they are disturbed that they were not called into consultation, as they were over the Ingleby Report. They say—and I quote:
"We are concerned that actions now promised in the Lord Chancellor's reply to you shall not take place without full consultation, so that we all know what is going on. If such consultation is taking place only at top level that, in our opinion, is not really satisfactory."
I am sure the Lord Chancellor, if he may not be able to say anything about that now, will certainly take note, because I feel this is a matter of importance and a possible decision is too recent for any consultation to have taken place.

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The last point that I want to put forward is the need for co-ordination between probation, prison welfare, and after-care services. I could quote, but I will not, cases where perhaps three different probation officers might well be dealing with different members of the same family. I do not want to develop it, but I ask him to submit the point to the Advisory Council that, above all things, we need co-ordination of the probation and welfare services and that it may well be that the probation service may provide the main and essential part of the framework and the basis of aftercare services when they are set up. I am grateful to your Lordships for your patience in listening to these three brief points, all of which. I hope, were in order, and I would add my good wishes to this Bill as we send it on its way.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: My Lords, before the noble and learned Viscount replies I want to take up a minute and a half on a question of procedure, because I have spent a considerable part of my life in another place. I presume that it is in order to move Amendments on Third Reading, certainly in the case of an important Amendment like this one, which was supported by four Opposition leaders of experience and responsibility; but considering the fact that the Amendment had been discussed twice before in your Lordships' House and indeed voted upon, is it, even if it is in order, considered by my noble and learned friend the Leader of the House a good thing that, unlike in another place, we should be able to re-hash the same Amendment all over again?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I am grateful indeed to my noble friend for raising this point. Actually it is very close to the point which was raised by my noble friend Lord Swinton at an earlier stage this afternoon. I said that I personally deprecated Third Reading Amendments except in unusual circumstances, and that I thought that this one had been canvassed fully on two previous stages. But the noble Lord is in order under Standing Orders in putting his Amendment down on notice—I think it is Standing Order No. 48 or 49—and in that case I think it is up to the House to comment upon the suitability of the Amendment. I do not feel
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it was right for the House to do other than to give its own judgment on it.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am very grateful for the speeches which have been made. I do not think that I could profitably follow the noble Earl, Lord Longford, into the general view which he formed, but I think we both agree, and indeed he indicated, that our hopes are based on the contents of the Bill coupled with the building programme. I think we may legitimately have some hopes when the two are in operation. The other point was on the prison service, and I want to say only three very short things. The first is that when I was Home Secretary I was struck by the extraordinarily high standard that was set for the prison service, both in selection and operation. I wish to say that so that we do not get a picture of unrelieved gloom, but I should not want the noble Earl to think I am being complacent, because I am not. There has been some improvement recently in the rate of recruitment. We are doing a pilot advertising campaign in the North-West and, of course, as the noble Earl knows, there have been substantial increases in pay owing to the recommendation of the Wynn-Parry Committee of 1958 and again in January, 1961.
I should like the noble Earl to ask the writer of the letter to convey to all his members, the sense of this House as to the immense task which our prison service performs. I cannot think of any more exacting and, in many ways, depressing work at first sight, but equally I cannot think of any more rewarding work when it is carried out with a feeling of devotion and vocation, as it so often is. We should be glad if he would convey from the Government and from the House our gratitude to the service for carrying on this job under the difficulties which we realise so well.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, may I just rise to say that I am sure the words of the noble Viscount the Lord Chancellor will be deeply appreciated.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I thank the noble Earl very much. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, asked me about three points. The first was with regard to girls in detention centres, and I think

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that there, in view of the debates we have had, we must give more consideration to the programme for girls' detention centres, because of the opinions that have been expressed. Whether my statement about that—that I could not imagine any magistrates sending prostitutes to a detention centre—was one of those snap expressions which I may regret I do not know, but I think the noble Lord knows what I have in mind. There are often, of course, women convicted of other offences who have indulged in some prostitution, and I should not like it to be said that I had, so to speak, bolted this door against them, because that would depend on the two things, namely, how the detention centre shapes and what sort of programme we can get into operation. But I will ask my right honourable friend to give that matter very serious consideration.
The second point was with regard to the Streatfeild recommendations on information and the like. I think that the significance of my remarks has been mistaken. My emphasis was on administration and not legislation. Therefore, a great deal could be done by administration in that half of the report. That was what I wanted to emphasise, not that it would be done without consultation. I think the noble Lord can assure those who are worried that the usual and proper consultation which is in accord with modern administrative as well as legislative practice will take place. He can be assured that I will report it to the Home Secretary and ask him to consider that point.
On the third point, I should like again to say that I will bring the question of co-ordination of probation and welfare services to my right honourable friend's special attention. I do not think I can say any more at the moment, except to say that I do regard it as very important and I am sure he will. I think those were the points about which the noble Lord asked me. Both Mr. Butler and I will read the speeches most carefully and consider what has been said. Finally, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for his generous tribute to my right honourable friend. He knows that statistics must be faced; that they often reflect problems for which a personal figure cannot be praised or
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blamed, but they still represent a problem, and that we will all go on fighting together the problem of crime and trying to prevent it.
On Question, Bill passed and returned to the Commons.

COURT OF CHANCERY OF LANCASTER (AMENDMENT) BILL
6.21 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD JESSEL: My Lords, this little Bill, which has already passed through another place, I understand has the support of Her Majesty's Government and the Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster. Its short purpose is to put beyond doubt the power of the judges of the Chancery Division to transfer company work to the Palatine Court even if the registered office is not in Lancashire. The purpose of the Act which I seek to amend was to make it possible to have transferred to the Lancaster Palatine Court Chancery business which originated elsewhere but which it was convenient to try in Lancashire because of the presence of witnesses and other persons there. I understand the Act has worked extremely well and has saved a great deal of travelling for many people.
But in regard to company work, which your Lordships know is usually dealt with in the Chancery Division of the High Court, apparently an omission has been detected. Some Judges of the High Court, I understand, have refused to transfer to Lancashire business which everyone wants to have transferred. They have taken the view that where the registered office of the company is not in the County Palatine—and this applies particularly, I understand, to companies in counties surrounding Lancashire, such as Cheshire—they are prevented by the close construction of the Companies Act, 1948, and the Court of Chancery of Lancaster Act, 1952, from doing what everyone, I think, thought could be done. So this Amendment Bill is designed to put the matter beyond doubt and to give the Judges that power, but only, of course, if the parties involved so wish. Therefore I trust your

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Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading, and I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Jessel).
6.24 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I am sure the House will wish me to thank my noble friend Lord Jessel for introducing this Bill and doing so with great clarity and with exceptional brevity—not unusual for him but for the House as a whole. I do not intend to take up your Lordships' time, in view of the business which is to follow. As the noble Lord has explained, there seems to have been a slight hiatus in the Court of Chancery of Lancaster Act, 1952, which is usually known as Bell's Act, and that arose from Section 218 (2) of the Companies Act, 1948, which provides that the Lancaster Palatine Court shall have concurrent jurisdiction with the High Court for winding up a company where the registered office of that company is situated within the jurisdiction of the Chancery Court of the County Palatine of Lancaster.
It is because of that insertion in the Companies Act that some High Court Judges have felt that they did not have the power to transfer those cases where the registered office concerned was not situated within that jurisdiction. It is to put right the original intention of the Court of Chancery of Lancaster Act, 1952, that my noble friend Lord Jessel has brought forward this amending Bill. It is, as he says, in the interests of the Duchy authorities, who approve it, because it is to the advantage both of litigants and of the business of the Lancaster Palatine Court. So far as Her Majesty's Government are concerned, they have no objection to the Second Reading of this Bill, and in fact they support it.
LORD JESSEL: My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much for his support of this little Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and Committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
PRINTER'S IMPRINT BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

RATING AND VALUATION BILL
6.28 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be again in Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee:—(Viscount Hailsham.)
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE in the Chair.]
Clauses 6 to 8 agreed to.
Clause 9 [Reduction and remission of rates payable by charitable and other organizations]:
THE EARL OF LUCAN THE EARL OF LUCAN moved to leave out subsections (1) and (2). The noble Earl said: This Amendment, No. 12, with Amendment No. 14, is designed, as your Lordships will have realised, to abolish the feature in the Bill which imposes mandatory rate relief on local authorities in favour of charities to the extent of 50 per cent. We know that that Government accepted the recommendations of the Pritchard Committee, but the Committee went in great detail into this question of the rights and wrongs of rate relief for charities, whether grant or rate relief should be given, who should give it and so on, and they came down in the end, after arguing the case very carefully, in favour of local authorities being compelled to grant 50 per cent. rate relief to charities. I think one is entitled to argue in the contrary sense, and I would suggest that it is unsound in principle and bears unduly heavily on certain local authorities.
The question of assistance from public funds to charities is, I should say there is no doubt, in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the people in this country. I think it is not entirely obvious that that should be so. For instance, a charity raises money to carry out its operations and to maintain its headquarters organisation; it raises

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money for its stationery and furniture and its staff salaries, and for its rent. It does not ask the landlord of its offices to let it off 50 per cent., of its rent. It pays for its lighting and heating; it does not ask the public utilities to give it special rates. It seems to me that there is no logical reason why the overheads of a charity should not include the rates which, after all, provide the charity with the services that we all expect from the rates. The cost of the police and the fire brigade, the sewers and the highway, are all paid for out of the rates, and I think it is a quite arguable case that the subsidy, which in effect rate relief is, is really unjustifiable. But I do not want to labour that point; it does not arise in the present case. As I say, I think it is in accordance with the general wish of the public that charities should receive some measure of subsidy.
Whether they receive the subsidy from national Exchequer funds or from local authority funds is another arguable case, but I submit that what is not arguable is that the authority that provides the money ought to be the authority that decides—in other words, Parliament should decide when it is income tax relief and raised from Exchequer funds, but when it is relief from rates surely it is a case for the elected local authority to say whether their ratepayers are to provide this subsidy to the charities that happen to have elected to have their headquarters, their establishments of one kind or another, within that rateable area. Like all other exemptions—we have heard it so often in regard to immunities and privileges—if one person is exempted all the rest bear a heavier burden; so it is a matter directly affecting the ratepayers of a local authority area.
I said that some boroughs bear a heavier burden than others. The Pritchard Report showed that under the 1955 Act, in England and Wales as a whole, the hereditaments relieved were 1·09 per cent. of the total. In the County of London they were 1.49 per cent.; in the borough in which I live, St. Marylebone, it is almost 3 per cent.—2·98 per cent. That was under the 1955 Act. That is statistical evidence of the fact that a great many national bodies, institutions and associations of all kinds,
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from the Zoo to the Institute of Cardiology, are all located in that particular borough. I think there are two or three other London boroughs and the City of Westminster which are in much the same condition.
Another interesting figure is the relation that local charities bear to national or international charities in different sections in England and Wales. I will not detail the number of individual hereditaments, but the total rateable value represented by local charities in England and Wales is £2⅓ million, but wider charities just over £4 million. In the County of London local charities represent only £350,000, whereas the charities with the wider scope represent over £1 million; and in the borough of St. Marylebone there are only fourteen local societies with a rateable value of £1,355, whereas the national charities number 157 with a rateable value of £172,000. That is the simple point. I submit that the principle is sound, that any assistance given to charitable organisations should be of a voluntary nature, and that the ratepayers of an area should not be obliged to make enforced contributions to charities simply because an organisation happens to have established itself within the boundaries of the area whilst it serves the rest of the community far outside those boundaries. I think that is a sufficient explanation, and I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 8, leave out subsections (1) and (2).—(The Earl of Lucan.)
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: As the noble Earl has clearly explained, the object of these two Amendments is to dispense with mandatory relief and to leave charities and almshouses dependent upon the exercise of the rating authorities' discretion under subsection (4) of this section to reduce or remit their rates. I do not think anyone who has heard either the debate which we held on my Departmental responsibilities, in which the noble Lord, Lord Adrian, spoke from the Cross Benches some months ago, or the Second Reading of this Bill, when some noble Lords spoke in the same sense about the learned societies and the charities, would doubt that the proposal which the noble Earl makes is a controversial one, and I cannot pretend that the compromise between the various

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points of view at which the Government has arrived, on the advice of the Pritchard Committee, is otherwise than a compromise. It has therefore no complete logic on its side. But there is a long and I think, on the whole, reasonable tradition in this country that societies of particular types should be relieved from rates.
Under the 1843 Act which we are repealing relief was total, and one answer which I would give to the noble Earl on his two cases, of the Borough of St. Marylebone and the City of Westminster, is that the societies to which he refers in those boroughs were, many of them, 1843 societies; so that in fact they are getting discretion over 50 per cent. of what they had no discretion over before. So this Bill is beneficial to them. Noble Lords will remember the extent to which the learned societies have complained, in no uncertain terms, that the additional burden on themselves imposed by the Bill—that is, even if they do not get the benefit of the further 50 per cent, of this relief—may well be a heavy one and leads them to ask for assistance before they can carry on their business.
I do not altogether agree that there is no logic in the tradition. It is true, of course, that rates are a property tax designed to be the main source of revenue for our local services, including education, which is one of the greatest. Charities include a great number of voluntary educational societies or institutions of one sort or another, but in the main they have this in common: that they are subscribed to by voluntary subscribers, past and present, out of funds which have already borne the ordinary burden of taxation, local and general, before the subscription is made. It is, in a sense, hard to ask subscribers to charitable organisations first of all to pay their own taxes and rates and then subscribe to these wholly admirable bodies which, in their turn, will have to pay rates and other taxes.
Of course, my Lords, this is up to a point a plea ad misericordiam. But there is a sense in which it is hard to ask voluntary subscribers to have to increase their subscriptions out of their taxed income, which has borne rates and taxes, in order to support local services. This would really, in a sense, be tearing the thing twice. Then, my Lords, there
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is still the other point: that this bears more hardly on certain localities. It is of course true of the national societies. These tend to be congregated very largely in the Borough of St. Marylebone and in the City of Westminster. I recognise, therefore, that there is an additional burden.
The argument is that in the case of most societies they have usually a local appeal, more or less, and that therefore the burden of rates from which they are relieved is recompensed by the local advantage of the society's being resident in that area. That is up to a point true. But on the other hand the Boroughs of St. Marylobone and Westminster have certain advantages in rateable value from being the very centre of the British universe. The City of Westminster, in particular, gains great advantages in rateable value, to put it at its lowest, by being at the centre of the capital of the Commonwealth. I think, my Lords, that when one puts a hard case for the local authorities one has to recognise that there are swings and roundabouts, and that what we have done has a certain amount of sense behind it.
In providing in Clause 9 for mandatory relief for charities and almshouses, our Bill gives effect to the unanimous recommendations of the Pritchard Committee. It is as well to remind the House of the history underlying the deliberations of that Committee. In the 1955 Bill, as introduced originally, there was no provision for mandatory relief, but only provision giving the rating authorities discretion to reduce or remit rates of the charitable bodies. That is what the noble Earl is asking for now.
There was some justification at that time for such a provision, for previously bodies other than the 1843 bodies had had to rely on sympathetic undervaluation by the rating authorities, so that statutory discretionary powers were being offered in place of extra-statutory discretionary practice. Nevertheless, the provision received a uniformly unfavourable reception in another place. Mandatory relief had to be introduced there at the recommittal stage in deference to the wishes of the House of Commons after the provision relying entirely on local discretion had been criticised from all quarters.

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That is the background against which the Pritchard Committee had to report. They referred again to this history after analysing the views of local authorities on charities, who needless to say took an exactly opposite point of view on this matter of whether any rate relief should be mandatory. Their report was as follows. They said:
"The fact that before 1956–57 the great majority of bodies within our terms of reference were entirely dependent upon sympathetic under-valuation by local authorities without statutory sanction is a cogent argument against any form of mandatory relief. But it was certainly no less cogent in 1955 before any measure of mandatory relief was introduced and when, as we have noted, Parliament was unwilling to leave rate relief for charities and kindred bodies entirely a matter for the discretion of local authorities."
It is perhaps right to remind this House that the introduction of mandatory relief for charities by the Amendment which was made on recommittal in another place in 1955 gained support on all sides upon Second Reading of this Bill here.
Lord Silkin welcomed the provision while regretting that some method had not been devised to give the same kind of charities the same kind of relief throughout the country. The right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of London, expressed the Church's appreciation of the relief given under the clause. Lord Brand on this side welcomed the clause, although he regretted that it laid down no permanent principle as I may say this Bill does. Lord Wise asked questions about the clause but showed no hostility towards it. Lord Tedder, from the Cross Benches, was concerned to be sure that the National Rifle Association, which is a charity, was covered by it. Similarly, in Committee on that Bill the efforts of noble Lords were directed towards improving, extending and clarifying the provisions, not reducing them.
The Committee then came to this conclusion which would seem to be correct in the circumstances. They said, and here again I quote:
"While the practice of sympathetically under-valuing charities seems to have been widespread when local authorities were responsible for rating valuation, it was not uniform, and it does not seem to have been based on any clear principles or to have been followed consistently. It has led to the different treatment of different charities in the same area, and of the same charity in different areas. We think that the time has come to introduce a
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measure of uniformity and certainty into the rating reliefs enjoyed by bodies within our terms of reference. A satisfactory scheme should be simple and economical to administer and should not add materially to the rates borne by other classes of ratepayers. In our view the essential basis should be mandatory relief for the great majority of the classes or organisations which have in the past enjoyed some measure of relief."
They explained this at some greater length. The Government have accepted these recommendations with only one or two modifications. We do not think that Parliament, or indeed opinion outside, would be at this stage willing to revert to complete local discretion in this field. Quite apart from that, it must be remembered that the treatment of bodies in this field covered by Clauses 9 and 10 is part of a single concept. For example, the acceptability of the repeal of the exemption for the scientific bodies, to which I have already referred, is dependent, in part at least, upon an assurance that almost all of them, being charities, will get the 50 per cent. mandatory relief under the provisions which these Amendments seek to repeal.
We feel that we were amply justified in following the Pritchard Committee in thinking that Parliament on both occasions in both Houses did prove itself unwilling to leave the rate relief entirely to local discretion. Whilst I see the force of what the noble Earl has said, I still feel that we are right to adhere to the views of the Pritchard Committee and that this has really expressed the genuine feeling of Parliament upon the matter.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: I am grateful to the noble Viscount for that explanation. I quite see the argument. I accept the fact that generally this principle has met with the approval of Parliament. I would only question the argument that bodies dependent upon voluntary subscriptions have money subscribed to them on which tax is paid twice over or which is already taxed. I wonder whether that is really so and whether that can be substantiated. Donations to charitable organisations are, anyhow, relieved of income tax. And are not some donations classed as business expenses? Of that I am not sure; but I would suggest that the idea that these enormous organisations depend on thousands of small donors may not be the whole truth nowadays. Though of that, again, I am not sure.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: The noble Earl is right in saying that under a covenant the tax is recoverable by the charity; but that is on the assumption (which was the point I was making) that the donor is making the donation out of his taxed income.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: But the tax is not paid at all because it is recovered by the charity; or so it seems to me. But I should not like to detain the Committee with an argument, and I would not press that. I think it is a pity that authorities are deprived of the exercise of any discretion or responsibility in this matter. I think it is one more small thing militating against the powers of local authorities, and we are always told that reduction of those powers makes service on local authorities so much less attractive nowadays. It should not be thought that charities by these means do not ask for assistance. They are given assistance by Parliament at the expense of the ratepayers' pockets and, frankly, I think it is a rather unsatisfactory situation. I do not want to pursue this matter. I should like leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.53 p.m.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK THE EARL OF CRANBROOK moved, in subsection (4), after "authority" to insert, "or precepting authority". The noble Earl said: A first glance at subsection (4) of this clause would seem to indicate that a local authority which draws its income from rates has the power to exempt from rates a charity whose activities it thinks are beneficial to the people who live within its area. But, in fact, of course, owing to the curious history of local government in this country, and the two-tier or three-tier system which has grown up, it means nothing of the sort; because a rating authority is, in fact, the second tier in the three-tier system. The metropolitan boroughs of London and the county districts, the municipal boroughs, urban and rural districts in country areas, and they only, have the power to relieve from rates a charity which they think happens to be beneficial to the ratepayers in their own particular area. The London County Council and rural county councils are not rating authorities and have no such power.
We have the position that a small urban district such as one finds up and
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down the country for about a couple of thousand population has the power to exempt from rates (and, I would remind your Lordships, not only from the district council rate but also from the county rate) some almshouses or a small local museum whose activities cover only the geographical area of that small urban district; and the county council, covering a very much larger area, cannot relieve from rates any charity the activities of which cover the area of the entire county and whose activities may be beneficial to the county area and, in a very small way, to the rating authority where it happens to be situated.
The noble Lord who has just been making a plea for a particular borough forgot, I think, the fact that should that borough derate a local charity, I, in Chelsea, would be supporting one of the charities in St. Marylebone—possibly the old people's home to which he himself will go when he is old and which will not be able to accept me owing to its Charter. It seems to me ridiculous that a very small local authority can exempt from rates while a very large local authority cannot. I put down this Amendment for the precepting authority, which I believe covers the county councils only, in the confident expectation that the noble Viscount who replies will see that this wider discretion for local authorities is necessary and that my Amendment, or possibly some modification which he will suggest, will be acceptable. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 45, after ("authority") insert ("or precepting authority").—(The Earl of Cranbrook.)
LORD LINDGREN: The noble Earl has been very persuasive in moving this Amendment. It is quite usual in this House to declare an interest. My interest in this matter is not by any means a financial one, but I am associated with local government and I am a member of a precepting authority. I am a member of the Hertfordshire County Council. I think that this Amendment would lead to a considerable amount of antagonism in local government. After all, though we are considered to be a local service, we have to be frank with ourselves and realise that there is a considerable amount of friction in various parts of the country as between the minor authority

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and the major authority, the county council. It is not uncommon for the local authority, whether it be a rural district council, an urban district council, or a borough, to accuse the county council of being the "big brother" who treads very roughly over them and usurps their powers, ignores them, and so on.
We have to realise that the precepting authority decides what it is going to spend. It then asks the local authorities, who are the rating authorities, what their rateable value in their area is. After it has accumulated all the rateable values of all the local rating authorities within its area it then determines the rateable value over the county as a whole. It then decides, as precepting authority, what its rate is going to be for the local authority. The local authority then has to decide what it is going to collect from its own people. So it is, in fact, the rating authority which decides what is going to be collected within the borough, within the rural or urban district. One knows that within a county, though the county rate is consistent over the whole county, it has an effect as between rural districts and boroughs as to the amount of expenditure within those authorities. If one had the county coming back, after the local authority had assessed its own budget and its own rateable value for some particular organisation or organisations, about particular sections of the county rate, which is a major portion—generally two-thirds—of the rate levied by the local authority, I think it would cause a considerable amount of trouble. I think it might conflict slightly with what my noble friend said just now.
Had the noble Viscount anticipated my rapid promotion to the Front Bench this evening he would have been able to quote me as saying, in discussions in leading for the Opposition in the 1955 debate, that in fact it was unwise to have a variation or discrimination between one local authority and another on charitable organisations, and that one ought to have a general rule which goes throughout the whole country. But in this instance I think it is a far better method, where there is discretion, to leave it to the local rating authority, who are the rating authority for that particular area, rather than that there should be imposed upon them a decision by a precepting authority, which has no
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responsibility for the collection of the rate.
LORD CAWLEY: I have been a member of a large urban district authority for several years, and I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren. It would cause the most tremendous trouble if a large urban district authority had the precepting authority exempting charities in their area.
7.2 p.m.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I should like to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, to the Despatch Box of this House, and to say how glad I am to see him there. I am afraid that on this occasion I must agree with him and with my noble friend Lord Cawley against my noble friend Lord Cranbrook. The effect of the Amendment is to add to the list of rating authorities which, under the Bill, can give discretionary relief to charities, a precepting authority. I do not know whether such was the intention of my noble friend Lord Cranbrook in using the wide expression "precepting authority", but this would, in fact, have rather (to me, at any rate) unexpected results. Listening to his argument, I could not help thinking that what he really wanted to do was to add the county councils to the rating authorities; but, in fact, the expression "precepting authority" would include parish councils, river boards and even the Receiver of the Metropolitan Police District; and I doubt whether it is really his intention to add them in any event, whatever the general merits of his Amendment.
The Government's view is that, on the whole, it is right to leave discretionary relief in the hands of rating authorities. It is admittedly true, as my noble friend quite rightly urged, that any relief granted by a district council naturally has its effect, in turn, upon the county precept; but this, of course, does not, in fact, deprive the county council of money, because they then precept for a higher poundage. Rates in other districts may be affected, but there the effect is diminished by the spread. On the other hand, if one turned it the other way round and supposed that this Amendment were passed, and that a county council was free to give remission, it could, of course, bear extremely hardly

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on a small district to be forcibly deprived of rate resources for district purposes.
There would be other disadvantages. My noble friend's Amendment would apparently give the discretion both to the rating authority and to the precepting authority, and I do not feel that that would be tolerable. I feel that it would really be necessary to confine the discretion to one or the other. Otherwise, there would be the risk of duplication of relief, of inconsistent reliefs, and of one charitable body playing one of the two authorities off against the other. The discretion for county councils would, I am advised, play havoc with the estimation by the districts of rate product—a key stage in precepting, calculation of grants, and so on.
I should like to quote the words of the learned editor of Rating and Valuation Reporter when, in the issue of June 15, he wrote:
"Rating authorities are entrusted with the whole process of collecting and recovering rates, and any discretion given to them in discharging that responsibility may naturally affect the rate product and so the county rate. It would hardly be practicable to make the county council a party to such purely administrative rating matters as the rating of owners, agreements with owners, allowances granted for prompt payment, writing off of rates as irrecoverable, excusals on grounds of poverty and refunds under the new Bill. Yet all these affect the county council through the operation of the Rate Product Rules 1959 …. And it would be anomalous to make a special case of charities."
That is the Government's view. The learned editor of that review suggests that the county council, while avoiding seeming to interfere in, or usurp, what is essentially a function of the rating authority, can in fact do much to influence the decision of the rating authority towards some worthy charity by letting them have all the information which the county council have about the body.
We feel also that there are other ways in which my noble friend's object can be achieved under existing provisions. For instance, any local authority has power, under Section 136 of the Local Government Act, 1948, to contribute toward the expenses of any body carrying on activities within its area for the purpose of giving advice, information or other assistance to persons resident in the area, or otherwise for the benefit of the area or of those persons. There are, of course,
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limitations to this power. The Minister's consent is necessary, but that may be given both generally and specially; and a county council could not make a contribution to a body resident in its area but not active for the purposes of the area. However, this power goes a long way towards enabling a county council to give help to deserving bodies. Any contribution will fall wholly on the county precept, whereas rate remission would fall partly on the district rate; but it is no doubt preferable, in such a case, that the county should bear the impact.
Those are the reasons which have led the Government to feel that the right body here is the rating authority and not the precepting authority, whether in the more general connotation of the term or in the more limited sense of the county council. It is not really a question of what is the larger or the more important body: it is a question of what is the body charged with the rating problems I have enumerated.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: I must confess than I am disappointed with the reception of my Amendment, and am reminded of the saying, aliquid novo pro horrifico. All I have suggested is something new, and the innate conservatism and inclination of every Government Department to say "No" to anything new seems to me to be the only thing against it. As to the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, if, as one expects, remission of rates is to be given for a period of years under subsection (5), the thing will become perfectly normal, and there will be no cause for the sort of squabbles which appear to occur in counties other than my own between the major and minor authorities. I may say that I have served on a district and a county council for 30 years and upwards, and we manage things very much better in my county than apparently they do in Hertfordshire or in the noble Lord's county, which I do not know.
I am sorry that the Government cannot accept this Amendment. Though a small one, it is quite an important one, because I feel sincerely that the larger authority can look at the larger charity with a more independent outlook than can the rural authorities. Though I am quite ready to withdraw my Amendment now, I would ask the noble Viscount if he will possibly consider this again and

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possibly consult with the local authority organisations who I do not feel would be so frightened of something new as the noble Lords who have spoken here tonight seem to be. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.10 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH moved, in subsection (9), after "a person" to insert
"and
(b) a hereditament occupied for the purposes of a religious order,"
The noble Lord said: At first sight, my Amendment would seem to be a wide one; for there are, of course, a very considerable number of convents in the country. But it is, in fact, a comparatively narrow Amendment, since most of the convents which do active work, such as nursing or teaching, or are engaged in other forms of social activity, already receive rate concessions as charities. But there are twelve Anglican communities and about 60 Roman Catholic communities to whom this does not apply, and who do not receive mandatory rate relief under the present Bill. They were mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Leicester, in what I thought was a very persuasive and excellent speech on Second Reading; and also mentioned, I thought sympathetically, by the noble Lord, Lord Latham, on that occasion. The right reverend Prelate told the House, as is indeed the case, that he was acting on behalf of the Churches Main Committee, an extremely valuable interdenominational body, who approve of the end which I am seeking to achieve by this Amendment. It is, in fact, an example of that Christian co-operation which we discussed a few weeks back.
The reason why these convents do not receive the concessions that are given to charities stems from a case that was brought and taken to your Lordships in your judicial capacity in 1949. That was the case of Gilmour v. Coats, in which it was argued, on behalf of these convents, that they were charities in so far as they promoted religion, a recognised charitable object. The House of Lords decided that that was not the case. I do not want, of course, to controvert the legal arguments of the learned Lords
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who so decided. At the same time, I must remind your Lordships that, in your legislative capacity, your Lordships are in no way bound by decisions which have been reached in your Lordships' judicial capacity.
These convents, then, are not eligible for mandatory relief, but they do need relief very badly indeed. In past times they had two principal sources of income: one their endowments, which of course, for reasons which I need not discuss, have no longer the same value as in the past; and the other, the dowries (as they were called), sums of money brought in by young novices on entering the Order. Very few girls can now provide a dowry when they enter. These convents are, therefore, in a parlous economic position. It is true that, owing to the austerity of their life, their expenses are very low indeed. No butchers' bills for Carmelite nuns! But it is becoming increasingly a struggle for them to find the wherewithal to meet the very bare necessities of life. If it proves the case that, in modern economic conditions, such convents cannot continue to exist, I can only say that we shall lose a part of ourselves, a part of our history. A convent which I sometimes visit was founded by Henry V to pray for the men killed at the Battle of Agincourt. As I say, this is a part of our history. During the hard centuries they had to travel abroad; English girls followed them, by stealth sometimes, to that foreign land and maintained the English character of the community. There are many other communities which are similarly part of our history.
The needs, and I suppose the merits, of these bodies have been recognised in another place. An Amendment was moved and accepted which brings them within the sphere of optional rate relief from local authorities. I am most grateful for that concession. I do not want in any way to appear less grateful by pointing out that the amount of relief they will get under that provision is very doubtful. Some local authorities will, I trust and believe, take a broad view of the matter, and seeing the smallness of the rateable value of the buildings occupied by most of these communities, will grant them the exemption.
On the other hand, I must point out that many of the convents are in rural

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districts where it is very difficult for the county council to give up any part of a rateable value open to them. Some of them are in districts of the United Kingdom were sectarian feelings run very high, and where they will have no chance whatever of obtaining relief from the local authorities. I suppose that others are in districts where the matter will become controversial; and I do not much welcome the thought of controversy over this matter in the council chamber. Therefore I am asking your Lordships to take the responsibility upon yourselves to settle the matter at national level. I am asking you to settle it in favour of these contemplative communities, and it is therefore my duty to persuade your Lordships that they are of value, and that they do, in fact, promote religion. At this late hour I will put my reasons as succinctly as I can, but there are five considerations which I feel bound to bring to your Lordships' attention.
The first of these is that the contemplative communities promote religion by example. The girls who enter them are, for the most part, girls of intelligence and good education. I know many very intelligent ones who have found this—to us, so strange and difficult—a vocation. These girls might have enjoyed great careers in this world; in any case, they would have had the opportunity of much happiness. But they give it up and take in exchange hardship, austerity, deprivation, obedience, poverty. Why? They do it for an ideal, an ideal which may or may not appeal to your Lordships as a good one, but which is recognised as a valid and high Christian ideal by the majority of Christians, alike in the East and in the West.
My second argument would be that religion is promoted by the prayer which these ladies offer continually. About that I would say very little, because it is not a subject on which it is easy to speak in this Committee, but I would say this. It is known to those who study the science of prayer—for it is a real science—that after a time a contemplative nun arrives at such a state of prayer that she can offer no prayers for herself: her sole petition is for the glory of God and the doing of His will. It is very difficult for me to believe that that does not promote religion.
A more mundane point is that they provide services which the public may attend. If one goes, as I have often done, into the chapel of one of the enclosed Orders, one sees that while part of it is screened off as a choir for the use of the nuns, a substantial part is open to the public. The public can and do attend services there. In these chapels, Mass is said every day and the public attend. Sometimes it is said by a local priest brought in by the nuns, sometimes by a chaplain whom they maintain, to whom they give services and maintenance for saying Mass. In addition to the service of Mass, Benediction is held in the convent chapels almost every day and sometimes every day. That, too, is open to the public.
There are many places in this country where the convent chapel provides certainly the most convenient, and sometimes the only, place in this land of scattered churches for the faithful to attend these services. While I am on this subject, let it not be forgotten that the atmosphere of these convent chapels is one of prayer and recollection. I could show your Lordships a convent chapel in London, where all through the day faithful men and women drop in to say their prayers. I suggest that in that respect there is a promotion of religion by these bodies.
I come to my fourth point, to the very definite and concrete contribution which the enclosed religious have made, and are still making, to the life of my Church, and, I have no doubt, in some degree, to the life of the Anglican Church, too. I will put it this way. If one goes into a Roman Catholic church it is exceedingly likely, almost certain, that one will see at least one or two statues. One of them represents a young Carmelite nun. St. Teresa of Lisieux was her name. After a short adult life, spent entirely in a Carmelite convent, she died in 1897 at the age of 24. She left behind her a few short manuscripts and a tradition. Millions of Catholics and some people in the Church of England, too, have been influenced by her spiritual teaching, by the memory of her. Scores of books have been written about her. She is by far the most popular Saint of modern times. I have heard from two sources that when French troops were having a difficult time in the 1914 war their morale was immensely encouraged by reminders of

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the life of that young contemplative nun. Strange, but she contributed to the defence of Verdun.
The other statue which one will see in churches is called the Sacred Heart. For nearly three centuries devotion to the Sacred Heart has occupied a central place in Roman Catholic piety. That devotion was given to the world by an enclosed Benedictine nun, who saw a series of visions at the end of the seventeenth century. Nor has that influence ceased to-day. There are still remarkable personalities in the enclosed convents to whom the faithful in the living world look in trying to live their internal life—I know some of them, remarkable people—to whom one can go for advice, help and encouragement. In the 'thirties there was a remarkable Carmelite prioress on Notting Hill. She alleged that she saw a vision of Our Lady. Strange to think of the visionaries on Notting Hill! That lady had great influence on a number of people living in the world whom I know. There was the great Dame Lorenzia, abbess of the noted Abbey of Stanbrook. She was a great musicologist, an authority on mediæval plain chant, who corresponded with many learned and artistic people, including the late George Bernard Shaw.
I am not going to keep your Lordships much longer, but finally, I would mention a totally modern and highly unexpected way in which these convents have promoted religion. Your Lordships may have seen, a few years ago, a telecast from the inside of a Carmelite convent. It was a totally unprecedented exception. The cameras and commentators were admitted to the convent and described the life of the nuns; and the nuns spoke of their lives and told people what had made them enter. It was a deeply moving programme, which I have no doubt promoted religion as successfully as any religious telecast could do. This year, Independent Television followed suit and took their cameras into an Anglican enclosed convent at Oxford; and they made a broadcast which was also, I am told, exceedingly moving. My Lords, I have put my case before you because I think it is time that this subject was raised. I leave it in your Lordships' hands. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 15, after ("a person") insert the said words.—(The Earl of Iddesleigh.)
LORD HAWKE: My noble friend Lord Iddesleigh has made out a very moving case for his Amendment, and I must say I should have thought that from his five points—example, ideal, prayer, facilities for prayers by the laity, and teaching—he had abundantly proved that these bodies are what we should understand to be charitable. The unfortunate part is that, by some legal decision in the past, it was held that they are not charitable. I am drawing on my memory of the Charities Act which we passed last year, and, if I recollect aright, in that Act the criterion as to whether an object was charitable or not was to be the Inland Revenue's attitude to its exemption for tax and the like. Presumably, that attitude will follow the legal decision which my noble friend has mentioned.
In other countries, these bodies would undoubtedly be charitable. I remind your Lordships of the position in the East, in India for instance. The whole contemplative apparatus of Hinduism is supported entirely by voluntary contributions of the faithful who genuinely believe that, by their prayer and meditation, the whole nation gains. The hermit living in a cave in the Himalayas is held by the Hindus to be able to influence, for good or evil, the whole life in this world—and, for all we know, they may be perfectly right.
I would agree with my noble friend that it is particularly unfortunate if, through the permissive clause in this Bill, the rating or derating of these contemplative Orders should become a local authority battlefield. That is the last thing in the world we should want to happen at a time when the Christian Churches all over the world are trying, with some success, to draw slightly nearer to each other. So the fewer opportunities we can give for showing up our differences and past animosities, the better. I shall be interested to hear the answer of my noble Leader as to why these bodies are not charitable, because, in my opinion, by common sense they are charitable, and I hope my noble friend's Amendment will be accepted.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I had intended to make some little speech in

581
support of the Amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, but after what he has said it would be impertinent and almost sacrilegious to try to develop any spiritual arguments, because I can hardly imagine anyone dealing with that fundamental side of things more effectively. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, was as convinced as I was. I therefore rise only formally to express my strong support for this Amendment. I appreciate that the Government are in some difficulty. As the noble Earl has said, we cannot, as a Legislature, be bound because at some particular moment in time the House of Lords, in a judicial capacity, took a certain view of the nature of charities. While that decision stands, it is the law of the land and there is no question of interfering with it or disputing it in any way.
But here we are, as a Legislature, trying to ask ourselves whether these particular bodies should make payments from which other bodies, more actively concerned in the world but of a same general type, in the sense that they are composed of monks and nuns and other such good people, are exempt. I do not think, after what the noble Earl has said, that most people who believe in prayer at all—and I know the noble Viscount believes in prayer very strongly, and I expect his colleagues do—and anyone who has any sort of confidence in prayer, could rate these people lower, as one may say, in the service they render, than some of those who will be exempt.
The only difficulty from the point of view of the Government, it would seem to me, is how to define these people once one passes away from a category laid down by the law. So far as I understand it, the Government would leave the decision to the local authority. Perhaps the noble Viscount will set me right, if I am mistaken, when he comes to speak. We all must feel with the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, and the noble Earl, that the local authority is singularly unqualified (I speak as an old City Councillor of Oxford, and even an Oxford City Councillor would be remarkably ill-qualified) to pronounce on the spiritual or social value that the service in a particular convent was rendering. It would be rather farcical to have an inquiry of that sort. I hope the noble Viscount can accept this Amendment, but if he cannot, I wonder whether
582
he can hold out any hope for some machinery, better than that of local authorities, where the great service which these people, in the eyes of most of us, render, could be better assessed than under the proposed arrangement.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: This is obviously a difficult Amendment to reply to, and I hope that in replying to it I shall neither give offence nor be thought to intend to. I must first of all deal with the strictly practical and legal aspects of the matter. As the Bill is drafted, charities rank for mandatory relief to the extent of 50 per cent. and discretionary relief from the local authority to the extent of a further 50 per cent., enabling a charity to be given 100 per cent. in all—50 per cent. mandatory at the behest of Parliament, and 50 per cent. discretionary if the local authority allow it.
Most convents are charities and places of worship under the provisions of subsection (7) which refers back to Section 7 of the Act of 1955. What we are considering, therefore, is not the ordinary religious Order of either the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England or, for that matter, the Salvation Army, which also in many ways in law is approximated to the position of a religious Order. We are not discussing most of them. What we are discussing are the enclosed or contemplative Orders which in this country are more or less limited to the Roman Catholic Church and to certain parts of the Church of England. These are not charities. I say this as a matter of law, and without the smallest element of criticism or derogation from all that the noble Earl has said: they are not charities. I think it was always thought to be the law, but this was established by a decision in this House, in its judicial capacity, in 1949 in a case called Gilmour v. Coats. In that case, a contemplative Order was held not to be a charity by the House of Lords, which decided that the benefit to the public of intercessory prayer is not capable of legal proof. There, again, I say no word of criticism either of the decision or of what any of the three noble Lords who have spoken have said about intercessory prayer. The decision of the House of Lords was not that it was not effective but that its effect was not capable of legal proof.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I should like to ask a question of the noble Viscount on a matter of opinion. Is the value and work of a teaching order capable of legal proof?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: Teaching is a charity by another set of decisions, and I will come to a definition of charity in a moment; but a teaching order is quite clearly a charity because of the basic definition of charity.
If I may return to what I was saying, the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, said something to-day about what constitutes a charity, and this takes us back to the rather curious Statute of Elizabeth I, which gave rise to an immense proliferation of Case Law as to what is and what is not a charity. It is one of the great curiosities of our legal system, to which I will return. I was saying that the decision in Gilmour v. Coats was that a contemplative Order is not a charity because the benefit to the public of intercessory prayer is not capable of legal proof, while the element of edification by example is too vague and intangible to satisfy the test of public benefit. That is the law as it has been decided judicially in this House.
Of course it would be open to this House in its legislative capacity to alter the law as decided by the courts, including this House in its judicial capacity, but this, I must insist, is not what the House is being invited to do by this Amendment. It is not proposed to make a contemplative Order a charity in law and this Amendment would not have this effect. This Amendment would have the effect of saying that a body which is not a charity shall be treated as a charity for the purpose of rates, and to that I think there would be considerable objection. It is fair to pursue this question of charity a little further, because, as your Lordships are aware, we have dealt with it in this House in our legislative capacity a little more recently. A Committee on the Law and Practice Relating to Charitable Trusts, which we all know affectionately as the Nathan Committee, referred to the decision of Gilmour v. Coats in paragraph 129 of their Report. This deals with the status of contemplative and enclosed Orders from the point of view of legislation and the desirability of altering their status.
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The Report observed that the representatives of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and here I quote:
Pointed out that the decision raised an important question of principle regarding religious trusts generally".
They did not dispute that the decision was correct as the law stands, and agreed that in any charity there must be an element of public good. This was considered by the Nathan Committee, and the Committee did not accept the suggestion that contemplative communities should be put into the charitable field by extending the concept of trusts for the advancement of religion to cover
"the advancement of religion by those means that religion believes and teaches are means by which it does advance it."
In other words the test which was to be adopted for deciding what does advance religion is not necessarily that which religious teaching itself advances.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: There is something ironic about that.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: That may well be in the way of the world and there is a great deal of irony about life.
In answer to my noble friend Lord Hawke, who wanted to know why it was not a charity, the answer was that a contemplative Order does not come within the definition of charity, as developed by Case Law, for the reason that I have given, and when Parliament came to consider the matter on the recommendations of the Nathan Committee as recently as last year it deliberately did not make an alteration in that law on This point. Therefore there is a very strong reason, I should have thought, for saying that this was a deliberate decision of Parliament with regard to the status of these Orders in this country, and it would be wrong to attach to them the peculiar advantages in full which attach alone to bodies which enjoy the status of charities within the legal sense, because that would really be to take one stand in one Act of Parliament and the very next year to take quite a different stand in another.
The position, therefore, is that the present Amendment seeks to extend to bodies which are admittedly not charities the mandatory relief which the Pritchard Committee recommended should be confined to charities. In making their recommendation, which the Government have

585
accepted, the Pritchard Committee recognised that their proposal
"must exclude from relief other organisations which are clearly both in need and deserving",
and, of course, that would cover this particular group of Orders; but it would also cover a number of other bodies. They recommended that these organisations should be eligible for relief at the discretion of the local authorities. In another place doubt was expressed whether the closed communities would be eligible even for relief at discretion, and it was at that stage that the Government thought that they should move an Amendment, which was accepted at Report stage, to remove that doubt.
This seems to me to cover the original position which I have to put forward. I am very anxious to say nothing whatever derogatory about the communities concerned, but I would really question whether the absence of controversy in this very delicate matter would be advanced by giving the relief which the noble Earl on the Cross Benches so sincerely and so movingly asked for. There is nothing so unpopular in this country as taxation relief; the privileged position free from taxation. I quite see the force of what the noble Earl has said about these Orders.
It would be an impertinence for me to question or even to discuss the spiritual value of what they do. It is a subject upon which many sincere people have held different views, and upon which my own views have not the slightest importance at all. No one who has read, for instance, the life of St. Teresa of Lisieux could doubt the beauty of that life or the profundity or purity of the teaching contained in it. But I do not think that is really the question when one comes down to such a mundane matter as relief from rates. No one could be more certain of the value of intercessory prayer than I am, but does that matter from the point of view of relief from rates? We are living in a world of ratepayers, many of whom do not believe in any kind of religion and more of whom do not practise it. In many parts of the country sectarian feelings are stronger than they are in your Lordships' House, yet it is within your Lordships' recent recollection that the debate on religion here gave rise to quite bitter
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controversy at one short period, even in your Lordships' House.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: A very short period.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: But still between two very striking personalities. I really wonder whether, this being so, we should not be wise to take the convinced opinion of Her Majesty's Government—that is, the compromise solution which we have arrived at—that local communities whose elected bodies on the whole favour a relief of this kind should be allowed to make it, but those where other opinions prevail should be free not to do so, if that is the true local opinion where the communities happen to have their being. It is, of course, a matter of opinion. As I say, I express no views whatever, because my views could not possibly interest the Committee, upon the spiritual value of these Orders. But it is my convinced opinion, bearing in mind the climate of feeling in this country in both directions, with which I suppose I am neither more nor less acquainted than other Members of your Lordships' House, that this is the right compromise and we should stick to it.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: In the circumstances, I have only to thank, as I do very warmly, the two noble Lords who have supported me and the other noble Lords who have heard me with such patience. In particular I would thank the noble and learned Viscount, the Leader of the House, for his very sympathetic treatment of the matter, and I would ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment by leave withdrawn.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clauses 10 and 11 agreed to.
7.52 p.m.
LORD MILVERTON LORD MILVERTON moved, after Clause 11 to insert the following new Clause:
Rating of Crown Property
". The Crown shall be liable to be rated in respect of any hereditament occupied by or on behalf of the Crown for public purposes; and accordingly any such hereditament shall be rated and shall be included in the valuation list in respect of any rate period beginning on or after the date on which the first valuation lists come into force after the passing of this Act."
The noble Lord said: In rising to move this Amendment I should like immediately to emphasise the fact that the important words in the Amendment are "for public purposes". This Amendment deals with hereditaments occupied by or on behalf of the Crown for public purposes. It has, I need hardly say, nothing to do with Royal residences or anything of that kind. The exemption of Crown property from legal liability for the payment of rates goes back to the year 1601, when a Statute of Elizabeth I, the Poor Relief Act, 1601, which created the liability for the payment of poor rates and paved the way for the rates which are now levied upon properties by rating authorities, omitted any reference to the Crown. Even if this omission was intentional, it was hardly significant in the year 1601, because, of course, at that time there were very few Government establishments and very little was lost by exclusion from rating. The position is, of course, vastly different to-day. One thinks of the multiplicity of Government offices, of courts of justice, police property, property used by the Armed Services, General Post Office property, property occupied by the Prison Commission, the Probation Service, Trinity House, and any properties requisitioned under compulsory powers for the service of the Crown. All such property escapes legal liability for rating because the Crown is not subject to rating law. This exemption continues to widen. Thus, in 1954 premises occupied by the Atomic Energy Authority became exempt from rating, under Section 6(1) of the Atomic Energy Authority Act, 1954.
It is the practice, I know, of the Treasury to pay contributions to rating authorities in respect of these properties in lieu of the rates which would be legally payable if the properties were rateable. For a long lime rating authorities, through their local associations, pointed out to the Treasury anomalies in the arrangements for such Treasury contributions, and until recently no contributions were paid, for instance, on Territorial Army property and on requisitioned property. Contributions which the rating authorities regarded as inadequate were made on Post Office property. But as a result of continual pressure over many years the Treasury have at length agreed to make fair contributions in these cases.
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But the rating authorities are still not satisfied, and their reasons seem to me to be reasonable.
These contributions are ex-gratia payments and can be stopped or varied at the whim of the Treasury. No appeal lies to any tribunal as regards the Treasury's decision about how much should be paid. The valuations for the purposes of these contributions are made by the Treasury valuer, and if there is a dispute about the basis of his valuation there is no way in which it can be referred for decision to an impartial arbitrator. Compare this with the position regarding all other property in England and Wales which is subject to rating law. In those cases valuations are made by the Inland Revenue valuer and any interested authority can appeal to the Lands Tribunal.
It is submitted that there is no justification for this archaic exemption, which continues to widen. It is also submitted that machinery should be provided for the settlement of differences which arise over contributions now paid ex gratia on Crown property. The new clause accordingly seeks to make the Crown legally liable to be rated in respect of any property occupied by or on behalf of the Crown for public purposes. The words "for public purposes" are inserted because it is not desired to suggest for a moment that payment should be received in respect of Royal residences. The Amendment would not affect those, nor would it affect the "grace and favour" residences, although, in practice, contributions in lieu of rates are paid to rating authorities in respect of some of those residences. Its object is to apply the ordinary law on rating to the kinds of public premises which I have mentioned, whose use is in the public service. The Crown Proceedings Act, 1947, amended the law relating to the immunity of the Crown from proceedings in respect of breach of contract and injuries done by its servants. Until then the Crown had remained immune from liability for hundreds of years. It is submitted that this confers a precedent for the action proposed by this new clause in relation to legal liability to rates. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 11, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Milverton.)
LORD BURDEN: I should like to say a few words in support of this new clause moved so admirably by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton. As he has indicated, the local authorities are very interested in this Amendment, the object of which is to bring within the normal rating and valuation law properties occupied by the Crown for public purposes. It is unnecessary, in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, has said, to go into the matter in any further detail, but I would suggest that the case for this new clause is a simple one. In regard to property occupied for public purposes the Crown should no longer be above the law or able to contract out of the law. That is the simple case for this Amendment. As has been pointed out, until quite recently servants of the Crown or the Crown could not be proceeded against in the courts in respect of certain matters. That situation was dealt with not so long ago—I believe in 1947. It is perfectly true that the Treasury, in their own way, by their own methods, make contributions to local authorities, ex-gratia payments, in lieu of the normal rates. But I think I am correct in saying that no one knows how those contributions are arrived at—what yardstick, if any, is used; what principles are applied; and, if principles are applied, why is there no method of seeing whether those principles have been correctly applied? I am not accusing the Treasury of bad faith, but in this matter they are both judge and jury, and I think it is high time that property owned or occupied by the Crown for public purposes should no longer escape its legal liability. I hope that this Amendment will be accepted.
8.3 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Burden, have clearly explained the purposes of this Amendment—namely, to make the Crown directly rateable with effect from April 1, 1963, in respect of hereditaments occupied by or on behalf of the Crown. I think that, without making too much ado about this, I should tell them straight away that the Amendment, perhaps not to their astonishment, is not acceptable to the Government. Since the noble Lord, Lord Burden, was the last speaker, perhaps I should make it quite clear that, so far as I know, this is in no way a Party point. If I am correctly informed, during consideration of
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what is now the Local Government Act, 1948, it was suggested that the ordinary principles of rating should apply to property occupied by the Crown. As noble Lords opposite will recollect, if their memories stretch that far back, the then Parliamentary Secretary in the then Labour Government made it clear that the Bill was not intended to make any change in arrangements for Crown property. Be that as it may, I think that the campaign, in which my noble friend's Amendment constitutes the latest battle, was started over 100 years ago at least, when a Select Committee on Public Establishments recommended that all land and buildings should be assessed at local rates and pay rates accordingly. These recommendations were not accepted.
In a case which came to your Lordships' House in its judicial capacity in 1865 it was established in principle that the Crown, not being named in the Statute of Elizabeth, to which my noble friend referred, is not bound by it; and, furthermore, that property occupied by the Crown for its servants, for public purposes, is exempt from rates. Just to bring the picture up to date, it is my understanding that, from time to time since then, Bills to abolish all Crown exemption from rates have been introduced but all failed to reach the Statute Book. I think the last major attempt was when a clause was included in the Rating and Valuation Bill of 1925, but was rejected on Report stage.
I would claim, therefore, that the principle that Government property is not legally rateable is thus solidly and soundly grounded in custom and in tradition. But it is equally well established (I should like to dwell on this) that the Government should make ex-gratia contributions in lieu of rates. If I may read an extract from the relevant Treasury Minute of June 25, 1874, it stated:
"We adopt the principle that property occupied for the Public service should contribute to the local rates equally with the other property in the Parishes in which it is situated, having due regard to its character in each case."
The noble Lord, Lord Burden, asked what was the principle used in determining how ex-gratia contributions should be made. That is the principle and it still obtains: that they should be equal to what similar property would be rated

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at in the normal way. Thus two principles have clearly emerged: first, that the Crown should be exempt from rates and hence determine the value of its own hereditaments; and secondly, that the Crown will, however, in determining such values, ensure that the Crown property should voluntarily pay equally with other property.
I suggest to your Lordships that we should be careful about tampering with this principle, which has its roots deep in history and tradition and has a solid legal and constitutional basis. But I would also suggest that, apart from those reasons of tradition and history and constitutional law, there are practical reasons for not tampering with this. One of the main objections to the normal rating or property occupied by the Crown, for which noble Lords are asking, is that once such property was made subject to normal rates, there is no doubt that the local authority might be suspicious that the contributions in lieu have not been equal. I do not say these doubts are valid, but there would be a suspicion, and there is no doubt that many local authorities would "chance their arm" and try for higher assessments.
Your Lordships will note that the Amendment being moved is due to take effect before the 1963 lists. I shudder to think of the practical problems and the added burden which this Amendment would pile on the poor valuation officers. I am not saying—and I should like again to repeat this—that those proposals would succeed, because it is my clear understanding that the principle of equality is honoured. Moreover, many properties in Crown occupation are of a kind which, I suggest, it is unreasonable to value on a normal basis. In saying that, I grant that there are others which, other considerations apart, it would be reasonable so to rate.
Many premises of the first sort, especially those occupied by the Service Departments, carry out work of a highly classified nature, and it would certainly be embarrassing, to put it no higher, if they were exposed to the publicity inevitably entailed in the proceedings of a valuation court. I need not rehearse possible examples—they will occur to your Lordships. Again, during an emergency, in war time for example, the Crown occupies a lot of property on a
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temporary basis. Successive Governments have held that local authorities are not entitled because of this to large and quite fortuitous increases in their rate income at the taxpayers' expense. Legal liability for rates as the noble Lords have asked for—rates on Crown property—could involve the Exchequer in heavy and, I should have thought, unjustifiable expense in cases like that; for example, buildings of a temporary nature but still standing erected on land requisitioned during the last war.
May I say also that I do not think the evidence, as I am aware of it, suggests that the present system does bear unfairly on local authorities. Even though contributions in lieu of rates are ex-gratia payments, and though it is the Treasury who on this principle finally determine the level of payment in any particular case, the procedure adopted by the Treasury valuer is to discuss with representatives of the local authorities concerned the basis of the contribution before payment is made. Thus there is prior discussion. Surely that system gives plenty of opportunity for the local authorities to put forward their views. I am informed that in practice the number of cases where full agreement on value is not reached in that early stage is very small indeed.
My noble friend and the noble Lord who is associated with this Amendment are, of course, aware that there has lately been quite a protracted correspondence about all this between the Treasury, the Financial Secretary, and the County Councils Association. In the course of that correspondence the Financial Secretary has once again confirmed that the Government propose to pay full and fair contributions, and he has also made it clear that he is personally very willing to look into any complaints from local authorities arising out of this. I would remind your Lordships, having read that correspondence, that the Association expressed their satisfaction at that assurance. I think it also only fair to add that the Financial Secretary made it clear that the Treasury are always ready to listen to representations about the rating of specific Crown properties.
Your Lordships may smile at that assurance because asking the Treasury for something is occasionally rather like getting blood out of a stone. But I do not think that assurance was a purely

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platonic one. For example, as a result of representations of this nature, the Treasury, as your Lordships are probably aware, have recently agreed to pay contributions in respect of Territorial Army property. There was a case and a good case for not doing so, I think, but they have agreed to do so.
Again, as my noble friend Lord St. Oswald is aware, the Financial Secretary has also recently agreed to discussions between the Treasury valuer and the Association about the possibility of bringing certain Post Office properties, hitherto excluded, within the normal rating system. In the correspondence to which I have drawn your Lordships' attention, the Financial Secretary, however, made it quite clear that he could hold out no hope whatever that the Government were prepared to overturn the general principle that rates are not paid in respect of Crown properties. I hope that, in the light of the explanation I have given to the Committee, and possibly more particularly in the light of the last remark about a passage from that correspondence which I have also drawn to your Lordships' attention, this Amendment will not be pressed.
8.16 p.m.
LORD LINDGREN: Even at this late hour I think we ought to detain the Committee just for a moment or two, in view of the noble Earl's reply. One must agree that this is not a Party political point. But it is a very sore local government point. The noble Earl says, quite correctly, that there has been a promise in correspondence that there will be full and fair contributions under this new Bill after it is passed. Equally, prior to this Bill there has been an undertaking that they would contribute equally with other ratepayers. But from a local authority point of view there has been no equal contribution. There ought to be some differentiation as between properties. Let us take one instance. The noble Earl quite rightly said that in 1948 the Labour Government did not make any move in this matter. But since 1948 there have been two very important factors. First, there has been a movement (I am not arguing the rights or wrongs of it, but merely stating the fact) of the contribution which the Exchequer pays towards local authority expenditure away from the Treasury and placing the
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cost on to the ratepayer. There has equally been in this Bill, and in previous legislation too, an added burden placed upon the domestic hereditament as compared with commercial and industrial hereditaments; and that is not rectified even under this Bill. In addition to that there has been a tremendous increase in values.
Let us just take one case, which is a first-class case from a local authority's point of view: the Post Office. Here we have the Post Office established under this Government as a commercial undertaking, and the Government are altering the status and standing, the accountability and all the rest of it, and putting the Post Office on a full commercial basis. In most towns the Post Office is sited in the centre of the town, which of course is of public convenience to the residents of the area. It is sited on the most valuable of sites. But its contribution to the local rate fund is negligible compared with that of hereditaments on either side.
It is not uncommon to find Woolworth's and the Post Office almost side by side; and you will not find Marks and Spencer's far away. But I ask the noble Earl to consult any local rating authority about the contributions received from the two organisations I have already quoted, Marks and Spencer's and Woolworth's, and the contribution of the Post Office which is in close proximity to them. Yet now the Post Office is to be a fully commercial undertaking, as compared with our old conception of the Post Office. If we may go away from it for one moment, we have a municipal enterprise in the Post Office. Goodness knows! how it has managed to remain so, but the whole Post Office system is a municipal system, and not a national system. Not only does it pay rates on the telephone system, wires and all the rest of it, but, of course, the Post Office as a Post Office does not pay.
In view of the change of circumstances, in which there is a gradual change-over in the way of placing a greater burden on the ratepayer as compared with the taxpayer, and in view of the fact that there is a greater burden now being placed upon domestic hereditaments as compared with commercial and industrial hereditaments, and of the increased values which arise, I think a revision of the whole matter ought to be undertaken.

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It is perhaps unfair to expect the noble Lords who have urged the Amendment to press it at this stage, when the House is not as full as it ought to be if we are going to make a decision on a matter such as this; but I can assure the noble Earl that local authorities and the local authority associations are by no means satisfied; and if the "full and fair contribution" works out at no more—if they contribute equally, as has been the previous formula—then that dissatisfaction will in no way diminish.
LORD MILVERTON: I do not wish to detain the House at this late hour, but I should like to thank the noble Lord who has just sat down for his most devastating destruction of the noble Earl's defence of the Government's attitude in this matter. If there had been a reasonably full House, I should not have hesitated to take this matter to a Division, because I think it is a very important one. But as it is, one must accept for the moment, without agreeing with it, the attitude of the Government—which, I gather, is that, rather than pay the fair dues on these properties, they will pay a little "conscience money", which is what ex gratia payments amount to. I am quite unimpressed by all the talk about this custom being rooted in tradition and history. Are we never to take account of changing times, and are there not some bad customs in the light of modern circumstances? However, I must leave that alone. But I cannot let pass the reflection by the noble Earl upon local authorities, when he said that, had they the power of assessing these things, they would be tempted to over-assess them because they are Government property. I cannot allow that suggestion to pass. I think the local authorities are just as likely to do their duty properly as any other body.
EARL JELLICOE: I wonder if I may interpose here. I do not want to interrupt my noble friend, but I think he has slightly misinterpreted what I said in that respect. I said that, were this Amendment accepted and the basis changed, and were Crown property to become fully rateable in a normal way, then, local authorities, rightly or wrongly—my noble friend would think rightly, but I would differ from him on that—thinking that this property had not been
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paying its equitable contribution, would put in a lot of proposals; not that they would be assessed improperly. That was not my contention.
LORD MILVERTON: I am sorry if I misunderstood the noble Earl, and I apologise for any misrepresentation of what he said. My last objection is to his analogy of what might happen in time of war. We all know that extraordinary things have to be done in time of war, and we also know that there are war-time measures. The situations are not comparable in this instance. However, I now beg leave of the House to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 agreed to.
8.25 p.m.
LORD DERWENT LORD DERWENT moved, after Clause 12 to insert the following new clause:
Notice of proposal for alteration of valuation list
". Where any proposal for the alteration of a valuation list is made by the tenant of a hereditament under the provisions of section forty of the Act of 1948, notice of such proposal shall be sent to the owner of the hereditament at the same time as it is served on the valuation officer."
The noble Lord said: This is a simple Amendment which I confidently expect will be accepted by Her Majesty's Government, because both the Amendment and Her Majesty's Government are full of common sense. I have tried to think of every possible objection to this Amendment. The objections, I think, are a pretty poor lot, but I intend to deal with them during my few remarks before they are raised by my noble friend.
This Amendment would ensure that the owner of a property knew of any application for an alteration in the valuation list. There have been a number of cases where considerable difficulties have been caused by the owner having no knowledge of the alteration in the valuation of his property. The Ministry have put forward the argument that this will lead to administrative difficulties, about which we have heard a great deal from the Government during this stage of the Bill. But there seems to to me to be no reason why the tenant should not be required to serve a copy on the landlord at the same time as he applies to the local authority for an alteration of valuation. Alternatively,

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on the form which he has to fill in when he applies to the local authority there could be a place for the owner's name, and then the rating authority could notify the owner. There does not seem to be much administrative difficulty in that. It might be objected that the owner's name is not known in every case, but under the forms which are now being used in connection with the revaluation this information is called for. The owners' names were put on these forms which are now being used; so I think that argument is a poor one.
It may be said that it is the tenant who pays the rates and that it is of no particular concern to the landlord. But an assessment can have a considerable bearing on the value of a property, both under existing legislation—the Rent Restriction Acts, and so on—and, perhaps even more, under possible future legislation. There seems no difficulty in this, and it seems equitable. It is one of the things that has to happen under the Town and Country Planning Act. The tenant and the landlord both have to know all about it in that case, and there seems no reason why, when dealing with rating, the owner should not know as well as the tenant. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 12 insert the said new clause.—(Lord Derwent.)
EARL JELLICOE: I was glad but rather surprised to hear my noble friend's expression of confidence. I was not surprised to hear that my noble friend had confidence in the common sense of the Government, but I was a little surprised to hear that he had confidence in the reply which I was going to give him, bearing in mind my previous communications on this subject.
LORD DERWENT: If I may interrupt my noble friend, I always get one Amendment in every Bill.
EARL JELLICOE: This, I think, is my noble friend's third Amendment, and so far he is two down. Therefore, I fear that I must exert myself more than usual in order to try to convince him that this Amendment is not a very satisfactory one. However, before saying anything in explanation, I should like to say straight away that when I first saw my noble friend's Amendment my first re-
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action was one of agreement with him that it does seem somewhat anomalous that when a proposal is made there is not a clear understanding and a clear obligation for the owner of the property to be informed of the proposal. I must admit straight away to him that, when I first saw his Amendment, it did strike me as anomalous that that obligation and right did not exist at the present time. Having looked at the matter since, I should like to go over some of the reasons why we feel that the present situation, anomalous in theory though it may be, is probably, in practice, not unsatisfactory.
My noble friend said that there had been a number of cases where the fact that the owner did not have a right to be informed of a proposal had caused difficulty and hardship. I wish he had trotted out some of those cases, because one of the first things which I asked when acquainting myself with this subject was whether, in practice, this was giving rise to difficulty; and I was assured that that was not the case.
What are the real difficulties which the Amendment would entail? First, it would entail a number of purely practical difficulties. The first one in the way of ending this anomaly is mainly the one of keeping track of ownership. That is the one to which my noble friend referred. When requests of this kind have been looked at in the past, it has always been recognised that it would be virtually impossible for valuation officers to keep an accurate and dependable record of owners, and this is one of the main problems. A somewhat similar problem is the vast amount of paper which would fly about if my noble friend's Amendment were accepted.
I would remind him that, following the revaluation made for the 1956 list, one and a quarter million proposals were submitted. They were made predominantly by occupiers, who were very often tenants; and if my noble friend's Amendment for an extra piece of paper were accepted, it would in fact release a vast flood of additional paper. He has, however, referred to the possibility of including in the proposal form some slip, which could be torn off or detached, on which the owner's name would appear and which would be sent to the owner. That is a new suggestion, to me

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at least, but it is certainly one which, without commitment, I should like to have looked at. It seems to me that just that kind of thing might meet some of this difficulty.
Apart from those two practical difficulties which I have mentioned, I should like to touch on one slightly technical difficulty, and one much more material difficulty. The technical difficulty is that my noble friend's Amendment, as it is drafted, does not put the task of informing the owner on the valuation officer, and only implicitly does it place that obligation on the tenant. In fact, the Amendment may be technically deficient in not saying by whom the owner is to be informed; but that is a rather technical point, and I should not wish to lean too heavily upon it. If one is to disregard that possible drafting point, it then needs to be considered whether it is really practicable and advisable to place this duty on the tenant. And here I come to a point of real substance, I would submit, and a point of quite considerable difficulty.
The tenant will normally know the owner's name and address, although there may well be complications in the case of sub-tenancies. Even so, it is difficult to see how the valuation officer, and, at a later stage, the valuation court, could ascertain whether the tenant had carried out his obligation to inform the owner. The Amendment could then produce an unnecessary atmosphere of uncertainty, and in the event of the service of the notice being challenged, the tenant might be in great difficulty in proving satisfactory service under Section 63 of the Act of 1948. It would, I think, invalidate all proceedings if the owner subsequently came forward, possibly after the case had gone through the Court of Appeal, or even to your Lordships, in your judicial capacity. That failure to prove delivery might well invalidate any proceedings. The duty which my noble friend's Amendment proposes to lay on the tenant might, in fact, rather than aid him, impose a heavy burden on him, and might, in the case of litigation, have a very serious effect on his interests. I think that is a point of real difficulty.
Finally, I should like to come back to a point to which my noble friend alluded, and that is that in this country
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liability for rates rests firmly on the occupiers of rateable property. Except in the case where there is compounding, either compulsory or voluntary, when the owner's interest is already safeguarded by the Act of 1948, the rate liability is not the business or the responsibility of the owner. That, I think, is the position. It may be that a proposal by a tenant to reduce the assessment of property would bring it, if it were successful, within the scope of compulsory compounding, and a hypothetical landlord would wish to avoid that eventuality. However, it seems to me an impossibility. But the object of the whole rating exercise must surely be to secure a correct assessment, and not to keep the tenant's rate liability at too high a level solely to enable the landlord to avoid having to collect and pay the rates. It is twisting the purpose of rating to use it for subsidiary or extraneous purposes.
I do not know whether my noble friend had in mind—he may have had—the possibility that the valuation list will be used for other purposes extraneous to rating. I would remind him of the importance of gross value in the Rent Act of 1957 in determining the new limits of controlled rents, and of rateable value in determining whether the house was to be freed from rent control. That may very well have left in some quarters the uneasy feeling that here is something in which owners of property have a direct financial interest from the point of view of their rate assessment. That may be one of the things which has been troubling him. Since rent control is governed by the rateable value as at November 7, 1956, I do not think that particular worry should now be troubling him. Even if it is, I would come back to the point that the purpose of rating valuation is to ensure that every ratepayer bears his proper share of the rate burden. It is surely wrong to make the rating system subservient to extraneous purposes.
Although my noble friend tends to dismiss them, there are difficult practical problems involved in his Amendment. There is a possible technical difficulty in drafting, but I grant that is one which could perhaps be overcome. It would involve (although I do not wish to dwell on it) the release of a great flood of paper. There is a possibility, which I

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have undertaken to look into, of a detachable slip, which might serve to overcome that. Because of these various difficulties and because of the importance of safeguarding the principle that rating is for rating's purpose and not for any extraneous purpose, I would suggest that this Amendment should be allowed to lapse, with the assurance I have given my noble friend of looking into this particular expedient.
LORD DERWENT: I thank my noble friend for going into this matter in such detail. I am glad to say that the tracing of ownership is now being done satisfactorily on the new forms that are being used for revaluation. The solution of the bulk of paper is to be found in the tear-off slip. I readily agree that the Amendment might have to be redrafted and I will have another look at that. My noble friend says that the Rating Act is not for extraneous purposes, but where a Rating Act affects a matter that comes under a different Act, that must be taken into account. It is no good saying that this is a rating Act and we cannot consider how the Rent Restriction Acts are affected by it, if at all, because that is one of the things we must control. We cannot say in new legislation that we must ignore previous legislation.
My noble friend has satisfactorily proved to me that if I want to redraft this Amendment and bring it up on the next stage I must put the duty of notifying the landlord firmly on the rating authority and not on the tenant. I thought that he made an extremely good case for that and I will look into a future Amendment on that line. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 13:
Rating of owners
13.—
(2) The allowance which may be made under paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of the said section eleven to owners rated under that subsection shall not exceed ten per cent. of the amount payable in respect of rates, and accordingly section one hundred and twenty-two of the Act of 1948 (which enables the rating authority to increase the said allowance to fifteen per cent.) shall cease to have effect.
LORD CAWLEY: This Amendment and the next, which I am moving on behalf of my noble friend Lord Broughshane, deal with proposals to amend Section 11 of the Rating Act, 1935. Section 11 (1) provides that in some cases landlords may be made compulsory rate collectors on behalf of the local authority and that local authorities should pay by way of fee to the landlord a sum up to 15 per cent. of the rates for the service he does in collecting them. I am informed that at the present moment the scale of charge for collecting rates is 10 per cent. This subsection reduces it from 15 per cent. to 10 per cent. and I entirely agree with that, but it also provides that the local authority may pay considerably less than that. If they were to take 2 per cent., then there would be only 8 per cent. to the landlord. The Amendment is to secure that the local authorities pay 10 per cent. neither more nor less.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 3, leave out ("not exceed") and insert ("be").—(Lord Cawley.)
EARL JELLICOE: At this increasingly late hour, I do not think that I should detain your Lordships too long in reply. My information is that the Amendment as drafted would not have the effect my noble friend suggests it would have. It is a slightly involved argument to prove that, taking one into the realm of higher legal semantics, and I do not propose to take your Lordships there, because the Amendment proposed by my noble friend on behalf of his noble friend is perfectly satisfactory to the Government. I am told that the Government draftsmen, having thought the matter over carefully, prefer my noble friend's way of achieving an object which they jointly share. Therefore, I am glad to be able to advise your Lordships to accept my noble friend's Amendment.
LORD CAWLEY: I am delightfully surprised.
LORD CAWLEY: This Amendment deals with voluntary compounding arrangements. Section 11 (2) of the Act of 1955 provides that a landlord may make a voluntary arrangement with a local authority that he will pay the rates chargeable in respect of a hereditament

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whether it is occupied or not, and goes on to say:
"… the authority may agree, where the owner so undertakes … to make him an allowance not exceeding in the case of an undertaking under paragraph (a) fifteen per cent.",
Your Lordships will see that this is an inducement to get rates whether a house is occupied or not. The amount which is provided in the present Bill is only 10 per cent., which is the equivalent to the scale of charge for the collection of rents now and all inducement to take advantage of Section 11 (2) (a) has disappeared. In my submission, if the Government had wanted to nullify the effect of the section, they have succeeded in doing so and it would be better to repeal it. Nobody is going to take a hazard with no particular incentive.
There is another point to which I have drawn my noble friend's attention—that is, that subsection (4) is at present defective, because by an oversight the words on lines 13 and 14 should read
"… a rating authority to make an allowance not exceeding 15 per cent. to owners …"
That is in fact what Section 11(2) of the 1925 Act provides. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 12, leave out subsection (4).—(Lord Cawley.)
EARL JELLICOE: Again I will try to be as brief as possible in reply. Dealing with my noble friend's first point, could I ask him a question? Is he referring to the part of the clause in brackets?
LORD CAWLEY: Yes, I am.
EARL JELLICOE: I am advised that in legislation, or in a Bill, the parts in brackets are purely illustrative and do not have statutory force. Therefore they will not be harmful. However, I am also advised that if my noble friend would like to clear up this small drafting point and put down an Amendment along these lines at the Report stage, there would be no difficulty in dealing with that particular aspect of it. But I do not think it is in any way harmful. I will not go into the argument for that, unless my noble friend wishes.
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On the substantive point, however, I cannot advise your Lordships to accept this Amendment. May I refer briefly to an important study carried out recently by a group from the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants? Their Report, Rating—Compounding Allowances and Discounts, was published by the Institute a couple of years ago. In it the group observed:
"The evidence is conclusive that the use of Section 11 (2) of the Act of 1925 is steadily losing favour and rating authorities are one by one ceasing to rate owners by agreement."
They also observed that the general tendency is to reduce the allowance made below the maximum permissible. According to the statistics of Rate Collection, published biennially by the same Institute, nearly 60 per cent. of the rating authorities practising compounding by agreement in 1958–59 under paragraph (a) of Section 22 (1) were paying the maximum allowance, but in fact only 10 per cent. of all rating authorities were using this particular provision. It is therefore a very quickly shrinking field.
Since the arrangements under Section 11 (2) are voluntary, the effects of cutting the allowance rate are potentially more significant to rating authorities, who might possibly want to use a higher allowance to tempt owners into compounding by agreement, as my noble friend suggested. There is that danger, but in fact the evidence is that they are all the time exercising this particular right less and less. Quite apart from the evidence of the study group, the Working Party who gave birth to this particular Bill agreed that the allowance should be reduced to 10 per cent., as is provided in the Bill as drafted, as a corollary to the ending of the discretion to allow up to 15 per cent. for compulsory compounding. I understand that the associations of local authorities have in no way demurred at that suggestion.
The payment of a larger allowance than is necessary is unfair to the other ratepayers in the rating area who must contribute a larger share of the total rate in consequence. In the case of a county district, it is also unfair to other ratepayers in the county, since the allowance

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under this provision is treated as a "loss on collection"—I think that is the technical term—in computing the product of a penny rate, and thus depresses the amount contributed by that district towards general county expenses. It could easily reduce the rate deficiency grants payable to other authorities through its marginal effect on the national average product of a penny rate per head of population whilst—and this is much more important—increasing the grant to the particular authority. At any rate, it is a shrinking field. The responsible bodies who have looked at this advocate this change, and because the present practice has harmful effects I suggest that the Committee should not accept this Amendment.
LORD CAWLEY: We have been told that the Report suggests that this subsection in the Rating Act, 1925, is no longer of much use to anyone. It strikes me as a curious way of putting it completely out of action, rather than repealing it. But I do not think it is a very important matter, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 13, as amended, agreed to.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I think we have had about enough. I beg to move the House do now resume.
Moved, That the House do now resume.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
On Question Motion agreed to, and House resumed accordingly.