Lords Sitting of 9 March 1961

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Liverpool
The Lord Kilbracken—Took the Oath.

AGRICULTURAL TOXIC CHEMICALS AND WILD LIFE
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether their attention has been drawn to the report issued on 22nd February by the joint committee of the British Trust for Ornithology and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds on the effect upon birds and mammals of toxic chemicals used in agriculture; and whether, in view of the urgent necessity for a comprehensive and meticulous study of the whole problem, they will say what steps, other than those already in operation, they propose to take for the furthering of the collection of information on the subject and for the conduct of postmortem analyses.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, this report has been brought to the attention of Her Majesty's Government, who are very much aware of the problem. Comprehensive measures for dealing with this problem were agreed at a meeting last December convened by my Department, which included representatives from the British Trust for Ornithology and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds among the delegates from the Council of Nature, as well as delegates from the National Farmers" Union, the National Association of Corn and Agricultural Merchants, and the Association of British Manufacturers of Agricultural Chemicals.
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The measures agreed included a survey by the Ministry's pests officers of reported cases of unusual deaths among birds, foxes and badgers. The bodies are sent for post-mortem examination and analysis when poisoning is suspected. The results of the survey are to be reviewed with the interested organisations after this spring. The need for further research into the effects of the use of toxic chemicals in agriculture is being examined by a Research Study Group appointed last year by Ministers. My right honourable friend thinks, therefore, that these new arrangements will provide valuable evidence on which to base any further action which may seem necessary. I should like it to be widely known that we should welcome full information from naturalists or other interested persons about suspected poisoning of birds or mammals by toxic chemicals. Reports should be made to the Ministry's pests officer at the local divisional office.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for that Answer. May I ask him whether it goes far enough? Whatever may be the immediate dangers of these chemical sprays, it is essential to explore thoroughly the long-term dangers of these toxic chemicals upon man and animals. As this, as it seems to me, is never done by private organisations, will the Government play their proper part and set up a responsible body which is able to take evidence and pursue the matter?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I think when the noble Viscount comes to read my reply in the OFFICIAL REPORT he will see that we are carrying out almost all the recommendations of the report to which his Question refers. There is in existence a Research Study Group; we are holding this survey; we are doing analyses; and we propose to review the whole question again when the evidence is collected at the end of this season.
LORD HURCOMB: My Lords, may I say to the noble Earl that all the naturalist bodies are grateful to the Ministry for holding the meeting in December? May I ask him whether he might not make public the results of the analyses of all those dead creatures which have already been sent to the pest

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officers of the Ministry; or, if he cannot make them public in the full sense, can he make the results of the analyses known to the responsible bodies? May I also draw his attention to the fact that the Ministry's 1961 list of approved chemicals made no reference at all to the possible dangers to wild life which their use might involve, and that the Ministry three weeks later sent a memorandum to the Press and to agricultural interests emphasising the fact that they might cause serious risks? That was a very useful and helpful action, and it is very much appreciated. But does the noble Earl not think that in future a warning of that sort should be embodied in the list itself, and perhaps emphasis laid on the fact—for it appears to be a fact—that many substances which are agriculturally effective can be used which are much less toxic than some of those commonly in use?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb. He was, I understand, at this meeting in December, and we are grateful for his co-operation. I will certainly take note of his suggestion about the publication of the results of the survey when they become known. I do not imagine that there will be any objection to that. The second part of the noble Lord's Question referred, I think, to the Notification Scheme that has been in operation since 1957. I understand that there is a further appendix dealing with wild life which has been discussed with the Nature Conservancy and other bodies and which will shortly be added to the Notification Scheme. I hope that will satisfy the noble Lord that we are taking this matter as seriously as he wishes.
LORD HURCOMB: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl. We are satisfied that the Ministry are taking the matter seriously. I was referring particularly to the noble Earl's own list of 1961 of approved chemicals, which made no reference to the fact that many of them are extremely toxic to wild life, although a subsequent statement was issued to that effect. My suggestion is that that statement should be embodied in the list itself when it comes to be re-issued.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I will certainly take note of what the noble Lord has said.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, while welcoming the Government's statement, is the noble Earl aware that there is still great distrust among scientists and, in particular, ecologists—and not merely those in the Nature Conservancy, who are very active in this—that the Government are not fully aware of the danger that we may create in the countryside the sort of mistakes that were created during the Industrial Revolution, and that we are in grave danger of polluting our countryside? When I raised this matter in the debate on Science, the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, on that occasion was, I think, unaware of the problem; I certainly had no answer from him. Would the Government consider, in particular, whether the manufacturers ought not to play a bigger part themselves in carrying out long-term research on the side effects of the chemicals which they produce?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, my information is that the manufacturers are doing a great deal of research on this subject and that the Government research organisations are co-operating with them in that research. Of course, it is a difficult question, which would be more proper for the Minister for Science to answer than for me, as to the general ecological balance of nature. But I feel we must not over-exaggerate this problem. Clearly, these agricultural chemicals may have harmful side effects on wild life. What we have to do is to minimise that to the greatest extent, while not denying the immense value to agriculture of these chemicals, properly used and applied.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, might I ask the noble Earl whether he would think about this? Is he not aware that there is a very responsible body of opinion outside Parliament which does not consider that the present pursuit into the long-term dangers and potential dangers of these chemical sprays is being properly thought out: and will he set up a body, independent of the Ministry, to inquire into it? I implore him to do this, and to give these bodies some hope that something will be achieved.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I could not accept that we are not taking adequate and proper measures at the moment. Of course, I shall bring to my right honourable friend's attention the points of view that noble Lords have raised, but I can give no undertaking that we can set up any other body on the subject.
LORD REA: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether he considers there is adequate co-ordination between the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister for Science with regard to such things as strontium 90 fall-out which, like the matters in question, are developing rather faster than chemists and biologists are quite happy about?
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, I do not know which member of the Government ought to answer the question posed by the noble Lord. I think co-operation in these matters can always be improved, and we are always trying to improve it. If any instances of failure to co-operate are brought to my notice, I will certainly do my best to put them right. I quite agree with what the noble Lord has said. So far as the atomic fall-out question is concerned, it is not really a question of co-operation between the Minister of Agriculture and my Ministry. The Agricultural Research Council is responsible for monitoring, and this is solely under my responsibility.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, is the noble and learned Viscount considering issuing, or asking the Agricultural Research Council to issue, some sort of statement as to what research is going on? The noble Earl who answered for the Ministry of Agriculture said that he was quite sure that private concerns were doing a great deal of research work. But there is undoubtedly a strong feeling of uneasiness in the country that enough research work is not going on into these problems, which affect human life just as much as wild life. If the noble Viscount could consider issuing a statement as to what is being done, it might alleviate the uneasiness.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, that might be a useful suggestion, but I should like to see it on the Paper. I can see that in my unpremeditated answer to the last supplementary I unintentionally misled the noble Lord. I allowed myself to be led on to the monitoring of the fall-out, but so far as the original question is concerned, of course there are a number of bodies involved in it. There is my noble friend's Ministry—and that was why he answered—and there is the Agricultural Research Council, which deals with one aspect of the matter. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb, knows, one of the more important aspects is dealt with by the Nature Conservancy, which is responsible to me, and which deals with that aspect of the matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, referred particularly, ecology. Agriculture is, as it were, the inside of the farm gate, and nature conservancy perhaps the outside of the farm gate.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, is the noble Viscount the Leader of the House aware that he has given a complete answer to my plea that an independent body should be set up to coordinate all these different bodies to which he has referred?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, that is in a sense true, but I had thought that any noble friend had indicated that a body has been set up. Although, of course, I am responsible for the various research bodies that I have described to the House, they are independent of me in the sense that their scientific judgment is not interfered with by my office. Indeed, it was precisely in order to avoid political interference with the scientific judgment of research councils that they were originally put under the Lord President of the Council, and are now under the office of the Minister for Science. Therefore, although there is a great deal in the noble Viscount's argument, I think the considerations he has indicated are being given.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether he is satisfied that when these inquiries are finished his Department will already have sufficient powers to prohibit the use of chemicals proved to be harmful; and

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can he further say, without specifying them, whether in fact so far any such chemicals have been prohibited?
EARL. WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, the question of prohibiting or banning raises far wider matters than, if I may be allowed to say so, were envisaged in the original Question. I understand that the Government have not readily at hand compulsory powers to ban these chemicals. But, as noble Lords will be aware, a voluntary ban has been arranged by the manufacturers (through the good offices of the Government) on certain chemicals quite recently, which we think is a great advance, and probably the proper way to proceed.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I apologise for pursuing this matter a little further, but I think the noble Viscount made a most astonishing statement to come from the Minister for Science. Did I rightly understand him to say that ecology stops at the farm gate and, by inference, that the Nature Conservancy's responsibilities are there limited? Because it is one of the complaints that the Agricultural Research Council are not doing
enough fundamental long-range ecological research. I think we ought to hear from the noble Viscount exactly what he meant.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord has interpreted rightly what I said. I think that ecology, which is concerned, as it were, with the balance of nature, is essentially a matter for the Nature Conservancy rather than for the Agricultural Research Council; and if he looks into the terms of reference of the bodies, he will find, I believe, that this is so. It may be that I. was speaking too popularly if I talked about "the farm gate". I certainly should not expect to be treated as being on oath in regard to that particular phrase. But the Agricultural Research Council is, after all, primarily concerned with research into agriculture, which is the deliberate propagation of plants and animals for human use or consumption. The Nature Conservancy is fairly well described by its name, and I should have thought that there was a need for an independent body of that kind. Obviously, there must be coordination between those bodies, and
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my office is supposed to maintain it, but I think it would be a pity if the body responsible for agriculture were treated as absolutely identical in scientific interest with the body responsible for wild life, whether plant life or animal life. These are scientific bodies, and I should myself have thought that the present arrangement was not a bad one. I am afraid we are getting into a rather different debate from what my noble friend was originally asked, and perhaps the House will think I have given an adequate explanation for this purpose.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I think we have finished now, and we ought to thank the Government for their patience to-day. May I express the hope that the Minister from the Agricultural Department is not suffering from toxic chemical action in the left arm, and if there is any pain we hope that it will soon be gone.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I should like to thank the noble Viscount. I am much obliged to him for his kind inquiries.

LIFE-SENTENCE PRISONERS' SUBSEQUENT RECORDS
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: 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 how many of the persons sentenced to life imprisonment who have been released from prison in the past five years have subsequently been convicted of crimes of violence.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (EARL BATHURST): My Lords, of the 76 persons released from sentences of life imprisonment during the last five years, 1956 to 1960, inclusive, two have subsequently been convicted of crimes of violence. In addition, eleven persons have been released during this period from detention during Her Majesty's pleasure (having been under the age of eighteen when the original offence was committed): and of these—that is of the eleven—two have subsequently been convicted of crimes of violence.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his Answer, and in view of the satisfactory nature of those figures I do not propose to try the patience of your Lordships further.

THE EASTER RECESS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, perhaps this might be a convenient moment to inform the House that it is proposed to adjourn for the Easter Recess on Thursday, March 30, until Tuesday, April 11. I hope it will be possible to have only a formal Sitting on Thursday, March 30.

POST OFFICE BILL
3.24 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Post Office Bill, has consented to place Her Majesty's prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purpose of the Bill.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. In so moving, I might begin by explaining why the Queen's consent, which has just been signified by my noble friend Lord St. Aldwyn, is needed for this Bill. The revenues of the Post Office have formed part of the Hereditary Revenues of the Crown, ever since they were vested, by an Act of 1685, in King James II and his successors. Since the year 1760, it has been customary for these revenues to be surrendered to Parliament at each Accession, for the duration of the reign, in return for the Civil List. This Bill, because it sets up the Post Office Fund on a permanent basis, constitutes an obstacle to the resumption of any Post Office revenue by the Crown at the beginning of a reign, and so necessitates the Queen's consent.
My Lords, King James II would scarcely recognise his Post Office to-day. Nor would the original Master of the Posts, Sir Brian Tuke, appointed in 1512; or even the first Lord Stanhope, who
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80 years later widened and organised its activities along the classic Five Roads radiating from London, those to the North, to Kent, to Chester, to the West, and to Bristol. Even he would be astonished at the further expansion which has taken place since his day.
Preceding the present Bill, there have been two main organisational developments in the history of the Post Office. First there was its assimilation as a revenue Department, into the increasingly meticulous system by which Government revenue and expenditure in general came to be controlled and accounted for. Later there were the stirrings, especially from the time of Rowland Hill onward, of a determination that public utility should be put before fiscal exploitation. In our own century, public interest and public criticism urged on this form of development, which was aided by the appointment of the Bridgman Committee in 1932. The Bridgman Committee recognised publicly that the Post Office ought to cease to be a fiscal instrument, and become self-contained financially. Unfortunately, the practical measures which they felt able to recommend at that time fell a good deal short of giving the Post Office the full liberty implicit in this principle, and it has taken nearly 29 years for their findings to bear truly nourishing fruit, in the shape of this Bill. The war, for one thing, put the clock back in this as in other spheres, but a Bill is now before your Lordships.
I should say, first of all, that nothing in it is intended to weaken the sense of responsibility which the Post Office feels for the social implications of its services. In another place some disquiet was expressed that the two financial duties laid on my right honourable friend by this Bill—to secure that his revenue covers his outgoings, taking one year with another, and to establish and maintain a general reserve—will submerge the Post Office's social obligations. I can assure noble Lords that this is not so. Future practice will confirm the principle, already implicit in Post Office policies, that for the most part prices must be such as to cover at least the average cost of the service rendered. But this does not mean that every single service has to be run at an economic

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rate. For example, the telegraph service has always run at a loss, and we also make losses on telephone kiosks which, in fact, are provided in this country more generously than in any other.
What the Bill does is to implement the proposals set out in the White Paper, published last March, called The Status of the Post Office (Cmnd. 989). It also makes a few minor legislative changes, which are useful but not strictly consequential upon that White Paper. A further White Paper (Cmnd. 1247) has accompanied the Bill, so that I think no very detailed explanation is called for for such of your Lordships as are interested on this particular occasion. The essential step is the Post Office's separation from the ordinary Government finances, which is done by the setting up of the Post Office Fund, in Clause I of this Bill. This Fund is to be the repository of the Post Office trading receipts and the source of its outgoings. Broadcast receiving licence revenue and fines will still go to the Exchequer, but otherwise all Post Office receipts will be retained for use in the business.
The Post Office will bear its proper share of tax burden like any other business. As it will remain a Crown Department, it will be exempt from the direct consequence of tax law, but the Bill provides in Clause 2 for the payment of a contribution to the Exchequer nearly enough equal to the value of the exemptions. The Treasury must agree the payments, and the various departments responsible for tax collection will be consulted to ensure that the right amounts are paid. As an exception, postal orders will not be liable for a contribution in lieu of stamp duty. If levied, this would amount to 2d. per order, plus a further 2d. for receipts on orders for £2 or more. Such additions would defeat the purpose of postal orders as a cheap means of sending small sums. Money orders, however, are for larger sums, up to £50, and are more like cheques. On them, therefore, 2d. will be payable by the Post Office in lieu of bill of exchange duty; but nothing will be levied for receipt duty.
Other Departments will pay in cash for Post Office services available to the public at the same rates as the public, or for other services, at a fully costed
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charge. The initial assets and liabilities of the Post Office Fund will be those shown in the Commercial Accounts for the year ending on the last day of the old arrangements. This is an eminently fair provision that leaves the Post Office owing no more than is due to the Exchequer for assets that it has financed in the past.
The Post Office starts off on its new footing by translating into reality the situation shown in its commercial accounts which it has been preparing for nearly half a century. As well as showing the assets and liabilities of the business, they show its income and expenditure. For 1959–60, for instance, they show the Post Office as spending £422 million and receiving an income of £442 million, leaving a surplus of £20 million. This sort of information has been translated into an attractive, not to say picturesque, chart, for the benefit of people like myself who can understand no other form of balance sheet, with neat piles of shillings denoting various kinds of income and expenditure.
For all that, the whole thing until now has been notional. Included in the income and expenditure are payments for work done for other Departments by the Post Office, and vice versa. But the Post Office never received money for these services to other Departments, nor did it pay the Departments for services rendered to it. In general, Departments do not pay one another for services.
Because of this, complex calculations have had to be done by anybody who wanted to reconcile the money which the Post Office says it has spent in its commercial accounts with the money it did spend according to its Parliamentary cash accounts. This confusion will disappear, because in the future the commercial kind of account will be the only one; and if it shows that the Post Office has received the £442 million that I have just mentioned, then that money will really have flowed into the Post Office Fund.
Annual Parliamentary authorisation of expenditure through Estimates ceases, except in relation to Ministers' salaries, staff pensions and broadcasting, but effective Parliamentary control will remain. In the first place, the Post Office will still be headed by Ministers of the

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Crown fully answerable to Parliament, and their salaries will still be voted by Parliament. Secondly, it is provided in the Bill that an annual Resolution of the House of Commons will be required before any payments can be made from the Fund in the ensuing year. Thirdly, statutory instruments providing for Post Office charges will all now be laid before Parliament and subject to annulment by either House.
Parliament will remain well-informed about Post Office affairs by the Report and Accounts, together with the Auditor General's Report on the latter, which will be published after the close of each financial year. Further opportunities for discussion will arise on borrowing powers which it is expected will need extension about every two years, by House of Commons Resolution and by Money Bill alternately. Treasury control will automatically diminish through the bringing to an end of the traditional Vote and accounting procedures. The Bill, however, formally removes certain statutory provisions which subject various Post Office commercial actions to the need for Treasury consent. Treasury control over pay and conditions of staff, investment and foreign exchange continues, but there need be no legislation for this purpose.
Post Office staff will remain civil servants. The Bill ensures that their pension position under the Superannuation Acts is not prejudiced by the separation of Post Office finances. The security of the pensions will continue to be that of the State, not of the Post Office, and pension payments will therefore continue to be voted. But the Post Office will be expected to set aside enough to finance the pensions, and appropriate sums will be paid into the Exchequer as if into a pension fund.
Clauses 8, 9 and 10 of the Bill refer to the borrowing powers of the Post Office under it new status. Under Clause 8 the Post Office will be able to borrow temporarily from the Bank of England for its short-term needs. Such borrowing will be limited by the Bill to £30 million. Experience shows that Post Office working balances may fluctuate by as much as £20 million while at times sudden rises in expenditure may have to be met before compensatory action can be taken. The limit of £30 million was, in fact,
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challenged in another place during the passage of this Bill as being too little, but we are satisfied that it will be sufficient, having regard to an examination of past fluctuations in the Post Office cash position.
Clause 9 provides for Exchequer advances to meet Post Office longer-term requirements for the purposes of fixed or working capital. Borrowings will be repayable after a set term of years. The term will normally correspond to the average life of the assets financed. Twenty-five years is at present the period in mind, but advances for working capital might be for a shorter period.
Clause 10 defines the limits for Exchequer advances in terms of a maximum debt which may be outstanding at any one time, whether in respect of past borrowings or of sums advanced under the Bill. The debt at the date of severance is expected to be around £800 million, so that the lower limit of £880 million effectively authorises additional borrowing of about £80 million. The upper limit of £960 million which may be authorised by a resolution of the House of Commons would permit a further £80 million to be borrowed. The initial sum of £80 million would, we expect, provide for the needs of about two years, and the further sum of £80 million for about a further two years. Capital expenditure in the whole period (including some increase in working capital) might well come to about £500 million. Recent performance suggests that it may be safe to assume that at least two-thirds of capital finance can be provided from income. This means that some £340 million of the £500 million would be self-financed, leaving about. £160 million to be borrowed.
My Lords, by the system of accounts that have been kept over the past many years we have had the advantage of a blueprint to know how the financial performance of the Post Office goes and will go, and therefore the Bill establishes the Post Office on a firm and known financial footing. It is a long and widely awaited piece of legislation, and I hope that it will win general satisfaction and approval from your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2n. —(Lord St. Oswald.)
3.40 p.m.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I rise to support the Bill on behalf of noble Lords on this side of the House. Some five weeks ago I had the privilege of addressing your Lordships on another Post Office matter, and on that occasion I took the opportunity of recounting an experience in New York when, at 6 o'clock on a Monday evening, I was promised that a letter would be sent to my hotel, three miles across the city. By Wednesday morning I had not received that letter, although I had received one posted at 7 o'clock on the Monday night by one of your Lordships here in Westminster. I then pointed out to your Lordships that neither my American friends nor I were surprised. They were accustomed to the excellent Post Office service of this country, and we take it for granted. Indeed, I think that the people of this country very often take their Post Office service too much for granted, and that is why, on the odd occasion when someone gets a letter late, or a letter is sent to the wrong place, it merits even a letter in the Press. Apparently it has not been realised that the poor fellow in question is one of those who sent the 10,000 million letters a year which I know the Post Office has to handle in the course of twelve months.
It is because of the experiences I have had while connected with the Civil Service over the past 30 years, and in travelling abroad, that I welcome the opportunity afforded to me of speaking on behalf of noble Lords on these Benches and saying on this occasion a few words appreciative of the Post Office while offering some observations on this Bill. I want to tell the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading of the Bill that we shall do everything we can to expedite it, as we understand that if the Bill is to be at all effective it is essential that it shall operate from the first day of the new financial year, which means that it must have Her Majesty's assent some time this month. I can assure the noble Lord that, since we are most anxious to see this great and long-delayed measure put through, we shall do everything we can to help. But that does not mean that we have no criticisms of the Bill to offer; for we have, as I shall point out.
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Broadly, we welcome the measure, so far as it goes, because it gives some freedom from Treasury control—and I would stress the words "some freedom", for it gives only some of the freedom for which we were pressing in the debate some weeks ago. Then I brought to your Lordships' attention the difficulties of the immediate past when I pointed out that although the White Paper on Post Office Capital Expenditure (Command 973), in 1955, had referred to the fact that three-year averaging was indispensable for economic development, such averaging had never been permitted because of the financial controls imposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury over the Postmaster-General. Indeed, as has been pointed out on a number of occasions in the other place, the Postmaster-General himself never knows how much he is getting for the current year, never mind three years ahead.
The right honourable gentleman Mr. Marples, who was then Postmaster-General, not only complained but, on May 15, 1959, told right honourable gentlemen and honourable gentlemen of another place [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 605, col. 1626]:
"I am quite certain that … one cannot run a business like the Post Office or any big business on a year-to-year basis. It is physically impossible to do so. There must be a steady programme, and one cannot turn that programme on and off as though it were a tap. The business will not be efficient if one does."
We have therefore been pressing for freedom from the Treasury. One small part of which is here; because when the Bill becomes law the Postmaster-General will at least be able to plan his job for some considerable time ahead. But the freedom is subject to limits which, in the view of some of my friends in another place and here, are not justified. That is why I shall offer criticisms while not proposing to detain your Lordships with too much detail or to present an Amendment in the Committee stage.
I should be doing less than justice to Her Majesty's Government if I did not say we welcome wholeheartedly this attempt to carry out the 1932 Bridgman Report, and in particular welcome the decision which the Government have made, contrary to what some of their supporters were pressing on them, to leave the Post Office alone and not make it a public corporation. Thinking British

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people are jealous of the handling of the great service by State employees and with a Minister responsible to Parliament. I welcome personally the fact that that Minister is to retain the title of Postmaster General, a title first given to the holder of that office in the days of Cromwell and which we are proud to think will be kept. After studying the Bill and hearing the explanations Ministers have given, I am quite happy that another place will have greater, and not less, opportunity of examining the affairs of the Post Office and reaching conclusions about them.
The Minister, in moving the Bill, referred to the future status of civil servants employed by the Post Office, which is the subject of a special clause. We are very happy about that. This is a great reorganisation, said by the Government to be on commercial lines; but all too often the unwise commercial tycoon thinks of himself and his fellow directors, and sometimes even of his shareholders, while all too often forgetting the work-people, who have invested everything they have—their labour—in the concern with which they are connected. Here the Government have taken the right line, and civil servants of the Post Office, whom I have known for so many years as a great bunch of people, retain their existing status. Their pensions and future conditions will be dealt with in the same way as now; and "as now" means being dealt with through the machinery of the National Whitley Council and the Ministry Whitley Council inside the Post Office, and the maintenance of the excellent industrial relations machinery which, one is bound to admit, the Post Office has with the Union of Post Office Workers and the Post Office Engineering Union.
I would point out that to the extent that this provision is made as to status and pay of the staff, it is one departure—and a good one—from commercial freedom that commercial freedom which, as the noble Lord said, has been the subject of a good deal of concern in another place during the passage of the Bill. It was a matter of concern because it was felt that rather too much emphasis was being placed on the word "commercial" and not enough on the word "social". We want to emphasise—and this is one of the reasons why I stand here now—that nothing which aims at
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producing the good commercial background of the Post Office must stop its ability to carry out its social services, which may often cost money and cause a losing item on its balance sheet.
The old ladies must still have the opportunity of drawing their old-age pensions at some place that does not make them toil for a mile to a post office. There must still be a telegraph service, and particularly the unprofitable kiosk to which the noble Lord has already, quite candidly, referred, for people in the country, or those who live in great housing estates and have neither the facilities for nor the finance to afford a telephone for themselves. That is a social responsibility which we could not see taken away.
When it came to seeking from Parliament the powers for commercial freedom for the Post Office, Her Majesty's Government seem to have got "cold feet" part of the way, if one is to judge by some of the clauses about financial powers and so on; because the limitations which have been put on the borrowing powers, both short-term and long-term, are not what most people in this House who are running businesses would regard as very much commercial freedom.
In Clause 10 the figure of £880 million, which is provided as the total amount for debt, will, as I understand it from the statement of the Postmaster-General, give him an amount that will cover only about two years; the second figure of £960 million will cover a further two years; and after that a new Money Bill will be needed. I admit straight away the reply which the Minister could give: namely, that a new Money Bill has something to be said for it (he referred to the fact that it might be needed) as it would give another opportunity of discussion in the House. But I rather feel that there has been too much of an attempt to restrict the very freedom which was being given, and it is not the kind of freedom for which we should have hoped. In another place representatives of those who sit on these Benches moved Amendments, and those Amendments we could inflict upon your Lordships again, but it would be taking up the time of the House to do that. It is for this reason that I am making this statement now, indicating that we shall not put down

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those Amendments merely to have the Government reject them all over again.
So far as the General Reserve provided for in Clause 7 is concerned, I shared the concern of my colleagues in another place. We learned that the total amount of money the Treasury were likely to hand over would be under £30 million—to be exact, probably only £27 million. But I gather that what has now happened is that the amount is to be augmented by such surplus as the Post Office earns in the course of this year; and the Postmaster-General is satisfied because he is doing so well that he may hope to finish with certainly £40 million as the amount to be handed over, and perhaps as much as £46 million. That being so, I have no particular criticism to offer of
the clause. Anyone looking at the needs of working capital and ordinary business contingencies would probably have been led to the conclusion, in broad terms, that £50 million would be about the amount required, and it looks as if the Postmaster-General is going to start off with something like that figure.
There is one other piece of commercialism in the Bill to which the noble Lord referred and which we do not think is very amusing at all; we cannot understand it, in fact. That is the imposition of income tax. If this were to be a public corporation, as was suggested by some persons, instead of being merely the form of organisation which has been chosen within the Government, one could understand it. But, as I see it, this means merely that money will be taken out of the right-hand pocket and transferred to the left-hand pocket of the Government machine. Any one of your Lordships who has read Annexe A of Cmnd. 1247 (which was the Memorandum on the Bill we are now considering and was published when the Bill was presented in another place last December) will find that it gives a detailed account of all the work involved in securing what is said to be the amount:
"— the Pont Office will pay as nearly as may be what it would pay in taxation, but for the various exemptions that affect it."
So, as I see it—indeed, as this Bill provides—the traditional exemptions for a State enterprise are there, and they are then given up by this Bill. As a
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result, the great machinery in Annexe A comes into play, which will involve the spending of thousands of hours by large numbers of civil servants in making intricate calculations, at a cost of thousands of pounds in salaries, in order that it may be determined accurately how much is to be taken out of the right-hand pocket and put into the left. That may be something which it is necessary to do in the interests of good government. We, who have looked at it in the other place and here, have not been very convinced by anything we have seen or read or by any of the explanations which have so far come from the Post Office Department.
Before I leave the subject of commercialism, there is one other comment which I should like to make. Why, oh why, if we leave the same Civil Service staff to operate effectively and to run the business and keep the accounts on the efficient lines on which they have always run, do we need to provide in Clause 12 (1) that accounts shall be kept for the future in a form "which shall conform to the best commercial standards"? What we want are accounts that Parliament can understand when they are presented and which we are able to read and discuss; and that is not necessarily achieved, I suggest, by keeping accounts in the best commercial sense. What is wrong with the Civil Service accounting of the Comptroller and Auditor General's Department, which has served us so well? You are going to leave accounting still to be done by that great Department, a Department which does not find any difficulty in detecting the difficulties that may occur in transactions between firms and Government Departments. I would rather have seen it said that accounting shall conform, not to the best commercial standards, but the best standards of Civil Service and Parliamentary accountancy, which this country has enjoyed for years.
There are other, smaller points in the Bill with which I will not weary your Lordships. I should like, however, to say a few words about one matter which is not in the Bill, the new recorded delivery packets. Some of my honourable friends in another place put down an Amendment on Report stage, swiftly and at the last minute, as a result of representations made to them by the County Councils' Association and other organi-

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sations of local government offices. They withdrew it after the Government had indicated that they accepted the principle of the objections. They realised not only that the phraseology was not good, but that what they had been running into was a very considerable piece of difficulty involving not only this Bill but probably many Acts of Parliament.
The problem is a new one. I may explain, very briefly, for any of your Lordships who have not seen the details of this new service in Press advertisements, that it provides that one can have proof of posting a letter by filling in a form at the Post Office and paying a fee. It is something like the A.R. registered post, which many of us have used in connection with legal actions when we have needed evidence of posting, delivery and receipt of a document. But the local authorities have become worried about the use in the advertisement of the words "proof of delivery", which they think may be misleading and may have irreparable consequences if accepted at face value. I understand that the Postmaster-General has discovered that there are at least 50 Statutes so far uncovered which specify the use of registered post. The provision in the Statute in some cases was probably designed to secure only proof of delivery. If that is so, the new system might be good enough. But the sheer requirement of the law may be that the old system of registered post must continue to be used; and that matter needs clearing up very quickly.
What may be involved is Post Office legislation. There may well have to be a Bill which the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack will have to present in order to deal with a large number of legal consequences arising from this matter. For that reason, I am not expecting the Minister to say a word about this subject this afternoon; but as I am indicating that we are not proposing to worry the Government on the Committee or the Report stage, I should like to hear something about some method of discussion in which we can get a reply. I should like to hear something on this urgent problem, which is worrying people in business and local authorities all over the country. In that connection, I should expect that my own noble Leader would be able to co-
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operate with representatives of the Government to secure the end we want.
If I have said nothing in detail about the telephone service it is only because I took so long in talking to your Lordships about it—and you listened so patiently—some few weeks ago. I merely want to make the comment that the exposure I then made of the failure to develop the excellent telephone service we can have, a service which lags behind every telephone service in every major industrial country, was due not to technical difficulties or to the inefficiency of the Post Office, but entirely to the frustration of the Post Office as a machine in respect of monies provided by the Treasury. The improvement of that telephone service—an improvement which I hope will give dialling and subscriber trunk dialling earlier than 1970 —is one of the criteria by which we shall judge the Postmaster General in the exercise of the new powers which this Bill gives him, aimed at partly freeing him from the thraldom of the Treasury.
So I begin to wind up what I have to say to your Lordships by broadly commending the Bill. It has, in my view, the shortcomings to which I have referred, but it is basically a good Bill—an overdue measure of reform—and in some ways quite imaginative. In the midst of its dealing with huge principles, it has not hesitated to deal with one or two petty, yet most useful, things, on which I should like to congratulate the Minister. For instance, steps have been taken in one of the final clauses, Clause 25, to deal with repealing the present silly law which makes it imperative that there shall be painted in while, in capital letters, over the doorway of any little establishment which sells stamps, the words, "licensed to sell stamps". These words must be—and I quote the portentous words of the enactment—
"painted on some conspicuous place on the outside of the front of the place".
That means painted over the doorway of a poor little place where some poor little widow tries to sell a few postcards, and thinks she may sell more if she sells stamps with them. I am glad to see that that petty requirement, along with other petty requirements, will leave for ever once this Bill reaches its conclusion and becomes an Act.
I am sure that, when this becomes an Act, if the Post Office civil servants, as

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I have known them for 30 years, are given their heads, and allowed to use some of the ideas they have had for years but which they have not in the past been allowed to use, the Post Office and its staff will go on from strength to strength. There are so many things they could do. I will not keep your Lordships by enumerating large numbers of them, but some of them stand out. For instance, in this year, when we celebrate 100 years of the Post Office Savings Bank, look at the extensions which could be made to that Bank. Those of your Lordships who have ever paid bills in countries like Switzerland, and a number of others, will know that wonderful system by which you get a bill with a number on it and two tear-off slips. Then, all you do is to go to the Post Office, pay over the cash, the original bill is post-marked as your receipt, one chit is kept by the Post Office, which deducts the money from the account or adds the money to an account, and the other chit goes off to the person concerned. The saving in commercial labour, in envelopes, in post and in all sorts of things is quite wonderful. Anyone who has had to settle a medical bill, for instance, while in Switzerland or Sweden will know that there are a number of simple ideas waiting to be used. Normally, we have been the pioneers in good postal activities. We have been the great country which has done so much that others have copied us. I think we have a Post Office of which we can all be proud. Come fair weather, snow or wind, the post has gone through. Come peace or come war, the service, somehow, manages to struggle along. We shall now have a chance to see a Post Office, encouraged by this Bill and by the reception it has had and, I think, is going to get from both Houses, going on to do its best for us.
I conclude by insisting, as I have said already, that we for our part still lay great stress and emphasis on the maintenance of the social as well as the commercial side of the Post Office. We shall be satisfied only if, by his future actions, the Postmaster General lives up to the promise which he has made; that is, that the sense of enterprise associated with the commercial approach will not be allowed to prejudice the sense of public service to the community as a whole
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which has been so dominant a feature of Post Office policy for the past three centuries.
4.4 p.m.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend that I was not able to hear his opening speech, and it may be that he dealt then with a little point on which I venture to ask him a question. I understand that it has been pointed out in another place that telephone calls will be cheaper—that they may even be 2d. each, and that they may become more automatic—but that talking for a long time on the telephone in the evening is going to be severely limited. Now some people may rejoice at that, but others will be very sorry. For example, I had a pathetic letter only two days ago from an old, blind person, who says, "My telephone is my only friend. I live alone, and I ring up and talk to my friends, and I like to talk as long as I like".
It is not to be supposed that this lady is doing any harm when she talks as long as she likes, provided that she does it at a time in the evening when the lines are not required; and if it is a local call from herself to her friend, the only embarrassment that could possibly arise is to her friend, who may have hoped that somebody else might ring her up. If, therefore, the lines are not busy in the evenings or at weekends, is there any reason at all why this limitation should be imposed? Once the connections have been made, and the overheads have been paid, it does not cost the Post Office anything to allow people to talk for a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, if they want to. I ask that sympathetic consideration be given to this point—and not especially for blind people. But since this may affect all lonely people, why have this limitation?
4.7 p.m.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Crook, or the House as a whole, would wish me to say more than a very few words in thanking him for the kind way in which he has received this Bill—very kind in general, and kind, even, in certain details, though not in all. I hope that I did, in my opening speech, put sufficient emphasis on the social purpose and aspect of the Post Office in its new status. I tried to do so at the beginning,

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and I can assure the noble Lord that my right honourable friend is very conscious of this, and is exactly the same in his feelings as the noble Lord, Lord Crook.
The noble Lord referred to what he regards as the too limited long-term borrowing powers of the Post Office, at a ceiling of £880 million, but I would point out what is perhaps not entirely clear at this point. That is that the two years mentioned to be covered by the extra £80 million—the first £80 million which is included in the Bill—is only an estimated two years, and there is nothing to prevent the Postmaster-General from asking for more if, before that two years is up, the £80 million does not prove sufficient. There is no hard-and-fast ceiling set at two years.
The noble Lord spoke also of the income tax liability which was being given to the Post Office in its new status; but if he was not convinced by the arguments of my right honourable friend, which he said he had read, I do not think he is very likely to be convinced by me. He naturally could not resist mentioning telephones, as I expected, and he mentioned again something to which we both referred at some length in a previous debate: that is, the comparison of telephones in our country with those in other countries. In that context I can, in fact, show the noble Lord—and I should like to do so, after the debate—some figures that I have been given. They show (at least, I hope he will take them as showing) that there is a remarkably close relationship between telephones per head and income per head, as well as between the growth in telephones and in income, between our country and other countries, and we really have nothing to be ashamed of in that respect.
The noble Lord spoke of the hope that S.T.D. would come earlier than 1970, and he appreciates that for many people, himself included, I am happy to say, it will come a long time before 1970. lit is by 1970 that we set ourselves to provide S.T.D. for nearly the whole country, but the position is that there is, even now, a diminishing number of people in the country who are not on S.T.D. There are still more off it than on it, but gradually the number off will diminish and the number on will grow,
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and 1970 is the year by which we hope virtually all will be on S.T.D.
My noble friend Lord Fraser of Lonsdale put another question with respect to the subscriber trunk dialling system—namely, whether it was strictly necessary for local calls to be limited in time, as is the intention. I can tell him that my right honourable friend has at heart the position of such people as he mentioned, particularly elderly people whose life rather depends on being able to carry on long conversations with each other. The noble Lord asked whether something could not be done to lengthen the set time of a local call at night and on Sundays. I cannot give him a precise answer, but I will naturally bring his thoughts on this matter to the attention of my right honourable friend, and I am sure that it will have the influence that his ideas always have on Ministers. I thank the House very much for the way in which it has received this Bill, and I am glad to see that it is generally approved.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SUICIDE BILL [H.L.]
4.12 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.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Suicide to cease to be a crime]:
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved, after "commit" to insert "or attempt to commit". The noble Lord 'said: I beg to move the first Amendment on the Marshalled List. The Committee will see that under Clause 1 it is no longer to be an offence to commit suicide. I believe it is intended that that should apply also to attempts to commit suicide. A successful suicide, whether it was a crime or not, was not of very much effect so far as the person who committed it was concerned. However, it has been an offence, punishable

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by law, to attempt to commit suicide, which attempt was unsuccessful. It is now intended that both the successful suicide and the attempt should cease to be an offence.
On Second Reading I asked what was the practical effect of suicide being an offence, and what were the legal consequences. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, who was unfortunately suddenly taken ill yesterday, and is therefore unable to be here, although he had intended to come, gave us a statement about what he felt were the consequences. He said that it has been regarded as contrary to public policy to commit suicide, and therefore it has had certain effects on insurance policies. I do not know whether there are any others. However, the point is whether this change will affect similarly attempts to commit suicide.
In the course of the conversation which I had with the noble and learned Lord, when I sought his advice on the question of whether it was necessary to include in the Bill the words of my Amendment, he thought that if it were no longer an offence to commit suicide, it could not be an offence to attempt to commit suicide. That is, generally, the advice that I have been given. At the same time, the noble and learned Lord felt that it would be better if these words were included in the Bill and the Bill made abundantly clear.
It would seem to me that that is so. I should not dream of being dogmatic on legal questions, but it seems to me that there are two separate offences here: suicide is one offence; an attempt to commit suicide is another. They have both been offences under the Common Law. It could be that if you make one of them no longer an offence, the other might conceivably still remain an offence, particularly in the light of the legal consequences to which I referred a moment ago. It could be held that, although it was no longer contrary to public policy to commit suicide since there was no mention in the Bill of an attempt to commit suicide that might be regarded as contrary to public policy, even though not an offence. So I should be grateful if the noble and learned Viscount would consider incorporating those words into the clause, even out of an abundance of caution.
There was one other point, which was again referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in his speech. That was that it is anomalous that while to commit suicide, or attempt to commit suicide, will no longer be an offence, it will be an offence to aid, abet, counsel, or procure the suicide of another, punishable with imprisonment for up to 14 years. That could be interpreted as meaning that if it is punishable to aid and abet someone to do something which is not an offence, the Statute really meant that to attempt to commit suicide might still remain an offence. This is not unnaturally of tremendous significance. I say straight away that if the noble and learned Viscount tells me that an attempt is already incorporated in the clause, I shall be prepared to accept that. At the same time, I still think that it would be better if we had these words included. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 5, after "commit" insert "or attempt to commit".—(Lord Silkin.)
LORD REA: Like the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I should hesitate very much to give any dogmatic opinion on legal problems but it seems to me that to the ordinary man in the street there is a very distinct difference between committing suicide and attempting to commit suicide. They are the two things which, if I understood the noble and learned Viscount aright, he said went together in the law as it is now. If a man commits suicide and is successful, it seems to me that the law comes down in its majesty and penalises him in a way which reflects only upon his family, his relatives and his reputation; whereas if there is an attempt to commit suicide which does not succeed, the man himself is the sufferer under the law.
I am not making a judgment on this point but I think there are two very different things involved here. It might be said, especially on the Episcopal Benches, that, from their point of view, both acts would be equally wrong, and they would not like to see the words "or attempt to commit suicide" inserted in the Bill, so that attempted suicide would be absolved from being a crime. I am not advocating that, but it is a point of view. They are two separate things, and for the sake of clarity, unless they

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are redundant, perhaps the noble Viscount would consider inserting the words suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): I am grateful to both noble Lords for their speeches, and particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for raising this point. I do not think that the Amendment is necessary. I hope that the noble Lord will soon have an opportunity of discussing it with my noble and learned friend Lord Denning restored to health and then they can consider the validity or otherwise of my points. I think that logically we ought to deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, because I want to make it clear that there is no doubt that the Bill covers attempted suicide. The reasons for that I developed on Second Reading. I think that overyone who has looked into the matter would agree with me that the most important practical change made by the Bill is the abolition of the offence of attempted suicide.
With regard to suicide, we discussed on Second Reading the results of its being a crime. If the law were left unchanged, those results would remain even after death, although the person himself would not be personally concerned. With regard to attempted suicide, the Amendment is unnecessary, because the present rule that attempted suicide is a crime depends on the Common Law rule that an attempt to commit a felony is itself a crime. In this case, the felony in question is now being abolished. The Bill is constructed on the principle that, with the abolition of the law that suicide is a crime, the consequences of that law at once fall.
And this is the point that I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, to note. Those consequences include not only the rule that attempted suicide is a crime, but also the rule that complicity in another suicide is murder. If the Bill were to abolish expressly one particular consequence of the present rule that suicide is a crime, it might create the impression that the others were intended to be preserved and, therefore, that complicity in another suicide was to remain murder, notwithstanding that it could also be prosecuted as a new offence created by Clause 2 (1). I do not
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think that we want to do that. We want to get rid of any other conception except that it should be prosecuted under the new clause, because we have provided for the other possibility, with which I dealt at some length on Second Reading. That is the first point.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will be helped by the third item in the Second Schedule, which says that paragraph 15 of the First Schedule of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, is repealed, except as respects proceedings commenced before the commencement of this Act. That Schedule lists the indictable offences by adults which may be dealt with summarily, with the consent of the accused, and paragraph 15 contains the words "attempted suicide." They will be repealed. So, with the Common Law rule which I have stated and this repeal, it will be quite clear in construction that the crime of attempted suicide is abolished. I think that there is considerable importance in the point I have mentioned about the other consequence, and if the noble Lord would be good enough not to press his Amendment to-day, I hope that he will get a chance of discussing it with my noble and learned friend Lord Denning, and if they have any doubt or any other way of approaching it I shall he pleased to consider it. But, at the moment, I am satisfied that the Bill succeeds in doing what it sets out to do.
LORD SILKIN: I shall certainly take the course which the noble and learned Viscount suggests and withdraw my Amendment. I think he has given a complete answer. In fairness to my noble and learned friend Lord Denning, I would say that he would agree with the noble and learned Viscount, but he did not wish to discourage me from putting down the Amendment. His own view was that it would not do any harm if it were included in the Bill, but I can see that there may be the consequences to which the noble and learned Viscount referred. So I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment, and if I have second thoughts, perhaps we can have another talk about it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD SILKIN: In saying a word about this clause, I should like to inform your

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Lordships that the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Carlisle has asked
me to say that he regrets not being here. He would have liked to take part in the discussion on this clause, particularly on the point to which I propose to refer. Suicide is no longer to be a crime, but it is still a social problem. The number of attempts at suicide run into tens of thousands a year, and every
individual case of attempted suicide, and, even more, of successful suicide, represents an extremely unhappy period of a person's life to a point where he or she is driven to desperation. I do not think we ought to be content to rest on the fact that it is no longer to be an offence. It is our duty to do everything we can to help these unfortunate people who are driven to these desperate courses.
In the debate on Second Reading, the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor, the right reverend Prelate and I all referred to the desirability of persons in this condition being seen by somebody. So long as attempted suicide is an offence (at any rate, where the attempt is discovered, though many are not because they create no injuries), these persons automatically get into the hands of the police, and thence are seen by psychiatrists or doctors or maybe taken to hospital for treatment or observation under the Mental Health Act. But under the Bill as it will now be, the police having no locus in the matter, it appears that the possibility of such persons getting treatment or being put in touch with social workers and mental welfare workers will become more remote. I take it that, except with the consent of a person or his relatives, or unless a person attempting to commit suicide was clearly certifiable, there would be no possibility of securing treatment. If I understood the noble and learned Viscount aright in his reply to the debate, I gather that he thought that the only way to ensure that a person received treatment compulsorily would be to make it an offence and thereby bring him back within the jurisdiction of the police. Of course, that is the last thing we want, and it is what the Bill is intended to prevent.
I wonder, therefore, whether there is not some way, possibly by amendment of the Bill or by administration, of ensuring that every person who attempts
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to commit suicide is seen by somebody, whether it is a psychiatrist, a mental welfare worker or somebody else. To place the decision in the hands of a person who is already ex hypothesi suffering from some kind of disturbance, whether mental or otherwise, does not seem to me to be a satisfactory course. The person who wants to commit suicide may not necessarily want to be helped or may not be in a condition to appreciate the value of help. One would like to have some means by which such a person can really be helped, even against his own wishes.
I should be grateful if the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor would give some consideration to this question. There is no Amendment on the Marshalled List and there is nothing we can do at this stage. But it is a vitally important matter, and it links up with the purpose of this Bill. It is not sufficient merely to ensure that the person is not punished for something for which in most cases he is not really responsible. Punishment and imprisonment are not the right form of treatment; but some form of treatment is necessary in the vast majority of these cases. If it can be secured under this Bill, then we shall have gone a long way to doing something for those people who are so desperately unhappy that they are being driven to these terrible recourses.
LORD TAYLOR: May I add one point on this matter? Normally what happens is that a relative or a friend in the house discovers that somebody has attempted to commit suicide and has to make a decision what to do. His first reaction usually is to send for the police, and when the police arrive their present action is dictated by their legal responsibility, plus common sense, plus sending for an ambulance. I hope, that the position of the police will not be reduced; that their duty in this respect will be clear and they will act and not be inhibited from going if a person sends for them. I presume that the relative could send for a doctor, an ambulance or the mental welfare officer. The normal person would be the patient's own doctor if he could be obtained, or an ambulance if the person is in extremis. I think the people who require guidance here are the ordinary members of the

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public who will have to take the first, step when they find someone who has attempted suicide.
LORD SILK1N: Before the noble and learned Viscount replies, I should like to make one further observation. I appreciate that normally relatives will come into the picture, but a great many of the people who commit suicide, or attempt it, are lonely persons. As I said in my Second Reading speech, I think loneliness is one of the causes. One of the troubles in this world is that there are lonely people who have no relatives, no friends and no one to talk to. They are the people who are in most need of help, and they have no one who can take action.
LORD TAYLOR: I accept that at once from my noble friend. It will often be a landlady, or even the milkman observing bottles of milk uncollected, who will make the discovery.
4.35 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Again I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for raising an important and very human point. I should like to say, in answer to the remark of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, without dogmatising about the powers of the police, that I am sure they will carry out to the best of their ability (there is nothing to stop them if somebody asks them to come) the function, which I am proud is a function of the police in this country and which people from abroad say they find in very few other places, of being the friend and helper of the population. I am sure they will do that, and no legislation will stop them.
Coming back to the point, I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Carlisle cannot be here. Curiously enough, I had a letter prepared to send to him on this point which I did not see until after the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, was good enough to tell me that he would raise it on the Question that the clause stand part. I am sure that my right reverend friend would not object to my giving the substance of that letter to the House. I will send the letter to him so that he can study it, and I am sure that he will read the debate. I was not absolutely certain, when I had to reply to the right reverend Prelate, whether he had in mind the restoration
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of leaving the offence; but I dealt with that point, because he mentioned at one time that he would like the wrongfulness of the matter underlined. I think I convinced him—and certainly the rest of the House was with me—that that would be a retrograde step.
What the right reverend Prelate certainly had in his mind was the provision of some form of compulsory power on the lines of the powers contained in Part IV of the Mental Health Act, 1959. I considered that carefully, in consultation with my right honourable friend the Minister of Health, and I came to the conclusion that it would not be practicable to adopt it. In the great majority of cases a person who attempts to kill himself will receive treatment, either because the attempt has resulted in physical injury which makes it necessary for him to be admitted to hospital—and the Minister of Health is making arrangements to ensure that in all such cases the need for psychiatric treatment will be considered—or because his mental condition is such that the compulsory powers conferred in Part IV of the Mental Health Act, 1959, will be applicable. Of course, the admission for observation really meets the situation here, and, as I understand the position, that can be at the instance of relatives or of the mental welfare officer, if it is brought to his attention. The Home Office and myself have considered it and we believe there will be few cases in which a person attempting suicide will not receive, either voluntarily or under compulsion, the care and treatment he needs.
An express provision in the Bill extending the compulsory powers would in practice be required to deal with this small number of cases only. But this is the difficulty: there is nothing in the nature of the attempts to distinguish the small minority; therefore, the provision would have to be drafted so that it would apply to every person who attempted to take his own life, whether or not he agreed voluntarily to receive treatment, or was receiving treatment as a result of his injuries. That is one of the difficulties of legislation, and that is the difficulty which faced us. When I state that, I think noble Lords will see that such a provision would be open to serious objection. It is simply not true, in some of these cases, that the person concerned is suffering from any mental illness, and there is to me a

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of the offence of attempted suicide or great difficulty in subjecting such a person to treatment designed for those who are mentally ill. That relates to the case where there is no mental illness but where there is, as the noble Lord has said—and I quite agree with him—intense and tragic depression and loss of faith in the goodness of life.
The effect of including a provision of this kind in the Bill would be to take away from attempted suicide the stigma of criminal conduct and replace it by a presumption of mental illness to which, in the eyes of some people, some stigma still attaches. The powers contained in the Mental Health Act were carefully considered. I shudder to recall that I made 82 speeches on that measure in your Lordships' House. But your Lordships did ensure that it was very carefully considered, and I do not think it would be right to extend those powers except for the strongest reasons.
Therefore, although I have great sympathy with the suggestion, I am so far faced by a difficulty which seems to me insurmountable, and I could not, with my present state of mind, include a provision which would mean, in effect, that the fact that a person had attempted to kill himself should be evidence of mental disorder. I hope noble Lords will consider that point. It may be that my present view is one from which argument would shift me, but that is the view I have formed at the moment. That is all I propose to say to the right reverend Prelate, but, of course, I will consider what your Lordships have said, and I hope your Lordships will consider my difficulties. If any of us can see any way through, I shall be pleased to consider it. I think we were all most impressed in the last debate by the picture drawn so poignantly by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, of the state of mind of these people.
LORD CONESFORD: May I put one point to my noble and learned friend on which I feel a little difficulty? I apologise for the fact that I was not here at the very beginning of these proceedings, and, therefore, my point may possibly have been answered. This clause simply abolishes the crime. It does not say that when the crime is abolished, an attempt at suicide is even an unlawful act. The
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problem which puzzles me is this: What would be the position of a person who sees another person attempting to commit suicide? I imagine that any one of us, whatever the position in law, would feel it to be his duty to intervene and even to use force to prevent the attempt from succeeding. But when this clause is on the Statute Book, I am not quite clear that such an attempt to prevent suicide might not be an actionable assault. I do not know if my noble and learned friend has fully considered this, and I do not know how far the matter ought to be dealt with; but I think there may be that problem. If we simply do away with the crime, there may be a great legal difficulty—at any rate, a theoretic legal difficulty—for the person who sees an attempt and may have no legal right to interfere.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: The first matter that comes to relieve my mind is that the problem must have been thrown up by a self-inflicted wound. I do not mean in the Army, but for somebody in civil life. It must have constantly happened when, not going so far as to cut the throat, but, "I will cut off that hand that has offended me" or something of that sort. Speaking from memory (my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest is here, and he will supplement or correct my memory), I cannot remember that it has ever been considered as an assault for which anyone is answerable in law to take action to prevent another person from being hurt. I have stated it in quite ordinary terms, but I think that is really the answer to it—I notice that my noble and learned friend nods assent. I think that is really an answer to my noble and learned friend's point, and I am sure that the next time he is put in the position of having to consider the problem, he will not let anything in my reply prevent him from helping the person.
LORD SILKIN: I am very grateful for the answer which the noble and learned Viscount gave to the points that I raised. As I said on Second Reading, I was not concerned to stipulate necessarily that
every person who attempts suicide should be seen by a doctor; in fact, I put even more stress on being seen by a representative of the Church, or by a social welfare worker. But I feel that such

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people ought to be seen by somebody. I do not think we ought to accept the position that if a person attempts to commit suicide but does not succeed, that is the end of it. He can go and try again; and he is left with all his troubles, all his loneliness, and so on. I do not know in what form this matter can be raised again. Possibly one could put down an Amendment on the Report stage just to raise the matter and perhaps the right reverend Prelate will be here. I certainly feel that any person attempting to commit suicide—wherever the attempt, of course, is discovered: there are some that are never discovered—should be seen by somebody, whether it be a psychiatrist or some social worker.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2:
Criminal liability for complicity in another's suicide
2.—(1) A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.
4.50 p.m.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "counsels". The noble Baroness said: I should like to discuss this Amendment and the subsequent Amendments to the Schedules together. The subsequent Amendments could perhaps be moved formally. The point of the Amendment is that there is, I think, an important point of distinction in principle between "counselling" and "aiding and abetting" Counselling is something which takes place before an action is decided upon. Aiding and abetting is an action which takes place when the deed aided or abetted is, in fact, going to be done. This seems to me to put counselling on a rather different footing from aiding and abetting. I have no doubt that in the vast majority of cases all of us, if we found ourselves, as we sometimes may, in the unhappy position of being consulted by somebody who contemplates suicide, would give the most earnest counsel that we could not to do it. But there might be, I think, the very occasional exception, which becomes of greater importance if the suicide itself, as this Bill contemplates, is not to be a crime.
The very occasional exception which I contemplate is the occasion when a
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person who is dying, and knows that he is dying, contemplates suicide and wishes to discuss the matter beforehand with his most intimate relative or friend. There could be no more intimate or graver conversation that could take place, perhaps between two spouses, than one on this topic. I can see that the person consulted might feel bound to say, "Well, if that is the way you feel, I cannot find it in my heart to persuade you against it"; or, alternatively, "If that is the way you feel, I am bound to say that perhaps if I were in your position I should feel the same". Either of those statements might be interpreted as counselling suicide, and it seems to me that they ought to be allowed, and that the whole conversation ought to be permitted, not under the shadow of a very grave criminal charge. Such a shadow, indeed, might prevent not only counsel of that kind but even counsel of a negative kind, since the person contemplating suicide might be afraid to discuss it with his or her nearest and dearest, lest the spouse were put in the position of wishing to give advice that would lay him or her open to this serious charge. For those reasons it seems to me that we could dispense with counselling suicide as an offence so long as we retained the procuring, aiding and abetting.
I cannot think of any example in which the evil case, the case of the man who tries to get someone to commit suicide and helps that person to commit suicide in order to get hold of his money, would not be sufficiently covered by the words "procuring", "aiding" or "abetting". But I should like to leave the loophole for what seems to me might be a case which commands the deepest sympathy of all of us. In the sort of case I have described it is a private matter of conscience. There could be very different opinions among people of different faiths and attitudes, but it is a private matter of conscience and which ought to be private between the two people intimately concerned in it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 7, leave out ("counsels").— (Baroness Wootton of Abinger.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Perhaps I might first put the general answer to the point raised by the noble Baroness

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and then deal, so far as I can, with the point that she raised in her speech. Of course, as she is well aware, the expression "counsels or procures" is the ordinary way of referring in Statutes to being an accessory before the fact of a crime, and the expression is used in the general enactments providing that an accessory before the fact may be dealt with as a principal offender; the Accessories and Abettors Act, 1861, Sections 2 and 8, dealing with felonies and misdemeanours respectively, and the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952, Section 35, dealing with summary offences. The difference between counselling and procuring is, I would admit to the noble Baroness, probably slight, but it would cause confusion if one were to alter a particular Act when it is in the general Act. That is one's legislative problem.
On the point which the noble Baroness put so clearly and so movingly a moment or two ago, I think that the leading case on aiding and abetting draws the line also in respect to counselling. Mr. Justice Hawkins gave the judgment, and perhaps I might quote the words, because I think they are helpful:
"To constitute an aider or abettor, some active steps must be taken, by word or action, with intent to instigate the principal or principals. Encouragement does not, of necessity, amount to aiding and abetting. It may be intentional or unintentional. A man may unwittingly encourage another in fact by his presence, by misinterpreted gestures, or by his silence or non-interference—or he may encourage intentionally by expressions, gestures, or actions, intended to signify approval. In the latter case he aids and abets; in the former he does not. It is no criminal offence to stand by a mere passive spectator of a crime, even of a murder. Non-interference to prevent a crime is not itself a crime. But the fact that a person was voluntarily and purposely present witnessing the commission of a crime, and offered no opposition to it, though he might reasonably be expected to prevent it, and had the power so to do or at least to express his dissent, might, under some circumstances, afford cogent evidence upon which a jury would be justified in finding that he wilfully encouraged, and so aided and abetted. But it would be purely a question for the jury whether he did so or not."
I think that the point is put more closely to the one that is worrying the noble Baroness in Stephen's Digest of the Criminal Law—that is the textbook. It gets quite close to the point. The learned author illustrates it from Oliver Twist. The only play which the great activity of your Lordships has
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allowed me to see in the last six months is Oliver. I cannot remember whether this point is highlighted in the musical version; but again, if the House will bear with me while I read the quotation from Stephen, it says
"Fagin (Chapter 27, Oliver Twist) after getting Sikes to say he would murder any one who should betray him, wakes up Noah Clay-pole and makes him tell Sikes that the girl Nancy had betrayed him, and, as Sikes rushes out in a passion, says, 'You won't be too violent, Bill; I mean, not too violent for safety.' I think that the whole conversation taken together would be evidence to go to a jury, that Fagin did 'counsel' or 'procure' the murder committed by Sikes, which would make him an accessory before the fact; but if he had confined himself to merely telling Sikes what Claypole said he had heard, it would not have been enough."
I think that those both show that there has to be a clear, positive element before the counselling comes into play.
Again, as I am sure the noble Baroness appreciates, the law requires that the act counselled should in fact have been committed. I will not go into the cognate question of incites; I think the noble Baroness has probably considered it. It is rather a different point and, of course, it has now to be looked at in view of the offence which still remains—who-ever aids and abets, counsels or procures the offence of suicide or an attempt. I only wanted the noble Baroness to know that I have considered that point, and I could deal with it should the occasion arise. But I think, in view of the two quotations I have given, that there is not really a danger unless that positive element is present. I should like to consider it again, because I always like to consider points that have been raised on the Committee stage. I will consider it, and before the Report stage I will write to the noble Baroness if anything else occurs to me on what she has said. At the moment, I do not think it is necessary to leave out the word.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: I am grateful to the noble and learned Viscount for his assurances and for his exceedingly lucid reply. It was just because suicide is no longer to be a crime that I was proposing to move that we should depart from the standard form of words for counselling or procuring, or aiding and abetting a crime. I anticipate with great interest being able to read at leisure the two quotations which the noble and learned Viscount has been

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good enough to give us; and though the immediate impact upon myself is not perhaps quite what the noble and learned Viscount intended, in view of his assurance that a clear and positive element is necessary for the counselling to become a criminal offence, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.5 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "fourteen" and insert "seven" [years]. The noble Lord said: This is an Amendment to Clause 2 (1) which constitutes an entirely new offence: that of aiding, abetting, et cetera, the suicide of another. As has been said before, both on Second Reading and on this occasion, it is an extraordinary thing that it is to be an offence to aid and abet something which, if successful, is not an offence. However, I am not objecting to its becoming an offence; I think that the exercise of influence on another to commit suicide should not pass with impunity. The only question is, what is the appropriate maximum sentence to be inflicted if such a person is found guilty?
I realise that the Government has had the benefit of the advice of Lord Justice Sellers, the Chairman of the Sellers Committee. That Committee have recommended a maximum of fourteen years, and that has been included in the Bill. Nevertheless, I think that this is too severe, even as a maximum. I realise that in many cases the courts would not dream of imposing anything like fourteen years, or even seven years, if seven years were substituted, but I still think that, in the last resort, it is an offence not of action in itself, but merely of assisting another, at the worst, to do something which the other person is already set on doing. Even in the worst of cases a sentence of seven years strikes me as being adequate for the purpose of either a deterrent or as an expression of the measure of our disapproval of such conduct. It is difficult to say dogmatically that one term of sentence, fourteen years, is wrong and that seven is right, or vice versa; but my own reaction is that seven years as a maximum is right, and I hope that the noble and learned Viscount will be able to give it sympathetic consideration. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 10, leave out ("fourteen") and insert ("seven").—(Lord Silkin.)
LORD SOM̃ERS: I hope that my noble and learned friend will not accept this Amendment. My reason is this. There is one most unpleasant way of procuring another's suicide—that is, by blackmail. The blackmailer may possess some quite trifling piece of knowledge about his victim which, for purely social reasons, the victim does not wish to be disclosed; and the terms of blackmail may be made more and more severe until the victim simply cannot afford to go on paying the requisite amount of money, and so in the end, out of pure despair, he commits suicide. I do not think this can be considered anything less than murder. I believe the noble and learned Viscount earlier to-day described encouraging suicide as murder, and that surely would be so in this case. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, must remember that this term of fourteen years is only a maximum penalty, and that if it were a much less severe case the Judge need not necessarily pass the maximum sentence. But I think the maximum should be there for cases like that.
LORD DERWENT: I did not mean to intervene, but I agree with my noble friend in asking Her Majesty's Government to keep the fourteen years, although not being a lawyer I am not sure in my own mind whether suicide as a result of blackmail would, in fact, be covered by this clause. I should like the maximum of fourteen years kept, for this reason: clearly, it is not a sentence that would be given except in very rare circumstances, but there are cases, such as those where a person procures, aids and abets the suicide of a person of rather feeble mind, perhaps of feeble mind, possibly to procure his money at his death. I am taking, perhaps, an extreme example, but there one gets the suicide of a person who is very much open to suggestion and persuasion, and in practice I cannot see any difference between a case of that kind and a particularly revolting murder. I feel that a sentence of fourteen years should be kept for cases of that kind, for, as I say again, while that would not normally be the sentence, the courts should have a very heavy sentence in their power for exceptional circumstances.
5.13 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It is always an arguable matter what a maximum sentence should be, and sometimes, one would say, a matter of first impression, but in this case, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, candidly admitted, we have had the advantage that this point has been considered several times before; because the existing law is that abettors and accessories before the fact to suicide are guilty of murder and subject to imprisonment for life. The maximum penalty proposed for the new offence will, therefore, be lower—and, as I said, this was recommended by the Criminal Law Revision Committee, a most distinguished and experienced body who, after consideration, came to the conclusion that this was the proper penalty.
As I mentioned on Second Reading, however, the Committee, in their Report, noted that all previous proposals for reform had envisaged a maximum penalty of life imprisonment for the offence of abetting the suicide of another, and these were in the Draft Code proposed by the Criminal Code Bill Commission in 1879. But the curious thing is that paragraph 173 of the Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1953—which, if my arithmetic is right, was 74 years later—made the same recommendation. The Commission which examined the Question on behalf of the Church Assembly Board for Social Responsibility, for their pamphlet, Ought Suicide to be a Crime? came to that conclusion also—that it should be a matter for life sentence.
If we go through the Commonwealth we find that the maximum sentence for the offence of aiding and abetting suicide in Canada, New Zealand and the States of Australia, is also life imprisonment. In Europe, in countries where suicide is not a crime, the act of aiding and abetting suicide remains criminal and is punishable by maximum sentences ranging from 3 to 12 years. I think I have given a fair account, but it is interesting that there have been four Committees in this country, three of them quite recent, who took that view; and we have the standard accepted in the Commonwealth. The reason for that has already been stated by my noble friend, Lord Derwent—that this offence varies from something very venial, as when two people enter into a suicide pact when
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they are of the same mental and physical status and, although they decide to do it together, are really two people committing suicide at once. That is one case where, of course, the entry into the pact gives the element of encouragement to the other.
Then we come to the case to which I drew attention on Second Reading, and my noble friend, Lord Derwent, had similar cases in mind, where one party is in a completely different position from the other and where, in effect, there was inducement to get someone to commit suicide by a bogus suicide pact, which, as my noble friend said, would be something very close to murder. That is one form of aiding and abetting, and the offence comes down in seriousness from that point. I feel, therefore, that one has to provide a fairly stiff sentence. In the case mentioned by my noble friend, Lord SoM̃ers, the person would be dealt with for blackmail, and my noble friend can take it from me that the punishment for blackmail is quite adequate even to deal with what I think we should all agree is as abominable an offence as one could think of. I am not disputing the point. That is one of the most serious aspects of blackmail—that in some very sad cases people are driven to suicide. But those responsible would be dealt with for blackmail, and my noble friend can rest assured they would be adequately dealt with. If your Lordships would allow me a slight irregularity (because I should like your indulgence) I would point out that this is a new offence. There is another Amendment down—
EARL WINTERTON: Before the noble and learned Viscount comes to that, could I ask a question? I admit it is asked out of my ignorance. Is not the case for the Bill stronger than he stated, in this respect? I understand that in this country a sentence of life imprisonment actually does not mean more than 12 or 14 years and that it is very rarely that a man is kept in prison for life whereas I understand that in the Dominions, to which the noble and learned Viscount referred, a life sentence, as in America, actually means a life sentence, and there are several instances in the Dominions, as in the United States, of people being kept in prison for 20 or 30 years?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My noble friend, Lord Winterton, who has great experience and has always taken an interest in Home Office problems, is absolutely right about the procedure here. So far as I know, he is right in the other limb of the argument: that one can find countries—I think certain States of the United States—where people can be kept in prison for a longer period than we think is possible, except in the very exceptional cases where one has to protect the public by keeping someone in prison. I should not like it to be thought that that is not done here: it is done where it is considered essential in the interests of protecting the public. But it is done very seldom, because one knows the terrible penological effect of keeping people in prison beyond a certain time. The point raised by my noble friend Lord Winterton was absolutely apropos, if I may put it that way.
I was just going to deal with a similar aspect of it and. I was asking the indulgence of the Committee. Of course, this is a new offence, but the other one under the next Amendment is an existing offence. I think it would be convenient, as I am dealing with the point, to give certain figures now which I think will be helpful to the Committee. The broad proposition is that where a person may be guilty of complicity in the death of another it is right that a serious penalty should be available. I have tried to develop that point. It should be available because the circumstances will differ so much. In 1957, in the Homicide Act, Parliament decided that the maximum punishment for what is really this offence when created in the furtherance of a suicide pact should be imprisonment for life. I was just going to make the point of my noble friend Lord Winterton. I say that it would not be right to have a substantially smaller maximum for the new offence created under the Bill; and, as he says, there is very little practical difference between life imprisonment and the fourteen years, although the fourteen years is historically a smaller sentence.
I now want your Lordships to consider the matter that is covered by the next Amendment, which would substitute the same punishment of seven years for the offence under the Homicide Act. The reason I will deal with again; I do not want to avoid dealing with points put
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by any noble Lord. But I had got out, for the purpose of dealing with the next Amendment, the figures in regard to manslaughter, because, as many of your Lordships will know, the maximum sentence for manslaughter is penal servitude for life. Manslaughter is also an offence which ranges from something little more than civil negligence to something very near murder. Therefore we have to have a big range of sentences for it.
In 1959, of 75 persons convicted of the offence of manslaughter where a maximum sentence of life imprisonment applied, 64 were sentenced to imprisonment. I want to make clear that these figures are not in respect of the other manslaughter under the Homicide Act; they relate to manslaughter generally. Of 75 persons convicted, 64 were sentenced to imprisonment. The interesting point is the variation of the different degrees of seriousness of the offence. The lengths of the sentences imposed in these cases were: six months and under, 4; over six months and up to one year, 6; over one year and up to two years, 12; over two years and up to three years, 9; over three years and up to four years, 3; over four years and up to five years, 7; over five years and up to seven years, 6; over seven years and up to ten years, 7; over ten years, 10.
The reason why I have troubled your Lordships with all these figures is that I think they establish my thesis, that we have great and varying degrees of seriousness. Therefore, when one is deciding what a maximum sentence should be I think one ought to take the examples which my noble friend Lord Derwent and I have given. They are not fantastic; they are things that might well occur; and I think one ought to provide for them by having, as the Committee suggested, a high maximum.
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: Would the noble and learned Viscount forgive me if I ask a question? His figures are not confined to the special "diminished responsibility" cases under the Homicide Act, but do they include those cases?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I should have thought that they would include all cases of manslaughter. I will find out; in fact, I have not been briefed. I had assumed that they did. Such cases

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would be cases where the conviction was of manslaughter, even if it came in under the Homicide Act. Of course, the noble Lady will remember that under the Act the suicide pact now becomes manslaughter. So I think that if the noble Lady will treat my argument on the basis that they include all the offences, that will be right. The point I am making is that there is this tremendous variation in seriousness. The second point I make is that the provision of a maximum does not mean that it is going to be applied in unsuitable cases. These cases will go before only the assize courts. They will always be dealt with by a criminal judge of great experience, and I am sure that he will do his utmost to see that the appropriate sentence is involved.
Therefore, for these reasons I do not think we ought to depart from the general view that has been taken recently. I do not think anyone can say that one is being really reactionary if one is supporting a smaller sentence than that suggested by the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment or the Church Assembly Board for Social Responsibility, and I do not think there is any question of that. We are not really in a field of criminology where we would throw such adjectives at each other. We are trying to find what is suitable punishment, maximum punishment, for this offence; and I would still keep a high maximum punishment to deal with the case which closely approximates to murder. I am sorry to have taken so long, but it is an important point.
LORD SILKIN: This is, of course, a matter of judgment, but I should like to deal with one argument which the noble and learned Viscount put forward: that is, as to what was recommended by the Royal Commission as recently as 1953, and by other bodies, at a time when suicide was a crime, and in that context. I think the fact that suicide is no longer to be a crime makes a big difference; and I am sure the noble and learned Viscount will appreciate that. It may be that if the Royal Commission had reconsidered this question in the present context, they might have come to a different conclusion. In fact, I think it
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would have been quite logical that they should.
I do not want to trespass on the argument which the noble and learned Viscount put forward on the next Amendment (I should like to say a word on that later), but on the figures I would say that the question put by my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger is very pertinent. It could be that, if we analysed those figures and took out the cases which related to suicide, we should find (theoretically, it could be) that all the sentences which were imposed in relation to suicides were the small sentences, and the big sentences related to those convictions which were not suicides. Therefore, in the absence of more detail, I do not feel as convinced about these figures as the noble and learned Viscount himself was. Moreover, he himself gave the maximum sentences in countries where suicide is no longer a crime, and they all range below the fourteen years. I think he said that they range from three years upwards—three years to twelve, or three years to six; I forget which it was—but, at any rate, they were well under the fourteen years. Therefore, it is not an extravagant demand to say that we should put ourselves perhaps midway between the maxima of the different countries where suicide is no longer an offence.
I feel that this point is worthy of further consideration. I recognise that there may be very bad cases, but I should have thought that seven years was adequate, even for the worst kind of case which related to suicide. The noble and learned Viscount referred to murder, or something akin to murder, but I do not agree with him that any of these offences which are newly created under
Clause 2 (1) are in any way akin to murder. They all relate to a person who is about to commit suicide. In the weak-minded case which the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, quoted, seven years, in my view, would be reasonable. However, I do not feel that I can press the matter any further at this stage. I should like to reconsider it, and I hope that the noble and learned Viscount's mind is also not closed on this matter, and that possibly we might come back to it at a later stage. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.34 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved, after subsection (3), to insert:
"(4) Section four of the Homicide Act, 1957, shall be amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:—
'(4) Notwithstanding any enactment or rule of law, the penalty for an offence under this section shall not exceed seven years' imprisonment'."
The noble Lord said: In tabling this Amendment, my object was merely to secure that the maximum penalties for the offence under this Bill and for the offence under Section 4 of the Homicide Act, 1957, were the same. It seems to me that, again, in Section 4 of the Homicide Act we are dealing with a suicide pact, and suicide is no longer a crime. Yet, as respects the survivor, he may be charged with manslaughter, and, as the law stands, is liable to imprisonment for life. Now this is undoubtedly too severe, even if we decide to retain the maximum penalty of fourteen years under the present Bill. In my view, the penalty under Section 4 of the Homicide Act should be lowered. We are dealing with much the same kind of offence: both relate to a suicide pact.
Perhaps, for the information of the Committee, I might read Section 4; it is very short:
"It shall be manslaughter, and shall not be murder, for a person acting in pursuance of a suicide pact between him and another …"
That is the first condition: the person must be acting in pursuance of a suicide pact—and that we are now ceasing to regard as a crime. It is no longer a crime; but if a person acts
"in pursuance of a suicide pact between him and another to kill the other or be a party to the other killing himself or being killed by a third person",
then is becomes manslaughter, and that person is subject to imprisonment for life. I feel that the aiding and abetting of somebody to commit suicide and the action in connection with a suicide pact are virtually of the same character, and should be treated in the same way. It is for that reason that I beg to move this Amendment. I realise that, from a technical point of view, having withdrawn the first Amendment relating to seven years, logically I should now alter my Amendment to make it fourteen years, but I am sure the noble and learned Viscount will not stand on technicalities of that kind.
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Therefore I beg to move the Amendment as it stands.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 19, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Silkin.)
BARONESS WOOTTON OF ABINGER: I should like to say a word in support of my noble friend Lord Silkin on this Amendment, because I fully share his view that the penalty for the crime of aiding and abetting and the penalty for being a party to a suicide pact should be the same. But I should like to take it just one step further than he did, because, as the law now stands, what is likely to be the less serious crime is going to carry the heavier penalty. In the case of a suicide pact, if it is a genuine suicide pact, the person who survives has in fact risked his own life; whereas, in the case of the aiding and abetting or persuading, the person who has persuaded, let us say, an old lady, that life is not worth living and that she should take a suitable amount of pills, has not taken any risk himself. He has done a horrible and dastardly thing purely in the hope of financial gain. I think that possibly in the course of this debate we have been rather exaggerating the ease with which persons not contemplating suicide can be persuaded to undertake this; but let that pass. If they can be so persuaded, I should have thought that in most cases—in practically all cases—the suicide pact, which must be established as a genuine pact, was a less heinous offence than the worst cases that would occur under the new Bill.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I hope your Lordships will bear with me for a short time so that we may get the difference between these offences absolutely clear, because it is slightly difficult. Section 4, subsection (1), of the Homicide Act, which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has just read, provides that it shall be manslaughter for a person acting in pursuance of a suicide pact between him and another to kill the other or be a party to the other killing himself or being killed by a third person. The Second Schedule of the Bill now before us provides for the repeal of the words, "killing himself or", and the effect will be that in future the survivor of a suicide pact will, when the other partner to the pact succeeds in killing himself, commit

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the new offence created by the Bill of aiding and abetting the suicide of another, which will attract the maximum penalty of fourteen years and not, as now, the penalty for the offence of manslaughter.
The distinction we have to make is that where the death of a partner in a suicide pact results from the act of the survivor or a third party, the offence committed will remain that of manslaughter, and under the existing law will attract a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life. I think the distinction is clear. What we were considering in the last Amendment was where a person takes his or her own life. In this Amendment the life is taken by the survivor or by a third party, and not by the person himself. Again, for those who are studying the matter so carefully, your Lordships will remember that the Criminal Law Revision Committee considered whether it would be desirable to repeal and replace the whole of Section 4 of the Homicide Act, since it was concerned with suicide. They reached the conclusion, however, that the offence of killing another, although it was in pursuance of a suicide pact, which is the subject of the section as amended by this Bill, and that of complicity in another's suicide, with or without a suicide pact, which is the subject of the Bill, are different in substance; and they recommended that the former offence should remain one of manslaughter and subject to a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
One must again recognise that the circumstances of the offence may vary widely. Two people may be found in a gas-filled room, one dead but the other capable of being revived, with all the indications that a genuine suicide pact was intended and that both persons wanted to die. Whether it was the survivor or the deceased who turned on the gas will, I agree, make little difference as to the moral culpability of the survivor. It will, however, determine whether proceedings against him, if any, are brought under Section 4 of the Homicide Act, or under Clause 2 of the Bill. If proceedings were to be brought in such a case, it is unlikely that any court would consider awarding anything like so heavy a punishment as even the reduced maximum sentence of seven years suggested by the noble Lord and the
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noble Baroness. On the other hand, as I have said—and I will not repeat it—the circumstances of a suicide pact may be such that the moral culpability of the survivor is great. He may genuinely have intended to die, but be of such a character that the prospect of death becomes more attractive if he can persuade another, perhaps to begin with against his or her will, to share it; or he may secretly have hoped to survive, provided that the other died. In such a case, the offence would be a grave one.
We say that the maximum penalty for an offence involving the taking of the life of another should be high, both to emphasise the grave view which the law takes of such conduct and to meet the worst cases that may arise. As I said to your Lordships before, the fact that the offence may attract a life sentence does not mean that the courts will award excessive punishment in appropriate cases. I gave your Lordships the figures, but I will look into them and try to get them broken down, so as to remove, if possible, the doubts which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has. In the meantime, I think the distinction which we now make in these cases between the person who takes his or her own life—and then deciding whether someone else aided or abetted—and the person who is killed either by the survivor or by somebody else, is worth keeping. After all, however sorry one may be, it is a very serious matter indeed to take human life. I think we should keep that distinction.
I do not want to take up too much time, and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will forgive me if I do not go on further, because I know that other Business is to follow. I will consider very carefully what the noble Lord has said. I will consider the two cases together, and I will also consider the implied point in the two Amendments: that they should be treated similarly and not differently. But I felt that I should give your Lordships the view I have formed at the moment.
LORD SILKIN: I will certainly withdraw my Amendment, but I should like to be in a position to put the matter before the House on Report stage. I think it is down for next Thursday, this day week.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: If the noble Lord will allow me to say so, I

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feel that, in view of the most interesting discussion we have had, we certainly ought to have a separate Report stage. Long before I came into the Chamber I had come to that view, and I will do my best to consider, in the time available, the interesting points which have been raised.
LORD SILKIN: If the noble Viscount can let my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger and myself have the figures he has promised well before next Thursday, I think we shall be in a position to consider this matter again. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Remaining clause and Schedules, agreed to.
House resumed.

BETTING LEVY BILL
Read 3a; (according to Order), with the Amendment, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE CHARGES
5.50 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH rose to call attention to the—

1. National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations, 1961;

2. National Health Service (Pay-Bed Accommodation in Hospitals, etc.) Regulations, 1961:

3. National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) (Scotland) Regulations, 1961;

4. National Health Service (Hospital Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations, 1961; and

5. National Health Service (Hospital Charges for Drugs and Appliances) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations, 1961;

laid before the House on the 7th of February last; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I have put down a Motion on the Order
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Paper, to call attention to these five Statutory Orders, because I thought that it would save time to discuss them together. The House is well aware of the controversy raised in another place about the general provisions for increased charges, and although these Orders have been lying on the Table for two or three weeks and the statutory time during which any comment on them could be made has nearly expired, we thought that we should not be doing our duty if we did not raise the matter in your Lordships' House.
Noble Lords on this side of the House, in co-operation with our colleagues in another place who hold the same views as ourselves, wish to take strong objection to the policy which the Government have introduced. We think that it is untimely and that the larger proportion of charges will make it exceedingly difficult for those who are at the wrong end of the income scale. We think that the increased charges are a main departure from what was intended in the welfare scheme, envisaged by the Government of which I was a member, and in which the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, who speaks from the Liberal Benches, had a hand.
I am not going to speak on the merits or demerits of the provisions of these Orders. I wish to register my own pretest against the charges now being made, which may well cost those who participate in the benefits of the scheme tens of millions of pounds more than was previously paid. By the additions made to our ranks on this side of the House, I am fortunate in now having noble Lords, who were not available to me before and who are expert in the details of these matters; and, having explained to your Lordships the reasons for putting this matter on the Order Paper, I am going to hand over to my noble friends who know more about the details of this matter, though certainly they have no more fervent objection to the proposals than I have.
5.53 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, may I start by publicly apologising to the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition, as I have already done privately, because I shall have to leave before the end of the debate? I have not spoken previously on this subject in what we may

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now term a series of debates, and in particular on the raising of the prescription charges. The reasons I have not done so before is that when the information about what was intended was first given to us and when these debates first started, I frankly did not have sufficient knowledge to try to form a balanced view for myself. I have listened to every speech in your Lordships' House on the subject, and I have read most, if not all, of the speeches in another place, because I felt strongly that if this is a matter which affects everyone in the country it is a matter on which one should try to be instructed. I hope that it will not be considered presumptuous, therefore, if I claim to speak as a man in the street, because any man in the street could have tried to acquire his knowledge in the same way as I have done, except that he would have to read the speeches made in your Lordships' House, instead of listening to them.
It appears to me that the two things about which one wanted to learn are these: why the Minister was raising these charges and what adverse effect the increases might have on a section, perhaps large, perhaps not large, of the community. From what I have heard and read, there appear to be two reasons. The first one seems to me to be the less important—namely, that the Minister feels that certain abuses, which undoubtedly go on under the method of prescription in the National Health Service, will be considerably reduced. Frankly, I have not made up my mind whether they will be reduced or not. The more important point seems to me to be the financial one. Any Minister can have only what is called a "slice of the national cake." I am not going to weary your Lordships with the argument—though I could do so—but I believe that at the present time the Minister of Health has about the right percentage of the national "cake." Obviously, there has to be a limit to every share.
The Minister says that he can save a good many millions of pounds by raising the prescription charges, and that this money can be better spent on other projects, still inside the National Health Service and still for the general good. I seem to remember, in this connection, that there is about £13 million involved. The Minister goes further and says that
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if he does not get this money from this source, there are no other convenient sources from which he can get the money for the things he wants to do, because he is not going to get any further money from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In my view, that is a reasonable argument and the Minister of Health has made his case.
I come to the other side of the question. Is this going to have a major adverse effect on a reasonably large number of people? I do not pretend that there will be no hard cases. There is never any legislation that does not cause one or two hard cases, but I think that we ought to accept that the general good must outweigh one or two hard cases. I find it difficult to believe, as the
prescription charges were raised by 1s. some years ago, that, with the general increased wealth enjoyed by the bulk of the population, a 2s. charge will cause undue hardships. The question is how many people will be caused hardship.
Noble Lords opposite have painted a quite horrifying picture, which wrung my heart. But I wonder quite how genuine some of the arguments were. The people who are going to suffer, as I understand the argument, are really three-fold. There are those who are unable to understand how they can get their money back if they are in a category where they need not pay the full subscription. Undoubtedly there are such people, though I do not believe that there are very many of them. One of the things that even people who are not very intelligent seem to find their brains working quickly about is the getting hold of their own money. Let us be quite frank about it: they have only to ask a chemist what the procedure is. So it is really not so difficult as is sometimes suggested.
The second class, I am told, who may find it difficult to get their money back, if they are entitled to do so, are those who are bedridden or confined to their homes. I wonder (I do not suppose anyone can tell me) how many people there are of that kind who have no friends, are never visited, and have absolutely nobody in the world to help them—because if that really is the situation, they will starve. I just do not believe that there are—I do not say any, but certainly many of that kind.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord? It is quite impossible to give numbers, but I can tell him that some enlightened local authorities have found it necessary to supply old people with cards which they can drop through the letter box, to be seen outside, so that if they are incapacitated people can go in. There are a very large number of old people who live alone and have no friends or relatives who depend on that scheme. But not all local authorities adopt the device I have mentioned, and some of these people will starve.
LORD DERWENT: The noble Lord says there are these people, and that they are looked after by the local authorities. So those who are not looked after at all must be only a very small number. That is my argument.
The third category, we are told, are those who are too proud to go to National Assistance and get their money back. In one way one cannot help admiring their pride, though it is very foolish. There are a certain number of people of that kind, but I think there are fewer than there used to be. A Government cannot really legislate for people who are too proud to take advantage of what they can easily get. During the last few weeks I have made inquiries of various people among what I might term the poorer sort. I at once admit that none of them, because the opportunity did not offer, was among the very poor, but I have the feeling that under the Welfare State those whom I describe as the poorer sort often do rather worse than the very poor. I may have asked the wrong people, but they were what I should call poor people or the poorer sort. I asked them how they thought these increased charges were going to affect them. It was only a small selection, I agree, and they were taken rather out of the blue. I got the same sort of answer from all of them: "I do not think this is going to make very much difference to me." Perhaps I was lucky or unlucky in the people I asked, but I did my best to talk to the people who I thought might be seriously affected.
I find that the case built up by noble Lords opposite and by their Party is exaggerated. I find, so far as I have been able, that, although their case is
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genuine in certain instances, the number of cases which they say exist do not, in fact, exist. I believe that they have overstated their case. It seems to me that the sound and fury—or, should I say, the oratory of noble Lords opposite, and the sound and fury in another place—have really struck no spark, except among the more ardent supporters of noble Lords' Party in the constituencies, who, of course, are always tinder-dry. In the rest of the country no spark seems to have been struck, and I can find very little interest, generally speaking, in this matter. My own view is that the case for the Opposition is grossly overstated. I believe that the Minister is going to use the money to better advantage, and I do not believe he is going to cause undue hardship, except in a very few cases.
6.7 p.m.
LORD BEVERIDGE: My Lords, I must begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for allowing me to rise before him. I must apologise to the subsequent speakers by assuring them that I shall on this occasion be shorter even than usual—and I will explain in a moment why my name was not on the list of speakers. In the first debate which took place on
February 13 on these Health Service charges I found myself in a middle position between Her Majesty's Government and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who had moved the Motion on behalf of the Labour Party. I did not feel able to join the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in condemning the Government offhand for making people with inflated incomes pay more for Health Service benefits; but I did not feel at all happy about the harmful effect of these charges upon people whose incomes had not been inflated, and above all, upon the old and disabled.
I made some very definite suggestions as to what I thought the Government ought to do to make certain that all these people, mainly the old and disabled, were cured, if they could be cured, by necessary treatment. Let me add that I do not feel any happier as a result of the Answer which the Government gave, through the noble Lard, Lord Newton, to the Question which my noble friend Lord Ogmore asked them on February 28; and I am not yet

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happy, in spite of hearing the conclusions to which the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, has already come, as to the position of the old and disabled people.
Noble Lords may remember that in the debate on February 13 I said that I hoped to make a study of the aged and lonely poor in an affluent society, and to make that study my next immediate task, particularly in regard to health, and what the State ought to do to secure health for everybody, irrespective of want, ignorance or carelessness. Let me say that I have begun that study. I was engaged on it this morning, and that was the reason why my name did not appear on the first list of speakers. In that study I have discussed with four of the agencies of national scope, all concerned with old and disabled people, the position in which the old find themselves today. On the results of that study, I hope to publish my views, not in a great hurry, but in a substantial form, soon after the middle of April. What those views will be will depend, naturally, upon whether the Government can before then show a more conciliatory attitude and a greater readiness than they have done hitherto to consider the seriousness of the danger to old people. May I express the fervent hope, not for my sake but for the sake of the old people, that the Government may by that time have come to a better understanding of the problems that are facing the old and disabled people?
6.12 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I shall not burden the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, with my oratory on this subject. I do not know that I am capable of oratory at all, certainly not in your Lordships' House. The only thing I can say is that I did not speak in the previous debate, and therefore I have not wrung the noble Lord's withers. I am rather regretting that I shall not have the opportunity to do so tonight, because the noble Lord has had the courtesy to inform me that he must go away to keep another urgent engagement, so I can only hope he will read what I say tomorrow, because at least some of the things I have to say will deal with the points which he has raised.
The basic objection which we on this side of your Lordships' House have to
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these proposals is that they are a further erosion of the fundamental principle of the Health Service, that it should be "free at the time of use". It is no answer to say that unfortunately the process of erosion began under the Labour Government. That has been seized upon by successive Conservative Governments as an excuse to destroy further the principle of the Health Service, "free at the time of use". A great disadvantage about the increase in the prescription charges is that the incidence of them falls precisely at the time when people are ill, and, of course, it falls most heavily on just those classes of people that the noble Lord has described—the elderly sick and the frail people. I have already known the noble Lord far too long not to be aware that if he were really conscious of the measure of that suffering he would not have said the kind of thing he has now said and dismissed it with a feeling that, after all, only a very small number of people are affected.
In my view, the greatest social problem to-day is the need of elderly people—their need for housing, companionship and care. There is too little awareness of the fact that when a person becomes old it is the same brave eyes looking out from, the same active brain working in, an enfeebled body. These people have too much pride—not pride in the ordinary sense, but the kind of pride which shrugs off the world—they are too unconscious, too obtuse and ignorant, to realise what is facing them. Any noble Lord who has been a Member of another place in the last ten or fifteen years—and there are many in your Lordships' House—who conducted weekly "surgeries" and who went round visiting in the homes of his constituents, will have been aware of countless examples of old people whose first answer to the question, "How are you getting on?", was "I mustn't grumble." Then, when you begin to inquire tactfully into their circumstances, you find what an enormity of problems they must not grumble about.
It has been my lot on many occasions to find that it is not merely a question of pride, ignorance, inertia or immobility it is a combination of all those things, which prevents these people from applying. When you say to them: "But help is available—not necessarily merely over prescription charges, but for blankets,

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coal, oil and all sorts of things", they say, "Shall I have to go and fill in a form or see anybody?". You tell them, No you will not have to do anything. A very charming man or lady will come round and talk to you and it will be all right." In those circumstances it is all right, and they are perfectly happy about it.
But people to do this work have to be found. In constituencies I have represented I have set up voluntary organisations of that kind to find out where the old people are and what their needs are, so that what is necessary can be done gently. I assure the noble Lord that there is real and increasing hardship, and that this great social problem—which is one which will affect most of us if we live long enough—has seriously to be tackled. The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, approached this problem, if I may say so with respect, in a sound and constructive way. He asked what I regard as the right and important questions. He said that the Minister was activated in raising these charges by two considerations: first, would certain abuses be reduced? The noble Lord said that he had not made up his mind whether they would be reduced or not. One of the most important abuses is over-prescribing. I would say that these proposals are certainly a factor which will increase the abuses, and not reduce them. Most doctors, particularly G.P.s, are the friends of their patients and want to help them. It goes very much against the grain for doctors, whose patients are old men or old women who perhaps are bronchitic or suffering in some similar way, as so many of them are, to prescribe for them when it is 2s. 0d. a prescription; and so they tend—and I expect them to—to prescribe a bigger quantity, so that the patients do not have to come so often. I say to noble Lords opposite seriously that, at the end of the day, I very much doubt whether the savings hoped for by the Minister will be achieved, because there will be those extra costs. So on the first point raised by the noble Lord about abuses being reduced, I think that is a horse that will not run.
Then the noble Lord suggested that the Minister had decided that he already had about the right slice of the national cake, and that it was no good going to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for more money; and that if he did not get
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it from somewhere else certain other portions of the Health Service would go and certain developments which we should like to see would not come about. He believes he is going to save millions of pounds by raising prescription charges. If a good many million pounds are going to be saved—the noble Lord said £13 million—they are not going to be saved by the extra charges. They can be saved, if the money is to be made good in that way, only by less medicine; and if there is less medicine then there are people who, in the opinion of their doctors, ought to have medicine but who are not going to have it. The suffering will be on a considerable scale, and what the nation will reap will be more bad health and more neglected old people dying quicker than they might otherwise have done.
I strongly contest the view of the Minister, but if it is true—and I do not accept it, because there is an enormous amount of money wasted on medical service—that he should not get this money elsewhere, then I should like to know why his Department has not taken serious steps to get the money out of the global expenditure on drugs and dressings, because the whole thing is a scandal and it has been a scandal for years. When I was a member of the Public Accounts Committee in 1956 and 1957, and again in 1958, these matters came up before us, and we examined the Permanent Secretary on them.
I am not now going to talk about the infamous profits made by some of the wholesale druggists. My noble friend, Lady Summerskill, will remember, as I do, that one evening when we were invited—she and I and one other noble friend—to meet some of these gentry, we met them in a large room downstairs, and they were the hardest-faced bunch that I have seen in one small collection. Almost the first thing said to us was that it was not very comfortable or convenient to discuss business in that room, and could not they arrange a pleasant dinner for us. That was one dinner that did not come off. Some of the results of that attitude are exposed in the Public Accounts Committee. We learned that it was impossible at that time for the Minister to determine

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profits, and we know all the hopeless arguments about the export price being used to decide the level of what they should charge; they have moved a little way from that but that position is still bad. I am not so much concerned about that, because I know the matter has been ventilated earlier in discussion by my noble friend.
But there are other ways where money could be saved. We are considering five Orders to-night. Two of them are for Scotland. I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Newton, what is the possible justification for the earnings per prescription of a chemist in Scotland to be so much higher than in England? Why is it, for example, that they can charge so much more for a glass medicine bottle in Scotland than in England? Why are they allowed so much more? After all, these bottles are bought from the same manufacturers, the United Glass Bottle Manufacturers or somebody else. They cost exactly the same to the chemist in Scotland as in England, but in Scotland they get—I am speaking from memory—I think double for the glass bottle. The allowance fee, we will call it, although it is really a profit, that the chemist gets for a prescription in Scotland is considerably higher than in England and Wales. Large sums of money are lost in that way, and the Minister should have looked into that matter before he took the money out of the old people.
Then there is the question of profit per prescription being exactly the same, whether the man dispenses 500 or fewer a month, or whether he dispenses 5,000 or 10,000 prescriptions a month. I am not going to argue that the fee for the small chemist who dispenses very few prescriptions is too high. It may not be. But if it is fair for him, then it is grossly unfair for the big-scale chemist. There is no question about it whatever. I have never heard any kind of satisfactory argument why there should not be fees graduated according to the number. It is no use Ministers or their noble friends getting up and saying the money cannot be found anywhere else, when we know, beyond peradventure, and it has been proved in public time and time again, that money is wasted wholesale and nothing is done about it except for offering a few unconvincing excuses. I hope, therefore, that when the noble Lord,
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Lord Newton, comes to reply, he will tell us about these matters.
And I should like him to tell us this also. Why is it that no allowance is made, when the cost of prescription and the cost of drugs in a prescription are computed, for the so-called discounts which almost every chemist enjoys? The cost is computed on the list price, but of course there are discounts up to 20 per cent. for a modest quantity. The noble Lord can look up the question in the Report of the Public Accounts Committee. I remember that I asked the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry what were the normal discounts enjoyed, and he said that he could not tell me; that they could not be ascertained. I said, "Of course they can be ascertained; they can be ascertained in five minutes on the telephone". At a subsequent sitting of that same Committee, I produced the wholesale discounts myself, having got them from a chemist, as anybody else could do. I can assure the noble Lord they were roughly 20 per cent. But my information is that the cost per prescription is still computed on the list prices, so that all those discounts are enjoyed as so much extra profit, and so much more which we have to pay. Those are a few replies, I hope, to the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent—and very good questions they were, too.
I come to the last question which he said he asked himself: will these increases have a major adverse effect on a large number of people? He said that of course there will be hard cases, but he wondered how genuine were the arguments adduced from this side, which had so wrung his withers. There are in this country a very large and increasing number of old people, and those of us who are connected with hospitals know the pressure on our geriatric hospitals. They know the grave shortage of local authority hostel accommodation, so that our chronic hospitals become ever more crowded by cases that cannot be improved yet cannot move out. They know, too, the increasing amount of work done by local authorities, and the increasing anxiety.
When I was a Member of another place I had the honour to be connected with the Borough of Finsbury for some time. That was a borough which was a

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pioneer in starting work centres for old people, and it was that borough to which I referred (in an intervention which I made when the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, was speaking) in regard to the practice of having special coloured cards, printed cards, which old people can drop through their letter box when they are in difficulty or trouble or sick, so that somebody can come to them. We found that was necessary, even in a London borough with one of the smallest populations of any of the London boroughs. We found a large number of old people who needed that kind of help because they had no relatives or friends, or anyone else to look after them. Unfortunately, that is one of the few boroughs which does that kind of thing, and which has such a highly specialised service for old people.
The difficulty in matters of this kind is that the old people, when they are sick and alone, begin to think that things are hopeless; that we are against them, and that there is nobody for them. And the Government have made it more difficult for them—there is no argument about this—to get medical care, which means one more piece of hopelessness for them. I regard that as a serious indictment. I do not care if the number is only two million. That is a lot of old people, helpless people, with nobody to speak up for them. I regard that as a very large number indeed. Even if there were only one-tenth of that number, it would still be, to me, a very large number indeed; and that is the core, the gravamen, of OUT objection to these charges.
The Government are progressively destroying the principle of a National Health Service free at the time of use. The present proposals are utterly unprincipled and indefensible. If the money had to be found out of the Health Service it could have been found by economies in other directions without affecting the Service as such. The Minister has lacked the courage to stand up to the harder elements among the suppliers; he has lacked the courage to stand up to the various trade and selling associations. It did not need any courage to take it out of the old people. I should like the noble Lord, Lord Newton, when he comes to reply, to tell us, not what the Minister has done in this matter (because he has done nothing)
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but what the Government intend to do to deal with the people whose activities I have mentioned.
6.31 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Derwent, I do not declare any interest in this matter so far as professional and financial interests are concerned. But the more I hear the Party opposite criticising the Government on these increased charges, the less convincing I find their case. I should like to quote from an article by a Socialist correspondent in the Perthshire Advertiser of a week ago, in answer to an article by the Member of Parliament for Perth, who is a personal friend of mine and who wrote a most cogent article on this matter. The article reads:
"The latest increases are in keeping with Tory policy. Costs are more important than people, and the burden of financing the Health Service is gradually being passed to those least able to bear it, while the free enterprise drug industry continues unmolested to amass ever increasing profits."
There are many medical experts on the Benches opposite, and I do not pretend to have more knowledge than they on medical matters, but, as I understand it, elaborate arrangements are being made for elderly people to recoup the charges, and war pensioners and old age pensioners will surely not be among those least able to bear them.
I myself am not entirely happy about these proposals, for two reasons: first of all, I feel that the charges should be levelled most at those who have just left school and are in employment, up to those who are on the verge of retirement. I should have liked to see an increase of more than 2s., perhaps half-a-crown, on prescription charges for these people, and an exemption in the case of children of five or under, particularly where there are three or four in a family. If an epidemic of illness breaks out simultaneously among all the children, obviously there is going to be hardship forced on the family, especially if the illness is of a type like pneumonia. I said that on Second Reading, and I make no apology for mentioning it again. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Newton, may have some observations to make on it.
Let me for a few moments turn to the question of drugs. I have consulted a local doctor friend of mine and, with

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your Lordships' permission, I am going to quote some figures. The average total cost of penicillin per capita per week is 10s. That is for the injection type of penicillin, assuming it is being used four times a day, 400,000 units. Oral penicillin costs 24s. a week; aureomycin £3 a week and cortisone 38s. 6d. a week. Phenobarbitone costs 8s. a week. To-day infant mortality due to pneumonia is practically nil. Before the discovery of penicillin, which I believe, if my memory serves me correctly, was in 1953—I stand to be corrected if I am wrong—
LORD TAYLOR: It was 1943.
LORD AUCKLAND: I beg your Lordships' parclon—mortality was 10 to 20 per cent. While I would agree that there is a case for some kind of inquiry into the drug industry, I cannot help feeling that the most exaggerated figures are being given of these vast profits that it is said are being made. Indeed, I have spoken to one or two people in the drug industry and they have said that they would welcome an inquiry—that they have not all that much to hide. To have life-saving drugs such as aureomycin, chloromycetin and cortisone and so on, costs money. A good proportion of drugs is produced in this country; a number go to help our export trade, and we are importing fewer and fewer drugs at the present time. New plants are being set up. The Armour Laboratories have built a large factory just outside Eastbourne,
and new plants are being established by smaller companies. But it seems to me that there has been some rather exaggerated talk about increased profits—
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question? I am rather surprised that he is speaking on this subject. He says that he has not made a careful inquiry. Would he read the report of the Senate Committee in the United States, of which Mr. Kefauver was chairman and in which the whole question was examined? Those firms which he castigated strongly all have subsidiaries here.
LORD AUCKLAND: I will certainly read the Report, and I do not doubt what the noble Baroness says. But I come back to my point; that the drug industry is carrying out a great pro-
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gramme of research and that there is a great deal of irresponsible talk about great profits.
LORD CROOK: By "research" does the noble Lord mean the mere addition of some further drug to a compound already in existence, so that it can be given a new name, advertised to doctors and sold at an inflated price?
LORD AUCKLAND: My information is to the contrary. In a great many cases new drugs are being produced. I believe (I am not sure) that aureomycin was the successor to penicillin. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who is I believe the expert on the opposite Benches, will correct me if I am wrong. A great number of lives have been saved by the use of such drugs. While I should be the last to defend any excessive and rampant profiteering by the drug industry, I think that insufficient credit has been given to the part which they have played in reducing mortality, particularly among children. I should like to come to the question of the diabetics, a subject which I and several noble Lords raised on Second Reading. I feel that here there is a great case for an exemption from prescription charges. Diabetes is an illness which is very different from a great many others, and insulin cannot always be kept for long periods of time without losing its strength. So I think there is a case for some adjustment there.
A great deal has been said about these increased charges in relation to more or less medicine being dispensed. Most medicine chests in this country, or at least a good many, are tremendously over-filled with all kinds of concoctions, and anything that can be done to lessen this is always very welcome. The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, mentioned the point about bottles costing more in Scotland. I do not pretend to be able to answer his question satisfactorily but, coming from Scotland myself, I would put the point that there are far fewer chemists in Scotland. Often one has to travel a good many miles, particularly in places like Ross-shire and Sutherland, to get to a chemist; and, after all, these chemists have to get a livelihood. Whether or not this cost should be passed on to the consumer is another matter, but if the implication was an attack upon the actual pharmaceutical chemist, I would say that it is a little unmerited.

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There is no doubt that mortality, among infants, mothers and old people, is on the decrease, and I think it is quite wrong to suggest that the Health Service is being slashed. I attended some of the debates in another place and heard the word "cut" and also, I believe, the word "slashed"; but that is quite wrong. We are spending more money on the Health Service in the current year than was spent in any previous year. Whether or not the money is being spent in great wisdom in every direction is another matter. But I feel that a case has been made out for these increased charges. Better health, more advanced drugs, more hospital building and equipment must be paid for somehow. In all our welfare services, in health and education, we are seeing more and more money being spent—and quite rightly; and the results are, in the main, satisfactory, though I would say that in some directions more could be done. But I certainly think the Opposition's case against these increased charges is wholly unconvincing.
6.44 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I have great hope for the noble Lord, Lord Auckland. He has a kind heart and some jolly good ideas, and he goes out and sees for himself—which I always think is a most attractive feature of his speeches. I am going to predict that the noble Lord will have a "dusty answer" from Her Majesty's Government to his very good suggestion. I may be wrong—I hope I am—but I believe he will; and if he will consider what he has said I think he will see that he ought to have been supporting us. What the noble Lord asked for was really a graduated charge, with no charge for the period under the age of five, and then the charge starting and going rather higher when one started to earn wages, and continuing throughout one's earning life, stopping in old age. I hope that I am not misrepresenting the noble Lord. That is not a bad idea. But the best way to do that is to finance the Health Service out of income tax, which we have always said is the proper way to do it. Administratively, the scheme is, I think, too difficult to work, and the proper thing is to pay this out of tax, as we say. That is the only fair and right course.
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The second point which the noble Lord made was about the drug industry. He said we had perhaps not given all the credit that should have been given to the pharmaceutical industry for the good work they have done. I have not been backward in giving credit to the pharmaceutical industry. They have done some very good research work, but they are very wasteful, as we tried to show in the last discussion, particularly in the multiplication of research. The fact that there are so many firms competing, and not co-operating, in the research sphere leads to wasted research effort. Also, it becomes necessary for perfectly good, honest and honourable firms, in order to keep going, to keep producing new products, which they do by minor modifications, not all of which are any advance on earlier products. This is a purely commercial situation. I do not blame them for coping commercially with it. That is what they have to do in order to keep going and make profit.
A third thing (and this is a result of competition) is that they unload on the unfortunate medical profession a vast load of paper which comes through my letter box every morning, and that of my noble friend Lady Summerskill and so many others. It has been estimated that it probably costs about £10 million to do this postal advertising. It must have some effect. It must work in some way, or presumably those firms would not do it. But that advertising can only influence the most ignorant and credulous doctors, and it would be a very good thing if this could be stopped. The cost to the nation, that £10 million of which I spoke, could be saved straight away, and we could have a simple bulletin issued each month by the Ministry of Health, giving us the facts. That is all we need to cope with that situation.
Then Lord Auckland's heart was open to the diabetic; and I believe that he is quite right to feel passionately and warmly about the needs of diabetics. But there are many other folk in an exactly similar situation, people who have to take regular doses of some kind of medicine or tablets, daily, or perhaps twice daily, in order that they may remain in good health. There are epileptics for example, who must take Epanutin. Epileptics nowadays do not have fits, and it is very rare indeed to see an epileptic fit—thank goodness!;—whereas

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when we were young it was a very common sight. Now that has disappeared because of the use of this excellent drug. Again let us give the drug firm responsible the credit for that. But it means that the epileptic person has to buy that drug, or get it through the National Health Service for the rest of his or her life; and those people are not usually the highest wage-earners. Therefore, while the noble Lord is absolutely right, I would say that he is seeing a part of the picture but not the whole picture. And the more one looks at the whole picture the more one feels all these people need help.
Finally, the noble Lord said he hoped the charges would reduce the volume of medicine dispensed (I believe I am right in saying that), and he regretted the over-stocking of the family medicine chest. I must say that I agree with him about that. I have recently tried to work out what a family medicine chest ought to contain. I reckon that it ought to contain not more than three items: first, aspirin, or aspirin, phenacetin and caffeine tablet.
LORD ST. OSWALD: One tablet?
LORD TAYLOR: No; a packet, a box, price 9d. or 1s. Also, a packet of some form of cough or cold-relieving substance—for example, some sort of simple throat pastille—and some form of indigestion-relieving tablet, bismuth or magnesium trisilicate. I do not think it should contain very much. I do not think there is much of a case for keeping purgatives in one's medicine chest. I think that that is all we need in our home medicine chest, just those three things. The reason why I am driven to this conclusion is that I have had to equip first-aid boxes in factories where I have found all sorts of rubbish accumulated by the first-aid workers. I have "kicked out" all this rubbish and just given them those three items, and the people do well on them.
My noble friend Lord Stonham referred to bottles in Scotland being double the price of bottles in England. There is a strange concomitant to that fact. Medicines in Scotland are half the price of medicines in England. Why Scottish doctors are so economical in their prescribing I do not know. Perhaps your
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Lordships can guess for yourselves. But they have always, I believe, been very much lower in their prescribing costs than have the English doctors.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: Perhaps they are better doctors.
LORD TAYLOR: No; I cannot accept that. The noble Lady suggests that Scottish doctors are better. I would say that the best of both are very good.
The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, really put the best possible case for the Government on this matter, but it was not very convincing. He asked, first, why the Minister had raised these charges. He thought it was probably to reduce abuses, but he was not very sure about that. As a matter of fact, he had only to refer to the Hinchliffe Committee's Report to see that the Hinchliffe Committee were satisfied that charges had not stopped prescribing: that there were virtually no abuses, and that they certainly had not reduced the amounts prescribed, but, rather, as my noble friend Lord Stonham said, had increased the amounts prescribed. Then he went on to say that the second reason, and probably the real reason, was financial, and that, given that the Government had the "slice of the cake" of the National Health Service about right, the Minister needed some more money for "other projects"—in "quotes".
We have heard of these "other projects" from the Minister of Health himself, but we have not heard what these other projects are. If the noble Lord, Lord Newton, can tell us we shall be very interested indeed. We know that in the next year the extra cost for hospital construction is going to be £5 million, but the extra yield from these charges plus the raised contributions is going to be £65 million. That is a big difference. We all know where that money is going: it is going to pay for the extra salaries of the doctors as a result of the Royal Commission's award. That is what is happening, and that is why we have to pay these extra charges. I would quote this extract from the Medical World Newsletter:
"The major part of the increase in the Health Service estimate is due to the implementation of the Royal Commission's recommendations. Additional contributions and charges are imposed to meet these increases. Must the patients now be required to pay £12 million p.a. more for his medicines"—

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that is these charges we are discussing—
"in order that the doctors should obtain their due? We doubt very much whether our profession would have urged its cause so strongly if it had known that the Government would require the patient to meet the bill"—
at the time of sickness. That is really what has happened, my Lords: it is nothing to do with increased facilities in the service. Alas! I wish it were.
The noble Lord, Lord Derwent, went on to outline the people who are going to suffer hardship, the existence of whom he doubted. He is quite right in supposing that these charges bear hardly only upon the poor people. For the middle group of the population and the upper group, perhaps three-quarters of the population, or even four-fifths, they are not going to be a very great hardship. But what are the causes of poverty in our society to-day? They are two. As the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, was mentioning, one is old age. If we take the poor people of to-day, we find that they are the old people, by and large. The second group are those families in which the chief wage-earner is either acutely for a short period or chronically for a long disabling period.
So the main categories of poverty today are due either to prolonged illness or old age. These are the people on whom we are placing this extra burden. And remember that any of us can pass into one or other of those groups, particularly if we are weekly wage-earners. It is very easy if one is a weekly wage-earner, and most weekly wage-earners do not get their money made up by their firms. They go on to the ordinary National Health Service benefit. They carry on as best they can, and if they have a prolonged illness they have to go to the National Assistance Board and get some National Assistance to help them with the rent. They try to avoid doing that, as a rule, for as long as they can—perhaps mistakenly, though I think for good and reasonable reasons. Those are the folk who are going to find these charges hard to bear.
LORD AMWELL: There are more than two million of them.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I would not argue, but I cannot confirm that. Professor Titmuss has said this in a very good article of February 2:
"The new health charges … do not make any real saving for the Community. It simply
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switches the payment for the Health Service from one form to another: from general taxation on to the shoulders of those who can afford it least. I calculate that those who are now living perilously near the margin of poverty represent about one-fifth of the nation."
That one-fifth we do not see a great deal of, but they are largely the old and poorly-paid workers.
These charges have been in operation now for just over a week, and it is too early to say what their real effect is, but I have made some inquiries of my medical friends to see what is happening. The first thing that is happening is that doctors who are called dispensing doctors are in some difficulty. Most doctors do not dispense; they write out the prescription, and the patient takes
it to the chemist and gets it dispensed by the chemist. But in country areas and in small country towns doctors themselves still dispense. They do it as part of the National Health Service, and it is not a very profitable occupation for the doctors. They do it really as a form of social service, because there is nothing, or very little, to be made out of dispensing. It takes a lot of time. They may have to employ a dispenser, and they are lucky if they break even. They have had to charge 1s. for every bottle of medicine or packet of pills in the past. Now the charge is 2s.
The effect of this is that patients are asking them to dispense bigger quantities. In the case of a doctor who writes a prescription which the patient takes to the chemist, it does not affect the doctor if he dispenses double quantities, except that it pushes up his average dispensing costs. These are analysed at the end of the quarter, or whenever it may be. In the case of the dispensing doctor, however, he has to buy the stuff, and he does not get more money, unless he happens to operate an elaborate system of costing, just because he dispenses more to help the situation of the patient. Most dispensing doctors have rather low dispensing costs because they tend to be economical, not only from their patients' point of view but from the point of view of making ends meet. That is the first thing that happens. These doctors are going to be in some difficulty, and I think the Government will have to look at it. However, I would not ask them to look straight away, because much more time must elapse before

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they can say how this situation will develop, and whether it will lead to serious hardships and difficulties for the dispensing doctors.
For the ordinary general practitioners, it so happens that, in the areas I know best, the number of prescriptions dispensed has gone rapidly down during the last week. But there is another reason for this. The coming of the new charge happens to coincide with the end of the measles and 'flu epidemic; and, so far as I can see, the fall in the number of prescriptions dispensed may be entirely due to that. However, there have been some rather odd things happening. The patients have been asking their doctors the price of each medicine on the prescription, because they say, "I do not want you to write me out something that would cost only 1s. 9d. at the chemist's and find that I have to pay 2s. on the prescription". This means that the doctors have now to add to their medical and social knowledge an expert skill in retail price manipulation, as it were, which they have to bring into play—one more thing to do at a crowded surgery, which is not very good, and certainly a little trying though it would not be fair to say that it is a serious inconvenience.
Another thing that is happening, so far as I can see, is that some more old-age pensioners are realising for the first time that they can fleet National Assistance. That is a good thing, though a rather inverted good thing. It is certainly adding to the national costs, because these people who were struggling before are now going to their doctors and are saying, "Can I possibly get this 2s.?", and they are being told "Yes, you can. What is more, you should have been getting the rent as well." They say, "I have not been getting that", adding, "I do not want to get the National Assistance". The doctor says, "Don't be an idiot; you are entitled to it. You can get National Assistance not only for the 2s., but for the rent as well". That is a bit of good coming out of evil, anyway. Perhaps the Government think it is good coming out of good; but we are very pleased to see that that is happening, whatever the cause.
Thirdly, there are the poly-family-syndromes, which are familiar enough
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to any doctor. These are the "mums" with lots of kids—four, five or six children under school age. No; that is a bit of an exaggeration; it would be difficult to have six children under school age, but three or four under school age, and two or three above school age. These folk, of course, have a very tough time financially. Their husbands are usually of the labouring class, or in the building industry. If they are in the building industry, they are better off than if they are in the labouring class—I am sure my noble friend Lord Stonham will bear me out there. They have to budget very tightly, and towards the end of the week they run out of money; or at least it gets very tight. I have heard such "mums" saying, "I don't think I can afford to go to the doctor on Thursday, because if he gives me a prescription with two items for my little boy or girl, we cannot afford it. It will mean cutting into the food for the next day". That is an absolutely genuine situation. You may say that these people are feckless and should not have all these children, or should be better managers; but they are not, in many cases, good managers. They are, in fact, the hardest up, They are the hardest cases of all, and certainly they are being hit by these charges.
I am not going to recapitulate the arguments I used when we were debating these charges before, but before I end I want to ask the noble Lord, Lord Newton, one thing: that is, whether he could give us the details of how insulin can now be obtained, because I believe I am right in saying that, on a single prescription for 2s., one can get both short and long-acting insulin.
LORD NEWTON: That is so.
LORD TAYLOR: I thought it was. That is
one alleviation of the situation, which makes it slightly less bad than it otherwise would be. You can get both types of insulin, if the patient is on both of them, for the one 2s.
Finally, my Lords, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to a really first-class book called, Britain's Search for Health. It came out last week, and it is by an American, Professor Paul Gemmill. Now Professor Gemmill is the Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and one

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might imagine that he was very much an anti-Health Service person. I know Professor Gemmill, and he is the most honest, nice little chain you could possibly meet. He came over from America to find out what was really going on in the British Health Service, and he did it in the most intelligent way. He went and sat in doctors' surgeries for seven months. He was the last patient, so he heard all that was said. He used quietly to administer questionnaires to patients waiting in the surgeries, and then he saw the doctor and had a chat with him. He was completely unbiased, and this book is completely unbiased. It is a beautifully written book. He tells you all about what the doctors like and dislike, and what the patients like and dislike—in fact, how the thing really works. It is the best account of the Health Service that has ever been written.
Of the things patients dislike, he mentions three things: long waits—long waits in the surgery and long waits in the out-patients' departments. That was the top dislike that he found. The second dislike he mentioned was hurried surgery consultations as a result of big lists. The third thing he mentioned was these Health Service charges. The way in which the charges were mentioned (they came up spontaneously, and in those clays they were only 1s.) was almost always as a deterrent to getting things done which ought to be done—these were ordinary patients speaking—particularly people not getting the specs that they ought to get, and not getting their teeth attended to as they ought to get them attended to. He certainly mentioned that.
He also gave a very fine description of the attitude of the British public to National Assistance and to the Poor Law. He said:
"The British are a proud and sensitive people. They have a horror of anything that smacks of means tests or Poor Law charity. Professor Lafitte cites an example from the days of the Great Depression: ' No fewer than a million aged pensioners who had quietly refused to ask for poor relief flocked to the Assistance Board in 1940. and qualified for help, when relief was offered them outside the Poor Law under the new name of "supplementary pensions"'. A feature of the National Health Service that appeals to the patients strongly is the fact that the medical care they get comes to them as a right and not as charity."
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My Lords, I think those words are absolutely true. The point that Professor Lafitte makes about the dislike of the Poor Law atmosphere, and about people's pride, which is hard to legislate for (though it was legislated for successfully on that occasion, and again when the National Assistance Board was created), disproves the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Derwent.
Finally, there is this quotation from this book:
"The doctors are happy that they can now prescribe the best medicines (regardless of their cost) for even the poorest patient, knowing that a lack of funds will not prevent the prescription from being filled. This was not always the case uncle] the private-enterprise medical system of a dozen years ago. I have talked with physicians who, in pre-N.H.S. days, sometimes felt compelled to prescribe the poorer of two possible remedies, simply because they were sure that the better one, which was quite expensive, would never be purchased by the patient. Unsolicited comments from N.H.S. general practitioners indicate their satisfaction in being able to get the most effective medicines into the hands of their patients. One such comment, from a 9,700 patient partnership in Devonshire, says: 'It is gratifying to order treatment, knowing that the patient can obtain it and not be worried about the cost.' Another, from a large general practice in Lancashire: At first my partners and I were against the Service. Now we approve of it. Any treatment, however expensive, is open to everyone, no matter how poor
The quotation goes on:
"In the days off fee-for-service practice, a doctor who thought a follow-up home or surgery visit desirable might nevertheless hesitate to suggest it because it would mean an extra fee for him and extra cost to his patient. By dissolving the commercial link that formerly existed between doctor and patient the N.H.S. has obviated any embarrassment which this relationship may have caused in the past, and has thus made it easy for the physician to continue his treatment of a patient for as long a period as he thinks desirable. Report has it that the removal of this obstacle to seeing the job through to the end is much appreciated by doctors who … measure their success very largely in terms of the service they render."
My Lords, that service is being rendered just a little less effectively as a result of these charges. It is a great pity and a great blow that that should have happened, and it is a needless blow. We know that we cannot get the Government to change their mind. There is only one thing which could do that, and that is a change of Government. And that, my Lords, is what I think will happen in due course.
7.12 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I am sure we have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, with great interest. I followed him carefully, and I was interested to learn what should be the contents of the perfect medicine box. I wonder whether the noble Lord has examined the medicine box in another place. Over a period of twenty-three years I have treated the initial stages of every disease in that other place—with the exception of a confinement—with the drugs available. I think what we should learn from the noble Lord to-night, although he was jocular about the contents of a medicine box, is that doctors throughout the country who conduct the medical education of the people, illustrating what the doctors themselves consider are the most effective drugs, could time after time tell interested groups that the last thing a doctor would take was an antibiotic, unless he thought it absolutely necessary. It is tragic to think that this country to-day—and here I am speaking rather to the noble Lord, Lord Auckland—attaches such importance to these expensive proprietary antibiotics, when the fact is that in consequence of taking unnecessarily all the penicillin he has mentioned many people to-day are unfortunately resistant to penicillin. This is a matter on which we should have a long debate in this House, because it is fundamental not only to the health of the people but to the National Health Service.
I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, for interrupting him, but I was a little astonished. Here we have a progressive young man, and he was saying
things which I thought really could not be acceptable in view of the information that most of us have. I told him about the Kefauver Committee. I would also direct his attention to the statement of the Auditor General, and to the Public Accounts Committee, which I think my noble friend Lord Stonham mentioned. They invited the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Health to give evidence on this subject, and the noble Lord will find the Report most interesting reading.
It was only three weeks ago, when I entered this House, that I made my maiden speech on this subject. I confess I thought I detected some sympathy
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on the faces of noble Lords, not only because it was my maiden speech but because I thought a number of them were not too happy about the morality and wisdom of taxing the sick, the aged, and the children. I am sorry the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is not here. I sat back in my seat and thought that his speech could apply to the last century, when little boys went up the chimneys. He could then have argued quite cogently that there were so few little boys, and that anyhow they did not seem to worry about it very much. However, I do hope that he will read what I have to say in Hansard. It is a fact that already these Orders have been in operation for nearly a fortnight. Although we have appealed to the Minister time after time to modify them, nevertheless he went forward, despite the fiscal and ethical consequences. I have no intention of repeating the arguments which I adduced three weeks ago, but I want once more to emphasise what the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, has already said, and that is that these new charges represent, surely, a departure from an important principle. Indeed, I feel that the Health Service is a noble edifice of the Welfare State, and that these charges tend to undermine it.
The National Health Service Act was passed on the principle that the Service should be financed so that the rich should pay relatively more for the poor. That is a fact which I think was applauded by all progressive, liberal-minded people. Surely these charges make a complete departure from that principle. Three weeks ago I said that a Minister, in a Department like the Ministry of Health, which is a highly technical Department, cannot fully appreciate the significance of imposing these charges on the sick and aged people. I also said that he cannot appreciate the repercussions on the administration. I want, quite shortly, to mention to-night some of these repercussions. If, as has been argued by some noble Lords, this imposition were insignificant, why is it that the conservative medical profession has not supported it? The medical profession has never allied itself with the Labour Party. The organised conservative medical profession and the British Medical Association have said, time after time, that no financial barrier

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should be placed between the doctor and the patient. These are the people who know the situation. These are the people who know the whole field of medicine. These are the people who treat the sick and the aged. Why have they not echoed what the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, has said, that there is no problem here; that these shillings are easily available? The medical profession has set its face against these charges.
My noble friends behind me have said that the time has been short, that the Orders have been operating for only a short time, and perhaps it is not fair to judge the effect of them yet. But I think already the chemists have reported that many people will not be able to pay this extra charge. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, will correct me if I am wrong when I say that, in consequence of these warnings, the Minister has already had to revise the list of people who are entitled to a refund of the charges. Again, what a pity it is that the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is not here, because he commented on what a little trouble this is. The fact is that a sick person has to fill in a form, post it and get it delivered; and then there is the operation of the relatively complex and costly administration of the National Assistance Board—and we must not forget that, when we are thinking of the cost of the refund itself.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, when he says that already we can see this amount of money which the Minister expects to save being whittled away. What will the doctors do? I agree with my noble and medical colleague that the doctor will, of course, often prescribe larger quantities of medicine, tablets and pills. Doctors have been invited to do so by the Minister himself. When I spoke for the Ministry of Health in another place, seven Conservative Ministers of Health faced me on successive occasions, and on two or three of those occasions they said that they invited doctors to prescribe large amounts. I ask your Lordships to glance at your own medicine cupboards and see all those half bottles of tablets and pills. And that is repeated throughout the country. The wastage of expensive medical preparations is such that I tremble to think of what is going to happen now, because the waste will be colossal. The doctors are now prescribing more, and
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as the names of the preparations are not written on the bottles and boxes, after a time people forget what they were prescribed for and throw them away.
It seems to me that since this decision has been made the Minister has been compelled to meet the needs of the situation by expedient after expedient. I would ask the noble Lord to correct me when I say it is a fact that the Minister has been concerned in giving a directive to chemists that, in the event of a certain item similar to one on the prescription form E.C.10 being less in price than two shillings, they are now expected to tell the patient that they have in the shop something cheaper which is the equivalent in therapeutic value. If that is so—I think the Minister announced this about a fortnight ago—it is a menacing thing, because the relation between doctor and chemist so far has been a pleasantly professional one, and the chemist has been vigilant in interpreting prescriptions as accurately as he could.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend on this important point? I made some inquiries about the situation this morning, and I understand that the chemist is not allowed to alter the script or to give anything other than what is in the script. If the chemist wants to tell the patient that anything is cheaper and that he ought to get a cheaper equivalent or even pay for it as an item, rather than have it on the prescription for two shillings, the only thing for that person to do is to take the prescription back to the doctor and get a new prescription which omits the item concerned. The chemist is not allowed to alter it, because he must follow the doctor's instructions, and the patient is not allowed to make any alteration, for fear of dangerous drug tricks.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I think that my noble friend will agree that this is a very slippery slope.
LORD TAYLOR: Yes, my Lords, it is a most difficult situation.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: To suggest that even in that way the chemist ought to interfere with the treatment of a patient is opposed to all medical practice. It is suggested that the chemist should now look at the prescription in

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a little crowded shop—and I ask noble Lords to envisage the average chemist shop throughout the country, full of toilet accessories, with one chemist and maybe an assistant or two, and crowds of people coming in all the time; these are the things which the Minister does not anticipate—and say to a patient, probably someone he has known for years, "You can get this more cheaply"?
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, suppose something was under two shillings, would one be able to ask the chemist, "If that costs less than two shillings, I would rather pay the 1s. 10d. and not have it on the prescription."?
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: The patient can ask anything he likes. If a patient goes into a chemist's shop with a prescription, nobody can gag him. He can say to a chemist, whom he has probably known all his life, "Tell me about this." And nobody can gag the chemist. The chemist can also express his views. But the point is—and perhaps the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong, because this is a most important point—that if, as my noble friend says, the chemist is not allowed to alter a prescription and it has to be taken back to the doctor, then the arrangement is really preposterous. Doctors are paid on a capitation basis. The young doctor with a limited list, say, of 1,300, which he is desperately trying to build up, knows his patients personally, looks after them and occasionally cossets them. He suddenly discovers that it is possible for his patient to go to a chemist and be told that one item on his prescription, or its equivalent, can be supplied much more cheaply—in other words, that he has prescribed something that is cheap. Think of the psychological effect on the patient. Will a young doctor say that it is helpful to him as a practitioner, that it will establish closer relations and make his patients feel more confident in his treatment, if they learn that he has prescribed something so cheap that it is under two shillings?
I would dare to say that from this latest expedient of the Minister there may be unfortunate repercussions. Doctors, particularly young doctors, may say that in future they will not prescribe anything under 2s. There may be a temptation to excessive prescribing, be-
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cause a doctor may be anxious not to prescribe anything which may be revealed in a crowded little shop as something cheap. Like my noble friend Lord Taylor, I attach importance to aspirin, because I know its usefulness. It is a cheap drug—
LORD TAYLOR: A hundred for ninepence.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: — although I think that in this House tranquilisers might be sometimes rather useful. Here is a temptation to doctors to prescribe expensive drugs.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: Extraordinary!
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: I hope that the noble Lady agrees with me.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, I did not know that a doctor would take it as his standard that he would be popular with his patients if they thought that the drugs he put on his prescription were all expensive; and that if he put in anything that was cheap, he would not be popular. I am learning a great deal. That is why I stayed.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, I did not know that the noble Lady was so utterly innocent and naive. Why does she think that the cost of prescriptions, which was about 2s. 6d. a few years ago, is about 7s. 3d. to-day? All these proprietary drugs are now on the market and very often pressure is brought to bear on doctors to prescribe expensive proprietary drugs. That is one reason why the cost has gone up.
I want to make only one more point. We have heard about Dr. Gemmill, the American who said that everything he learned was learned sitting in a doctor's waiting room. I saw him when he came over here. If only the Minister before he had tabled these Orders, had gone round the country (he might have emulated the Minister of Transport and his colleagues, who do their work in a most practical fashion and go round the country), sat in doctors' waiting rooms and in chemists' shops and listened to the talk there, he would have heard all this and he would have thought most carefully before he tabled these Orders.

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My final point is about his attitude. I am afraid that he based his whole plan on the income of a highly skilled industrial worker: he failed to take into account the fact that the average wage of women in the country is approximately £7 a week, and that there are millions on small fixed incomes. He thought also, having had his education in the Treasury, that he could divert to medicine money spent on tobacco and drink. This in itself revealed his ignorance of the economy of many homes. No doubt he will learn a lesson from these failures—and I am sure there will be failures of the kind I have described—but, unhappily, it will be at the expense of the most helpless of the community.
7.31 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I believe that this is the first occasion on which the noble Lady has addressed us from the Front Opposition Bench, and it is therefore my first and very pleasant task this evening to offer her congratulations. It is not a new experience for the noble Lady to speak from a Front Bench, but it is the first occasion in this House, and I think she should be congratulated. And nobody is more pleased than I that it falls to me to have that pleaseure.
We had a full-dress debate on February 13 on all the proposals which the Government announced on February 1 for reducing the net Estimates for the National Health Service. The debate we have had this afternoon is really an extension of that debate—indeed, my noble friend Lord Derwent said it was one of a series. I personally am very glad that we have had the debate. The noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition explained the reasons for putting down this Motion, and I entirely accept those reasons. As I say, I am glad that we have had the debate, because I believe that the more the Government's proposals are discussed the better they will be understood generally in the country; and the better, I believe, too, will it be understood that they are intrinsically fair and justified in present circumstances.
The noble Viscount, in explaining why he was going to make only a short introductory speech, referred to his team of experts that he had at his disposal, and nobody is more conscious than I that
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the noble Viscount has these experts to back him up.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Do not worry; we like you.
LORD NEWTON: This Motion calls attention to five Regulations which came into operation on March 1 about charges for prescriptions in. England, Wales and Scotland, and for amenity beds in hospitals
in England and Wales only. I do not think that anything has been said in this debate about the amenity beds Regulations and I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I do not say anything about those particular Regulations. But the other Regulations form only part—albeit an important part—of the Government's proposals for ensuring that the money available to the National Health Service is laid out in the best possible way.
In our debate on February 13 we had a full discussion about all these things, and I am sure your Lordships would not wish me to go over the ground again.
However, I should like to remind your Lordships (because this is the basis of the whole of this exercise) that I argued then that if the National Health Service is to expand in accordance with progress in medicine we must from time to time see what can be done to Limit the expenditure already incurred, in order to ensure that money available for the Service as a whole is spent to the best advantage on new developments. This is surely true, whatever the total size of the sum of money available for the National Health Service in this country, if only for this reason: that the resources which can be made available for this Service are not unlimited, any more than they are in the case of any other services. They never have been under any Government, and I do not imagine that they ever will be.
If I understand the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, aright, he argued that the sort of point I am now putting to your Lordships is not an argument for further erosion (as he called it) into the National Health Service. My answer to the noble Lord is that I do not regard 111 is as being further erosion into the National Health Service. And that is the whole basis of the Government's case. Therefore it seems to me that the Government of the day, whatever their political complexion,

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have a very clear duty to see that whatever funds can be made available are spent as wisely as possible.
Again, in the debate on February 13 I picked out three main directions for future progress. I am not going to say more about them to-day; they are recorded in Hansard, if noble Lords wish to see what I said. The general aims were not disputed in that debate, and I do not think they have been disputed to-day. Therefore it seems to me that the real question before us now is whether, to help in realising those aims, we are making the right adjustments in the right places. I think that to answer this it is necessary to show that the changes
which have been made satisfy two main tests. The first is that they must be adjustments which will not have an adverse effect on health, and the second that they must be administered in such a way that they do not cause hardship.
The Government believe that the adjustments which we have been debating satisfy those tests, and it is my aim to convince your Lordships that that is so. For many years prescriptions have been playing an increasing part in the National Health Service. There has been great advance in treatment, due to the development of new drugs, which have brought immense benefit to the community. They have saved lives which would have been lost; they have enabled patients to be treated at home, instead of in hospital, and they have shortened the length of sickness, both at home and in hospital. But there has also been a substantial increase, as we all know, in the cost of the drugs supplied; and this is a fact which has caused much concern to all Governments since the start of the National Health Service.
As I said in the last debate, if one considers the history of the National Health Service one is immediately struck by the very early date after its inception in July, 1948, that it was appreciated by the Government of the day that it was necessary to take powers to impose a prescription charge. I had intended to give your Lordships some details of these rises in costs to which I have been referring, but I think I had better omit them. I should like to make it clear, however, that these
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Regulations are not, in the view of the Government, a substitute for action to ensure that we get value for money for the cost of the pharmaceutical services.
LORD TAYLOR: Including the cost of bottles in Scotland?
LORD NEWTON: I will come later to the cost of bottles in Scotland. There are two aspects of this problem—the prices of drugs and the prescribing of drugs—and we have heard quite a lot about both aspects to-day. In the view of the Government, so far as prices are concerned, the new voluntary price regulation scheme is a great improvement on its predecessor and is likely to show dividends.
One of the first results of this scheme has been a reduction in the price of an antibiotic group known as tetracyclines, and this reduction in price will represent a saving of £1 million a year to the taxpayers, which I would suggest is quite a good start. As for over-prescribing, this is a matter for the professional discretion of the doctor, and in the presence of two doctors I must be very careful what I say. I know, and I suggest that your lay-Lordships who are in the Chamber to-night know from your own personal experience, that some doctors prescribe more profusely than others. I know a very good doctor who is a most reluctant prescriber. It is almost like trying to get blood out of a stone—he is not the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. I felt that if I did not say that, when we remember what he said about the contents of the medicine cupboard, other noble Lords might think that I was making an oblique reference to him. This doctor about whom I am speaking takes the view that for most ailments, bed, a hot water bottle and a couple of aspirin tablets are the best cure. And he may well be right.
However a doctor may exercise his professional discretion, my right honourable friend recognises that it is the duty of the Government to help doctors to prescribe both well and economically, and that is why the new Prescribers' Journal is being produced. Those are the actions in the field of prices and prescribing which the Government are taking to ensure that we get full value for the money spent on the pharmaceutical service.
LORD TAYLOR: Can the noble Lord say when the new Prescribers' Journal will be coming out?
LORD NEWTON: I think towards the end of April, but I should not like to say that authoritatively, because I may be wrong.
These increased charges have been criticised as a tax on the sick, and it has been said that they will result in patients going without drugs which are necessary for their proper treatment, and that there will be serious hardship for many people. I cannot accept that, and I would say to the House that the Health Ministers have no evidence that the charges, coupled with the
arrangements which have been in force since 1952, for refunds in the cases of real hardship, have deprived patients of necessary treatment. And there is no reason at all to expect that the increased charges will change this position. In another place my right honourable friend has offered to consider individual cases where it is claimed that the new charges would mean that necessary medicines would not be available without hardship.
Since these Regulations were made, many letters have been received by the Health Departments criticising the increase in the prescription charge. But while these letters have shown anxiety at the possible effect of the increase, they have so far given no evidence that individuals will, in fact, suffer. There is no reason why they should suffer in any way, provided that proper use is made—as indeed it should be—of the arrangements for the refund in cases where it will be a real hardship to a person to meet the new charge in addition to his other commitments. It is essential, of course, that the minority with small resources who might otherwise find it difficult, or indeed impossible, to meet the 2s. charge, are helped so that they can be sure of obtaining the medicine and other things that they need.
I should like very briefly to mention the various ways in which the cost of the charge can be reduced or relieved. First, there are the arrangements for the refund for a war-disabled pensioner, and for people receiving a supplement to a pension, or a regular weekly grant from the National Assistance Board. Your Lordships know that they are automatically entitled to a refund. Then there are the other people who are not in either of
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these categories. The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, and the Health Ministers, have given much thought to ways of making sure that people who may suffer hardship by meeting the prescription charges know the sort of circumstances which might entitle them to a refund.
The National Assistance Board are making available a new leaflet explaining these circumstances. This will shortly be available; it will be sent to their area officers, and will be available, for citizens' advice bureaux, doctors, chemists and other persons and organisations who may be concerned. The leaflet will explain that where prescriptions are regularly required at very close intervals, and refunds are payable, the Board's officers will provide on each occasion a franked envelope and a simple form, on which the patient can say whether his circumstances have changed. If they have not, he will normally be sent the refund without further formality.
LORD AMWELL: Upon whom do they claim? Do they have to go to the Post Office? What kind of bureaucracy is this?—making all these fiddling little claims. How is it going to be done?
LORD NEWTON: I think the short answer to that question is in the way in which it is being done already, and that the method which has been in operation for some years has not been affected by the fact that the charge has been increased. In addition, the prescription charge receipt form, obtainable on request from the chemist or dispensing doctor, is being altered so as to include a fuller explanation than it now does of the refund arrangements. A short indication is to be included on the National Health prescription form, as soon as new stocks are ordered, directing the patient's attention to the fact that he can obtain from the chemist information about refunds. These arrangements, together with the posters which have already been distributed to doctors and chemists, should ensure that patients who would be entitled to a refund of charges know what they should do.
May I now briefly consider some of the detailed points which have been made by your Lordships in this debate? My noble friend Lord Dement asked how many old people there may be with no relations and friends. Quite

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obviously, we do not know how many there are, but there must be many old people in this country with children, relatives, friends and neighbours who care for them. I think it is so easy, when one is discussing these problems, to think of the old as though they live in a world of isolation. Do not let us forget, too, all the voluntary organisations, which I believe are on the increase in this country, for helping to care for the old people. They certainly exist in growing numbers in the part of the world in which I live. I expect that many of your Lordships are connected with organisations of this kind, or, if you are not, that your wives are.
The noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, in explaining to us why his name was not on the list of speakers to-day, said that the reason was that he was making a study of the aged poor in the affluent society; that he had begun it to-day, and that he is to publish his report soon after the middle of April. I am sure we shall greatly welcome this publication from the noble Lord. He also said that he was very dissatisfied with the answers which I had given him in reply to his views on the need for ensuring, more actively than is done at present, that the old and the aged should get the medical help which they need. I could not agree more with him that it is important that all, whatever their age or whatever their state of health, should get medical help when they need it. But the noble Lord has not brought forward any evidence that there are people in any large number in this category who are failing to get the help they need. I hope that if he has evidence, if he gets evidence in the course of the study he is making, he will let the Government have it.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that chemists' earnings per prescription in Scotland are more than they are in England. On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said that the contents of the medicine bottle in Scotland cost less than the contents of the medicine bottle in England.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I think my noble friend, Lord Stonham, said that the earnings on the bottle were double those in England. I said that the
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cost of the contents in Scotland was half that in England.
LORD NEWTON: I am obliged to the noble Lord. So far as I know, the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, is that in Scotland there are more chemists proportionately to population than in England and Wales, and Scottish doctors tend to prescribe less frequently than English ones. I think the noble Lord made that point himself. Hence the Scots chemist would get much less in the way of dispensing fees if the fee were not made
higher. The dispensing fee of 1s. 8d. in Scotland, as against 1s. 2½d. in England, is designed to produce the same income in the two countries.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, also raised what I thought was an extremely technical point about discounts. I think perhaps it would be in accordance with the wishes of your Lordships if I wrote to the noble Lord about that, rather than read out the rather complicated information I have succeeded in obtaining. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, I think gave a very good answer to the point raised by my noble friend Lord Auckland; that there was a good case for exempting diabetics from the prescription charge, and I thought also that Lord Taylor's observations on my noble friend's other point, about the advantages of having a graduated prescription charge, were also most apt. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, also said that more old age pensioners are realising they can get National Assistance as a result of this increased charge. If he is right about that—I do not know whether he is, but that is his view—all I can say is that it seems to me a most admirable thing. I personally have always been in favour of the citizen taking advantage of his rights whatever they are and not feeling that to do so is something which should not be done.
The noble Baroness developed her case against what the Government are doing, but I hope she will forgive me if I do not give a long answer to try to rebut her case; it is part of the general argument I am trying to advance now. So far as the question of the items on a prescription form having a retail price of less than 2s. is concerned, the answer

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is this. If the retail price of an item on a prescription form is less than 2s. the chemists are encouraged to tell their customers of that fact, and if the customer then says, "Right, I will buy over the counter for the retail price", the chemist may then mark the item on the prescription "Not supplied".
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: He does not have to go to the doctor?
LORD NEWTON: No; he just marks the form "Not supplied", and that is the end of the matter. I should like to think that I have persuaded all your Lordships of the strength of the Government's case.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Perhaps I may intervene, because the point I made is so serious and the noble Lord has agreed I was right in this. Is he satisfied that the relationship between the chemist and the doctor will not suffer? Indeed, is he satisfied that, in consequence of this, the doctors I have described will not be tempted to prescribe more expensive things?
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I really do not think it is for me, if I may say so, to try to act as judge in the case of the professional responsibilities of the chemist and the doctor. All I am saying is this: that if an item prescribed by the doctor would cost less than 2s. if bought at retail price—and the doctor may or may not know that—the chemist is encouraged to tell the customer, who will decide in the manner I have outlined.
May finally say this? I have greatly appreciated, if may respectfully say so, the atmosphere in which this debate has taken place, even though I may not have succeeded in convincing your Lordships of the rightness of the Government's case. I recognise, as I said at the beginning, that the Opposition feel strongly about these things and they feel sincerely. But I would ask noble Lords opposite to believe that we feel equally sincerely about these things, and that no Party enjoys a monopoly of sympathy and compassion for the sick and aged. Nothing has been said in this House
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to-day to suggest that any Member of the House would not agree with that proposition, and on that I should like to finish.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, before my noble friend finishes, I wonder if he would consult with his right honourable friend about the possibility of some kind of inquiry into the drug industry. There have been suggestions that the profits which are being made are over-large. I am certainly not in a position to dispute that one way or the other. On the other hand, I feel that certain points do need clearing up, and possibly some kind of inquiry could be considered. Would my noble friend consider consulting his right honourable friend on that?
LORD NEWTON: will certainly see that the views of my noble friend are drawn to the attention of my right honourable friend.
7.57 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, emphasise the point. There was a drive, I understand, for economising on the drug bill in the other place, and it seems that there might be a saving of £400,000 on something over £65 million. It did not seem very effective to me. May I just say that I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Newton, for the care and attention he has given to the case. I must apologise that I had to be absent for a large part of the debate because I had some urgent work to do, but I was glad to be back before he finished. I would say "Thank you" to my noble friends on both sides of the House who joined in this debate. We had, I gather, formally to put down a Motion for Papers, but on this type of thing we never divide, and although, as the noble Lord says, we still feel very strongly on the matter, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at one minute before eight o'clock.