Lords Sitting of 29 March 1962

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

BRITISH STRONTIUM 90 AND SWISS WATCH DIALS
3.5 p.m
LORD KENNET: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any statement to make about the following, which appeared in the New York Times on March 17:
" It was recently discovered in Switzerland that some watch-dial painters were bringing home pots of Strontium 90 for use by the family of an evening. The material furnished a cheaper luminous paint than that based on radium. It was reported to have been bought from a commercial agent, who obtained the Strontium 90 as a by-product of the British Atomic Energy programme."
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government cannot accept responsibility for statements in the American Press. Radioactive materials are supplied by the Atomic Energy Authority only to firms or institutions on the Authority's list of approved users, whose bona fides has been investigated. Anyone ordering radioisotopes is required first to have accepted conditions, which, among other things, reserve to the Authority the right to require the prospective purchaser to inform them of the uses to be made of the material. In the case of Switzerland, orders for Strontium 90 are now referred by the Authority to the Swiss Federal Office of Industry for approval. Since the beginning of 1958, Strontium 90 has been supplied to Switzerland for medical and research purposes only. Prior to 1958 a quantity of Strontium 90 supplied by the Authority to a firm in Switzerland was understood to have
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been used for luminising watches, and supplies to this firm were discontinued. At one time, it is fair to add, Strontium 90 may reasonably have been thought by a section of the watch industry to be safer than radium, because it does not give off gamma radiation or radon. It was also thought to be superior as a luminising agent.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, may one take it, then, that this probably refers to an old story that is now cleared up?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I do not know what it refers to for certain, because, as I say, I cannot accept responsibility for the American Press. But I think the Answer gives a fairly comprehensive account of our policy in the matter.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION BILL [H.L.]
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to make it an offence to discriminate to the detriment of any person on the grounds of colour, race or religion in the United Kingdom. I beg to move that this Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a —(Lord Walston.)
On Question, Bill read 1a and to be printed.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 41 be considered in order to its being dispensed with for the purpose of taking the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill this day through its remaining stages.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL
Read 2a (according to Order); Committee negatived.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been dispensed with (pursuant to Resolution), Bill read 3a and passed.

PIPE-LINES BILL [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be again in Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Mills.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 9:
Orders for compulsory acquisition of land for pipe-line construction
9.—(1) A person proposing to execute works in land for the placing therein of a pipe-line or a length of a pipe-line may, by means of an order made by the Minister (in this Act referred to as a "compulsory purchase order"). be authorised to purchase compulsorily land described in the order which is required by him as the site of any of the works.
(5) A compulsory purchase order shall be subject to special parliamentary procedure.
LORD LINDGREN: The purpose of this Amendment is to make clear the position of apparatus of statutory water undertakers. We appreciated that, to meet their obligations, statutory water undertakers lay mains and place apparatus not only on their own land and in the highway but also in the land of third parties. This is done, as in other cases, by way of easement. The water mains, of course, are laid under their statutory powers. I beg to move.
Page 7, line 24, at end insert ("but no such order shall authorise the compulsory purchase of any apparatus belonging to or maintained by statutory water undertakers").—(Lord Lindgren.)
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MILLS): The noble Lard apparently has in mind apparatus belonging to water undertakers and situated on a third party's land. I am advised that the Amendment is unnecessary, because the Bill as it stands would not enable the pipe-line promoter to acquire this apparatus. The land has been purchased compulsorily and all that can be acquired is what the landowner owns; apparatus belonging to a third party would not be covered.
LORD LINDGREN: In view of the assurance given by the noble Minister,
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I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD CONESFORD LORD CONESFORD moved, in subsection (5), to leave out "subject to special parliamentary procedure" and insert:
"of no effect unless confirmed by means of a Provisional Order Confirmation Act".
The noble Lord said: I think it will be for the convenience of the Committee to take this Amendment and Amendment No. 25 together. This is an Amendment to which we attach great importance, which was foreshadowed in the debate we had on Second Reading. I am afraid that the Amendment looks rather technical and perhaps is immediately understood at first reading only by lawyers familiar with the two classes of procedure. Nevertheless, I shall try, if I can, to make the purpose of the Amendment easily understood by all, because the aim is one which I think commands the support of all sections of the Committee. The aim is greater justice to persons affected and greater Parliamentary control.
The Special Parliamentary Procedure is a procedure which enables an Order of a Minister to obtain statutory effect. It is laid down by the Statutory Orders (Special Procedure) Act, 1945, and what can be done is rigidly prescribed by Statute. There is no power whatsoever in either House of Parliament to override those stringent provisions in any individual case. Provisional Order Confirmation Acts, on the other hand, are, of course, in every sense Acts of Parliament which must pass through both Houses of Parliament in the ordinary way. Roughly the procedure is the same as in Hybrid Bills, that is to say they proceed as Public Bills through all their stages in both Houses, but, in addition, if there are Petitions against the Bill those Petitions are heard by Select Committees in the way with which we are familiar.
It is no part of my purpose to deny that the Special Parliamentary Procedure has been found useful and convenient in a number of cases. The Special Parliamentary Procedure was designed to give a simpler and a cheaper alternative to the Private Bill procedure. Its essence is that the Minister provides

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the motive power for driving the proposal through Parliament. It makes matters a great deal simpler for the promoters. But there are, of course, two corollaries: first of all, the Minister must himself be satisfied of the desirability of the project, and secondly, the rights of anyone wishing to oppose have been considerably cut down in contrast to what they are under Private Bill procedure. The onus lies upon the opposition and not upon the promoter. This Special Parliamentary Procedure has been freely and conveniently used for small projects, the acquisition of land for schools and many other matters. It has been used for the large compulsory grouping of water undertakings, and perhaps the greatest number of occasions of use under any one Statute have occurred under the Marriage Validity (Provisional Orders) Acts, 1905 and 1924.
The method is that the applicant, or as he would be called under Private Bill procedure the promoter, applies to the Minister for an Order, and then, should the Minister generally approve, we have the stage of local public inquiry and so forth; and if after the public inquiry the Minister is still of opinion that the Order should be made he lays it before Parliament. What then happens to the rights of those who wish to oppose? The position is that for a fortnight there may be Petitions against it. Those Petitions may be either of two kinds, a Petition of general objection or a Petition for amendment.
The one with which I am particularly concerned this afternoon and which I wish to bring to the attention of the Committee is the Petition of general objection; that is to say, the Petition of the objector who says that the proposed Order is bad, root and branch. The only way in which he can have his objection referred to a Joint Committee is for two things to be done in either House of Parliament. The first is that a Member of that House must introduce a Motion that the Order be annulled. And the second requirement is that another Member of the same House shall introduce an Amendment to that Motion proposing that the Petition should be referred to the Joint Committee. Unless that Amendment is carried there is no machinery whatsoever by which the
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Petition of general objection will be heard by Parliament at all. This Statute was passed in 1945. From 1945 to the present day so difficult has the procedure which I have just described proved that only in one case has such an Amendment been carried in this House, and until a little over a fortnight ago it had never been carried in the House of Commons.
On the 13th of the present month there was carried in another place the required Amendment referring one of these Petitions of general objection to a Joint Select Committee. It was the Llanelly and District Water Board Order, 1961, which was so referred. I greatly hope that any noble Lord who is interested in the great difficulties of this procedure will read the Report of the debate on this matter in another place on March 13, 1962, and I would particularly recommend noble Lords who sit on the Front Opposition Bench to read what their colleagues said on that occasion about this procedure and the matter which is now being raised. Such is the difficulty. There is no method whatever of getting an objection considered as of right. An objection can be considered only if the Motion that I have described is introduced and the Amendment that I have described is carried. That has happened only once in the House of Commons in the entire period between 1945 and the present day.
Burt the difficulty does not end there, because if the fortunate objector finds that one or other House of Parliament will carry the necessary Amendment so that his objection can go for consideration to a Joint Select Committee, he is then in this rather novel and difficult position. Members of your Lordships' House and of another place are familiar with the general convenience and efficiency that we have introduced into our legislation by the order of our proceedings. The commendation of a proposal precedes opposition to it. In the Law Courts the burden of proof is, in the ordinary way, on the plaintiff, and counsel for the defendant has not to open his case until he has heard what the plaintiff's case is. But when an Order comes before a Joint Select Committee, under the process which I have described it is the objector to the Order on whom the whole burden rests, who has to open and prove his objection without the case

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of the other side, that for the Order, being outlined or presented at all.
This procedure has proved awkward and difficult to a number of Chairmen and members of these Joint Select Committees. Although it is rare that a Petition of general objection has come before one of the Select Committees, several Petitions for Amendment have, so we are familiar with the procedure. On several occasions when the matter has come before one of these Joint Select Committees they have been placed in so much difficulty by this peculiarity of starting off with the objection before anybody has outlined the case, that they have been compelled to instruct counsel for the promoters to open with a brief factual statement which has sometimes lasted for 2½ hours. But the petitioner, in opening, is under great disadvantages. What could be more natural, for instance, than that the petitioner. who has a general objection to the Order, should wish to refer to the evidence given at the public inquiry by the promoters? There was a case where the legal advisers of the petitioner had spent £80 to obtain a transcript of what took place at the public inquiry. A most experienced former Member of your Lordships' House of high legal skill, the late Marquess of Reading, ruled that that was quite inadmissible because it was hearsay.
Several Chairmen of these Joint Select Committees have said how much easier it would be to follow the proceedings if the promoters put their case first. Of course, it would be far better in every way, if there is to be a proper inquiry into these objections to the Order, for the promoters to start and to put their case. The Committee will of course give due weight to the fact, if it be a fact, that the Minister has already held a public local inquiry; that he has examined the project carefully in his Ministry, and perhaps has even amended the Order originally proposed and has given it his approval. All that will be given proper weight, but the matter can be properly inquired into.
It may be urged against my proposal for substituting for this Special Parliamentary Procedure proposed in the Bill as it stands, the better, as I suggest, and more normal procedure of a Pro-
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visional Order Bill, that the change would involve some sacrifice of convenience and time. Let me admit the degree of truth there may be in such a reply to my proposal. Supposing the two alternative proposals are both unopposed, then I think I am right (my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will, if necessary, correct me) that the average time which would be taken under the Special Procedure would probably be about a month, and the average time which would be taken under the procedure of a Provisional Order Bill might amount to 2½ months before the Royal Assent was obtained. That is based on the average time taken in the last year in which there were a great number of such Bills.
If on the other hand, we are going to assume opposition—and of course it is with the case where the Bill is opposed that I am particularly concerned—an opposed Special Parliamentary Procedure Order is unlikely to go through in less than two months. And I should assume that if the alternative proposal that I advocate were adopted, and there were opposition in both Houses, the corresponding period might be four months. That is the difference in the time taken.
To sum up, the Provisional Order Bill procedure which I commend to the Committee is, by universal admission, the right procedure in many cases. There is no suggestion by Her Majesty's Government that it has been replaced in all cases by the Special Parliamentary Procedure. In fact your Lordships may remember that on the 13th of last month my noble friend Lord Jellicoe commended to this House, and the House approved, the passing of the Statutory Orders (Special Procedure) Order, 1962, which came into operation on the 1st of this month, under which a certain number of cases which had hitherto been subject to the Special Parliamentary Procedure were put back to the old procedure of the Provisional Order Bill. So, admittedly, both procedures are proper, and survive and should be applied in the proper case.
The next matter which I ask the Committee to observe is that, both these procedures being proper procedures, the one I now commend is the one that was commended in the Special Report of the Select Committee of another place that

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considered the Esso Petroleum Bill. It was out of those proceedings and the recommendations of that Committee that this Bill admittedly arises, so that the proposal which I am advocating to the House now is the same proposal as was recommended by that Select Committee of another place.
The Amendment I propose is, I suggest, useful in meeting a criticism that has been made in all quarters of this Committee in the proceedings on this Bill that have already taken place. Noble Lords in all quarters have pointed out that we are here dealing with a very novel and important subject matter, and even if the various criticisms that have been advanced—substantially the same criticism has very often been advanced by both sides of the Committee—were met, Parliament would still want one of these pipe-line proposals when it comes before Parliament to be properly considered in the fullest possible way. There is at present in the Bill no principle at all laid down which should govern the Minister and indicate which proposals for pipe-lines should be approved and which should not. It may be that subsequent Amendments to meet our other criticisms will be incorporated, but is there one of us who believes that we should be willing to dispense with proper Parliamentary criticism and control of one of these pipe-line proposals when it eventually comes before Parliament? It is surely very desirable that in this novel sphere of legislation the applicant and promoter in a disputed case should commend his case affirmatively and satisfy a Parliamentary Committee. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 43, leave out ("Subject to special parliamentary procedure") and insert the said new words.—(Lord Conesford.)
LORD SILKIN: Just before the noble and learned Viscount intervenes, I should like to give my own first reactions to this. The noble Lord who has moved this Amendment, has done so very fully and I believe adequately, and I think we all understand the purposes of the Amendment. I find certain difficulties about it, and perhaps it will be convenient if I explained what they were, although I have quite an open mind on the subject and it may well be that at the end of the day I would
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support the noble Lord who moved the Amendment. The point arises where there is an objection to the Order for compulsory purchase and the objector has the right to have an inquiry. The inquiry is then held and the Minister, whoever he is, may decide in favour of the compulsory purchase. The Order then goes to the House for confirmation and, as the Bill stands, the House confirms it, confirms the decision of the Minister, and that is the end of the matter.
The noble Lord's Amendment would then give the objector a further opportunity of objecting to the decision of the Minister after an inquiry by having the matter referred to a Joint Select Committee. It is with this that I find some difficulty. In most cases the decision of the Minister is final. He has had a public inquiry conducted by an inspector; all the objections which the objector could put forward have been considered; they have been presented to the Minister and he gives his decision. It is not a matter in which the Minister has a personal interest or a departmental interest; he is adjudicating between two bodies, the one who has made an application to have a pipe-line and the other who has objected to it. There is no reason to suggest that the consideration by the Minister is biased or unfair or that he is not in full possession of the facts.
The procedure which the noble Lord suggests seems to me to have three objections. One is that it is rather novel for a Minister who has held a public inquiry and come to a quasi-judicial decision to be in the position that a Joint Select Committee of the House can set aside his decision. I can understand the House itself rejecting it; that is the position of every Minister. But for a Joint Select Committee to hear the same evidence, presumably, and then to reject it, seems to me to be wholly novel and without precedent. The second objection is the one that the noble Lord himself referred to: that of delay. He may think that a month and a half is not very important; he cannot assure the House it will be a month and a half and that it will not be longer.
The third objection is the question of expense. Why should the public be put to the expense, and why should the

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objector be put to the expense? The objector may not mind, but his chances would be fairly remote if he has a decision of the Minister to contend with. However, leaving aside the point of view of the objector, why should the public be put to the expense of a further hearing before a Select Committee, when in all other cases where there is a dispute between two private bodies or persons the decision of the Minister is final? It seems to me that there is no particular reason why in this case there should be this further right of appeal on the part of the objector. The noble Lord may have perfectly good answers upon this, but these are my own first reactions and I thought it right before the noble and learned Viscount gave the Government view on this Amendment that I should put forward my own.
LORD DERWENT: Before the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor replies, may I ask him to deal with one point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin? I am under the impression that exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has said happens in the case of a water order made by a Minister. After a public inquiry the order is made by the Minister and it is then, if it is still opposed, put to a Joint Select Committee. I think that is the case.
LORD SILKIN: That is the Amendment.
LORD DERWENT: That is the case at present in a Water Order. I believe that to be exactly equivalent to what my noble friend is suggesting now. I may be wrong, but perhaps the noble and learned Viscount would deal with it.
3.40 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): In case the point goes out of my mind, the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is right about a Water Order. But, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is quite right that there are hundreds, probably thousands, of compulsory purchase orders which finish with the Minister and do not have this procedure at all. We are dealing to-day with compulsory purchase orders and compulsory rights orders. But I should
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like to pick up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, if the House will bear with me while, very shortly, I put the history of this matter, because the effect of this Amendment is that compulsory purchase orders and compulsory rights orders, which are less than compulsory purchase orders, would be submitted to Parliament under what I am told by the Departments is an obsolescent procedure—namely, the Provisional Order procedure—instead of under the Special Parliamentary Procedure.
My noble friend Lord Conesford placed part of his reliance on the fact that Provisional Order procedure was suggested by the Commons Committee on the Esso Petroleum Company's Private Bill in 1960. But I think it is fair to say that the Committee on the Esso Bill were no doubt looking at the matter against the background of that Bill, in which, for convenience, the company had sought compulsory rights over the whole length of the routes of their two proposed pipe-lines. The present Bill, however, proceeds on the basis that it is up to the pipe-lines constructors to secure the rights they need by agreement, if they can, and only exceptionally to come to the Minister for a compulsory purchase order or a compulsory rights order. Of course, I at once acquit my noble friend altogether of any attempt to erect a procedure of "white-mail" against the promoters by raising procedural difficulties in their way, which would raise the price that they would be prepared to pay voluntarily.
The present Bill, however, as the noble Lord. Lord Silkin, has indicated, places upon the Minister the responsibility for ensuring that adequate arrangements are made to ensure the safe construction and operation of pipe-lines and to safeguard other interests that might be affected. There is no more reason why these should be submitted to Parliament in each case than, say, the various conditions which are imposed upon a developer by a local planning authority or the Minister of Housing and Local Government, when a planning permission is granted under the Town and Country Planning Act, because compulsory powers will be granted by the Minister only after a thorough inquiry into all the circumstances and into the

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objections of the persons concerned. I believe that this is the point which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, expressed in slightly different words, but I think we approach it in the same way: that this is, in essence, an appeal department against the Minister's decision, and the Provisional Order procedure would, in our view, be quite inappropriate for dealing with what would, in effect, be an appeal against the Minister's decision.
The Provisional Order procedure was devised early in the nineteenth century, in an effort to reduce the number of Private Bills coming to Parliament. It is cumbersome, expensive and timewasting. The Provisional Order Confirmation Bill goes through a procedure very much akin to the Private Bill procedure in each House and in your Lordships' House it even has an additional stage in that it comes to the Committee of the Whole House after leaving a Select Committee. It was because of the many defects in Provisional Order procedure that Special Parliamentary Procedure was devised at the end of the last war to provide a better means of bringing before Parliament the many Orders to be made for the purpose of applying a national policy to local circumstances.
What was sought was an expeditious and inexpensive procedure, which would enable Ministers to make the Orders necessary to discharge their responsibilities under the new legislation that was coming along, under the Water Act and the Planning Acts in particular. Here I pick up my noble friend's point and the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, may remember this. When we were dealing with our Water Bill in 1944 in the Coalition Government, in which I had the honour to be a colleague of the noble Lord, Mr. Winston Churchill (as he then was) himself put this procedure before Parliament as an improved procedure for dealing with our Water Bill at that time. It is a rather interesting historical footnote for those of us who look back over eighteen years with pleasure, as I am sure both of us do, to that time.
At the same time, the procedure had to provide adequate opportunities for the Orders to be challenged by Members of either House; and that it does. It can be challenged in either House by
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Members on the Floor of the House. An advantage of that is that the Minister can then defend his Order on the general principles on the Floor of the House, which is a sound place to do it. But, of course, those who object—the interests which are affected—can also present Petitions. It was thought that the procedure might well be extended to other Orders already subject to the Provisional Order procedure, which incidentally had been applied over the years to many Orders for which it was not really appropriate.
I ought at this stage to declare an interest, in that I helped to invent this Special Parliamentary Procedure some eighteen years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, may remember that I was chairman of the Sub-Committee of the Cabinet, under the Machinery of Government Committee, which dealt with the Parliamentary procedures. After I had invented it, and an ungrateful electorate decided to dispense with my Ministerial services, the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, took up my invention and moved the Bill in another place. I do not think he would say it was a breach of confidence at this time, to say that he passed to me one of his charming notes thanking me for what I had done about it. I do not suppose he remembers that, but I remember it very well.
It occurs to me that to-day I am in the converse position to that well-known scene in Iolanthe, which will be known to all your Lordships who are Gilbert and Sullivan addicts, as I am, where Iolanthe appeals to probably the best known of my predecessors in the office of Lord Chancellor for the life of her son, Strephon. A cynic of little romantic feeling might say that there was some difference in a Lord Chancellor appealing for the life of his legislative child, but I have too much confidence in the sympathetic nature of my noble friend Lord Conesford to believe that he would drive that point too far. Moreover, I am going to suggest an improvement in procedure which will have a more mundane but perhaps more compelling reason for getting his acquiescence.
The Government have recently conducted a lengthy and detailed inquiry into the procedure. In the course of this, they considered a number of criticisms

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which had been advanced and they had the benefit of advice from Officers of the two Houses. They came to the conclusion that, for Orders of an executive character—that is, Orders applying a national policy to local circumstances—the procedure was substantially sound and had fulfilled the objects for which it was devised. But certain Orders of a legislative character, for which the Government agreed that it was not appropriate, have now been put back to the other procedure—and this was the matter that my noble friend Lord Cones-ford referred to in the speech of my noble friend Lord Jellicoe. The Government's conclusions were given in a statement of August 1 last and were then set out in the White Paper (Cmnd. 1610) presented in January for the purpose of the debate on the Statutory Orders (Special Procedure Order), which took place on February 13. As my noble friend Lord Jellicoe said, there were one or two respects in which the procedure called for improvement. One I shall deal with to-day, and the others can be considered in the future.
To take the criticisms which my noble friend has made, the first is that these Orders do not receive the same detailed scrutiny which is afforded to a Private Bill. I think it is a misconception to say that one of these Orders is in the same position as a Private Bill. That is where a lot of this trouble has arisen. A Private Bill is essentially a Petition directed to Parliament by private interests for special powers or special dispensations from the ordinary law. The first time that interested parties need to be told about that is when it comes to Parliament, and the first opportunities for its provisions to be considered may arise only during the Parliamentary proceedings.
On the other hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has pointed out, a Special Parliamentary Procedure Order is made by a Minister in the discharge of responsibilities placed upon him by Statute. He is not seeking private rights for himself but is performing a public duty. Moreover, before making the Order he is under an obligation to inquire thoroughly into the whole issue, if necessary by holding a public inquiry. I submit that it would be inappropriate in these circumstances for the Minister to
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be placed under the same obligation as the promoter of a Private Bill to prove the case for the Order which he has made or for his Order to be subject to the same detailed scrutiny and to amendment, or even to rejection, by a Committee, regardless of whether any interested party has taken objection or not.
What is required—and I say this again because I think it meets my noble friend's point about Parliamentary control—is that Members of either House should have the opportunity to challenge the Order if they so wish and that interested parties outside the House should be able to appeal to Parliament against the Minister's decision. It means that, in cases where there is no Petition, no objection, there is no scrutiny, but, as I said, and as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, pointed out, that occurs in hundreds and thousands of cases at the present time. We considered whether it should go to the Special Orders Committee, but the Chairman of Committees was kind enough to undertake to examine Orders himself and to call the attention of the House to anything which he thought fit; and since the Lord Chairman carries the main burden of the work on Unopposed Private Bills, we thought that this arrangement should provide all the safeguards that are necessary.
Another criticism which was made arises from the confusion of Special Procedure Orders with Private Bills, and is in regard to the order of proceedings before a Joint Committee. It has been argued that the proper procedure should be for the Minister first of all to set out his case for the Order and then for the petitioner to make his case against it. My noble friend suggested that, in practice, that would mean the onus would be placed on the Minister to prove his case for the Order; and that, I have explained, is quite inappropriate. It is fundamental to the procedure that once the Minister has gone thoroughly into the matter, heard all the objections and given a decision, the onus is then on the petitioner who is appealing against the Order to prove his case against the Order.
My noble friend referred to it only faintly to-day, but the point was made as to whether the petitioner knows the

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case. Of course, that is not a valid criticism, because he knows all the preliminary proceedings. In these circumstances, there will have been a local inquiry and he knows about that. Moreover—a point which my noble friend Lord Conesford had not in mind to-day —we went into this in this House in 1960, when the Standing Orders of both Houses on this point were revised. If my noble friend will look at Private Business Standing Order No. 209, he will see that that now provides that the proceedings before a Joint Committee shall, if the Committee so require, be opened by the presentation of a factual statement agreed with the petitioner; and that solves any practical difficulty.
I think that my noble friend said in his speech on Second Reading that there was only one hearing before a Joint Committee, and not two hearings before Select Committees of both Houses. But, as I said, unlike a Private Bill the proposals in a Special Parliamentary Procedure Order have already been the subject of a public inquiry held on behalf of a Minister. These preliminary proceedings, and the factual statement which I have just mentioned, should give the petitioner all the information he requires. But the advantage of the single hearing before a Joint Committee lies in the very considerable saving of time and expense. My noble friend has made the case with regard to time, but I do ask him to look at the question of expense. It is very often public money that is being spent, by both sides, when Special Parliamentary Procedure Orders are being contested, and that is a very serious consideration and one which all of us should have in mind—even myself, remembering the interests of the profession of which I have the honour to be the head.
May I now come to the points on which we believe that we can meet my noble friend? As he said, two related points have been put forward. The first is that Petitions of general objection—that is, Petitions which seek to secure the outright rejection of an Order as distinct from its amendment—should be sent automatically to a Joint Committee and not, as at present, only by Resolution of either House, with the somewhat complicated procedure which my noble friend mentioned. The second is that the "Resolution period"—the second of the
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two periods of fourteen days during which it is necessary for one House or the other to resolve to send a Petition to a Joint Committee—is too short. Others have argued, as my noble friend Lord Conesford argued to-day, that these two factors present petitioners with serious difficulties in getting their objection before the Joint Committee. Whether or not they do in fact, it would be proper for us to argue that the theoretical position is there.
We came to the conclusion that both these criticisms had some merit. We do not accept as a matter of principle that all Petitions of general objection—I repeat "all" and the noble Lord will see my point—should automatically go to a Joint Committee. Such a Petition can be, I think my noble friend would agree, a direct challenge to a Minister's policy, and in that case I should have thought it ought to be dealt with in the first instance on the Floor of the House, where a Minister can defend his policy, rather than dealt with immediately by a forensic procedure. Nor do the Government know of any case where it can be said that a Petition of general objection has failed to reach a Joint Committee because of procedural difficulties. Nevertheless, the Government agree that there is something to be said for making it easier to get a Petition of general objection before a Committee, and they have said that they will deal with this when a suitable opportunity for legislation occurs.
I agree that the point has particular relevance in the context of this Bill. Compulsory purchase orders or compulsory rights orders which may have to be made under Clauses 9 and 10 may well be individual orders covering land which is all under one ownership, and a Petition against such an Order will necessarily be a Petition of general objection. The Government accept that it would be desirable to deal with this particular difficulty in advance of any general amendment to the procedure. If my noble friend will withdraw his Amendment to-day, I will undertake to bring forward at a later stage an Amendment which will have the effect of amending the Statutory Orders (Special Procedure) Act, 1945, in its application to these two clauses. I think that would be the convenient way to do it.
This would provide that a Petition of general objection should be sent to a

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Joint Committee, without the need for debate on the Floor of the House, unless a Motion is put down or the House otherwise orders. I think my noble friend will see that I must keep that position, from the point of view of the House no less than from that of the Minister. It is hoped that that will go some way to meet my noble friend. But, subject to that, for the reasons I have ventured to put before your Lordships, we think that the procedure is a fundamentally sound procedure.
As I have said, compulsory purchase Orders do not normally come to Parliament at all. On the few occasions when they do, they come by way of Special Parliamentary Procedure and not under Provisional Order procedure. This Special procedure gives the opportunity to Members of either House, as I have said, to challenge the Orders, and therefore they keep Parliamentary control, and for outside interests to petition. I submit that that is the right procedure. However, I have always tried—and it is now getting on for eight years since I first presided over your Lordships' House—in these matters where different views are held to meet the difficulties which some of my noble friends have. I think my noble friend Lord Conesford will consider that this is, at any rate, an important step in the right direction, which from his point of view is his direction, and therefore I hope he will not press his Amendment to-day. If there are any other points, I hope he will be good enough to communicate with me, and I will consider them.
LORD CONESFORD: My noble and learned friend has not only spoken with his usual persuasiveness but has gone a very long way towards meeting the principal point which I had in mind. Let me say to him at once that I do not mind in the least being confined to a single Committee, the Joint Committee. In fact, I think he will agree with me that that can be combined, and has been combined in some cases, with the Provisional Order procedure. But the matter to which I attach the greatest possible importance is that the Petition of general objection shall, in all appropriate cases, be able to reach the Joint Select Committee without a Parliamentary procedure so difficult that, since
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1945, it had never been accomplished in the House of Commons until this month. The exact terms of my noble friend's Amendment I shall study, with others, when it is put down, and I may make some approach to him as he has invited. Just before I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment, may I say that I thought he was about to deal with the matter which he raised of fourteen days?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I do not think that is of the same importance, if it automatically goes to a Committee, unless there is going to be an Order of the House. If my noble friend, on consideration, thinks that it has a greater importance than there seemed to me to be, I will look at it again; but it seemed to me that my suggestion really covered that, because it obviated the difficulty of the shortness of time. But I should be very glad to look at it again.
LORD CONESFORD: I am most grateful to my noble and learned friend and I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 9 agreed to.
Clause 10:
Orders for compulsory acquisition of rights over land for pipe-line construction
(6) A compulsory rights order shall not affect any right over the land comprised in the order which would not have been affected had that land been compulsorily purchased by virtue of a compulsory purchase order, nor shall it authorise disregard of any enactment.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved, after subsection (5) to insert:
( ) If in his particulars of claim the owner of any land in respect of which notice to treat for an easement or right is given under this section requires the pipe-line owner to acquire the land the pipe-line owner shall not be entitled under this section to acquire the easement or right unless the Lords Tribunal determines that the easement or right can be granted without material detriment to the land or in the case of a park or garden belonging to a house without seriously affecting the amenity or convenience of the house and if the Tribunal does not so determine the pipe-line owner may acquire the land compulsorily not later than one year after the determination of the Tribunal:
The noble Viscount said: This is not, perhaps, a very large point, but this

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Amendment raises a matter which your Lordships thought fit to put in the Esso Petroleum Act of 1959, I think, under which a certain obligation was laid upon a pipe-line owner who was given by Parliament compulsory purchase powers.
As your Lordships will see, the provisions for compensation under this Bill in the case of a compulsory rights order are entirely contained in Clauses 10 and 11, whereas a compulsory purchase order under Clause 9 automatically attracts the provisions of the Land Compensation Act of last year, with very much wider and more far-reaching provisions for compensation in many ways. It seems to me that there may be cases where a compulsory rights order made and confirmed under this Bill would sterilise the whole of one man's piece of land. It might mean that he could do nothing with it whatever, because the pipe-line in fact ran underneath it, and had this effect of sterilising it completely. In such a case, it seems to me that he ought to have the right to ask the Lands Tribunal to require the pipe-line owner to buy the whole of the land and not just the right to put a pipe-line underneath it. This is not precisely what my Amendment asks, because the onus of proof is the other way round. But as your Lordships have seen fit to put it in this way in the Esso Petroleum Act, I should not lightly have chosen to change it. Nevertheless, it is a provision which occurs in that Act and I think It ought to be considered by the Committee this afternoon.
There is a second part of my Amendment, which would allow the Lands Tribunal to require the pipe-line owner to buy a garden or a path which goes with a house, if that garden or path were similarly sterilised by a compulsory rights order for a pipe-line to run underneath it. It is, as I say, not a very important point, but it is one which has arisen in the past in the context of compulsory purchase orders for pipe-lines. I hope that my noble friend Lord Mills will be able to assure your Lordships that, if this Amendment is not accepted, its omission from this Bill will not damage landowners who may have dealings with pipe-lines in the future. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 5 at end insert—
("( ) If in his particulars of claim the owner of any land in respect of which notice to treat for an easement or right is given under this section requires the pipe-line owner to acquire the land, the pipe-line owner shall not be entitled under this section to acquire the easement or right unless the Lands Tribunal determines that the easement or right can be granted without material detriment to the land or, in the case of a park or garden belonging to a house, without seriously affecting the amenity or convenience of the house; and if the Tribunal does not so determine, the pipeline owner may acquire the land compulsorily not later than one year after the determination of the Tribunal.").—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)
4.10 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): I certainly have not in mind to argue with my noble friend about the merits of the principle underlying his Amendment. As he says, perhaps it is not a very important one; nevertheless it is a point which, in my view, he did right to bring up. I will content myself by trying to respond to the assurance for which he asked by saying that this Amendment is unnecessary because Clause 11 (1) of the Bill provides in the case of a compulsory rights order for compensation equivalent to the depreciation in the value of land. This means that a landowner who does not wish to retain his land after a compulsory wayleave has been granted over it may sell it at the depreciated price and will receive by way of compensation the difference between that and the full market value before the wayleave was granted.
I think that this provision safeguards the position, of an owner fairly adequately. The acceptance of this Amendment would do little more than provide an immediate purchaser for the land, in the shape of the pipe-line promoter. It might not be unfair to say that to accept this would put on the pipe-line promoter something of an unjustified burden. The acceptance of this Amendment might also mean that the pipe-line promoter would find himself with a number of odd parcels of land which were of no use to him, which he was not necessarily equipped to manage or farm and which he could not perhaps conveniently sell in quantity. I am not

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convinced that that would be in the interests of the proper management of the land. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend may think that the position of the landowner is safeguarded by this assurance and will not wish to continue with his Amendment.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I thank my noble friend for his answer. I am not really so concerned that the pipe-line promoter should not end up with pieces of land for which he has no particular use. After all, by putting a pipe-line beneath land ex hypothesi he has made it of no use to the person who owned it previously. Therefore, if he has that benefit out of it, I do not see why he should complain particularly when he owns the surface of the land as well. Nevertheless, I see my noble friend's point: that under Clause 11 (1) payment of depreciation in such a case would probably be large enough to cover the loss of the beneficial use of the surface of the land. All I can hope is that it will turn out in practice in the Lands Tribunal that that may be the case, otherwise there may be cause for complaint. But I hope that that will not arise, and beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.14 p.m.
LORD BURDEN LORD BURDEN moved to add to subsection (6):
"or any by-law made under an enactment."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment is submitted after consultation with the River Boards Association. With other Members of your Lordships' House, I happen to be one of its Vice-Presidents. Your Lordships will see that this subsection provides that a compulsory rights order, which of course is an order made by the Minister, shall not authorise the disregard of any enactment. Therefore it seems to me to be both logical and reasonable that any by-law which has been made in virtue of any enactment which any rights order must not disregard, or any by-law confirmed by the Minister, similarly should not be disregarded—in other words, it should remain operative. It is possible that in making a compulsory rights order, taking into account any by-law or sets of by-laws made and confirmed by a
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Minister arising out of a particular enactment, the Minister may think that one or more may be unnecessary, but I suggest that he could deal with that point in the order which he makes.
May I examine for a moment the alternative to my Amendment? On the assumption that the Amendment is not accepted, it would follow that any bylaw or set of by-laws made by a Minister, or by a river board and authorised by a Minister, would cease to have any effect in the event of a compulsory rights order being authorised and applying to land which falls within the area of a river board. Therefore it seems to me that, in the event of a compulsory rights order of the character indicated, a number of the by-laws which have been sanctioned by the Minister ever since the passing of the River Board Act would have no validity at all, because there is no provision in the Bill for them to remain operative so far as land within the area of the river board is subject to a compulsory rights order.
Frankly, I think that this is wrong. No one can foresee the effect of such an impossible position so far as the river boards are concerned. In the event of a compulsory rights order, must they be exempted and must they have to go through all the Parliamentary procedure which has been indicated, or some other form of Parliamentary procedure, in order to get good by-laws which are in no way affected by a compulsory rights order but relate only to the area within the river board's jurisdiction? Must they go through some form of Parliamentary procedure in order to get these by-laws again made valid and workable?
Of course, it is just possible that those in charge of the Bill may not be able to accept my Amendment in its present form, but the matter seems to me to be one of great importance to the River Boards Association and river boards likely to be affected. It is in no way adverse to the pipe-line business, and is put forward with a view only to good government and to enable river boards to carry out duties which Parliament has imposed on them. If the Minister cannot accept the Amendment, I hope he will be able to tell the Committee that some other form of words may be put

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down at a later stage, or that he can help the river boards in what they feel is a real dilemma and difficulty if the subsection is not amended. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 10, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Burden.)
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: As a Vice-President of the Central Associations of River Boards, I should like to support the noble Lord in this Amendment. The Association feel strongly about this. The noble Lord, Lord Burden, has put the arguments very well, and I hope the Amendment will be accepted by the Government.
LORD CHESHAM: To begin with, I think I can agree with the noble Lord, Lord Burden, that the mere making of a compulsory rights order should not exempt a pipe-line owner from his obligations under by-laws. It seemed to me, when considering this Amendment in advance, that the main point is whether or not there is some doubt that the word "enactment" in the Bill includes by-laws. I am advised that there is some such doubt. If that is so, among the other things the noble Lord mentioned we should get a position where the same pipe-line would be subject to by-laws where it had been given a voluntary wayleave, and not subject to by-laws in places where a compulsory rights order had been used. Of course, that would be an absurd position. I can therefore help the noble Lord by saying that I am quite ready to accept the principle of the Amendment. He will not mind my confirming what he himself suggested—namely, that there are doubts as to the place in which it should go and its form. If the noble Lord will withdraw the Amendment, we will put down a Government Amendment covering what he wants at a later stage.
LORD BURDEN: I am grateful to the noble Lord for that assurance, as I am to the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, for his support, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 10 agreed to.
Clause 11 [Compensation in respect of compulsory rights orders]:
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY moved to insert as a new subsection (1):
"( ) A person entitled to an interest in land which comprises, or is held with, land to which a compulsory rights order applies, being an interest subsisting at the time when the order was made, shall be entitled to a payment by the person in whose favour the order is made of the full value for the rights thereby obtained."
The noble Lord said: As your Lordships will realise, Clause 11 of the Bill is the only clause which deals with compensation for compulsory rights orders. As my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross said in moving an earlier Amendment, they are not subject to the Land Compensation Act. I wish to raise a point that I mentioned on Second Reading. Under Clause (1) a person is compensated for the depreciation in the value of the freehold, and under subsection (2) he receives compensation for any damage done. But he gets no payment whatever for the rights that he is giving for the pipe-line to go across his land. In the case of statutory undertakers, so far as sewers, water mains and so on are concerned, which are laid for the general benefit of the public, I think that is quite right; and it is the position at the moment. Here, however, we have commercial companies who in the past have always been prepared to pay for the rights which they acquired, but under this Bill they will acquire those rights for nothing. There is, in my view, a great deal of difference between a commercial company who will get a right for their own profit and the statutory undertakers. Under the Esso Petroleum Act, and in the case of the Shell pipe-lines, various agreements have been arrived at under which differing sums have been agreed as minimum payment for putting a pipeline through land; and in the case of the Shell Company there was also a payment to the occupier of the land for the disturbance caused in the process of laying the pipe-line.
I am not saying that the owners of land should be in a position to hold a company up to ransom, and that is why I agree that the compulsory powers are necessary. I feel, however, that in introducing a Public Bill we do not want to put the owners and occupiers of land in a worse position than they were in under

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the Private Bill procedure. That is really the object of the Amendment. I do not pretend that it is an ideal Amendment which could be accepted in the form in which I move it, but if my noble friend can assure me that he agrees that there is a point of principle here which will be looked into, then I shall be happy to withdraw the Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 13, at beginning insert the said subsection.—(Lord Amherst of Hackney.)
LORD WOLVERTON: I think my noble friend has a good point here. These will be commercial companies and not statutory undertakers, and it seems to me that they ought to pay either a wayleave charge or some lump sum for the rights. Even statutory companies, like the Electricity Board and the former electricity companies, used to pay wayleave for their pylons going over land. They go overhead, of course, but there is a disturbance to land and compensation was paid. I cannot see why a commercial company who are going to get some benefit out of the pipe-lines should not pay the owners some part of that benefit for using their land.
4.30 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I also should like to support my noble friend Lord Amherst of Hackney, on a point which seems to me to be of great importance and very valid. The various landowners' associations and the National Farmers' Union have in the past succeeded in making agreements with the big commercial companies who wished to put pipe-lines through their members' land. That has been done not only in the case of the two oil pipe-lines my noble friend mentioned; it has been a widespread practice, and a certain number of shillings, or whatever the sum was, per yard of the pipe-line was paid to the landowner.
Now this Bill has come along, and it is, as my noble friend has said, putting the position in the case of compulsory purchase fairly and squarely into the same situation as applied, for instance, under the Public Health Act for the laying of sewers where case law has established that compensation is paid for the depreciation of the land, if any
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—and in many cases there is none whatsoever—and also for the disturbance involved in laying the pipe, and for people coming to and fro on occasions to inspect it, look down the manholes, and so on. But in the cases under that Statute and others, there has been held to be no payment to be made for the actual right to put the pipe through the land. In the case of a pipe-line the right is the thing the companies want. That is what is of value to them, and, as this is a commercial bargain, it seems strange to me that the landowner should get nothing whatever for it. But that is the case under the Bill at the moment. I hope my noble friend Lords Mills will be able to give your Lordships some reassurance. so that the situation may not arise where the pipe-line owner will be able to say to a landowner. "I am not going to give you any payment for the wayleave under a voluntary agreement. because I will go and get my compulsory purchase order and then I shall not have to give it to you." That is the situation which will arise as the clause is now drafted. Therefore I strongly support my noble friend in this Amendment.
LORD MILLS: As your Lordships know, the Bill already provides in Clause 11 for compensation to be paid to the landowner for any damage caused in the laying of a pipe-line. There is provision too, in the same clause, for compensation to be paid for any depreciation in the value of land which is the subject of a compulsory rights order. The noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, so staunchly supported by the noble Lord, Lord Wolverton, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, would like the Bill to go further than this. They want provision made for a wayleave payment by the owner of a pipe-line to the owner of land where the pipe-line runs.
Before I deal with this in more detail, may I remind your Lordships that the noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, made this suggestion during the Second Reading debate on this Bill. I then gave him a reply which, as I look at it now, perhaps indicated that a provision for a wayleave payment such as he wants is already in the Bill. This in fact is not so and I should like to take this opportunity to make that quite clear. I hope that what I said has not given rise

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to any misunderstanding about what is the position under the Bill as it stands at present.
The question remains whether provision for a wayleave payment, which would be in the nature of a rent, should as noble Lords propose be put in the Bill. The view of the Government is that it should not. Acceptance of the principle embodied in the Amendment would indeed have the most far-reaching repercussions on Government compensation policy in many fields. The principle behind the existing provision in the Bill for compensation for damage or depreciation is that the owner or occupier should not be worse off because compulsory rights are taken over his land; but that equally he should not gain financially for that reason. This follows the precedent of Section 18 (1) of the Land Powers (Defence) Act, 1958, which lays down the principle of compensation for compulsory wayleaves taken by a Minister under that Act for a Government oil pipe-line. There would be extremely great practical difficulties if we tried to go beyond that in the present Bill. After all, from the point of view of the landowner concerned, there is really no essential difference between pipe-lines crossing his land that are owned by a private company and those that are owned by the Government or a statutory body, such as a Gas Board or a water undertaking.
The principle to be preserved is that people should be no worse off because compulsory rights are taken over their land, and the Bill secures that. Therefore, while I see the reasons behind the noble Lord's views, and in a sense I am in sympathy with them, I regret that the Government cannot go any further than they have done in this Bill.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Mills, that the principle he has advocated may be all very well in the 1958 legislation for Government Bills, but it does not seem to me appropriate now, because of this fact. After applying for a pipe-line order, a company acquires a right from the Minister. The means by which he gets this is either by compulsory order or by permission to make a voluntary order. But in neither case is it a planning permission, and land with planning permission sells at a higher price than land
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without. The local authority or a private developer will pay the price that land with planning permission is worth in the market. That is a well-known thing. It would seem to me that that principle should also apply in this Bill. I do not think that those who wish to operate a pipe-line would want to be so severe on the owners as to appropriate to themselves the whole of the benefit which comes from this planning permission. I expect they would be perfectly reasonable and recognise the position and be willing to pay something.
Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross said, it will certainly make their job much easier to negotiate voluntary agreements if they are willing to pay some small amount for the way-leave right, whereas if they can get a compulsory power they will not be likely in all cases to negotiate these voluntary agreements. It seems to me that the objective of this legislation ought to be to make it possible for those who wish to build a pipe-line to come to some arrangement between themselves and the owners which would be satisfactory to both parties and which would result in a pipe-line in the place where it was most wanted. I do not believe that by the addition of these very stringent conditions the Bill is going to make that any easier.
LORD WOLVERTON: The noble Lord, Lord Mills, said that under the 1958 Act the Government had these powers for laying pipe-lines which, I understand, were for National Defence. That is quite a different thing from pipe-lines which are laid for commercial operation, for people who are going to make a profit out of them. I take a completely different view of that. One gives way a lot for National Defence, but I cannot say quite the same on this.
LORD OGMORE: The Government are under very heavy pressure from the land-owning interests on this Amendment. There is no reason why they should not make their voices heard, but they are rather over-strident in this House as a general rule and it would make a change to hear other views. Very rarely does one hear in this House the voice of the consumer. May I look at this Amendment from the point of view of those who have to pay, the ordinary members of the public?

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I think the Government are quite right in their attitude in this case because, as I gather from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mills, the landowner will receive compensation for any damage done and for any depreciation of his property. What more does he want than that? The surface of the land is not going to be interfered with. He is going to be able to enjoy it as in the past. There are not going to be pipe-lines running across the surface of his land; the pipelines will be underneath it. They will not interfere with his enjoyment of the land in any way whatsoever.
The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, used an argument which I should have thought was in fact an argument in favour of the Government. He said that if people want compulsory arbitration they were not likely to make a voluntary agreement. It seems to me that that, in fact, is what they will do. People who want to construct pipe-lines are generally people who do not want to be faced with a number of compulsory arbitrations on their hands. They will, in fact, I should think, for the purposes of speed if nothing else, desire to make voluntary agreements where it is possible and, no doubt, if they wish to do so they will make some small contribution to the landlords. I cannot myself see that it is a very weighty argument to say that people who are going to construct pipelines will refuse to enter into voluntary agreements, because the ultimate power is, in any case, largely in the hands of the Minister for compulsory arbitration.
As I understand this Bill—and I may be wrong—it foreshadows what will in future, in all probability, be the method of carrying large quantities of various types of material across the country. This is a Bill which really caters for the future and I feel that we do not want to clutter up the Bill with a provision for a vast number of payments to people who happen to own the surface of the land. I hope that the Government will not give way, because the people who are going to pay for this compensation will not in fact be the people who are laying the pipe-lines, as they will pass it on to their customers, to the consumers; it will be the people in this country who already pay, either as taxpayers or as purchasers of the goods, and who are, as we know, very
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heavily burdened at the present moment. I hope the Government will resist this Amendment, which I do not think is in the interests of the men and women of the country.
LORD DERWENT: Surely, the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, is somewhat wrong. There is competition in selling the product, and if anyone is going to benefit by getting something on the cheap it is not the public or the Government, it is going to be the shareholder.
LORD MILLS: I have listened very carefully to what has been said by noble Lords further in support of this Amendment. I think we are tending to lose sight of the fact that, as we have so often said in this House and in this Committee, the hope of the Government is that most of these wayleaves will be negotiated voluntarily and that compulsory purchase and compulsory rights will be the exception. That may not prove right, but it is our hope; and I am sure that the Minister will have due regard to that point if he finds that far from his expectations, the pipe-line promoters demand compulsory purchase orders or wayleaves in each case. Do not let us forget that before the Minister considers the matter at all he has to know whether these rights can be negotiated or whether he is going to be faced with applications for compulsory purchases. I think the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, expressed that point very well. The difficulty the Government find in this matter is, as I have already said, that the Amendment would make complications on the question of compensation generally, and they find themselves quite unable to accept this proposal. I do not think I can add much more to that.
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY: Before asking leave to withdraw the Amendment, I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Mills, that I did not feel he had misled me in his speech on Second Reading. I merely thought I had not made my point clear. I am very disappointed with the reply that the noble Lord has given, but I do not intend to press the Amendment and I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY moved, after subsection (2), to insert:
"( ) If at any time in respect of land in, on or through which a pipe-line has been laid in the

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exercise of any rights, powers or authorisations conferred by or under the provisions of this Act, and in respect of which land an application is made for permission to develop such land on an application made under the enactments relating to town and country planning, and—

(a) the application is granted, but the permitted development is prevented solely by reason of the presence of the pipe-line in, on through or near the land, and restrictions on the use of the land imposed by or under the provisions of this Act; or

(b) the application is refused solely by reason of the presence of the pipe-line in on through or near the land;

and the development for which planning permission is applied for cannot reasonably be arranged so as to avoid the pipe-line, or any land upon which the aforesaid development is prohibited by or under the provisions of this Act, the owner of the pipe-line shall pay to the owner of the aforesaid land compensation equal to the amount of any loss of value of the land due to the restriction upon development of the land:
Provided that—

(i) No compensation shall be payable under the provisions of this subsection for any loss of value for which compensation has already been paid under subsection (1) of this section;

(ii) Where planning permission for the proposed development has been granted as aforesaid, the owner of the pipe-line shall, subject to the provisions of section 3 of this Act, be entitled in lieu of the payment of compensation under this subsection, to divert the pipe-line in such manner so as to enable the proposed development lawfully to take place.".

The noble Lord said: This is on a slightly different point and it becomes perhaps a little more important owing to the reception of the last Amendment. This deals with the case where a pipeline goes across somebody's land and compensation is paid obviously at the existing use value, and at a later stage what would have been the value of that land changes, possibly because of development or something like that, but the existence of the pipe-line makes that development impossible. Under both the Esso Bill and the Shell Bill clauses have been inserted to the effect that if the grantor at a later stage wishes to develop, and gets permission to do so, and is prevented from doing so by the existence of the pipe, then if he goes to the company they will either move the pipe or pay him compensation. In the case of the Esso Bill this provision, I think, covered the next fifteen years, and I believe I am right in saying that in the case of the Shell Bill it was continued on
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into the future. This is a difficult point and, of course, can be done only once. Obviously, it is not something which can be repeated in the future. But here somebody has a pipe put into his land which he does not want there at all and for which he gets absolutely nothing, and, as I have said, at a later stage it is possible that he finds, owing to the pipe, that that bit of land is sterilised. I think it is a point which should be considered. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 27, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Amherst of Hackney.)
4.50 p.m.
Viscount COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I do not go so far as my noble friend in what he said in moving this Amendment, but there is one point which I should like to draw to the attention of my noble friend Lord Mills, and it is this. As I understand it, the Land Compensation Act will apply to a compulsory purchase under this Bill. That means that where, for the sake of argument, a valve house for the purposes of a pipe-line is put on land and a compulsory purchase order for that small piece of land is confirmed, then the compensation for that piece of land will be assessed now under the 1961 Act with regard to the probabilities of the planning for that piece of land. That is to say, if within the reasonably foreseeable future it is possible that that land would have been otherwise developed for housing or industry or something else, so accordingly the compensation will be higher, and I think rightly so, provided one keeps it to the foreseeable future at the time when the Lands Tribunal takes account of the matter.
However, if it is just a compulsory rights order that is obtained under Clause 11 of this Bill, there is nothing in the Bill to say that any reasonable forecast of the planning situation will be made at all. It seems to me possible that the value of depreciation may solely be taken as at the date when the order is made, and no forecast will be made to give the landowner extra value if in fact there is a reasonable possibility that within the near future that land might otherwise have been used for development but will, of course, be sterilised by this Bill. Whatever the noble Lord,

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Lord Ogmore, may say, I think this is a case where a landowner ought to be compensated for the just depreciation of his land in the same way as he would have been under a compulsory purchase order. I have not given notice of this point to my noble friend, but I hope at some time he will be able to touch on it and see that it is covered in the Bill.
LORD MILLS: My noble friend Lord Amherst of Hackney put forward a proposition which sounded so reasonable that I regret I am in the position of having to refuse it, on what I think are sound grounds. The acceptance of the principle of this Amendment would mean that for an indefinite period pipeline promoters would be liable to pay additional compensation of an unspecified amount. It would be quite unreasonable, I think, to impose by Statute an open-ended obligation of this kind. It would almost certainly have a stultifying effect on industrial development of pipe-lines. Where a promoter is considering whether to invest what might be a very large sum of money in new facilities of this kind, he should be able to calculate the expenditure to which he is committing himself within reasonable limits and should not be left with the risk of having to meet additional large commitments for reasons quite outside his own control. I would point out, in addition, that if these provisions were applied to private pipe-lines it would set a most awkward precedent for Government pipe-lines, gas pipelines and so on, and might seriously breach the Government compensation policy generally.
Where compulsory rights are taken, the landowners' legitimate interests are safeguarded by the provisions of the Bill for compensation in respect of any depreciation in the value of the land at the time the compulsory rights order is made. There are many forms of development which might have the effect of preventing the more profitable use of the land subsequently, and it would be undesirable to single out one of those for special treatment in public legislation. As I said in regard to the previous Amendment, where wayleaves are obtained voluntarily it is, of course, up to the landowner to secure the best terms
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he can. The point raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, is, as he said, a new one of which I have not had any notice, and I should be grateful if he would permit me to look into it. I am sorry I am unable to accept the proposed Amendment.
LORD BURDEN: While not pressing the noble Lord to accept the Amendment, I must say that listening to the noble Lord, Lord Mills, and the noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, my mind went back to the way in which Parliament treated railways in the early days of railway history, how tremendous sums were forced out of the railway companies as compensation for all sorts of conditions by the Parliament of the day. It is just a sidelight on the way in which the centre of power has now shifted in Parliament from the landowning classes, those who owned land over a hundred years ago, when we have come to the position of the noble Lord defending private enterprise against what are considered unreasonable demands of the landowning classes.
LORD WOLVERTON: I think the noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, has an important point here. Let us assume that the pipe-line owner was not able to do it by voluntary agreement and had to go to compulsion, and the pipe-line was laid when the land was not ripe for development. It might have become near ripe in the foreseeable future—say, ten or fifteen years, which I understand is the period taken in the Esso case. If the land was then given planning permission and the owner of the pipe-line was approached and refused to divert the pipe-line, of course it would sterilise the land completely, because the landowner could not build over it. If he built over it and the pipeline went wrong he would be in a difficult position. If this is legislation for the future, I think we ought to think of this matter very carefully. There is an important point here which ought to be met in some way.
VISCOUNT RIDLEY: While I cannot but agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mills, that a definite obligation for an unnamed amount would be an impossible burden to lay on the promoter of the pipe-line, I think it is important to look and see that both the

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right to lay the pipe-line and the right to buy the land operate having regard to what future planning operations may be. I believe the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, was right in making that point. At the same time there is the equally important point that a pipeline may at some stage prevent the development of a rather large area of land and may mean that the land is a great deal less valuable than it should be. I would not suggest that an obligation to pay compensation at a late stage be put on the company, but there may be a case for moving the pipe-line at the expense of the landowner concerned. Is it possible to think of some means whereby there is an obligation on the company to be willing to move the pipeline, but not at its own expense? Such a situation might arise and it might be worth considering.
LORD SILKIN: I do not know whether there is any danger of the noble Lord, Lord Mills, being seduced by the blandishments of the noble Lords on his side, but I hope he will stand firm on this matter as he has done on a number of other occasions with far more reasonable Amendments. In this case the compensation is not only based on the immediate prospect if it is settled under the Act of 1959; the compensation is based upon what is the value of the land, to be settled if necessary by the Lands Tribunal. That value will be assessed having regard not only to the immediate possibilities of development but to any future possibilities. The noble Viscount opposite shakes his head. I will have a word with him outside, and we will compare notes on how many cases he has had before the Lands Tribunal and how many I have had, and I think he will find that I am right The value of land is what its potentialities are—what somebody will pay for it in the open market. Somebody buying land in the open market will have regard not only to what he can do to-day, but what he will be able to do in the future. However, that price is settled by the Lands Tribunal, once for all.
Admittedly, there is, I think in the 1959 Act, a provision that within five years it is possible to go back to the local authority and get a little more if the planning position has changed—that is putting it broadly. This Amendment
1102
would give the owner of the land the right to go back in perpetuity, without any time limitation. The noble Lord, Lord Amherst of Hackney, has opened his mouth far too wide. If he had said "within five years" he would have had a more arguable case. But he would come back in a hundred years' time, if necessary. That cannot be right. But, on balance, I think this is right. It is one thing to "bleed" a local authority—I suppose that is permissible if they want to acquire land compulsorily; but to expect private enterprise to be "bled" is quite wrong. I hope that the noble Lord will stand firm on this.
5.3 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Of course I shall be delighted to meet the noble Lord opposite afterwards. I should like, however, to say that he is quite right that the compensation provisions of the 1959 Town Planning and Country Act (Which I might remind him are consolidated in the Land Compensation Act, 1961) will apply to a compulsory purchase order under Clause 9. However, as I understand it, they would not apply to compulsory rights orders under Clause 10, for which the compensation is laid down in Clause 11. That was the distinction that I was making, and that is why I was hoping that in the case of a compulsory rights order the same sort of procedure as is provided for a compulsory purchase order under the 1961 Act would apply. I hope that is clear.
LORD MILLS: I have already said to my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, that I will look into that point. In reply to my noble friend Lord Silkin, I hope that I shall always be prepared to give way, whether the proposal comes from his side of the House or from this side of the House, when I am satisfied that there is a practical or a just case. I do not think that this is a practical proposal, and I do not propose to give way.
LORD AMHERST OF HACKNEY: I see the difficulties of the noble Lord in accepting this Amendment. I am glad that he is going to look into the point mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. I think it is an

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important point. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Whether Clause 11 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD CONESFORD: May I raise one point, on the Question that this clause shall stand part of the Bill? On Second Reading I drew attention to what appeared to me to be a defect in the draftsmanship of subsection (2) which I am quite unable to follow as it stands. It reads:
"Where in the exercise of any right conferred by a compulsory rights order a person suffers loss by reason of damage to …" and so on.
So far as I can see, the person who suffers loss or damage is not the person exercising the right. With all respect, the words seem to me to be slightly nonsensical. It occurs to me that possibly the second word in the sentence, "in", should be "through", which would make some sort of sense. It may be that I am quite wrong in all this. I see my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor: no doubt he can say whether I have gone mad or the draftsman has nodded.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I accept my noble friend's invitation and can give him the most complete assurances as to his sanity and comprehension. It is not the person who exercises the right with whose possibilities of compensation we are concerned. May I translate the clause into its active form, giving the substance of it? In addition to depreciation, where the exercise of a compulsory rights order damages anyone's land or personal property, or deprives him of the enjoyment of it, he must be paid compensation. It is not necessary for the plaintiff to prove negligence. That is the effect of the clause. I think that the use of the word "in" is in order to avoid excluding what might be thought to be collateral damage—for example, people walking over the land; but I will certainly have a look at and discuss this interesting point. In the meantime, my noble friend need not fear for the additional compensation which will come, under the subsection, to the person entitled to it.
Clause 11 agreed to.
5.8 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved, after Clause 11 to insert the following new clause
Compensation arising out of pipe-lines
.—(1) In this section the expression "land" includes any works or apparatus situated under over or upon land and any interest in land.
(2) The owner of a pipe-line shall pay compensation to the owner, lessee and occupier of any land—

(a) for any damage caused to such land, and

(b) for any other expenses, loss, damages personally or costs incurred by such owner, lessee or occupier

not otherwise provided for in this Act which may be occasioned—

(i) by reason of the pipe-line and any works constructed in connection therewith or in consequence thereof or the leakage, bursting or failure of the pipe-line or such works:

(ii) by reason of any act or omission of the owner of the pipe-line or of any person In his employment or of his contractors or agents whilst engaged upon the pipe-line and any works constructed in connection therewith or in consequence thereof of the repair or maintenance thereof:

(iii) by reason of the exercise by an inspector of the powers and duties conferred upon him by section thirty-nine of this Act:

and the owner of the pipe-line shall effectively, independently and hold harmless any such owner, lessee or occupier from and against all claims and demands arising out of or in connection with the pipe-line and any works constructed in connection therewith or in consequence thereof or the repair or maintenance thereof or any such leakage, bursting or fracture or act or omission as aforesaid and the fact that any work or thing may have been done by any such owner, lessee or occupier on behalf of the owner of the pipe-line or done by the owner of the pipe-line in accordance with any requirement of his or under his supervision shall not excuse the owner of the pipe-line from any liability under the provisions of this section:
Provided that—

(a) this subsection shall not impose any liability on the owner of the pipe-line to indemnify and hold harmless any owner lessee or occupier in respect of so much of any damage as is attributable to the act neglect or default of such owner lessee or occupier or of any persons in his employment or of his contractors or agents;

(b) any such owner lessee or occupier shall give reasonable notice to the owner of the pipe-line of any claim or demand which in his opinion is a claim or demand for which the owner of the pipe-line may be liable and no settlement or compromise thereof shall be made without the consent in writing of the owner of the pipe-line.

(3) Any difference arising between the owner of the pipe-line and the owner lessee or occupier of any land under this section (other than a difference as to the meaning or construction of this section) shall be settled by arbitration."
The noble Viscount said: In moving this Amendment I again rely upon the wisdom of your Lordships in inserting a similar clause in the Esso Act in 1959 which, as does this Bill, empowered a certain commercial company to buy land compulsorily to lay a pipe-line. This proposed new clause provides for absolute liability on the part of the pipe-line owner for any explosion or leakage of his pipe-line which does damage to anyone. I am glad that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor is still here, because as I understand Clause 11 (2), a person who is injured while walking over the pipe-line would not personally be compensated under the Bill as it now stands. This is particularly important, seeing that your Lordships will, in a moment, come to a series of clauses which deal with pipe-lines laid in public highways, where people may be walking about or driving their cars, or be doing any number of things.
As the Bill is at present drafted, there is in Clause 11 (2) what seems to me to be another defect, in that the clause provides only for compensation for people who have their property damaged where compulsory rights orders have been made and confirmed in favour of the pipe-tine company. Your Lordships will see that where a landowner voluntarily agrees with a pipe-line company that it shall lay a pipe-line through his land, he will take an equivalent clause in the agreement to that which is provided in this Bill, to protect him from any damage that may arise in the future. I have no doubt that that is so. But, of course, there may be people who have land or property on either side of the pipe-line who are not in negotiation with the pipe-line owner. They would have no opportunity in any agreement made with the pipe-line owner to insert anything for their protection in the case of an explosion or leakage later on; and personal damage is, I believe, not covered by the Bill at all.
Therefore it seems to me that there is something of a gap here. It may be that personal injury should not be covered and that Common Law rights are enough. On the other hand, I believe
1106
that the lack of a provision, where there is a voluntary agreement, for any protection of collateral owners on either side is a defect in this Bill and might be looked at again—particularly as your Lordships have already seen fit to include such a provision in a Pipe-line Bill and are doing the same as the House did then: that is to say, conferring compulsory rights powers on any company which can get to this stage of procedure in the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 11 insert the said new clause. —(Viscount Colville of Culross.)
LORD MILLS: As the noble Viscount said, the intention of this new clause appears to be to establish the principle of absolute liability for damage to land or persons arising out of the construction of a pipe-line or its presence on the land. As it stands, the Bill provides, in Clause 11 (2), that in the case of a compulsory rights order the owner is liable, without proof of negligence, to pay compensation if, in the exercise of a compulsory right, he causes damage to anyone's land or personal property, or disturbance in the enjoyment of it. This provision follows the principles laid down for Government oil pipe-lines under Section 18 (3) of the Land Powers (Defence) Act, 1958. Claims for injury to the person will be governed by the Common Law, and negligence would normally have to be proved.
The Government have given very careful consideration to this problem, and have decided against making the liability of pipe-line owners absolute, for the following reasons. Pipe-lines are no more nor less dangerous than many other kinds of industrial equipment. Where Statutes impose an absolute liability of this kind they have always done so for some special reason. Perhaps I could give three examples of this. Such a liability is imposed on the owner of an aircraft, under the Civil Aviation Act, 1959, as a quid pro quo for permitting without compensation the notional trespass which, apart from that Act, would occur whenever an aircraft flies over someone's land. Secondly, such a liability is imposed on the National Coal Board, under the Coalmining Subsidence Act, 1957, because in the slow process of subsidence it is usually impossible to say whether at any time the Board or its

1107
predecessors have acted negligently. The third example is the Atomic Energy Authority, under the Atomic Energy Authority Act, 1954, and nuclear site licensees under the Nuclear Installations (Licensing and Insurance) Act, 1959, because they would be handling radioactive substances on a large scale and the risks of doing so were still imperfectly known. No such special reasons, so far as we can discover, are applicable to pipe-lines, and the Government therefore consider that they would not be justified in establishing the precedent of an abnormally onerous liability for a type of future industrial development which presented no exceptional risks. In these circumstances we do not find this clause acceptable.
LORD CONESFORD: I am a little surprised that the Government have turned down quite so definitely the suggestion of absolute liability. I should have thought that the precedent in Common Law was by no means so clear against the Amendment as my noble friend the Minister has suggested. I am admittedly very rusty in my law and am quoting from memory, but I think the leading cases are Rylands v. Fletcher and Nichols v. Marsland. Nichols v. Marsland was a case, I think, where a man caused a reservoir to be put on his land to collect the water and was not negligent in any way, but the dam burst and his neighbour was damaged. In that case the principle of Rylands v. Fletcher was applied, and, if I remember my books aright, the Court of Appeal in Nichols v. Marsland said that where a man for his own purposes had brought on to the land a thing which was not naturally there and it escaped and did damage, then he was absolutely liable. I have no idea what the danger of these things may be, but I should think that it would be very hard on some innocent walker, who was perhaps following a footpath, if some dangerous gases exploded in one of these pipe-lines and, perhaps, he lost a leg. It seems that it would be rather hard on him, if it were a complete answer to any claim by him for damages to say, "Oh no, we were not negligent. We are very sorry about your leg, but nothing can be done".
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I do not want to rival my noble friend in his knowledge of the law—indeed, I
1108
could not do so—but I must say that the answer of my noble friend Lord Mills surprised me somewhat, because in actual fact Her Majesty's Government have provided in this clause a certain absolute liability. What they have done is to say that where there is a compulsory rights order an adjoining owner will automatically, and without proof of negligence, be compensated for any damage caused to him as a result of an explosion. That is the situation without his having anything to do with the compulsory rights order or the procedure; and in any event he will not be affected by it. Yet Her Majesty's Government refuse to give him exactly the same protection where his neighbour, instead of being forced to give up his right by compulsory means, voluntarily agrees to do so. Her Majesty's Government appear to be making the most extraordinary distinction here.
LORD MILLS: I have neither the legal knowledge nor the vivid imagination of my noble friend Lord Conesford, but I am advised here that it would be wrong to impose by Statute the absolute liability asked for.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Will the noble Lord not look further at the point that I have raised? Even if he finds it impossible for personal liability to be accepted in this Bill, can he not do anything to remove this anomaly in the case of the adjoining owner; or would he be prepared to look at this matter again? It seems to me to be an entirely reasonable thing to ask for, and not in the least a matter objectionable in principle.
LORD MILLS: If my noble friend will not assume that I am making any commitment, of course I will look further into the points he has made.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: In that case I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
House resumed.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do now adjourn during pleasure until the Royal Commission at 5.30 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned accordingly.
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION
5.30 p.m.
The following Bills received the Royal Assent:

Consolidated Fund (No. 2),

Education,

Vehicles (Excise),

Telegraph,

Criminal Justice Administration,

Forth and Clyde Canal (Extinguishment of Rights of Navigation),

Commonwealth Settlement.

House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

PIPE-LINES BILL [H.L.]
5.42 p.m.
Committee stage resumed.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved, after Clause 11 to following new clause
Compensation for land within ten feet of pipe-line.
".If any person entitled to an interest in land situate within ten feet from a point on the surface of land whose position is vertically above any part of a pipe-line below the surface constructed in accordance with the provisions of this Act proves that the value of his interest is depreciated by the construction of the pipe-line the owner of the pipe-line shall pay him compensation equal to the amount of the depreciation."
The noble Viscount said: This Amendment involves, I am afraid, a somewhat complicated concept, but I hope that I can explain it to your Lordships so as to enable the Committee to give it at any rate approval in principle. The real reason why I believe some such Amendment as this to be necessary is because of the provisions of Clause 25 of this Bill. That clause provides that where, after a pipe-line has been made,
1110
someone, whether unwittingly or not, builds any structure within ten feet of the place in the land where that pipeline is situated, he must pull it down again, or, if he does not do so, must pay the cost of somebody else's pulling it down.
I can envisage this sort of situation occurring. Suppose that there are two landowners, A and B, and that A has going through his land, and along the very boundary of it, a pipe-line. Suppose that the actual pipe-line goes along the very edge of the easement which he has been granted, whether by compulsory rights order or by voluntary agreement, and as a result it goes right up to the very edge of his land. Clause 25 would provide that landowner B, whose land immediately joins the pipe-line. would have ten feet of his land sterilised. He would not be able to build upon it, and, if he did so, he would have to take the building down again. But since that pipe-line did not go through his land at all, but rather through that of landowner A, he would neither have been compensated, as a result of the compulsory rights order, nor have received any payment by voluntary agreement with the pipe-line owner. However, as the Bill stands at present, he is entitled to no compensation for the sterilisation of his ten feet of land, and it seems to me only right that some such provision should be inserted in the Bill. This I have attempted by means of this Amendment. which I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 11, insert the said new clause.—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)
LORD CHESHAM: I suppose it may be said that the set of circumstances which my noble friend envisages could happen, although I think they might be said to be operating in a somewhat remote and rarefied atmosphere. I should have thought the technical operation of laying a pipe-line would, on the whole, have made it difficult for the neighbouring owner to have been unaware of what was going on. Nevertheless, I feel that my noble friend may have raised a point of substance which perhaps needs some attention. I think that to deal with it may prove a rather complicated affair, and it may be that, in the consideration of it, other issues

1111
may arise. Perhaps they will not, but it wil certainly be quite complicated to consider. I can tell him, however, that I accept the principle of it, or that I accept that the principle does indicate that something needs to be done about it. If he will accept that, I would offer to deal with the matter at a later stage of the Bill, although at this moment I cannot be precise as to exactly when or how. But we will deal with it by means of an Amendment in due course.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I gladly accept that assurance from my noble friend, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 [Registration of compulsory rights orders]:
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved to leave out Clause 12. The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment, which stands in the name of my noble friend Lord Mills, I should say that it is not a very complicated or difficult affair. It was thought that people should know where there were compulsory rights in being, and Clause 12 lays down that compulsory rights orders are not to become effective until they have been registered in the registers of local land charges maintained by local authorities. These registers were designed for the registration of local authorities' charges, and are still used only for these purposes and for the registration of charges of a public nature. On further consideration we thought that the principle of keeping the local land charges registers for charges of a public nature should be preserved, and therefore it would not be right to use them, and that they would not be appropriate for the registration of rights which accrue for the benefit of private persons, as do the rights in the present case.
We felt that the purchaser of land affected by compulsory rights orders would always become aware of the existence of those rights, because it is the duty of the vendor to disclose the existence of any encumbrances which affect the property and he would normally preserve a copy of the order with these data. He may also become aware of the existence of the pipe-line and of his consequent rights by reason of the markers he would
1112
see on the surface of the land, and, of course, searches of local authority registers, which would commonly be made by his solicitors, would reveal the existence of maps indicating such pipelines and rights which are deposited with the local authorities, as Clause 32 demands.
Therefore, Clause 12 is not required and the purpose of this Amendment is simply to remove it on that account. I think that I should also point out to your Lordships that the provisions in subsection (5) of the clause will still be required in Scotland and, therefore, the substance of that subsection has been put down as a new Amendment to Clause 56. It is on the Marshalled List as Amendment No. 68A, which I shall move in due course. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 12.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 13 agreed to
Clause 14:
Power to place pipe-lines in streets
14.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, any person may place a pipe-line in a street with the consent of the appropriate authority for that street, and for that purpose and the purpose of inspecting, maintaining, adjusting, repairing, altering or renewing a pipe-line placed in a street in pursuance of this subsection or changing the position of a pipeline so placed or removing it, may open and break up the street and may remove or use earth or other materials in the street.
(5) The consent of an authority under this section shall not be required for the placing of a pipe-line by way of renewal of an existing pipe-line.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved, in subsection (1), after the second word "street" to insert:
"and of any statutory water undertakers who have apparatus in the part of that street in which the pipe-line is proposed to be placed".
The noble Lord said: On behalf of my noble friend Lord Lindgren, who unfortunately cannot be here at this moment, I beg to move this Amendment. With the Committee's permission I should like to discuss Amendments No. 34A and 34B at the same time. The new Clause 14 makes it possible for a person to place a pipe-line in a street with the consent of the appropriate authority for that street, which, I understand, would be the highway authority. Work done

1113
for the purpose of maintaining, inspecting, adjusting, repairing or renewing a pipe-line would again be done with the consent of the appropriate authority. There is some fear that this provision does not go far enough.
As we all know, in built-up areas many services are run under our roadways, such as electric power lines, sewage pipes and fresh water supplies. It is felt that where these services, by the force of circumstances, have to be in the road, and where a company has power to place a pipe-line in the road, there should be consultations not only with the highway authority but also with the other statutory undertakings concerned, in particular the water undertakers. It may well be the case that a highway authority, when giving permission for the laying of a pipe-line, will consult the other authorities, but we know from our experience that often there does not appear to be enough liaison between the various authorities when dealing with roads. Often a week after we see a new road being laid we see it pulled up in order that an electric cable should be put down. Therefore, it is felt that we should have in the Bill the requirement that, before a pipeline is laid, all the authorities who have services under the road should be consulted.
We do not know what may be carried in these pipe-lines. Certainly fuel and chemicals will be transported by this new means, and it may be that some of these commodities will be highly poisonous. Therefore, there should be agreement, particularly with the water authority, before a pipe-line is laid to ensure that, in the event of an explosion or leak, there would be no pollution of the drinking water. The first Amendment requires that this should be done. The second Amendment provides that the consent of a water undertaking shall not be unreasonably withheld and that any dispute should be determined by the Minister of Power and by the Minister of Housing and Local Government acting jointly, because we feel that in this case the matter should not be left in the hands of the Minister of Power as is provided in the Bill at the present moment.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 45, after ("street") insert the said words.—(Lord Shepherd.)
LORD BURDEN: I should like to support the Amendment which has been moved by my noble friend Lord Shepherd. I am glad that he has rather widened the scope of the Amendment, which, as I read it, refers only to statutory water undertakings. A moment's reflection will enable anyone to see that even the workmen engaged in opening the street might run risks to themselves if they came into contact with gas pipes, electric mains or the water main, let alone the inconvenience to and the real risk which might be run by the users of electricity, gas and water. In many cases, the water undertaking will be a private concern and gas and electricity will be run by statutory undertakings. I do not think that the responsibility should be thrown on the local authority to notify all these people of work which the new pipe-line people wish to do.
Further, although I do not expect an answer on this point, which goes a little beyond the Amendment, the clause gives authority, at the end of subsection (1), for opening and breaking up the street and for the removal or use of earth or other materials in the street. Is any obligation placed upon the new pipeline people to make good the street, or are they going to leave it as they open it up? It may be that there is a clause which I have overlooked in this respect. In any case, I do not expect the noble Lord to answer now, but surely we should have some assurance on the point.
LORD WOLVERTON: May I ask whether the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, is going to widen his Amendment? It relates only to water undertakers. Is he going to widen it to include the gas and electricity authorities?
LORD SHEPHERD: In answering that question I am in some difficulty. I have moved this Amendment on behalf of my noble friend. As I study it and consider the various ramifications that arise, I would say that if the Government were prepared to accept it in principle, obviously what is a case for the water authorities would apply to the other authorities.
LORD CHESHAM: I do not think the noble Lord could widen the Amendment at the moment. May I take the points in a slightly reverse order before coming

1115
to the main body of the Amendment? I am speaking without notice and without the book, but I think I am right in saying that the fears of the noble Lord, Lord Burden, about opening up the road and not closing it are unfounded. The Bill includes a form of words based on the Public Utilities Street Works Act, 1950, and, therefore, I think the noble Lord's fears are unfounded.
LORD BURDEN: Will the pipe-line people be regarded as public utilities?
LORD CHESHAM: I am coming to that point, because it enters into what I have to say on the main body of the Amendment. I should, however, like to say a word about the dangers of pollution and so forth mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. That matter would be looked after by another part of the Bill where safety precautions are laid down for individual pipe-lines. As the noble Lord said, Clause 14 permits a person to place a pipe-line in the street with the consent of the street authority. The important part of it is this: from that moment on, once the consent of the highway authority is given, for the purpose of Section 1 of the Public Utilities Street Works Act. 1950 the pipe-line is held to be laid in pursuance of a statutory power to execute undertakers' works in a street, and there are standard codes in the Act which will apply to it. Anyone who undertakes such a work will have to notify other undertakers having apparatus in the street and likely to be affected by it. Having done that, they are then protected in turn by the provision of the code laid down in the Public Utilities Street Works Act, notably in Section 26.
Without going into a lengthy explanation, I might also say that I think it would be undesirable to give any statutory undertakers, in addition to the street authorities, the right to withhold consent, even subject to the qualification which the noble Lord proposed. If these powers were given to statutory water undertakers, they would certainly also have to be given to gas, electricity, Posts Office, sewerage and other authorities who are in the position of being statutory authorities for this purpose. It is accepted that we are to have pipe-lines and that they must cross roads, and if all those authorities were also to have
1116
their consent sought, which is tantamount to a power of veto, in a sense, the work for arranging the crossing of streets and roads, which is the main purpose of Clause 14 and the next five clauses, would become incredibly complicated, and I do not think in the end would afford substantially any more protection to the statutory undertakers than they have already under the provisions I have outlined. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord may feel that I have not opposed this Amendment for the sake of resisting it, but it goes a little further than is necessary and would bring in a rather undesirable state of affairs.
LORD SHEPHERD: I am some way relieved by the statement that has been made by the noble Lord although I am not sure that I go fully with him. In Clause 14, at page 12, the two Ministers are specified, and presumably the Minister of Power and the Minister of Transport will act jointly if there is a dispute between a person proposing to place a pipe-line in the street and the appropriate authority. I should have thought that in these circumstances it would be right that the Minister who is responsible for the conditions of the street and the town, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, should at least be consulted. The noble Lord said that if the Amendment was agreed to it would amount to a veto against the development of pipe-lines. I do not accept that.
LORD CHESHAM: May I interrupt the noble Lord, because I do not want him to address himself to a wrong point? I did not intend to say it was a power of veto against the development of pipelines. It is a point I did not develop properly, I agree. What I meant was that it would give a statutory undertaker, in this case the statutory water authority, the power of veto on an individual crossing of a road, because (and this was a point I did develop) if the Amendment were accepted, and if the highway authority gave consent to the pipe going in or across the road, the water authority could then say, "No".
LORD SHEPHERD: That is, in fact, saying that the water authority would have the power of veto. The noble Lord will agree that when I moved this Amendment I also referred to Amendment No. 34A, which says that if there

1117
is a question of an unsolved dispute between the pipe-line builders and operators and a particular authority, the Minister of Housing and Local Government, should then enter and make a decision. There it is not a case where the local authority could veto for good any development. I still think there is something in our case, although I do not intend to press it now. I will consult with my noble friend, whose Amendment it is. But I feel that, knowing some of the failures and weaknesses which exist in consultation between various authorities, these statutory undertakers should be consulted before a decision is made.
LORD CHESHAM: If I may add a further word to that, I hope the noble Lord will look (as I am sure he will) at the provision I have mentioned covering this matter. I think he may well be satisfied by what he finds. I do not want him to attach too much importance to all the points I have made, because some are minor ones. The main point of my objection is that one could not very well single out one form of statutory undertaker who has to give his consent, and not the others. Taken to an illogical conclusion, if Amendment No. 34A were to be accepted, it would be deficient, because my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport certainly should be in on this, too, so to speak. Taken to an illogical and absurd conclusion, it would end up with all the authorities having to have a Cabinet meeting to settle the matter.
LORD SHEPHERD: Another job for Mr. Butler!
LORD SILKIN: My noble friend has promised to look at this again, in the light of the reply, but I should like to clear my own mind. Is it possible for the local authority to give consent without the water undertaking or other public authorities knowing anything about it? Is that conceivable? Would the section of the Act referred to take care of the point that all the public authorities concerned who have an interest in this should be consulted, or would it be possible for them to know nothing about it until the pipe had been laid? If so, there is something fundamentally wrong. But if, somehow, they do get to know, what is their procedure for saying that their own pipes or works are going to be interfered with if this pipe
1118
is laid? To whom can they make representations?
LORD CHESHAM: I do not know whether the noble Lord heard my first answer, but I will repeat it to make it clear. Once the highway authority have given their consent, that puts the pipeline proposer in the same position as other statutory undertakers under the Public Utilities Street Works Act, 1950. The first thing he has to do is to give notice to any other statutory undertakers who are affected by what he is proposing to do, so I do not think there is any possibility that a pipe-line could be laid, or even proposed, without their knowing anything about it.
LORD SILKIN: In a laudable desire to be brief, the noble Lord, I think, had not made that point sufficiently clear.
LORD BURDEN: I am sure the Minister realises that this is a most important point for people in an area where a pipe-line is to be laid, and also to the other undertakers, such as those dealing with water, gas and sewerage. Can it be made perfectly clear, without any doubt at all, that when the consent is given by the local authority, then the relevant section in the Act to which the noble Lord referred applies? Can it be made clear to us where that statutory duty will be imposed on the new pipe-line people?
LORD WOLVERTON: Cannot we have that put in the Bill? I cannot see why not. I feel certain, as a member of a local authority, that before the local authority gave permission they would consult. But they are not obliged to do so, and I think it ought to be put in the Bill that they should consult other authorities, which is very important.
LORD SHEPHERD: I do not want to press this matter, but I must say I am a little worried about it. Take the case of dangerous chemicals in a pipe-line, say, in Southampton, where the highway authority are responsible for the area in which the pipe-line is being built. There might be an explosion and a seepage of chemicals into the water supply affecting an area outside which the highway authority may have had consultations. In other words, the water may be polluted over a wide range because the pipe-line and the water supply have been

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too close. I would ask the noble Lord to see whether he could meet us in some way in this matter.
LORD CHESHAM: I do not see there what there is to meet, because the point the noble Lord has again made bears out the reason why it is appropriate for the safety regulations to be made by the Minister. Not all water supplies are under roads. They exist all over the place, and all the other kinds of public utilities may be well away from the roads. It is for that reason, depending largely, of course, on what is in the pipeline, that it is necessary for the Minister to be able to lay down the various safeguards. I do not think it would be adequate to leave the laying down of the safety precautions to the local authorities, without some code of guidance for them. Therefore, I think it is better left in the hands of the Minister. As to being clear that this matter comes under the provision I have mentioned, it does not need to be laid down any further than this. I am informed that in law it is perfectly clear, and, in any case, unless I am wrong, there is a reference in the clause to definition and application and I do not think noble Lords opposite need have any worries about it.
LORD SHEPHERD: I will consult my noble friends in this matter, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.19 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved, in subsection (1), to leave out from "in pursuance of" to the end of the subsection, and to insert instead:
"works of the following kinds, that is to say—

(a) inspecting, maintaining, adjusting, re-paring, altering or renewing a pipe-line placed in a street in pursuance of this subsection.

(b) changing the position of a pipe-line so placed or removing it,

may open and break up the street and may remove or use earth or other materials in the street."
The noble Lord said: We come now to a rather more complicated matter. I am glad to say—at least, I think I am—that it is slightly more complicated in explanation and in drafting than it is in substance. Clause 14, as your Lordships know, refers generally to the
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crossings of highways and roads by pipes, and I am going to ask your Lordships whether it would be convenient to consider this Amendment No. 32 with Amendments Nos. 33, 34, 35, 36, and 37. The point is that they hang together, and it is virtually impossible to explain exactly what I am endeavouring to do without reference to them all. But I will endeavour, as best I can, to make it clear what they do. Amendments 32 and 33, are in effect, no more than drafting Amendments. They alter the drafting of the Bill as it stands; they set the scene, so to speak, for the action which is taken by Amendment No. 34, which, in fact, is the only substantive one of the lot.
Clause 14 lays down conditions for the crossing of roads as I have said, by pipe-lines. Further consideration has led us to the conclusion that the protection afforded to the highway authorities was not sufficient and that it should be extended a little further; and the present Amendments do just that. In fact they enable the street authority to impose conditions of the following kind where it is necessary. There is a certain amount of reference here to streets, and I should explain perhaps that that is by virtue of reference to the same Public Utilities Street Works Act, 1950, in which motorways, trunk roads and Class 1 and 2 roads are referred to as protected streets. Minor roads and unclassified roads are referred to merely as streets, so I have adopted that description for them.
The extensions that Amendment No. 34 makes are for protected streets. The authority may require, if it is reasonably practicable. not only that the placing but that the subsequent maintenance or alteration or removal of the pipe-line should be carried out without breaking the road; and they may now do it not only when the pipe-line is laid across the road but also when it goes along it—that is, parallel with it or at an angle of less than 45 degrees. That is achieved by Amendment 34 (b) (i) and (ii); and in the case of these roads the burden of proving that it is not reasonably practicable to do the work without breaking open the street rests fairly and squarely with the pipe-line owner; and I believe your Lordships will think that is as it should be.
LORD SILKIN: Did the noble Lord say where the Bill says so?
LORD CHESHAM: At the end of Amendment 34, on page 6 of the Marshalled List, the last paragraph.
Then, for the streets or minor roads, the authority may not insist that the pipe-line must be laid across the road without breaking it open. The reason for that is that there are a great many more minor roads than major ones and it costs, I am told, about four times as much to tunnel under a road as to break through it. It seemed in the case of minor roads, where the traffic is light and the road is smaller and not so important, that it was not reasonable to insist on the condition of not breaking open the surface. But the Amendment enables the authority to require where it is suitable—for subsequent maintenance operations, and so on—that repairs shall be done without again breaking the surface of the carriageway. This applies whether a pipe-line is laid across it or along it; and if it should be laid along it, which is defined as at an angle of less than 45 degrees, the authority can also impose the requirement of not breaking the surface when they place it there. The object, of course, of all these provisions is to reduce to the minimum the disturbance of the metalling of minor roads, which is not as strong as that of major roads; and if it goes on, then a lot of damage is done to the minor roads.
One final thing. The Amendment also has the effect of leaving out the last four and a half lines of Clause 14, paragraph (4), which enables the street authority of a motorway to make contributions to the owner of a pipe-line in complying with any conditions that they impose. That was a power which they were given so that they could make a contribution to statutory undertakers when they were required to divert their lines—to bury them deeper, or whatever modifications were necessary in the interests of the road. Since the undertakers had to spend an extra amount to comply with the requirements, the highway authority had the power to make a contribution towards the extra cost. That was originally included in the case of pipe-lines, but as we do not see that there is any real justification for it, the Amendment finally has the effect of
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removing that power in the case of pipelines. I am afraid that that is probably a rather clumsy explanation, but your Lordships will appreciate that the point is a little tricky to explain. If any of your Lordships wishes to ask any questions, I will do my best to amplify what I have said. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 46, leave out from ("of") to end of line 3 on page 11 and insert the said new words.—(Lord Chesham.)
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I was wondering when, in this Bill, the Ministry of Transport were going to look after their own interests and, therefore, the interests of the country; and I am delighted that this series of Amendments has been moved, and moved by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. I can quite see what they are attempting to do, and I support wholeheartedly what the noble Lord has said. I do so because I had the responsibility and honour of piloting through your Lordships' House the Public Utilities Street Works Act, and it was rather grievous to me that some of my late colleagues seemed to have forgotten all about it.
LORD BURDEN: Ex-colleagues.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I said "late", but I do not mind what you call them. They certainly seem to have forgotten the great discussions we had in your Lordships' House covering the very points that have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and the noble Lord, Lord Burden. I can assure them that, unless that Act has been amended since 1950—which I do not think it has—the points they have raised are more than adequately covered.
LORD BURDEN: Good.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: There is one thing I should like to ask the Minister—I do not necessarily expect an answer now. I think it is absolutely necessary that we prevent the breaking up of our main highways. They cost, and are costing, tremendous sums to lay, and I visualise that in the future these pipe-lines will follow our national highways and also our national railways.
I am delighted to see that in the new subsection (4) (a) there is a condition

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requiring payments to be made to that authority in respect of the placing of a pipe-line in a street. As most of your Lordships are aware, a street or road also includes the verge; it is not just the carriageway. I can see further on in this Bill—if I may elaborate a point I am going to mention—that it will devolve upon the Ministry of Transport, in their planning of the future of the great national highways, to make provision for the acquisition of sufficient land alongside those highways for the laying of those pipe-lines. I think there should be in this Bill provision enabling them to recoup their expense and to charge, either by lease or rent or in some other way, their outlay. I do not know whether or not the Amendment goes too far. As I understand it, this clause covers trunk roads, Class 1 and Class 2 roads, but not Class 3 roads. I think I am right.
LORD CHESHAM: Not quite right. I was defining the use of the terms "protected streets" and "streets". It covers the lot.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: Am I right in saying you do not put an absolute embargo on breaking up the surface of a Class 3 road? I thought the expression the Minister used was "minor road". Perhaps the Minister could answer that point. I welcome this and I hope that the Ministry of Transport will now assume some responsibility; because I must confess that with the discussion we have had I am fearful of the results that are going to accrue by placing the responsibility for the pipe-lines' construction in this country upon a Ministry—the Ministry of Power who really have not anything whatsoever to do with it. They are not responsible for transportation; they are not responsible for the usage of the land, and the whole of the complication we have had in this Bill and are going to have in this Bill arises because this Ministry have been nominated as the responsible Ministry to operate this Bill. If I had my choice, they would be the last body I should allow to have anything at all to do with it.
LORD SILKIN: I am sure the Committee will welcome the return of the
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noble Lord now that the warm weather has come along, and we congratulate him on his maiden speech in 1962. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, had made his Amendment as clear as might be reasonably expected. I thought I understood him. I am right, am I not, in saying that there is no embargo on the breaking open of streets? It is only that if it is reasonably practicable to do it in some other way, then those wanting to carry out the work are required to do it in that other way. But there will be circumstances in which it will not be reasonable and practicable and the roads will be broken.
I rose really to say that I think I now understand what this Amendment seeks to do. To speak for myself and my few colleagues who are here, we are prepared to let it go today on the understanding that we shall look at it with the explanation that the noble Lord has given us and, if necessary, we may return to it, although I have no reason to think it will be necessary.
LORD CHESHAM: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, for what they have said. Naturally, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. must look at it in that way, although I think when he comes to do so he will find any shortcomings he discovers are in my explanation rather than in the drafting of the Amendment. Of course, the point which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, made, that roads must be protected, is a good one and that is the purpose of this clause. I think he would agree that you could not have an all-covering embargo on ever breaking a road at all. That would be unreasonable. But the point he made about the major roads costing so much and not being spoiled is a very good one of which we are all very much aware. I am glad that he welcomed the payment provision. I did not mention that in my explanation because it was already in the Bill and therefore it did not form any kind of innovation in the Amendment. It is for drafting purposes and therefore I thought it was not necessary to mention it.
The point which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, raised about the appropriate Minister to be responsible

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was one that came up on Second Reading when my noble friend Lord Mills, as I recollect, explained to the House that it was thought appropriate for the Minister of Power to be responsible because his Department had the expertise and the knowledge of what was wanted in these circumstances. He said at the time that the Government's mind was not closed on this matter; that there was provision under existing Statute for a change if ever one was thought desirable. Indeed, I shall say no more, because I see there is an Amendment later on dealing with just that and no doubt we shall discuss the matter again.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: That is why I referred to it only briefly. I did not want to anticipate the discussion which will undoubtedly come on the Amendment to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. But may I here and now tell him that he is going to receive my wholehearted support?
LORD CHESHAM: I shall myself remain sitting on the fence for the time being. All I want now is the opportunity, which I forgot to take before, of explaining that Amendments 35, 36 and 37 are drafting Amendments consequential on No. 34. I am at the moment dealing with Amendment No. 32.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
6.38 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 9, leave out from ("so") to end of line 16.— (Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 26, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
("(4) The consent under this section of an appropriate authority may be given subject to reasonable conditions, including, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing words, any one or more of the following conditions, that is to say—

(a) a condition requiring payments to be made to that authority in respect of the placing of the pipe-line in the street and of its being kept there;

(b) where the street is a protected street,

(i) if it is reasonably practicable for the placing of the pipe-line to be carried out by a method which does not involve the opening or breaking up of the street, a condition that the placing of the pipeline shall be carried out by such a method;

1126

(ii) if it is reasonably practicable for any such works as are mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1) of this section to be carried out by such a method as aforesaid, a condition that any such works shall be carried out by such a method;

(c) where the street is a highway, not being a protected street, and constitutes or comprises a carriageway and it is proposed that the pipe-line shall be placed along a line crossing the street, if it is reasonably practicable for any such works as are mentioned in paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of this section to be carried out by a method which does not involve the opening of breaking up of the carriageway, a condition that any such works shall be carried out by such a method;

(d) where the street is a highway, not being a protected street, and constitutes of comprises a carriageway and it is proposed that the pipe-line shall he placed otherwise than along a line crossing the street—

(i) if it is reasonably practical for the placing of the pipe-line to be carried out by a method which does not involve the opening or breaking up of the carriageway, a condition that the placing of the pipe-line shall be carried out by such a method;

(ii) if it is reasonably practicable for any such works as are mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1) of this section to be carried out by such a method as last aforesaid, a condition that any such works shall be carried out by such a method,

and, for the purposes of paragraph (b) of this subsection, the placing of a pipe-line or the carrying out of works by a method which does not involve the opening or breaking up of a street shall he taken to be reasonably practicable unless the owner of the piper-line shows that such is not the case.").—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 11, line 45, leave out ("subsection (4) of").—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move the next Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 12, line 11, leave out from ("under") to ("on") in line 12 and insert ("this section").—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHESHAM: I beg to move this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 12, line 13, leave out from ("street") to end of line 14.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 15 agreed to.
Clause 16 [Application of provisions of section 18 of Public Utilities Street Works Act, 1950, as to liability for nuisance]:
LORD CHESHAM LORD CHESHAM moved to leave out Clause 16. The noble Lord said: I almost felt that if I had said "I beg to move" I might have got away with it. In fact this is a small Amendment which goes with Amendment No. 69 which we shall come to some time in the future. The effect of it is to place beyond doubt that nothing in the Bill will exempt pipe-line owners from action for nuisance if their activities cause inconvenience or annoyance. Clause 16, which we now propose to omit, provides for this only where they cause nuisance by the presence of works in the street. That, again, was by reference to the Public Utility Street Works Act. The present Amendment, which I hope in due course will be accepted, gives the liability a general application, and therefore the narrower application in Clause 16 is not required. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 16.—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 17 agreed to.
Clause 18 [Restriction on breaking up, for execution of pipe-line works, highways in London Traffic Area recently closed for repair]:
LORD CHESHAM: This Amendment, which incidentally is linked with Amendment No. 64, is consequential on the acceptance of the group of Amendments Nos. 32 to 37. All it does is to move the definition of "carniage-way" to another part of the Bill, to Clause 55. The definition of general application previously within Clause 18 now needs to apply to Clause 14 as well, and it is better there. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 15, line 8, leave out subsection (3).—(Lord Chesham.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 18, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 19 agreed to.
6.45 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS moved, after Clause 19 to insert the following new clause
Pipe-lines to be below ground where possible
".The Minister shall ensure that, so far as is practicable, any pipe-line constructed in accordance with the provisions of this Act shall be constructed below the surface of the ground."
The noble Viscount said: I think that this clause is perhaps not in exactly the right place in the Bill, but I hope that your Lordships will none the less consider it. When one thinks of a pipeline in this context, I suppose it is natural to imagine it as running underground, except no doubt where it has to pass over a valley and has to be carried on a viaduct. As a general rule, however, I should expect a pipe-line to be underground unless there was some good reason to the contrary. This Bill does not say that, as a general rule, pipe-lines should go underground, although I should have thought, from the point of view both of amenity and probably safety, that it was preferable that they should do so. It may be that the Minister in granting a pipe-line construction authorisation will, in most cases, do so subject to a condition that the line shall be underground, but again, so far as I can see, there is nothing in the Bill, or in what the Minister has said, to assure your Lordships that this will be so.
I do not know whether this is a matter which can be put in a clause such as I have attempted to draft for the purposes of this Amendment, but I think your Lordships' Committee would like to know what Her Majesty's Government envisage as being policy in this matter, and whether we are likely to have pipelines going on the surface, criss-cross across the country, or whether there shall be a general rule in the Ministry that they go underground. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will be able to give some answer on this point. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 19 insert the said new clause.—(Viscount Colville of Culross.)
THE EARL OF LUCAN: I should like to support the noble Viscount in this point, for safety reasons, to avoid unnecessary disturbance and to preserve

1129
amenity. One noble Lord said on Second Reading that it would be much cheaper, in constructing a pipe-line crossing a valley, to take it overhead on a viaduct. That would affect amenity considerably. I see that the Minister can take powers to regulate the minimum depth below the surface of the ground at which the pipe-line is to be laid. If he does that, it seems to presume that the line will in fact always be underground. But I agree with the noble Viscount that we should have an assurance that that is the policy and, moreover, that it can be enforced under the Bill.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: It is said that there are in this country 700 miles of disused canals, 400 miles of which are in England and Wales, and that the people who will promote pipelines envisage putting pipe-lines along the canals. That might destroy the bank. They might simply put the pipeline in the water, to one side of the towpath. Has my noble friend anything to say about that?
LORD STRABOLGI: I, too, should like to support this Amendment which has been so ably moved by the noble Viscount opposite. I am rather sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, is not in his seat at the moment, because in previous debates, when he took perhaps a more active part, I remember that he used to say "put it in the Bill ". I feel that the Government ought to have a look at this point and, if it can be put in the Bill in some form —not perhaps in this clause, but somewhere else—it ought to be put in the Bill. One remembers when pylons were first constructed in this country. How much better would it have been if some such clause as this had been put in that Bill, because, well designed as they are—and one knows that the Ministry always make an effort to run them over country where they will not disfigure the landscape unduly—nevertheless, I think it must be admitted that in certain places they are an ugly blot on the landscape. One does not wish the same thing to happen in regard to pipe-lines.
LORD SOERS: I should like to support this Amendment wholeheartedly, with perhaps this possible exception, which perhaps my noble friend will deal
1130
with—namely, that where pipes are to go alongside railways, I wonder whether an exception for the sake of accessibility and also in regard to cost of construction might be made.
LORD CHESHAM: So far as I am concerned, I have but little hesitation in agreeing with all noble Lords Who have spoken that it is most desirable that, wherever possible, a pipe-line should be underground. I hope I can claim that we should like to be thought of as having as much regard for amenity as anyone else has. I have no hesitation in agreeing with that point.
I think, however, it might be wrong to impose a statutory obligation that they must be placed underground whenever practicable, because there might well be cases where, although it would be practicable to put a pipe-line underground, it would be unnecessary or undesirable to do so. It occurs to me that on many occasions probably very little harm would be done to amenity or to safety by the placing of a pipe-line used for some fairly innocuous substance alongside railway tracks, or actually in the bed of a disused canal—either in the water or on the bed of what had been a canal if there were no water left in it. In that case I do not think it would be entirely reasonable to require the pipe-line owner to go to the expense of actually putting it under the bed of the canal. A line conveying chalk-slurry from a chalk pit to a lime works along a disused railway cutting would probably be neither a danger nor an eyesore, and there would not be much reason to insist on that being buried, even though it would be practicable to do so.
There are a number of short pipelines linking chemical and manufacturing works which are laid on the ground, or even on supports above the ground; those pipe-lines will now come within the scope of the Bill as local ones. But there is no reason, so far as I can see, to insist that they should be placed underground if the local planning authority, when they consider an application for permission, see no need to impose a requirement. That deals only with the undesirability of forcing them underground wherever practicable. I think that is going a little too far.

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The more important point—and I imagine the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will be glad to hear it—is that this Amendment is in fact unnecessary because adequate powers already exist under the Planning Acts to ensure that pipe-lines are buried when it is desirable. These powers are available both to the local planning authority when they are dealing with local pipe-lines and to the Minister when he is granting deemed planning permission for cross-country pipe-lines. In addition to that there is the Amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Mills which is to be moved after Clause 39, which seeks to place a duty on both the pipe-line promoter and the Minister to have regard to the desirability of preserving amenity. It is not necessary to put this power in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said, because it is already on the Statute Books in the Planning Acts. I hope, in that case, that the noble Lord will feel that the position is adequately covered and will not wish to pursue his Amendment.
LORD SILKTN: The noble Lord has made two points. First, while he said he accepted the principle of the Amendment, he thought that there were circumstances in which it would not be necessary to have the pipe underground. I imagine most of us would agree. But that, after all, is only a quarrel with the language of the Amendment, and if the noble Lord had seen fit to do so he could have given an undertaking that he would look at the language again and make some kind of provision that this should apply only where it is necessary, but otherwise not. If he had done that, I imagine that the noble Viscount would have been willing to do a deal on that basis. But he went on to say that it is already provided for in planning legislation. But is it? There is nothing in the planning legislation which provides that pipe-lines should be underground. It certainly gives local authorities the power to make it a condition of an application that they should be underground, but they need not be.
What the noble Viscount wishes is that there should be virtually a direction in the Bill which would go a very long way, at any rate, to require them to do so. That is certainly not provided for
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in the legislation, nor does the Amendment which the noble Lord is going to move later on make that provision. It would require the Minister to have regard to amenity, but it does not go so far as this. Since the noble Lord has said he favours the principle of this Amendment, I would have thought that he would be willing to look at it again to see how far he can incorporate it in the Bill itself.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: May I also point out that the Minister in the last Committee stage said that so far as the immediate future goes it is contemplated that pipe-lines will be mainly for oil products, petrol and so on—highly dangerous substances. Although there may be occasions when such substances as chalk slurry (whatever that be) are needed to be carried by a pipe-line, we must think of the more dangerous substances for which this Bill is primarily intended. I think that the safety factor alone is a very strong argument for something of this sort to be put in.
LORD CHESHAM: In that case the Minister already has adequate powers to impose safety conditions. If we are to have regard to the safety factor, he has full powers to require the whole line to be buried 100 feet down if necessary. That does not come under the particular Amendment which we are discussing now, of course.
I do not think that I have done anything unreasonable. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin. I thought helped me in what he said, because he pointed out that planning authorities had not a specific power to put pipe-lines underground except on an application. That is precisely the point, because every pipe-line application has to be considered individually, either by the planning authority in the case of a local pipe-line, or by the Minister acting as a planning authority in the case of cross country pipe-lines. That power on an application, as the noble Lord put it, exists in this case and really is a safeguard in this respect. If the Minister or the planning authority did not use it—certainly if the Minister did not he would then be ready to be "shot at" for not paying due regard to amenity which he is going to be under a duty to do. I hope I have now convinced

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your Lordships, including my noble friend, that this Amendment is in fact unnecessary.
VISCOUNT BRENTFORD: I should like very briefly to support the Minister on this point. There are many pipe-lines which criss-cross the country already. So far they have given cause for no trouble whatsoever. The reason for this is that they have been subjected to the existing requirements of planning permission which have worked perfectly satisfactorily, but the reason I venture to intervene in this particular discussion is that the same does not apply to power lines. Overhead power lines, if needed to be put up, require a specific Ministerial approval over and above planning approval. I have had experience of the delay, the expense and the complexity that that involves, and I am perfectly certain it is quite unnecessary. I hope your Lordships will not seek to repeat that error in regard to pipe-lines as well as overhead cables.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Noble Lords on the other side of the House have succeeded in drawing my noble friend Lord Chesham a certain way along the road, and he has said, as I fully admit, that the power exists to make these pipe-lines go underground. I wonder whether I can urge my noble friend to go a little further and to say that it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to use that power whenever possible.
LORD CHESHAM: I do not know whether I am in a position to lay down that it is the policy that the Minister should use that power, and to make a categorical statement to that effect, but I hoped I had said enough to indicate that the Government are in sympathy with what the noble Viscount wants, and that it is certainly visualised that pipe-lines largely shall be underground. I have sought to do no more than to show that it is unreasonable, in my view, that they must be underground even when they do not need to be. That is as far as I wanted to go. But otherwise I would certainly agree that, by and large, from the point of view of amenity and very often of safety, they certainly should be underground.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I think the noble Lord has now gone
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quite a bit further than he did before. He has, at any rate, satisfied me, and I beg leave to withdraw this Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
House resumed.

HOSPITAL PLAN FOR SCOTLAND
7.2 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON)THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON) rose to move to resolve, That this House approves Cmnd. 1602, entitled Hospital Plan for Scotland. The noble Lord said:
My Lords, this paper is the Hospital Plan for Scotland, framed to meet Scottish needs, and it parallels the Plan for England and Wales which your Lordships have already discussed. The Command Paper describes the Government plan for hospital building in Scotland over the ten years up to 1970–71. The Plan represents a new outlook on the sort of hospital buildings we need for the future, and it has been made possible because the Government are able to make a reasonably optimistic forecast about the level of capital investment.
In a way, the Paper also marks the end of the first great period of the national Hospital Service. This has been a period when an immense amount of work has been done in reorganising and co-ordinating the Hospital Service: for what we inherited was a very large number of individual units with little responsibility to each other. It has been a period, too, during which the Service has grown in a way that few people had expected. There have arisen demands for new services which many of the existing buildings were ill-equipped to provide. Many of the buildings that were inherited in 1948 were already old: indeed, for most of the 'twenties and 'thirties. and during the war, very little new construction was undertaken; and since the National Health Service came into operation we have been, as your Lordships know, in a period of restriction on capital investment. Since 1948 the first national priorities have been, of necessity perhaps, education and housing rather than hospitals. Nevertheless, during this

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period in Scotland something like £27 million has been spent, most of it on renovation, upgrading and minor additions in existing hospitals. But comparatively little has been spent on new hospitals.
It is now generally recognised that the existing buildings cannot suitably house our hospital services as they are now developing. Much of the accommodation is too out-dated to be effectively modernised. Much of it is wrongly sited to provide an effective unified service throughout the country, and much of it is not consistent with our modern standard of living. For these reasons, the boards of management, the Regional Hospital Boards and the Central Department have evolved the plan which is now set out in the Command Paper.
I cannot refer to all the individual projects since there are so many, but I will try to describe the kinds of hospitals for which the Plan provides. Perhaps the most important general decision is about the Scottish teaching hospitals. The programme includes plans—already in hand—for the replacement of Dundee Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh Western General Hospital and the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, and for substantial additions to the other major teaching hospitals, the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow, Maryfield in Dundee, and the Royal Infirmary in Aberdeen. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has already explained his reasons for taking this decision. We consider that the teaching hospitals have so important a contribution to make to the care of patients, the advancement of medicine, and the teaching of future generations of doctors that they must be seen to be fitted to do the job that is required of them. Scottish medicine has always stood high in world reputation, but we must face the fact that to-day nearly all the Scottish teaching hospitals are housed in buildings which are already old and, because of their massive construction, are hardly capable of being adapted to new uses. So it was decided that the first great attack in new building in Scotland must be on the teaching hospitals. I make this special point because, in our Scottish programme, in the first ten years these
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teaching hospitals will absorb a very large proportion of the £70 million available.
Another important concept underlying the Plan is that of the district general hospital. This is not entirely new, since in places like Glasgow, Dumfries and Perth there have for many years been district general hospitals. What is new is that for the first time we are seeking to provide each of the main areas of population in the country with the type of service that is possible only in a large hospital of this class. The Plan provides for new district hospitals to be built, for example, in Fife, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, West Lothian, Inverness and Dumfries, Renfrewshire and Greenock. Each of them should within its own resources be able to cope with all the acute general hospital needs of the area. Some of them will also include maternity provision, psychiatric services, and a special investigation unit for the elderly sick. We believe that this is the way in which we can most effectively provide treatment for the greatest number of patients. while at the same time making the best use we can of the available medical and nursing skills.
The coming of the district general hospital means the end of an era for many smaller local hospitals. I will be saying something later about the closure of hospitals which are no longer essential, but it is the district general hospital which will make redundant a number of the smaller hospitals that at present do some acute work. While these small hospitals have been immensely valuable, they are not something to perpetuate now that we have the opportunity to plan on an area and a regional basis.
On maternity services, we are hoping in the course of the 10-year programme substantially to implement the recommendations of the Montgomery Committee that hospital beds should be sufficient to enable 70 to 75 per cent. of Scottish mothers to be confined in hospital. Some areas are further behind than others, but by the end of the first 10-year building period we hope that the number of beds needed to meet the Montgomery recommendations will have been provided in all areas.
Provision for the mentally ill is one of the subjects exercising the medical planners a great deal just now. With

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all the new forms of psychiatric treatment, with the early ascertainment of psychiatric illness, and the removal of the barriers to ready admission to mental hospitals, we are hopeful that there may be a substantial fall in the number of patients kept in mental hospitals. For mentally defective patients much has been achieved in the last ten years in providing additional accommodation, and a great deal more will be done in the next ten years.
Another problem now claiming greater recognition is hospital provision for the elderly sick. This problem has its origins in a variety of factors: the fact that more of us are living on into old age, and the burden which is sometimes placed on young families in caring for elderly sick relatives. Indeed, old people are now one of the most important problems facing the Hospital Service to-day. As this new need emerges, there is, too, a changing attitude in the hospitals as to exactly how much can be done for the elderly sick. Because an elderly person is ill, that does not mean that he or she must be bed-ridden for life. All the modern medical evidence shows that if the right kind of care and skill is brought to elderly patients at the right time, most of them can be made fit and well to return to enjoy life, either in their own homes or in the care of their relatives. So we shall be actively encouraging the provision of geriatric assessment units throughout the country, in association either with the district general hospitals or with other accommodation for the elderly sick. It is in these units that the intensive effort is best made to see how far the elderly person can be rehabilitated. Apart from this, we are steadily increasing, and will continue to increase, the amount of accommodation available for the elderly sick. In the more specialised fields, the Plan provides for new units for plastic surgery, neurosurgery and radiotherapy.
My Lords, I have mentioned what we shall be doing in the teaching hospitals to provide up-to-date facilities for the conduct of medical research. In this field we keep very closely in touch with the University Grants Committee, which is responsible for the university interest in medical research, with the Medical Research Council, which has established some important units in Scotland, and
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with our own Advisory Committee on Medical Research. While the Government can provide many of the major facilities for research in hospitals, they are very fortunate to be able to rely also on the generosity of the various foundations which have medical research as one of their interests. In this context, I am very happy to be able to announce to-day, with gratitude, that the Nuffield Foundation have just agreed to provide a new unit at the Western General Hospital do Edinburgh. This unit will be concerned with problems of replacing diseased tissues and organs, and with research in the related fields of auto-immune disease and cancer. This is a new field, and it is a tribute to Professor Woodruff of the University of Edinburgh that he should have been invited to take charge of the unit. The building and equipment involved will cost about £200,000, and we hope that in association with the other new developments in Edinburgh, this generous support from the Nuffield Foundation will lead to improved and beneficial results in the treatment of patients throughout the United Kingdom.
Now I turn to the Plan from the point of view of the Regional Hospital Boards, which are the Secretary of State's principal agents in administering the hospital services. Up to now, these Boards have done splendid work in reorganising and replanning, the services in the regions for which they are responsible; but up to now they have worked under the difficulty that they could not look further ahead than two or three years in considering their building programmes. The trouble about this kind of limitation is that it is liable to bring about a policy of getting rid of to-day's problem without being able to look to see how this will affect the longer-term pattern of to-morrow. The new Plan will give the Boards the basic data for each of their regions and the basic assumptions on which they can plan forward. They can now go ahead with the long-term planning of the Service, which is one of the main reasons for their existence. Throughout the years of the building programme, all sorts of decisions will have to be taken by the Boards which will affect the future pattern of services. These decisions, if taken on the basis of well-defined principles, will

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lead eventually to a Service which has a coherent pattern, and to a better Service than we have now.
I recognise that some of the decisions taken in the Hospital Plan will cause difficulties for Regional Boards and perhaps also for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I refer in particular to the decisions which will involve closing smaller hospitals. We have not attempted yet to decide which hospitals should be closed. This is not by any means only a matter of pounds, shillings and pence. It is just not possible to provide a full service of modern medicine except in a unit which is capable of carrying a certain level of staff and certain facilities in the way of X-ray departments, laboratories, et cetera. There has been, and there will be, reluctance to accept closures. This is very natural, and I sympathise with it: but if we all approach the Hospital Plan on the basis that everybody is going to hold on to everything they now have, and that everything that is now to be done must be additional to what we have already, then the Plan is not viable and we shall not make any headway. The taxpayer has no vested financial interest in favour of closure, for the new and larger hospitals will be more costly to run than those that are closed and replaced. But we have a duty to see that medical and nursing effort is not so dispersed among small units that it is impossible to provide a really satisfactory service in the area. This must be our criterion for deciding whether or not any particular hospital should continue.
This Paper is called The Hospital Plan for Scotland, but the Plan cannot succeed unless the other major partners in the Health Service play their part in association with the hospital developments. The general practitioners are the first line of defence, and we hope that they will be intimately associated with the development and growth of the Hospital Service. The other partners are the local health authorities. The Hospital Plan assumes that the local authorities will play their part in providing the supporting services which are vital to the continued care of patients discharged from the Hospital Service. It is for the local authorities to develop the preventive and domiciliary services which can
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do so much to make hospital care unnecessary. In the field of health education, the care of mothers and young children, and the care of the elderly in their homes, and in the new field of mental welfare, the staff of the local authorities can reach the people in their homes in a way that the Hospital Service cannot do. They and the general practitioners have a very important joint rôle to play which is complementary to the rôle of the Hospital Service, and we shall do all we can to encourage co-operation between them and the Hospital Service.
So far I have been mainly concerned with the kind of service we intend to provide. Much of the Plan, however, concerns buildings, for before we can provide any really new kind of service we must build the buildings. In the White Paper the assumption has been made that a sum of the order of £70 million will be available for hospital building in the period up to 1970–71. The cost of the projects which will be started during the ten-year period, including those which will run over into the next decade, will be over £90 million. This is a very substantial increase over the level at which we have been spending money during the past few years, and this increase in itself raises an extremely important problem in hospital planning. Sometimes it is difficult for those who are not concerned with the hospital building programme to understand just why it is that the planning of hospitals seems to take so much longer than the planning of other important buildings. There are good reasons for this. No significant new hospital construction has been undertaken in this country since the early 'thirties.
Meanwhile, there have been very great developments in hospital planning and practice throughout the world. Developments in other countries, which we have studied, are of very great interest for our future building programme, but they cannot be copied directly. They have to be reviewed and adjusted to the circumstances of the Hospital Service in this country. Planning a large hospital is not like planning a large office building, with a series of rooms which are to serve more or less similar functions. A large hospital is, in fact, a complex of entirely separate but linked departments, each with its own particular function,

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and each with a different problem that will change in scope and importance as time passes. So everything must be thought out in minutest detail if the buildings are to be right for their purposes when, and not only when but long after, they are completed.
The Regional Hospital Boards have been building up their planning staffs, and they are gradually acquiring experience in hospital planning. Our architects and the engineers who are to build the hospitals have also had comparatively little experience of hospital building, and it seems worth while in the early large projects to take time to prepare the brief for the architects and engineers in great detail. As experience grows, no doubt the pace will quicken; but it would be unwise to try to rush this process at the early stages and risk getting the wrong kind of buildings. But, my Lords, having said that, I must admit that some of the projects seem to me to have taken too long. We are now strengthening the Board's organisation, and both at the centre and in the Boards much time and thought is now being given to ways of speeding up procedures.
When the buildings are built, we must have the staff. Although the present Hospital Service is able, by and large, to get staff, some anxiety has been expressed about the future needs of these new and more complicated buildings. And there seems no doubt that the new hospitals, with their high level of amenity for patients, will need more staff. But we hope that the greater concentration of resources will meet the need and that recruitment will continue; and I hope that the Hospital Service, by providing the right conditions and the right educational and training facilities, will continue to attract the numbers and quality of staff that it must have.
My Lords, the Hospital Plan, then, is a forecast. It forecasts a Scottish Service, based on the regional centres with their teaching hospitals and other highly specialised units, with, in the areas outside, the large district general hospitals, and continuing in the remoter areas the service provided in the smaller local hospitals. The Service must work in complete harmony with the general practitioners and the local authorities. More immediately, the Plan foreshadows the major reconstruction or replacement
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of many of our older buildings, with many exciting prospects as the detailed plans develop.
It would be very rash of me to predict that this forecast will anticipate correctly the pattern of things when the first ten years have passed, if only because there are few fields in which advance and change in recent years have been so marked as in medicine. But allowing for the errors of human judgment and the advances of medical science, it must be right to take a longer look than ever before at what seems to be the right thing to do, and then to have geared up our organisation to do it. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That this House approves Cmnd. 1602, entitled Hospital Plan for Scotland.—(Lord Craigton.)
7.24 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, in other places outside your Lordships' House, the general rule is "ladies before gentlemen", and the list of speakers which we have follows that out. But instructions have been issued to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and me that we should change places, and we are both much too new here to interfere with tradition. It is, therefore, out of no rudeness to the noble Baroness that I precede her in speaking, and I will remember that her train back to Scotland is earlier than mine. I was very pleased when I entered the House yesterday to see that my noble friend Lord Greenhill had rejoined us after his very lengthy illness, and to hear that he hoped to take part in this debate. When, however, he learned that, due to the activity on the Pipe-lines Bill, we were not due to start this debate until seven o'clock, he realised that he would not be carrying out his doctor's instructions if he remained here for so long, and it was with real regret that he left the House before this debate started. I should say in that connection, on looking round your Lordships' House, that I am reminded of the fact that in another place the day before yesterday it was suggested that your Lordships' House should be abolished. We have not abolished it, but we have jolly nearly emptied it.
In speaking of another place, I should say that if I were speaking there I should probably be adopting a much

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more critical line with the Command Paper than I propose to do. In fact, shall be, very generally, in approval with the contents of the Paper. In another place I think it would be quite proper that more detailed criticism should be levelled, because, after all, the Members there have both the right and the duty to put forward the interests of their constituencies, and they can do so from local knowledge within their possession which they can readily make available. But in so far as I have any constituency at all—and I doubt very much whether I have any right to say so—it would probably be the whole of Scotland, and I have neither the time nor the resources to gather so much information; and I do not want regularly to appear as the advocate of Dundee General Hospital or the Eastern Regional Hospital Board, because that is the area in which my knowledge exists.
Therefore, I want to confine myself to a general survey of the scene. While it is very easy to be destructive when one talks in generalities, I will try my best rather to be constructive, because I have never felt that destructive criticism was of any great value, here or anywhere else. One of the things which has been said of the Command Paper is that there is nothing in it which is new; that practically everything has been announced already. I think that is quite true, but it is not necessarily a real criticism of the Paper. Rather, I think, is it a criticism of the fact that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not quite so good on the publicity side as the Minister of Health. After all, the Scots preceded the English in this matter by some two years. It is really more than two years since the foundation for this Paper was laid, and if South of the Border it had not suddenly been realised that something of this kind was necessary, probably we should have just gone ahead in Scotland doing these things, without gathering them together all in one Paper. Therefore I think that it is not a fault. but a virtue, that we are merely restating now decisions which have been building up over a period of years, and certainly over the last two years.
My general reaction to the Paper is one which is completely favourable. References in it to the past are mostly factual rather than opinionative. The
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statement of aims is excellent. In that connection I can say that Government statements of aims are generally excellent. What is not always so excellent is the extent to which the Government's performance matches up to their intentions; and that is not necessarily peculiar to the present Government, although, in my opinion, they are open to this criticism more frequently.
In the first paragraph of the Paper there is a reference to the 1945 Statement:
"The first aim of a hospital service must be to ensure that every patient requiring hospital treatment can obtain it without delay in the hospital most suited to his needs.…"—
in the seventeen years that have elapsed, it cannot yet be said that we have accomplished that end—
"the second, that the hospitals are provided with accommodation, equipment, and staff sufficient for this purpose …"—
nor can it be said that in seventeen years we have reached the end of the road so far as this end is concerned—
"and the third, that the efficiency of the service and the standard of treatment will be maintained and enhanced."
I have no hesitation in saying that the third aim has been very well carried out. In these years the standard of treatment has improved out of all recognition, and anyone who was making a broadcast in 1945 would not have ventured to predict the developments that have taken place in the standards of treatment and efficiency of the service.
In 1945 (I do not know whether they were more timid or more cautious), they did not put any period to the accomplishment of these ends, and though the Plan before us is a ten-year Plan, it does not say that these aims will be accomplished during the ten years. I have a strong suspicion that we are on a road which has no ending and that the best we can hope to do is to move as far along this road as circumstances permit.
How far will this present programme carry us on? The noble Lord, Lord Craigton, stated, and the Paper says, that the estimated cost is £70 million within the ten years. I am not in a position to say whether that is a fair sum, an adequate slice of the national "cake", because I am not in a position—nor, I suppose, are many Members of your Lordships House—to assess priorities between one thing and another. However, in this connection I am glad to

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see in paragraph 34 of the Paper that it is laid down that the programme is to be reviewed periodically and that modification and extension will take place as required; that the intention is that there will, in fact, always be an up-to-date ten-year plan. I think that this is one of the most valuable statements in the document. While I do not wish to be unduly political, I cannot refrain from taking the opportunity of saying that I wish that this recognition of the value of planning were accepted by the Government in fields other than the Health Service. It is one which they could follow with great advantage. In fact, if the Pipe-lines Bill had been better planned than it appears to have been, we might have been starting this debate before seven o'clock.
I should also like to say that I like paragraph 34, with its reference to "modification and extension" much better than paragraph 65, which is largely financial. It says at the bottom of the page that
"… the programme may have to be modified considerably when the detailed schedules of accommodation come to be prepared."
It occurred to me that perhaps I was reading "modified" in rather a narrow way, though I do not think so. I looked up in the Library the meaning of the word "modify" and I find that it is:
"to limit, restrain, tone down"—
or, in another connection—
"to make less severe, or to make partial changes".
In paragraph 34 the reference is to "modification and extension", so I think it is fair to assume that in both parts of the Paper "modification" is used in the sense of limiting or restraining, rather than just changing.
In 1965, when we come to talk about the money side, if the only alteration which is suggested is a restriction of the amount of money that may be available, I think it will be a mistake, because our experience over the last ten years has shown clearly that if we set a target of a given amount of money to do a given job we shall inevitably find, before the ten years are up, that it costs more money to do any given amount of work; and even if inflation is kept to a very small figure. it is bound to have some effect on the plan. So I would not accept that the only alteration in this
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programme should be in a sense a limiting rather than an expanding one.
I have already reached the stage of the only criticisms I want to make, and I might as well deal with them all at the one time. In paragraph 36 it is stated
"Perhaps the most obvious is that the scale of hospital provision aimed at is based in the first instance on the assumption that hospital treatment and care will be provided only for those who need it, and that the domiciliary services will be responsible for patients who do not need the special services that only the hospital can provide …"
Paragraph 40 touches on the same theme.
"If the hospital provision is to be limited to this class, however, there must be adequate home nursing and supporting welfare services for patients who can return home, and old people's homes for those who can no longer live by themselves."
As an old local authority man, I feel obliged to draw attention to the fact that this is placing considerable burdens on the shoulders of local authorities, at a time when many of them feel that their resources are strained to the uttermost. So the Government must not feel too disappointed if they find that, under the grants which are now available to local authorities, there may sometimes be a reluctance on the part of some of them to proceed in these supplementary fields as rapidly as the Government would like them to do.
It may be that, before the ten years are up, these burdens on local authorities, will be of a character that will compel the Government to look to the measures of assistance which local authorities are to receive in carrying out these tasks. After all, one of the criticisms which has been laid against the present Government—and it has been raised in another place by Members who are normally supporters of the Government—is that it has shown a very considerable tendency to transfer burdens from the taxpayer to the ratepayer, rather than to effect real economies. It is not an economy to reduce the amount the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to find if, instead, it is placed at the door of the local finance chairman or city treasurer.
In paragraphs 53 to 59 there is reference to bed ratios. and the Command Paper anticipates that in ten years' time there will be reductions in the number

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of beds required for certain purposes. In making this estimate certain ratios have been taken into account. In so far as these are based on information resulting from a great deal of study by people who are experts in these fields, obviously it would be neither wise nor proper for me to disagree with these conclusions. However, I am bound to mention, and it is admitted in the Paper in another paragraph—I would name it, but I cannot lay hands on it at the moment—that this is not a thing which remains in isolation. These figures can be achieved only if other factors work out as anticipated.
For instance, factors like bed occupancy, turnover of patients, the seasonal use of beds (which we have particularly in pædiatric units, where there is a high incidence of occupation in the winter and a low one in the summer), all have a bearing on the bed ratio, Obviously, if it were guaranteed that as one patient went out of the door, emptying a bed, another one came in to take it up, we could have pretty well 100 per cent. occupancy. But you have to leave a certain number of beds available, say, for the emergency patient, who is sufficiently inconsiderate to be taken suddenly ill and require immediate admission instead of taking his proper place on the waiting list; you can accommodate these people only if you leave empty beds available for them. We are all familiar with the pattern in so many Scottish hospitals where the number left has not been sufficient. In Dundee Royal, Edinburgh Royal, Glasgow Royal and Glasgow Western it very often happens that there are beds down the middle of the ward because all the ordinary beds are full up. All these things have their effect on ratios. I take it that these are as reasonable estimates as can be made of the situation and are not to be taken as the laws of the Medes and Persians.
That, I think, is all I want to say of a critical nature about the White Paper. I agree wholeheartedly with the first emphasis, which is to rebuild, either in whole or in part, the large teaching hospitals. I do so, even though I understand that some £40 million of the £70 million contemplated in the ten years'
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expenditure will be required for the building and equipping of these teaching hospitals. I think that in themselves they will make the greatest possible contribution to the health and welfare of the people of Scotland, because much of the work which is done there, much of the research carried out and of the experience gained, can be used in other hospitals throughout Scotland. I think, therefore, that while it is one which not everybody in the hospital service in Scotland will agree with, it is the right decision.
I also find myself very enthusiastic about the district hospitals proposal. I think this is a well worthwhile change which is being made. I did underline somewhere in this document a sentence which I thought showed that this was not just a piece of bureaucratic writing, but evinced a real consideration of the needs of the people of Scotland. I cannot find it at the moment, but it does say somewhere in the Paper that it is important not to try to concentrate everything in the teaching hospitals but to have regard to the convenience of people in getting to a hospital reasonably. I think the district hospital will go a long way towards making that possible.
Some of the policies in the Paper which I should also like to commend are the emphasis on the diagnostic aids which are available to general practitioners. I should wish, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, would, that they would make increasing use of these facilities, making their own task so much easier and more satisfying, and being so much more helpful to their patients. I am glad, also, that the opportunity is to be taken for associating, wherever it is possible and where it can be suitably done, general practitioners with those hospitals with specialisation services, such as accident departments. This is something which I think is overdue, and it may well be that we are setting a lead in some of these fields which others may follow.
I like the acceptance of the principle that the normal procedure will be that birth takes place in hospital rather than in the home. It has taken us a long time to reach that position, and I think it is reasonable to say that aiming at 70 per cent. to 75 per cent. of confinements taking place in hospital is, in

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fact, accepting that principle. But I remember many of the meetings which the Regional Hospital Board chairmen in Scotland used to have, and which it was my privilege to attend, when the chairman of the North-Eastern Regional Hospital Board fought so hard with representatives of the Department because she had a very high incidence of birth in hospital rather than outside. I think it is reasonable that births should take place outside the hospital only where the circumstances lay down that it is a better situation than having confinements in maternity units. This Paper will go a long way towards achieving that.
I was also very happy to hear the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, speak about the value of the geriatric assessment units. As he knows, there is in operation in Maryfield Hospital, under Dr. Taylor Brown, a most effective unit of that kind. He, I think, like me, has seen it in operation, and it is amazing the extent to which old people are enabled to return to a normal life by an application of the special techniques which have been discovered because such a unit was set up in the Eastern Region. I know that before long it will, in fact, be standard practice everywhere.
I should also like to associate myself with the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, in his thanks to the Nuffield Trust for the very generous unit which they are to establish in Edinburgh. Like the noble Lord, I am certain it will be something which is of great advantage to us in Scotland.
The Minister referred to the long time it takes to get new hospitals. I do not know how long it is now since we started talking serious business about the rebuilding of the Dundee Royal Infirmary, but it seems to be almost half a lifetime away and we still have not started to build. The situation, of course, is not so bad as the outsider might think, because, after all, we are building a hospital which is to be used for the next 40, 50 or even longer period of years ahead: the very least we can do is to do everything we can to make certain that when it comes into use it is not already out of date, and that can only be accomplished by a great deal of investigation. I think it was in 1951
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that I was one of a party that went to Sweden to see the hospital building programme there, in connection with the building of this Dundee Hospital; and departmental representatives and others have gone to America and European countries other than Sweden. I think we shall be making use in the years ahead of what we have learned there, and it may be that some of the things we are going to do will be ahead of what they have accomplished.
The Paper, as is perhaps reasonable in a Paper which is concerned largely with building, touches only briefly, and the Minister in his speech also touched only briefly, on the aspect of staff. One of the things I learned as long ago as 1951 in Sweden was that that country suffered from the same difficulties in relation to staff shortages as we do in this country. They had difficulty in getting nursing staff and domestic staff. They have been compelled to turn to labour-saving devices in order to make up for these staff shortages. What I liked about the Swedes was the way in which they went about this. Their rules were simple. If a proposal came forward which was workable—that was the obvious first test to be applied—they looked at what it was going to cost. If the sinking fund and interest cost of the proposal were less than the cost of the staff which it replaced, or the staff which it supplanted or made unnecessary, then they went ahead. They particularly used devices which enabled a nurse to do more work than she otherwise would have done—the sort of thing which reduced the mileage which a nurse had to do in the ward in the course of an ordinary day's work.
At that time we saw various types of unit. There was the simple case such as we get in the sleepers, where you press a button which rings a bell in another place, a light goes on, or a flap goes down outside your door. They had that installed, and a nurse could have her attention drawn by a patient and could see right away to which small ward of part of a ward she had to go. We saw in one hospital that they had gone further: they had a two-way system, where it was not necessary for the nurse to go and see what was required. She could speak directly to the patient, and if it was a case of taking a bed-pan

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along she did so. She did not have to go and find out what was wanted. I do not know how much of that has been done in this country. I do not think there has been much of it. I was told the other day that a two-way system of this kind has recently been installed in the Royal Masonic Hospital, and I hope to have the opportunity of seeing it working there. I think the planning of hospitals is taking that sort of thing into account, and if we are going to be able to make full use of the beds that are provided, obviously we must spend money in these ways or we are going to defeat ourselves before we are finished.
Finally, I want to say a few words about another element of staffing, and that is the question of the salaries that are paid to hospital staffs, and particularly the salaries paid to nurses. A great deal was said about this the other day in another place. There is an amusing cartoon in to-day's Daily Express which shows a nurse loaded up with every noxious device available to a hospital, going into a room labelled "M.P., collapsed after being up all night to vote against increases in nurses' pay". She is saying: "This one is for me!". I think it is a tribute to nurses that, even if they were faced with that opportunity, they would not react in the way the cartoon po trays. Even such an M.P. would receive first-class attention.
I think the fact that we know that that is the position has encouraged us to rely on the belief that we shall always find sufficient girls with a sense of vocation who will come forward and do nursing, whether the reward is a reasonable one or not. In that sense, I think we are quite mistaken. In fact, while a number of years ago the number of student nurses was certainly over 50 per cent, of the total (I obtained these figures only yesterday; I am talking not about Scottish figures, but United Kingdom figures) we have reached a position where the number of students is just equal to the number of trained staff. Having regard to the considerable wastage that is taking place, I consider that that is not nearly good enough. It is all very well to talk about a sense of vocation, but I think we are wrong when we work on the basis that a nurse is a ministering angel who will come along and soothe the fevered brow with her cool hand. A
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very distinguished, now retired, head of a large hospital in Scotland disagreed with that, and said that in his opinion the really good nurse was one who remembered to warm the bed-pan. We want practical people as well as those with a sense of vocation. Preferably we want people with both of these attributes, but I doubt very much whether we shall continue to get them if pay is put on the basis that it is.
I looked up the Whitley Awards made by the Administrative and Clerical Staffs Council and those made by the Nursing and Midwives Council, and I think it is a poor commentary on the situation that we find that a nurse entering training, probably at the age of 18, receives £299, and then, by her third year, she has risen to a salary of £336, whereas the girl who chooses to enter the office of the hospital at the age of 16 as a clerkess, to be trained as a clerkess, with just such education as she has received at school in commercial pursuits, gets £260. By the time she is 18 she is receiving £330, which is £6 a year less, or 2s. 4d. a week less, than the nurse in training receives in her third year. By the time she is 20 she has, of course, gone substantially ahead of the nurse in training. When the nurse becomes a staff nurse, she goes on to a salary scale of £525, and when she has received six increments and has probably reached the age of 28 or 29 she has achieved the maximum salary for a staff nurse of £656, again £6 a year more than the girl in the office has accomplished. The girl clerk has risen through the ordinary process of just growing older and staying in the position, and has achieved a salary of £650 a year.
I should not wish it to be thought that I am suggesting that the girl in the office is being paid too much, because I know that those who negotiate her salary think they have done a poor job and that she ought to be getting a great deal more. But the girl in the office has the advantage that her salary is arrived at, to some extent, by what is paid in outside employment, what is being paid in the office of the industrialist, the banker and other public boards. They all have their effect on the level of the clerical administrative salaries. After all, the hospital employs

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comparatively few of these people. But in the nursing field it is the other way round. There is a small nursing staff outwith the Health Service, and there is not this competition. I think we have too long played with this position.
I know it is impossible for the Minister to say anything in this connection to-day, but I feel bound to enter this warning. The Government will only be deluding themselves if they fancy that they can carry on maintaining the service through the years at the level of salaries which is being paid at the present time. If they are prudent men they will take into their calculations the fact at the end of the decade that a great deal more money will be being spent on salaries than is being spent at the present time. After all, the salaries which are being quoted, even if they were going to be comparable only with the office staff, ought to be 15 per cent. more, because the nurse's salary is based on an 88-hour fortnight, whereas the office girl does a 40-hour week. Remember, it is not a 44-hour week which the nurse works. The conditions are such that she cannot guarantee that she will do 44 hours in one week. She may be working 48 hours one week and 40 hours the next, because of the exigencies of the shift system. She is in fact working more hours than the other girl. As has been stated almost ad nauseam, she does it without any payment for overtime and the extra calls on her time that emergencies sometimes create.
I should not like to close on that note of criticism, although it is given rather as a warning than a criticism. Much rather would I close by saying how much I appreciate the terms in which this Paper is written. I think that much more important than the figures that are in it is the concept which lies behind it. But while officially these congratulations may be extended to the Minister, I have a pretty good idea that the Minister did not write this. I do not believe that the Secretary of State wrote it either. I believe I could name the people who had a very great part in it, and I should appreciate it very much if the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, would convey to them, as an old colleague of theirs in the Health Service field, my appreciation of the humane terms in which this document has been compiled. For these
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reasons it is a pleasure to agree with the Motion put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Craigton.
8.2 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I am sure we have all enjoyed enormously the altogether delightful and brilliant speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes. He is immensely knowledgeable and has spent many years of his life in local government, and I do not think anybody could have made a more interesting or constructive speech. I am so glad that I stayed here, rather to hear him than to make any contribution myself.
I should like to add my congratulations to the Government on this White Paper. It seems to be a bold and constructive Plan for a new and better Hospital Service in Scotland. Not being an expert on the Hospital Service, although I have now been for a great many years in local government, I was amazed to read, what I had not realised before, that except for the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary no major new hospital has been built since 1914. That conjures up a picture of most amazing historical buildings in which much of the brilliant surgery and medical practice is carried on to-day. So I think, like my noble friend Lord Hughes, that this is a very opportune moment for the Government to announce their plans; and I hope, as I am sure all your Lordships hope, that these will now be carried out as swiftly as possible.
I should also like to agree very much with the way in which the Hospital Service in Scotland is planned to be grouped around the four major teaching hospitals in the great cities; in the Northern Region and in the Southern Region from Inverness. I am sure it is a very wise way of using the skilled staff and teaching staff in those great centres, and I believe that we in Scotland do this much better than it is done in England. At least one noble Lord to whom I was talking earlier in the day (who is also a great doctor) said how much he admired the way in which we use to the best possible advantage the teaching hospitals in Scotland.
I am particularly interested (the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, also mentioned this) in the South-Eastern Region because

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it includes the four Border Counties of Peebles, Roxburgh (where I live, and where I am a member of the County Council), Selkirk and Berwick. This is largely a rural area, with a number of small boroughs. At present we have quite a number of small hospitals—what, in days gone by, were called cottage hospitals—and these are spread throughout the Border Counties. They are quite effective and serve a useful purpose, but they are not equipped for major operations and medical treatments. They are limited in what they can do, though what they can do they do very well indeed.
But our main hospital (I take it that it is one of the district hospitals referred to in the White Paper) is Peel Hospital, which is some way from Galashiels. It is right off the main thoroughfares, a long way from a railway station and, in fact, in isolation. No doubt that is because it was one of the emergency hospitals built during the war, when hospitals were built in inaccessible places. This hospital comes, quite rightly, under the teaching area of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the great Edinburgh hospitals. The medical service is, I know, excellent in every way, from the point of view of medicine; and of surgery and so on very good indeed. But the hospital is housed in a really terrible series of buildings. They consist simply of wooden hutments, built in the spider fashion of barracks, and the whole place must be extraordinarily difficult to run.
Only recently vast sums of money were spent on it, to put in a new heating system and to try to make new amenities; but, in my opinion, that money would have been far better spent, as it could have been, on providing a district hospital of this kind in either Galashiels or St. Boswell. It would then have been in the same relation with the regional teaching hospitals, but would have been very much easier to run. At present, there must be a tremendous waste of time and energy on the part of the nursing staff, doctors, and so on, in order to run Peel Hospital, and I think it is a great pity that we could not have included in the ten-year Plan a new district hospital on the lines outlined by the Minister and also outlined in the White Paper.
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There is in fact—and this is my only criticism of the White Paper—no mention in t of any new hospital for the Border Counties or of any development in the service there. I would beg the Minister to look at this point again. I realise that the amount of rebuilding which is described, and which is so urgently needed in the great centres must be carried out. We must have, as the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has rightly said, hospitals worthy of the knowledge, skill and the service which is rendered to the community by the nursing and medical profession. None the less, I feel that we in the Border area are at the moment rather left out; we are rather the Cinderella of this Plan. I should like to urge on the Minister and the Secretary of State, bearing in mind that paragraph which Lord Hughes quoted and which speaks about the development and looking at the scheme from time to time to see how it is going on, that someone should look at the Border Counties to see what can be done for them. I must say that I feel that we are worthy of something a little better than being completely left out of this Plan. But that is, I think, my only criticism.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has mentioned, quite rightly the very important point about the pay of nurses. I agree with every single word that he said on that subject. He knows far more about it than I do, but we are, I believe, in danger of losing first-class people—people who would come into the nursing profession—simply by reason of the fact that the remuneration is not nearly good enough for the long years of training which nurses take and also for the devotion which they show to the service. This really is very important indeed. I should like to make one or two other comments about the nursing situation. I believe (the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, did not mention this) that there is a very successful pre-service nursing school in Fife which is a model for the pre-service training of girls who want to go into the nursing service but who cannot get into hospital until they are eighteen. This school takes them from the age of sixteen to eighteen and gives them pre-service training. I am told that it is excellent (I have not seen it myself) and it serves an extremely useful purpose. I think that might be developed in other parts of Scotland.

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Then there is the fact that in many of the professions in which women play a very important part (I am thinking particularly of nursing and teaching) there is a very high marriage rate. I believe that one of the things we shall have to do, certainly in these two professions, is to encourage these married people later, when perhaps they have brought up their families, to return to the profession in which they started. I am quite sure that we could get more help in this problem from married nurses and married teachers.
It might be that they would have to be employed part-time, but that again I think ought to be looked at. If we were to make a recruiting drive for State Registered Nurses to help in the Hospital Service I am sure we could get some help, and probably a great deal, from married nurses. It is happening now in a great many areas. I know that in my own area in some of the cottage hospitals the only nurses are part-time nurses who live in the borough and come in and give their services. I believe that that practice could be developed further, and I suggest to the Minister that he might look at it in view of the great importance of nursing in regard to this White Paper.
There is only one other matter that I wish to mention. One could comment on a great many of the aspects of the White Paper, but this is one which, from my experience in local government and on the health and welfare committees, I have found invariably arises; that is, the shortage of accommodation for mental defectives, particularly children. It is sometimes months—I have known it to be even years—before a mentally defective child can be got into a mental institution. This can cause great unhappiness and difficulty in families where probably all the other children are quite all right. If one could investigate the possibilities of providing more accommodation far mental defectives, I think that would be a great help to many families in the community.
The new Mental Health Act, which deals not with mental defectives but with mental illness is one of the great steps forward, one of the great revolutionary plans, put forward by the Government in the medical services, and I wish it every success. It is going to lay upon
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the local authorities a considerable responsibility in connection with the provision of health and welfare services for mental patients who are well enough to be discharged and to go home, but who must have some care in the community. For this to be provided by the welfare services is bound to place a big responsibility on the local authorities. I am sure it is right that, wherever possible, people should try to live not in mental hospitals but in the community, because so often they become quite all right and can lead an ordinary, normal life. So I welcome this step forward very much indeed. In fact, like the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, I feel that this is an admirable document. I congratulate the Minister and the Secretary of State on putting it forward. All I ask—and this is my only criticism of it—is that the Minister will remember the Border area during the course of the ten years of this Plan.
8.25 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, with reference to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, about the Peers in this place, I heard the other day that the Members of this House represent no one but themselves, and enjoy the complete confidence of their constituents. In saying that, I would begin by welcoming this Command Paper and at the same time gently chiding the draftsman for the implication in paragraph 35 that the first principle on which the Plan is based is a new concept. If it were, there would be something revolutionary in the Paper, which of course there is not. How can there be, when it is a continuation of what people have had in mind for so many years? It is difficult to cast our minds back even to the days before antibiotics, to the days before the motor ambulance, to the days before the motor accident, and it is only a hundred years since we were in the days before the anæsthetic, but the effects of modern drugs in the treatment of infectious disease, T.B. and mental illness, are too recent to be out of mind.
The results on hospital planning have been referred to before. The manner in which population patterns and densities have changed is obvious, but are we sufficiently alive—I do not see this from a close study of the Paper—to the future changes which are coming?

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Do I detect a lack of reference to the changes in population pattern which are to come? These need not be based on crystal-gazing but on facts in terms of industrial development, particularly in the central industrial belt.
As your Lordships know, I am concerned in the pharmaceutical industry, though I do not propose to make more than passing reference to this in my speech. I spent part of my childhood in a doctor's home, and despite a fairly bucolic appearance now I have spent enough time in hospital, mainly with tropical diseases. Only the other day, as the result of an eye injury, I found myself in the casualty department and the following day in the out-patients' department in one of the very latest hospitals in England. In other words, I have been more at the receiving end than perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has been at the other end in terms of hospital study.
Further, I live in one of the landward areas of Southern Scotland and am in touch with the problems of the people, of the local cottage hospitals and the nursing services in the neighbourhood. As we all know, hospitals are not only bricks and mortar or concrete and chromium, and the human factor is of paramount importance. I was deeply impressed by the speech which was made by the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Lichfield, in your Lordships' House on February 14. I should like to quote (but I must not) a large section of his speech, particularly that part which was an appeal for the humanisation of the Hospital Service. Of course, we know that this is fully appreciated by our planners. But I should like to make two general points. First of all, on the reception of patients, and especially the handling of out-patients, could everything possible be done to imbue in the reception and the office staff some of that undefinable sense of compassion that to me nurses seem to radiate? Indeed, could the administration possibly contemplate a post something like a hostess, such as they have in airports, to look after waiting patients? Has the right reverend Prelate's suggestion, contained in the speech to which I have referred, something in it, that there is an outlet here
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for voluntary workers in helping with patients who are waiting?
At the planning stage one cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of design. Indeed, the noble Lord and the White Paper itself have emphasised this; and it is clear from paragraph 148 that this is well in hand. May I urge that design at every stage of reception and of out-patients' departments is most important? Perhaps I might again refer to the right reverend Prelate's remarks on the subject, and express the hope and wish that staffing and design can be such that we do not "see people like sheep, waiting, waiting, waiting". To me, there is something infinitely moving about the expressionless mask which our phlegmatic countrymen and women wear as they sit in an outpatients' department.
On the subject of humanisation, may I comment on the White Paper's encouragement to cottage hospitals, especially for the services which they render to old and bedridden people? I would emphasise the point which I think the noble Baroness made, that these cottage hospitals are accessible when they are situated in landward areas for frequent visits by relatives and friends. These visits mean so much to them all, and they are not possible in a landward area if folk are to be involved in long journeys to central hospitals. The noble Baroness touched on the work of cottage hospitals; but I was a little alarmed at that part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, which referred to the disappearance of the small hospitals. He did not mention the cottage hospitals, which I believe, from my own experience, play, and can continue to play, an important part in the care of geriatric patients.
The White Paper does not contain as much reference as I should like to see to the important question of staffing, though the noble Lord developed the subject in his introductory speech. I will not mention nurses, because they have been well dealt with. I would refer particularly to staffing by doctors and by the ancillaries on the doctoring side, such as physiotherapists, radiographers and the like. This subject has been debated in your Lordships' House and in another place, so it should suffice if I say that we must remember that the

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shortage of doctors is a pressing problem and cannot be put right overnight. As the noble Lord, Lord Craigton said, there must be sufficient staff if the plan is to succeed. One welcomes the last sentence of paragraph 48. But more is needed. It may even be that the National Health Service system may, in some respects, have to be recast. The emigration of too many doctors is a fact—there seems no question of that. It is not only because of insufficient financial reward. Does the Service give a proper sense of fulfilment to the doctors who are working in it? I would beg leave to refer to a quotation from Mill's Essay on Liberty, in which he said:
"A Government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual execution and development."
As I said, I will not refer to my notes in regard to nurses' recruitment, which has been adequately dealt with. I would mention the noble Baroness's reference and suggestion in regard to part-time work by nurses after marriage—wrongly referred to as "wastage" in some quarters—and remind the noble Lord, if I may, of the point I made in another debate, of the tax angle in regard to the part-time work of a married woman. I personally believe that special provision should, and can, be made if care is taken (though I think more could be done) to allow expenses such as travelling, laundry and even help for the care of children who are left behind, and for there to be superimposed upon it a greater measure of relief when a married woman's income is grossed up with that of her husband for tax purposes.
One other question I should like to ask is, will the Administration do all they can to improve the contacts between general practitioners and hospital doctors, so that patients know of this? —not only to see that the doctors in hospital are in touch with the general practitioners, but that the patients know that they are, and thus do not feel that they have just disappeared into the maw of a completely strange environment, sometimes, in a countryside such as mine, many miles from home.
I now turn from the general to the particular, to the criticisms I have to make about the Western Region Plan. Here the population pattern is most complex; it is changing rapidly and is
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likely to continue to do so, especially in Lanarkshire and the industrial belt. I believe it would be a mistake to build a new hospital at Motherwell rather than to build one at Airdrie/Coatbridge, and meanwhile to allow the Law Hospital to run down from its present outstanding position in the area. I welcome the statement in the introduction at the top of page 6, where the White Paper says:
"… in the later years the content of some of the larger projects may have to be reviewed."
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has referred to another part of the Report where, on the financial side, it is admitted that changes may have to be faced, though my proposal need not necessarily involve additional expense, other than that which might be caused by inflation. I hope that flexibility of this nature can be applied to this part of the Plan. Admitting that Motherwell is a centre of population to-day, and will continue so to be, I feel most strongly that the Strathclyde site is unsuitable for development. With 11-odd acres it is too small; there is not enough room to build while the existing hospital continues its work, and there is not enough room to provide the huge parking accommodation which is necessary to-day and will be necessary in the future.
I am informed—and the noble Lord's researches in other countries will confirm—that it may be that allowance must be made for parking four cars per bed, when it is realised that on visiting days visitors' cars have to be found parking room as well as the cars of the staff. Motherwell is many miles from the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire. Visitors simply cannot travel by public transport; they must travel in their cars, whether they are going to Motherwell or to the Law; and the Law, of course, has 84 acres. The Motherwell area is a centre of heavy industry, with all the smoke and dirt which goes with it, and I am informed any structure there will call for expensive air conditioning and consequent additional expense.
My reference to the Airdrie/Coatbridge area arises from the Cumbernauld development which is going ahead very fast, with its consequent change in the pattern of population. I believe that Airdrie and Coatbridge is the right

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location for a new major hospital, to be followed by the redevelopment of Law. May I appeal to the noble Lord to look into this aspect again? In passing, may I mention the fact that Law Hospital, despite the temporary-looking nature of its buildings, is a "guid-going" concern, with skilful and happy staff and with excellent training arrangements for nurses; and these intangible factors cannot be sacrificed except in extreme necessity.
One other particular point I wish to make about the Western area is in regard to the maternity unit for Hairmyres Hospital, which is mentioned in paragraph 75 though I was worried to see that it is not mentioned in paragraph 90 where the future plans for the area are detailed. East Kilbride is already a large community, over 15,000 people, and growing fast, and must be looked upon as a fact. If ever there is a unit which should be near to the folk who use it, I believe it is the maternity unit. Knowing East Kilbride as I do, and speaking as a father of four—and a father's anxieties and feelings are too often treated as a joke—I cannot too strongly urge the acceleration of the maternity unit at Hairmyres. Bellshill, in my view, is too far away for the proper contacts to exist between the maternity unit and the folk it is designed to serve.
If I began my speech with a gentle chiding when I referred to paragraph 35, I would end it by congratulating my noble friend and his Department, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on the readable, interesting and, to me, almost thrilling draftmanship of this White Paper. I would join with Lord Hughes in his references to those responsible. The Government have set their hand to a major development of an ancient concept, and to that extent can rely upon the sympathy and support of the community. Whether the National Health Service, as we know it to-day, is the best form of service is quite another matter—and it may well require radical revision in some respects.
However that may be, may I, in conclusion, urge my noble friend and the Secretary of State for Scotland to do everything in their power to preserve Scotland from the present malaise in the
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relations between the Ministry of Health and the medical, nursing and ancillary services? The Ministry seems at the moment to have fallen foul of the doctors, quarrelled with the nurses, driven the pharmacists to desperation, and abused and bullied the pharmaceutical industry. This is not the way to make a creaking structure function smoothly. I urge the Minister of State and his right honourable friend to use all their skill, consideration and courtesy—of all of which they possess in large measure—and to apply as much of the lubricant of human understanding as they can to the conduct of this Department's responsible task in Scotland. With these comments, and a further expression of appreciation not only of the Command Paper but of the manner in which the noble Lord introduced it, I support the Motion.
8.35 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, before I make my brief contribution to this very important debate, which certainly deserves a larger House than it has at this late hour, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Craigton and his Department for the help they have given me on this Motion. I should like also to congratulate my noble friend on the admirable way in which he has moved the Resolution, and also to congratulate the draftsmen responsible on the White Paper. Speaking as one who took part in the debate on its English counterpart, I think it has the same admirable traits of clarity and conviction as its English counterpart had.
My Lords, I am, as I have said to your Lordships before, something of an exile from my native country now. I seldom manage to visit it, but I keep in touch with Scottish affairs, largely through the Scotsman and the Perthshire Advertiser, and I have been particularly interested in the progress made with the hospitals in the Perthshire area. I am particularly pleased to note in the White Paper the improvements that are going to be made to the Bridge of Earn Hospital, which in my opinion does some excellent work, particularly on the accidents side.
Something has been said about the remuneration of nurses and I shall not say very much on this subject to-night because there is already a Motion down

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for debate upon it at a later date, but I should like to bear out what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, and by my noble friend Baroness Elliot of Harwood. Of course, while the pay pause is on—and I support the general principles of the pay pause—the hospital services must fall in line, but I should like something of an assurance from my noble friend that when the pay pause is ended the hospital services will be in the forefront of the queue. I do not need to trace the very long hours during which these nurses, the nursing sisters and matrons and other hospital workers toil. The recent smallpox outbreak provides an example. Admittedly Scotland has been mercifully free from that, but it could mean that the nursing staffs in Scottish hospitals would be put to a great deal of extra work.
It is another point with regard to nurses that I should like to make: that when these new hospital buildings are erected and when these new schemes come, adequate provision should be made for really well-built nurses' homes. I have seen a number of nurses' homes in England (I have not visited any north of the Border) and some of those which I have visited are in a really deplorable condition; and while I think the nurses rightly deserve extra remuneration they also deserve decent accommodation. Frequently a would-be nurse with her parents goes round a hospital and meets the matron, and one of the first things they want to see is the nurses' home. If it is an ancient building which lets in water and has other discomforts of that nature, it is going to turn these girls against nursing, even allowing for the fact that nursing is a vocation—and, perhaps, it is more of a vocation than is any other career.
I am not suggesting that nurses should be "molly-coddled". Nurses, and particularly Scottish nurses, would not like that, I am sure. But frequently, particularly in Scotland, hospitals are situated in areas rather more remote than they are in this part of the world and to compensate, perhaps, for not being able to have their share of the bright lights—which, after all, all young ladies like—they should be accommodated in well-ventilated, well-built and well-equipped homes. I hope, and in fact I believe, that the Government will bear that point in mind.
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My Lords, I gave notice to my noble friend that I was going to raise the matter of Belford Hospital at Fort William. Fort William is a very busy town and the hospital has to cater for a number of accidents which take place on Ben Nevis and the surrounding mountains and hills. I rather wonder whether the new 52-bed hospital, as outlined in the White Paper, is sufficient. This is a growing area, it is a growing tourist area, and Fort William itself has quite a high population. I would urge the Minister to see if this number is, in fact, adequate.
I gave notice also that I should raise the question of a new hospital between Fort William and Inverness. This is an area which I know quite well, because I lived for a time near Kingussie. The Badenoch area, which covers Kingussie, Newtonmore and so on, is very busy, particularly in the summer, and with the incidence of winter sports and other activities the need for a hospital, perhaps a small hospital, in that area seems to me to be quite important. If not tonight then at a later date I should like to hear the views of the Government on this. The distance between Fort William and Inverness is something like 70 miles. Particularly in the winter the roads can become very, very difficult to pass, particularly the A.9. Therefore, the setting up of a new hospital of some kind, even if it is a small one, is surely a matter of importance.
I was very interested to hear my noble friend Lord Ferrier mention the cottage hospitals. They perform a very fine service in England and in Scotland —I am thinking particularly of those at Crieff and Aberfeldy—and I hope that the Government will not allow the cottage hospitals to die out completely as they are tending to do in this part of the country.
I am pleased to see in the White Paper that the accident and casualty services are being paid adequate attention. It is becoming more and more important, with the increased traffic and with winter sports and other tourist activities, to have well-equipped accident services. I think that this is a practical White Paper. Scotland has contributed much to the world of medicine. I have just been reading a

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book on the life of John Hunter, who practically pioneered the subject of anatomy. The brothers John and William Hunter—both good, true Scots —contributed much to the annals of medicine, and I am sure that if they were alive to-day they would, as I do—and as I think all noble Lords who have spoken have done—congratulate the Government on this very good White Paper.
8.47 p.m.
LORD CRAIGTON. My Lords, this has been a valuable debate, and those of your Lordships who have taken part will know that it will be of great value to all those in Scotland concerned with Scottish health. I am grateful to noble Lords for the welcome they have given to the Plan and for their constructive speeches. I may say that I am not a bit worried about the attendance; personally I prefer quality to quantity. I think I should start by adding my regrets to those expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, has not been able to be here to take part in this debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said that he did not want to advocate the claims of any area. I agree with him, but I must say that no one speaks with greater authority about Dundee, or the area of the Regional Board of which he was so successful and popular a Chairman. I am also grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Hughes, Lord Ferrier and Lord Auckland, for the kindly thanks and appreciation given to the officials of my Department. I can assure them that I read and, as it were, make "dirty cracks" about these White Papers when they are 90 per cent. completed, but we must always remember that behind us are these loyal and skilled officials who work so hard for the good of us all. I know that they will appreciate very much the mention that has been made.
I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, too, for his reminder that Scotland was quicker off the mark than England and Wales. This is a point which, perhaps, I was too modest to mention myself. I liked the phrase used by the noble Lord; that we in the Hospital Service are on a road that has no end, and that all we can do is to
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hurry along as fast as possible. This is how I see the White Paper, and I think he sees it in that way, too. I can assure him that it is our hope, and indeed our intention, that there shall always be a ten-year Plan. In fact, the Regional Hospital Boards will before long be submitting to my right honourable friend proposals for two or three years after 1971.
I agree—and I referred to this in my opening speech—that the Plan relies, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on the active co-operation of the local authorities. I was not in the least surprised to hear from an ex-Lord Provost the usual and quite proper question: "Yes, but where is the money coming from?" All I can answer is that I am sure this problem can be straightened out, if it does arise, as other such problems are straightened out: it is the inevitable and proper conflict between the taxpayer and the ratepayer.
The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and my noble friend who has just sat down were worried about the future of the cottage hospitals. Of course, there is no general answer. Some of these hospitals are clearly essential and will have to remain. The coming of the district general hospital may well affect others if they are in the area of that hospital. What I said earlier about the closing or keeping open of small hospitals applies also to the cottage hospitals. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who has asked me to apologise for the fact that she has had to go, drew attention to the need for mental deficiency beds. I sympathise greatly with the needs of such patients and, as I said in my opening speech, this is one of the fields in which we have already done much and in which we intend to do a great deal more to provide the extra accommodation needed.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, referred to the labour-saving devices which impressed him in Sweden, and very properly, I thought, he wondered whether we were proposing to use in our new hospitals all the modern aids which are available to save labour and to increase efficiency. I can reassure him on this point. The provision of some of the new machinery, like pneumatic tube systems, central dish-washing equipment,

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call systems for staff, automatic X-ray processing machines and food service equipment seems essential if we are to use our manpower and our womanpower effectively. The only caution I would give—and I think the noble Lord would agree with me on this—is that we should not try to mechanise either to the point at which we set up a whole new series of problems, where we have to replace staff by even more expensive highly-skilled mechanics, or to the point where we substitute machines for effective personal supervision of the patients.
The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, expressed the hope that we should do everything possible to ensure that our out-patient departments in the new hospitals are designed to cope with the traffic they have to bear. I am glad that he made this point, and I will see that his speech—because he made so many constructive suggestions—is most carefully studied. In general, the growth of the out-patient traffic has been, as the statistics show, one of the dramatic things in the Hospital Service since 1948. The old hospitals were not built with this in mind. We recognise that if the right kind of out-patient departments are provided, not only will patients be seen in proper conditions but we can also take some of the load off the in-patient bed accommodation. We will try also to ensure that patients have to spend as little time as possible waiting to be seen by their doctors, and we can do this by insisting on proper appointment systems. Finally—and this is where the noble Lord's speech will be valuable—the Department's work-study team has made, and is making, a study of out-patient traffic in all its branches, and we hope that the beneficial results of this will be seen in the new departments that are to be built.
Noble Lords referred to staff difficulties, and especially to nursing staff. The facts of the increase—and they are facts —over the years in the number of staff in the service, including nurses and nursing auxiliaries, do not support the argument that pay has been a deterrent to recruitment. But the matter was fully discussed two days ago in another place, and there is a Motion on the Paper in your Lordships' House. So I do not think that in this debate, which is mainly about the Plan, I can usefully add any
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thing to what has been said by my right honourable friends the Secretary of State and the Minister of Health.
The noble Baroness raised the very important question of the hospital provision for the Borders, and I appreciate the feeling of disappointment that the Hospital Plan for the first ten years does not contain provision for the replacement of Peel Hospital or of Peebles Cottage Hospital. The South-Eastern Regional Hospital Board, who are responsible for setting the priorities in the programme for the whole region, have a very heavy building programme during the first ten years. They decided that their priorities must be, first, the replacement of the major teaching hospitals in Edinburgh, the Royal Infirmary and the Western General Hospital; secondly, the provision of general hospital services in Fife, where no such services now exist; thirdly, the provision of a new mental deficiency hospital in Fife—here again, there is no existing service for this type of patient. And, fourthly, they have decided to build a new district general hospital in West Lothian to replace Bangour, which, like Peel, is a war-time hospital. What tipped the balance in favour of West Lothian were the new developments in that area, including the B.M.C. factory developments and the proposed new town at Livingstone. My Lords, these are the main developments which we hope will take place in the South-Eastern Region in the first ten years and, although there will be continuing expenditure on existing hospitals, including Peel, so far as this is necessary, the South-Eastern Board could not accommodate another major project within the limits of the money available to them.
I should not wish, however, to give the impression that the situation is entirely hopeless so far as the Borders are concerned. The ten-year programme does not represent in any way the end of hospital building in Scotland. Fairly soon now, the Regional Hospital Boards will be presenting the Secretary of State, as I have said, with proposals for new works to be undertaken in the next phase of the programme after 1971, and when the South-Eastern Board come to do this I have no doubt that they will give very sympathetic consideration to the needs of the Borders. Meanwhile,

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Peel Hospital, like the others of the same origin—Law, Ballochmyle, Stracathro and Raigmore—will continue to provide the valuable services which they have rendered as general hospitals to the communities they serve. The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, asked whether we were fully alive to the changes that were coming in population and industry. The decision to go ahead with the new general hospital in West Lothian because of the B.M.C. developments and the new town of Livingstone shows, I think, that we are fully alive to the changes.
My noble friend Lord Ferrier mentioned the disquiet in Lanarkshire about the future of Law Hospital. There has been a good deal (that is putting it mildly) of discussion about Law among all the authorities concerned with the future of the hopsital services in Lanarkshire. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has now said that he approves the proposals of the Western Regional Hospital Board; so I must tell my noble friend that the final decision has now been made. The Board's proposals are to build a new general hospital of some 650 beds at Motherwell, a new hospital of some 400 beds in the Airdrie-Coatbridge area, and to continue acute hospital services at Law on a reduced scale. With beds for geriatrics and for long-term orthopædics. Law will still be a comparatively large hospital of about 450 beds.
I realise that those who were anxious to establish Law as the main general hospital for this area rather than Motherwell will be somewhat disappointed, but after a detailed examination of all the factors which led the Regional Board to their decision the case for Motherwell seemed very strong. Although it was a war-time hospital, as the noble Lord said, Law has rapidly acquired an excellent reputation amongst those who use it, and while it will now change its function to some extent. I have no doubt that it will continue to provide an excellent service. The noble Lord need not worry about Motherwell having priority over the hospital for the Airdrie area: it is the Board's intention that these two should be built at approximately the same time.
The noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, also asked me whether it was the intention
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to provide a new maternity unit at Hairmyres Hospital before 1965 for the mothers from East Kilbride. On the present programme I am afraid it will be after 1965 before this is done. I will tell the noble Lord why. The Board have taken the view that they should give priority in maternity services in Lanarkshire to those areas where the social and housing conditions are not so good. For this reason, the general practitioner units at Wester Moffat and Strathclyde which will serve the older industrial communities are likely to be the first developments. East Kilbride mothers are served mainly, as he said, by the maternity hospitals at Bellshill and Hamilton. This service will, of course, be much improved when the new maternity hospital at Bellshill comes into use in May or June of this year to replace the old hospital.
My noble friend Lord Auckland referred to Belford Hospital. He asked: was it sufficiently large for the area with 52 beds? I have investigated this and I can assure him that 52 beds is on the generous side—and that is after making proper allowance for the needs of the increased summer population. I take due note of what my noble friend said about nurses' homes, and I am grateful to him for what he said. With regard to the possibility of a new hospital between Fort William and Inverness, I must tell the noble Lord that that is a new proposal which has not come our way. No doubt the Northern Regional Hospital Board will read what my noble friend has said. I am grateful to noble Lords who have raised points in to-day's debate, and I hope that, with these new hospitals, we shall provide a balance of high quality medical care and high quality surroundings in which that care can be given.
On Question, Resolution agreed to.

SAINT PAUL, COVENT GARDEN, BILL
Reported, with an Amendment.
WHITEHAVEN HARBOUR BILL
Reported, without amendment.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM
Message from the Commons, that they have come to the following Resolution to which they desire the concurrence of this House, viz.:—
"That it is expedient that a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament be appointed to consider whether any, and if so what, changes should be made in the rights of Peers of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain or of the United Kingdom, and of Peeresses in their own right, to sit in either House of Parliament, or to vote at Parliamentary elections, and whether, and if so under what conditions, a Peer should be enabled to surrender a peerage permanently or for his lifetime or for any less period having regard to the effects and consequences thereof."
The said Message to be taken into consideration on Tuesday the 10th April next.