Lords Sitting of 24 May 1962

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD MERTHYR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Southwell
The Viscount Sidmouth—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

PRODUCTION OF IMITATION MILK
3.4 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the total production of "imitation" or "filled" milk in this country per annum, and what was the total amount of this commodity (a) imported and (b) exported in the year 1961.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE): My Lords, there are no official statistics of production and trade in skimmed milk with non-milk fat, but the indications are that sales are small. May I say that I very much regret that the noble Viscount has again used the term "filled milk", because this term is misleading and contravenes the F.A.O. Code of Principles concerning Milk and Milk Products. Skimmed milk with non-milk fat cannot be sold or advertised in this country as "filled milk".
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, on the last point, of course, I am quoting from the report of the conference in Europe to which I drew the noble Earl's attention on the last occasion. I should have thought there were records somewhere in the possession of the Government, whether or not they are in the printed report, showing the figures of production and the figures of export and import. Anyway, I sent the noble Earl a full
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extract of the discussion at the conference, and the resolution which was passed at the end. I should like to know what action the British Government propose to take about it.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, the fact is that there are no specific figures for this particular product. There are a number of minor products for which we have not specific returns. For instance, we do not have the full figures for peanut butter. But the report of the Conference which the noble Viscount was good enough to show me agreed that the F.A.O. Code of Principles ought to be adopted and kept by other countries. We do adopt it, and we try to prevent the public from being misled. Imitation milk may not be described for sale as real milk or ordinary milk.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, does it not occur to the noble Earl that we have no check at present whether any of the milk, say, served in restaurants and cafés is always whole milk, or whether it is a concoction of this kind? Also, considering the final unanimity at the European conference on this matter, would it not be well that this country and Eire, the only two countries who have not passed a ban on this product, should do the same as the others?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I remember that when the noble Viscount raised this question some months ago—perhaps it was last year—he took me up when I asked whether he was really asking for a ban. He replied [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 229, col. 66]:
"I did not ask you to ban anything."
The noble Viscount has changed his ground. He now wishes this product to be banned. It would be very difficult to ban a product which is wholesome, so long as the public are not misled. Out objective is to see that if the public ask for milk, they get milk, and not some substitute or imitation. That is what the regulations are designed to ensure. I forget the second part of the noble Viscount's question.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: As we and Eire are the only two countries represented at the European conference who have not used the ban, would it not be as well to be

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unanimous with the others in doing the same thing? Obviously, there has been very great pressure for this. I do not intend to raise the question of a possible Common Market, but if you go into the Common Market you would almost certainly have to adopt it, would you not?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I should doubt that very much. That is a hypothetical question. I now remember the other question which the noble Viscount asked: how can one be sure whether or not one is getting this product in a restaurant? The point is that if you ask for milk and you are sold something else, an offence is committed. Also, I think it should be borne in mind that the dairy industry of this country, if there were actual evidence that this product was being widely used in substitution for the real article, would have made representations to us. We have had no such representations.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: For the moment I will leave it at that. I may come back to it.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN LICENSED PREMISES
3.8 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: 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 on how many occasions in the past five years have protests been made to licensing justices against the renewal of licences on the grounds that the applicant has practised racial discrimination on licensed premises; and in how many of such cases has the renewal of the licence been refused.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (EARL BATHURST): My Lords, I regret that the information asked for is not available.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, the noble Earl will remember that a short while ago the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack specifically made use of some of these figures in rebutting an argument put forward
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in relation to the debate on the Racial Discrimination Bill, and he said he thought there were figures in the Home Office although he had not personally checked them. In view of that, could the noble Earl have a further search, because undoubtedly the noble and learned Viscount would not have made such a statement if figures were not available.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, the noble Lord will remember that in the course of his speech during our debate on racial discrimination he put a question to my noble and learned friend who was sitting upon the Woolsack and said (I paraphrase his words) that, so far as he knew, nobody had ever objected at a brewster sessions on racial grounds. My noble and learned friend, who received information from the Home Office, said that there had in fact been objections. That information had not come through official channels; we have not been collecting it. It is gained purely from reading the newspapers or from hearsay. So there may well have been many more objections than those odd few about which we have heard. That has nothing to do with the actual outcome that resulted from these objections. Again, we have no simple method of collecting the results of the objections which, of course, are already known in the courts, which are held in public. I suppose that the noble Lord could go round every single court and hear the results of objections. Certainly the newspapers could do so. But I rather doubt whether it would be in the interests of my right honourable friend's Department, the Home Office, to have to send officials round (there are some 900 licensing benches, and goodness knows how many times they sit!), and whether the results they would obtain would be worth the trouble. That is the difficulty.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, if these figures are not available, was not the House rather misled by the perhaps rather lax statement of the noble and learned Viscount—almost amounting to slovenliness, I would say? This was one of the points which I thought was decisive in regard to the rejection of the Bill; it was certainly a point to which I listened. Now the Government tell us that they have no figures and that

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the indication is that the number of licences that are refused on this sort of ground may be absolutely negligible; it may scarcely be taking place at all.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I do not think that the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack misled the House in any way. I am quite certain that he intended only to say that he was quite certain there had been occasions. What he did say was that there was information contrary to what the noble Lord believed. As the noble and learned Viscount said in his speech, there have been occasions but we have no official information about them—and in my second rather lengthy answer I pointed out the reasons to the noble Lord.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, but is the noble Earl not aware that these objections can be made only at the brewster sessions which take place four times a year? Surely, as there are only 900 licensing courts it would not be a difficult task to secure from licensing justices, or from the clerks to licensing justices, a return showing what has taken place and to ask for more details more often than once a year?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I do not think that it would be possible to send civil servants around collecting this specific information. Nor do I think it would be possible for the courts to provide it. Of course it would be possible to do so in the future, if it were of vital necessity, but these sessions are held in public. Should there be any difficulty it would be a matter for the particular area. That is the reason that we do not feel it is necessary to collect this information.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, do I understand that the Home Office have no method at all of being able to say at any time what are precedents in the country, whether they be brewster sessions or any other courts?
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, I am quite certain that this is not a precedent. It is just a matter of whether it is really necessary to gain this very specific information; and, indeed, whether it is possible to obtain such information. There would be many other reasons for
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refusal of a licence other than upon racial grounds, which the noble Lord mentioned; and therefore even that information might perhaps be inaccurate.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, would it interest the noble Earl to know that I and everyone else get so many requests from Government Departments to fill up forms that I do not think it would harm anyone of us to do once more what we have to do in so many other instances.
EARL BATHURST: I fully sympathise with the noble Viscount and with all other of your noble Lords and everybody in the country; but this would be still more information to be collected at considerable public expense. As I have said, this information could be collected, if it were absolutely necessary; but in view of the fact that these sittings are held in public, I cannot feel that it would be really necessary to set in motion the machinery for collecting the information.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, as I understand it, the noble Earl has in fact told us that the remarks made by the noble and learned Viscount were in fact based purely on some newspaper reports and that there was no official backing for them whatsoever. Would the noble Earl not agree that it is desirable that Government spokesmen, no matter how eminent, should not base their rebuttal of certain assertions merely on certain unspecified newspaper reports, even though those reports may have come through a Government Department.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, supposing the noble Lord happened to read the particular newspapers which somebody at the Home Office had read, the noble Lord would not have put the question in his speech. My noble and learned friend was merely putting over what could be public knowledge—certainly to anybody who had read those newspapers—in order to show that what the noble Lord opposite was putting over was not exactly right.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, since those newspapers have clearly been read in the Home Office, does that not mean that the Home Office should say how many newspapers they have read?
EARL BATHURST: A lot of them.

BEEF PRICES AND IMPORTS 'FROM ARGENTINA
3.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government—

(a) what specific steps they propose to take to ensure that any fall in the prices for beef at the weekly markets will be fully passed on by the wholesale and retail beef traders for the benefit of the consumers, and

(b) what effect upon the beef markets is likely to arise during the next twelve months due to the notice given to Her Majesty's Government by the Government of the Republic of Argentina that it proposes to raise their exports of beef to this country to about 300,000 tons.]

EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, the Government have noted the statement made by the President of the National Federation of Meat Traders Associations that retail prices will be adjusted realistically and fairly in relation to their costs. If butchers follow this policy and if housewives shop competitively, what the noble Viscount wants to see happen will happen without any need for Government intervention. In regard to the second part of the question, the Argentine Trade Mission which recently visited this country indicated its long-term hopes for expanding its exports to the United Kingdom. There has, however, been no suggestion that Argentine exports of carcase meat to the United Kingdom in the next twelve months could rise to anywhere near 300,000 tons.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, with regard to the first part of the Answer, is the noble Earl not aware that the same kind of difficulty arose with consumers last year? Was it not on record that, whereas the market price had fallen, in some instances to about one-third, so that the Government grant for what they pay out in subsidy had to be considerably increased, yet it was understood, after the collection of information, that not more
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than 7 per cent. was passed on by the butcher to the customer? Is it not surely necessary to introduce the kind of control we had before, to make sure that the prices are fair to the consumer in spite of the operations of the market? With regard to the second part of the Answer, did not Dr. Carlos come here within the last week or so to give notice personally that they would be sending 300,000 tons of Argentine meat?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, experience in other countries has shown that to try to control retail prices effectively is extremely difficult. In any event, I really do not think that there is any evidence at the present time to warrant such a drastic measure. In reply to the other question, as I said in my original Answer, this was not said by the Argentine Trade Mission. The words actually used by, I think, Dr. Juni were that it was his salesman's hope to increase Argentine meat exports to the United Kingdom by 40 per cent. over the 1960 level. The 1960 figures were very much more than the figures for 1961. Imports were only about 150,000 tons in 1961 and some 200,000 in 1960. That does not imply a prospect of 300,000 tons. It was a salesman's hope.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, really it is time for some plain speaking from the shoppers. The noble Earl has just stated, with two "if s", that the housewife would get fair prices. Might I ask him whether he is aware that, really and truly, no shopper has ever been given a satisfactory reason by this Government why, when prices fall at the wholesale end, they should not equally fall for her in the shops? And might I also ask, as he quoted from the speech of the President of the National Federation of Meat Traders' Association, whether he has seen that section of Mr. Woodhouse's speech where he said that butchers resented the threat implied when Mr. Soames said that if meat prices did not fall this summer he would want to know why? Might I ask the noble Earl to give the House an assurance that the Minister will not be intimidated by this sort of remark by the butchers? And will he please take some steps to see that when prices fall at the dealer's end they will fall in the shops?—because shoppers have had enough of it.
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I can give an assurance that my right honourable friend will not be intimidated by anybody. I cannot give an assurance that retail prices will follow in any precise ratio either upward or downward trends of wholesale prices. The only way to ensure that is by retail price control, with all its horrors.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, does the Minister know that, in the case of food and of house mortgages, prices always follow an upward but not a downward trend?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, while the noble Earl may be reluctant to have price control, would he not agree that it would very much help housewives to get fair prices if what were, in the view of the Government and the trade, the fair retail prices for the more popular joints of meat were published in the newspapers and on the radio on a weekly basis?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, in doing that the Government would surely be going a long way beyond their duty. What is a popular cut of meat? One can go from one end of any street to another and find different prices. This is a matter very largely in the hands of the housewife and the buyer.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the noble Earl in his original Answer to my noble friend placed the whole responsibility of the holding of prices on the retailers and the housewife. Is he not aware that the dealers and wholesalers have a responsibility, and that in fact wholesale prices of meat have not recently fallen? Is he further aware that New Zealand cold-stored carcases were put up to 2s. a lb. by the threat of a dock strike, compared with 1s. 9½d., and they are still at that price? English lamb is 3s. now in Smithfield compared with 2s. 6d. last year. Will the noble Earl look into that aspect of the situation and give an answer on what real steps the Government are taking to ensure that drops in sale-ring prices are reflected in the price to the consumer?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I cannot add to my original Answer. If butchers follow the policy which they have announced they will follow, and if the housewife shops with discretion, there should be no difficulty.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, are we to understand that the Government's policy of taking off the controls which they carried out, means that the subsidy can always cost the Government more and the consumer is not to get the result intended by the subsidy?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: No, my Lords.
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, is the Minister not aware that this reveals differentiation in Government policy? They are prepared to enforce a wage freeze on nurses, probation officers and public servants, but they are not prepared to enforce price controls on those who are exploiting those to whom the Government deny a reasonable standard of living?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My Lords, I think that the general enforcement of price control is a matter that should not be answered by myself in my capacity. It is a long way from the original Question on the Order Paper.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, as this is a very important matter and the noble Earl has said this is a matter for the housewife, would he tell the House precisely what is to be done by the housewife who finds herself served by only one shop within a convenient walking distance of her house? What precisely is she to do when she finds that the butcher is overcharging? Would he tell the House and tell the country?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: I think that very few of us have only one shop available to us.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, will the noble Earl not run away from the question I put to him? I made a very serious assertion that meat prices of cold-stored cuts in Smithfield were put up because of the dock strike. Will he not look into this question of the wholesale prices being charged now in glut conditions and compare them with the prices which were being charged in wholesale markets when the supply position was of greater scarcity? Will he tell the House what progress has been made by his Department in connection

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with inquiries into the relationship between sale-ring prices, wholesale prices and retail prices?
EARL WALDEGRAVE: My right honourable friend, as he said in his speech from which I think this question arises, is keeping a very close watch on this. He said that as Minister of Food he was going to watch this very carefully. Perhaps the second part of the Lord's question referred to the Committee set up under Sir Reginald Verdon-Smith, which has just started work and has very wide terms of reference. We all await its conclusions with interest.

R.A.F. SQUADRON FOR THAILAND
3.24 p.m.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question of which I have given Private Notice:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government if they have any further statement to make on the situation in South East Asia?"
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, following joint consideration by the British Government and the Thai Government we have now been invited to dispatch a contingent to Thailand, and, as I informed the House on May 17, we consider that a squadron of the Royal Air Force would be the most suitable contribution. The arrangements for the reception of the squadron are now being discussed with the Thai Government.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl, the Foreign Secretary. I hope that the other parties to S.E.A.T.O. are supporting him. I think he has done very good work as co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference, and we all want to see the aims of that Conference secured and a neutral Government in Laos. May I ask the noble Earl whether his attention has been called to page 14 of The Times to-day and this despatch from their Washington correspondent? I will only quote a few short words. It says:
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"the Administration is now convinced that the Central Intelligence Agency has been up to its old devices again and must share a large part of the responsibility for the situation in Laos."
I think that some of us had been feeling that there was no doubt some culpability in that direction in the months gone by, but we had hoped, from the indications we had seen, statements of President Kennedy and the like, that they had seen the error of their ways and were concentrating on the purpose of the Geneva Conference. I hope that the Foreign Secretary may be able to reassure us about this.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Viscount. The Australians and New Zealanders are sending contingents, as we are, to Thailand. On the second part of the noble Viscount's question, of course he realises that I am not responsible for the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, very happily, and therefore I cannot answer questions about them in this House and Parliament. I would add that I am absolutely satisfied—and of course I have seen the article in The Times to which the noble Viscount refers—that the President and the American Government, and Mr. Harriman, who has particular responsibility for the affairs of South-East Asia, are determined to go all out for the same policy which we have been pursuing for a long time now—that is to achieve a neutral Government in Laos—and are giving their full support to Prince Souvanna Phouma's attempts to form such a Government.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, while recognising the force of the noble Earl's statement that he is not responsible for any American State agency, we are concerned, with the United States Government, with the policy of bringing about a peaceful settlement in Laos, and this article states that the C.I.A. agents have been sabotaging that policy. Would the Foreign Secretary make urgent representations to the United States Government that those agents who have been throwing spanners in the works should be withdrawn at once? Is this not an essential step in order to repair the damage which they have been doing? If they are not withdrawn, and if they continue their operations, are they not likely to frustrate the achievement of

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the objective which both the British and American Governments have in mind; namely, the establishment of a neutral Government in Laos?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, it really must be for the United States Government to control their own organisations and not for me either to comment on their activities or to make any comments on the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. All I can say, as I said in answer to the noble Viscount, is that I am personally absolutely satisfied that the American Government are sparing no effort at all and are indeed, determined not to be thwarted in any way in their policy, which is to try to establish in Laos a neutral Government which shall be unaligned and not interfered with by any great power from outside.
LORD REA: My Lords, turning to the noble Earl's original statement, may I ask whether he is in a position to say that he considers this contribution of one squadron of the Royal Air Force is likely to be the only contribution? Or is he in a position to say that further contributions, unfortunately, must also be made?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, we have nothing else in mind, and I do not think that the Thai Government have anything else in mind for a contribution; and of course I would let the House know if there was any suggestion that our present contribution needed to be expanded. I have no such suggestion to put before the House now.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether it is correct that Prince Souvanna Phouma is seeing the King this week-end, and that he then hopes to call the other two Princes, representing the Left wing and the Right wing, together, with a view to coming to an agreement? And did not Prince Souvanna Phouma say, before he left London, that he hoped to have good news before long? If this agreement were to materialise, would it not mean the end of all the fears of further military development?
THE EARL OF HOME: Yes, my Lords.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, can the Foreign Secretary say
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why, before we send these forces, SEATO does not meet, and why the whole question has not been referred to the Security Council?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, as to the first part of the question, the noble Baroness is misinformed. SEATO meets once a week, so the Council has had the Thai question before it. On the second part of the question, there is no attack imminent, so far as I know, upon Thailand; and the Thais have a perfect right, under the terms of the SEATO Alliance, to ask their allies for assistance if they think fit. That is quite consistent, of course, with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, so there is nothing to take to the Security Council; and at the moment, of course, there is no intention of doing so.

RECORDED DELIVERY SERVICE BILL
House in Committee (according to Order).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

TRANSPORT BILL
3.33 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be again in Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Mills.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 7:
Duty and powers of London Board
7.—(1) It shall be the duty of the London Board in the exercise of their powers under this Act to provide or secure the provision of an adequate and properly co-ordinated system of passenger transport for the London Passenger Transport Area, and to have due regard to efficiency, economy and safety of operation as respects the services and facilities provided by them.
(5) Subject to the next following subsection, the London Board shall have power to let motor vehicles on hire to other persons who hold public service vehicle licences under Part III of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, for use by them for the carriage of passengers.
(6) The London Board shall not keep for operation as public service vehicles more vehicles than are in their opinion required for the purpose of providing such transport services as they have power to provide under subsection (3) of this section and under the next following section and, accordingly, they shall not keep for operation as public service vehicles more vehicles than they would keep if they did not possess the power conferred by the last foregoing subsection.
(7) The London Board shall not have power to let motor vehicles on hire to other persons for use by them for the carriage of goods.
LORD TEYNHAM LORD TEYNHAM moved to leave out subsection (5). The noble Lord said: The object of this Amendment is to protect that section of the private bus industry known as contract carriage work, and for a few minutes before I move the Amendment I must take up your Lordships' time in giving a little background to this subsection. As is well known, London Transport enjoys a complete monopoly of all stage carriage and express services operating within the London Passenger Transport area. The monopoly, however, does not extend to private hire, or contract carriage work as it is known. Before the passing of the London Passenger Transport Act, 1933, both the boundaries and the powers of the new London Passenger Transport Board were the subject of detailed negotiations between the Pro-motors of the Bill and many other interested parties at that time, and the terms of the general settlement were, I think, an all-round compromise and were incorporated in the 1933 Transport Act.
One term of that settlement was that the new Board was authorised to run contract carriages anywhere within the London Passenger Transport area and on any route outside that area within a radius of ten miles—with regard to Kent, I think the radius was to be within five miles—from any point on the boundary of that area, but not otherwise. All endeavours to extend London Transport Board boundaries, or to increase its powers, which have been proposed on many occasions, have been regarded by other operators as a breach of the bargain which was in fact written into the l933 Act. The present Bill seeks to extend the powers of London Transport, I would say to a considerable degree.
It is true that under Clause 58 outside operators are for the first time given the
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right to appeal to the Metropolitan Traffic Commissioners against the refusal of consent by London Transport to allow any operator to run inside the London monopoly area, but this apparent dent in the monopoly I should say is likely to be of little real value. If the routes were successfully developed, London Transport, unhampered in this case by road service licences and timetables, could easily run the interloper off the road. I therefore regard Clause 58 as being nothing much more than a sop to the industry, and of little real value.
The powers of the London Transport Board to operate contract carriages under the 1933 Act were passed, as your Lordships will no doubt recollect, by a settlement reached during the passage of the Bill through both Houses. The matter was finally settled, I think, by a Joint Committee of both Houses. During these proceedings the point was raised whether catering for long-distance travelling by contract parties is or is not part of London Transport operations. It was decided that it was not, and that the conveyance of parties for a long distance outside the area of the London Transport Board, to seaside resorts and other distance places, was not the business of London Transport. It was pointed out, though, by the other side (and this I quite appreciate) that in order to carry on London Transport there must be spare vehicles and that it would make the whole business of London Passenger Transport more expensive if there were no outlet for their spare vehicles. It was decided, as a matter of compromise, that it was reasonable that London Passenger Transport vehicles should carry passengers for a distance of ten miles outside their own area, and no further.
The basis of the 1933 compromise was reaffirmed by Parliament in the Transport Act, 1953, and London Transport's power to run contract carriages outside their own area was re-established upon the 1933 basis. As your Lordships will remember, the power delegated to the British Transport Commission under the Socialist 1947 Act allowed London Transport to run 100 miles outside their area. This was abolished in the 1953 Act. Speaking for Her Majesty's Government on the Committee stage of the 1953 Bill in your Lordships' House, the

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noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, used these words [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 180, col. 1391]:
"It is a question of fairness. The Commission are in a position to operate as a monopoly. The noble Lord"—
the noble Earl was speaking of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth—
"wants them to have power to run contract services in competition with private operators. With a background of monopoly, obviously, the Commission will be in a position to make conditions of unfair competition against a company who have not that background of monopoly."
And he went on further to say [col. 1402]:
"I think there is really only one point here which the noble Lord has made"—
again he was referring to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth—
"He has used the words ' open competition '. It comes to what is our definition of ' open competition '. If you are a great monopoly, with a turnover of £60 million a year, with the immense financial resources and funds that arise out of it, nobody can compete with you in your own area at all. It is suggested that this monopoly should be able to sally forth on to the roads, in competition with other operators who have not the benefit of that solid background of business. The noble Lord considers that ' open competition '. We do not. That is the difference. So far as I can see, it is a fundamental difference in point of view."
Those were the words of the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, who was then speaking on behalf of Her Majesty's Conservative Government. Although Clause 8 (2) of the Bill explicitly restates the existing powers of London Transport in relation to contract carriages, Clause 7 (5), which we are now discussing, gives the London Board power to let out vehicles on hire to other holders of public service vehicle licences. This is quite new and opens the door to what is, in effect, a very wide extension of the London Board's powers in respect to contract carriages, even though the expression "private hire" or "contract carriage" is not, I think, specifically mentioned in the clause.
In the first place, I think it should be appreciated that the practice of hiring in such a case is that the vehicle is hired out with the driver, and it is true that London Transport would not actually operate the vehicles themselves on private hire because they would find no difficulty whatever in hiring the vehicles and drivers out to other operators anywhere
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in the country, at prices at which they could afford them. I would say that the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, during the passage of the 1953 Act, which I have already quoted, apply almost as strongly to the present proposal. Nothing could be more ruinous to independent operators of private hire fleets than to have London Transport vehicles let loose on them, possibly even at cost prices. I understand that the Government are anxious to make the best use of available transport, and if this were merely a matter of a central stage carriage service little harm would be done and no outside operators would object. But what is involved here is excursions and tours, almost wholly pleasure traffic, which is very much a buyers' market and in which competition is already of the cutthroat variety.
I would say that the release of many London Transport surplus vehicles on hire would almost overnight destroy the equilibrium of the whole of the private hire industry in and around London and would put large numbers of private operators out of business. Is that what Her Majesty's Government really want? I think it should not be supposed that the fact that the hirer, under subsection (5), must be the holder of a public service vehicle licence is any material safeguard. I do not think it is. Such a person might in fact own a single minibus. Indeed, hawing regard to the exceptionally cheap rate, it would undoubtedly be possible to obtain them from London Transport. There is nothing to stop a company from actually being formed for the purpose of operating hired vehicles from London Transport during, say, the weekend. A company could be formed by the Holding Company for this very purpose.
Furthermore, it should not be supposed that there is any real safeguard contained in the last four lines of Clause 7 (6), which says that the London Board
"shall not keep for operation as public service vehicles more vehicles than they would keep if they did not possess the power conferred by the last foregoing subsection".
London Transport has a considerable surplus of vehicles at the weekend. Surely the last thing they would want to do 'Would be to buy more vehicles in

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order to take advantage of subsection (5).
During the passage of the 1947 Socialist Government's Transport Act, I, as a Member of the Conservative Opposition Front Bench at that time, had a good deal to do with the attempts to amend that Act. I must say that I am now astonished to find that I am once more endeavouring to protect private passenger operators from the effects of a Conservative Government Bill. I would say no more, except to repeat that Clause 7 (5), which I wish to strike out from the Bill, is grossly unfair to private operators. I would therefore ask your Lordships to support this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 39, leave out subsection (5).—(Lord Teynham.)
LORD SHEPHERD: I propose to be brief. I certainly do not wish to deploy some of the arguments that my friends will be making on the next two Amendments. We feel that those Amendments are necessary to give the London Board some flexibility in the use of their vehicles. However, I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, that I would have had a little more sympathy with the statement he has made if he had declared his interest. It is a practice in the House that when a Peer has an interest in the subject that he speaks upon, he declares lt. Perhaps I should have spoken earlier in order to give him that opportunity, but I thought that the noble Lord, because he has put down a number of Amendments specifically related to bus companies, would make it clear to the House that he is a director of at least one of these companies—a company, I should have thought by its locality, very much involved with the case which the noble Lord has made this afternoon.
LORD TEYNHAM: If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I apologise to your Lordships if on this Committee stage I did not make clear my interest. I think I did do so during the Second Reading.
LORD SHEPHERD: Very well, but there are some noble Lords here to-day who were not in 'the House at the Second Reading. However, I was not trying to score a point. The noble Lord complained that this Bill, a Conservative
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Bill, was giving an unfair advantage to a Board that has a monopoly position in London, as opposed to the private operator. I feel that the noble Lord has perhaps put his finger on the weakness of the 1953 Act. It was the 1953 Act that set road transport against rail, private road operator against the nationalised road operator. It is the Government that the noble Lord acclaimed in 1953 that have created the present position.
I think that this Committee must regard itself as being in the position of shareholders in the nationalised company. We are in fact dealing with the articles of association. It is a fact—and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Mills, will agree with me—that when you set up a company to carry out an operation you try to give it in its memorandum and articles as much flexibility and as much latitude as possible. My friends take the view that there are many aspects of this Bill which go quite contrary to the normal commercial set-up of a company. Instead of giving it flexibility, you are restricting it.
The noble Lord, Lord Mills, was complaining on the first two days of the Committee stage that the Opposition were rather rigid in their approach to the Boards. Perhaps we were rather rigid, but we were then seeking to strengthen the Boards in carrying out their operations. We have now, however, reached the stage when we are looking at the rigidity of the Government's proposals for the operation of those Boards. As we go through the Bill clause by clause, we will see to what extent the Government are imposing a straitjacket on these Boards to restrict them in their operation. Subsection (5), which the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, wishes to omit, gives some flexibility: it permits the London Board to let their motor vehicles on hire to persons who hold a public service vehicle licence.
Why have the Government decided to do that? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Mills, will correct me if I am wrong, but I think it is because the London Transport Board has a vast number of vehicles which it is forced to keep and operate for a relatively short time each day, for five days a week. It is wrong, therefore, that we should restrict the Board as to the use of those, or any part

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of those, vehicles on Saturdays and Sundays. It is wrong that this Board should have assets tied up which they are not free to use.
Therefore I hope that this Committee will resist the Amendment that has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Teynham. I hope the Committee will listen with sympathy to my noble friends, when they move the next two Amendments which will delete subsections (6) and (7). The principle which the Government want in subsection (5) is a good one, but why, then, do they not go the whole hog in that principle? I hope the Committee will resist the Amendment, I hope the Government have made up their minds not to accept it, and I must tell the Government—should they be wavering in any way—that they can count upon our support.
LORD LINDGREN: The speech that we listened to from the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, had little to do with the Amendment which he has moved. It really was a tirade against anybody coming into competition with people who fix their prices and do not want competition on a fair basis. But that is nothing at all to do with this subsection. This subsection gives a right to the London Transport Board to hire coaches to other private operators. The noble Lord, Lord Teynham, by reason of his association with the bus industry, knows full well what happens between operators. They accept any and every contract that comes to them. When a contract is received, they start to look around for the vehicles to use on the job which they have accepted—an outing to Clacton, an outing to Epsom, or whatever it is. All that this subsection does is to give to a private operator, having secured a contract and not having his vehicles, a right to go to London Transport to hire from them vehicles which are known to be roadworthy, with drivers known to be competent and efficient to drive their vehicles, so as to be able to carry out the contract already accepted under a private enterprise arrangement. If private enterprise does not want to operate this subsection, it need not hire the vehicles from London Transport.
What the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, is really afraid of is this. He knows that
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among the private operators, and particularly on the contract service, there are a number who are operating on a shoe-string. Reputable private hire service organisations are somewhat reluctant to go to some operators, because they are not satisfied with either their standard of maintenance or their standard of efficiency of operation. They would prefer to go to London Transport, knowing that they are hiring at a fair price a vehicle which is roadworthy and in the charge of a driver who is competent to drive the vehicle, thereby safeguarding the passengers that the private operator has agreed to carry. This is a subsection for which I commend the Government. It really is a subsection by which a socialised industry is available to help out private enterprise in the contracts that it cannot itself fulfil. If private enterprise does not want to use London Transport's vehicles, it need not hire them.
LORD GRENFELL: It is quite obvious that noble Lords opposite, and my noble friend Lord Teynham and myself, are miles apart in our views on this subsection. There can be no doubt whatsoever that under this subsection private hire firms could be heavily undercut by London Transport, both inside and outside London. It only remains for us to see and hear what Her Majesty's Government see in this subsection—what they really want, and what they expect. If it should be required of me, I will certainly follow my noble friend Lord Teynham into the Lobby on this Amendment.
LORD HAWKE: I am neither a bus company director nor, so far as I am aware, have I ever held a share in a bus company. I believe that both sides in this argument are tending to exaggerate their positions. What we, as Conservatives, really want to see is that the State-owned industry in London does not extend itself all over the country into services which are at present operated by private operators. Moreover, preventing that would, I submit, be to the benefit of the London public, because whenever I travel in a bus I nearly always see advertisements up saying that bus drivers are wanted, and whenever there is any question of withdrawal of services London Transport are apt to say that they cannot get

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the right number of drivers and conductors. If they are going to let out vehicles at the week-end with highly skilled drivers, surely that is going to detract from the service that they can give in their legitimate sphere, which is to convey Londoners to and fro within the circle. Therefore, although my noble friend's Amendment goes a little far, I feel certain that the Government ought to introduce something into this Bill to stop London Transport from setting itself up primarily as a hire service for vehicles all over the country.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I had a good deal to do with all of these Bills, either piloting them for the Government or helping the Labour Government to make their Bills into better Bills. I am bound to say, subject to asking the Government one or two questions, that I cannot see much objection to this subsection. If it were to say that London Transport might come into competition with private enterprise in running a hire service outside their own area, then I should certainly oppose it, because that would be quite contrary to what we decided in 1953. I believe that even the Labour Government did not accept that when they had their Bill before the House. On the face of it, all this subsection seeks to do, as I see it, is this. London Transport have a certain number of vehicles which they require for the purpose of carrying the public in the London Transport area but which are not always in use, and, when they are not in use, they want to be able to let them—not to run a competing service, as I understand it—to a private company which is running a service. On the face of it, I should have thought that that was a pretty harmless proposition.
To some extent, we are all shareholders in this enterprise. We, all of us, certainly have to pay. All I know is that, when I come down to the House—I cannot afford a motor car in London now—I find that my bus fare goes up very frequently. If I could stop it from going any higher—because it used to be known as a 6d. fare and it has now gone up to 9d.—by letting people hire out their vehicles, I should be quite glad to do so. But there are two things of which we want to be quite sure. First of all—and, on the face of it, the
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Government have attempted to introduce a safeguard in the following subsection, subsection (6)—they ought not to have more vehicles than are required for their ordinary transport purposes. I should like to know who is going to ensure that.
It is all very well to have a sort of common informer, but somebody who thinks he is damnified has to bring an action. That is a pretty expensive thing to do against a great nationalised corporation. I think the Government ought to say that it is the responsibility of the Minister of Transport—because, after all, these nationalised undertakings are responsible to Parliament. I think we ought to be able to get satisfaction from the Minister of Transport; and, if it is alleged that they are carrying more vehicles than they ought to carry for their primary purpose, then we and another place ought to be able to ask the Minister of Transport about it, and the Minister of Transport ought to accept the responsibility of making an investigation and ensuring that that is not so.
The other possible risk that I can see (and I must use some anodyne phrase which does not suggest a "racket") is that somebody might think it convenient for the London Board to enter into some arrangement with one of these companies by which they hire them a vehicle at a very cheap rate, or in some way get round subsection (6). I think we should also like to be sure that we could hold the Minister responsible for ensuring that this was a perfectly bona fide undertaking. If the Minister were to say, "I accept full responsibility to Parliament for seeing that subsection (6) is fully carried out, and will take the responsibility", then, for my part, I should, for once, differ from my noble friend, who gave me such great help when I was helping the Labour Government over their Bill. Then, I think, I should support this clause as it stands.
LORD CONESFORD: May I put one question to the Minister for answer when he comes to reply? It seems to have been assumed on both sides of the Committee that when the subsection which it is proposed to delete says:
" … to let motor vehicles on hire",

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that means to lend the drivers also. I should have thought, off-hand, as a matter of law, that that was very doubtful. The Committee will observe that the subsection goes on to say,
"to other persons who hold public service vehicle licences under Part III of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, for use by them for the carriage of passengers".
Who is going to be driving the vehicle, and whose servant is he going to be when so driving? Is he suddenly to become the agent of a different employer? I am by no means clear that the words in this subsection mean lending the driver at all. I am certain that the Minister has the point fully in mind and knows what the answer is, so I content myself with asking the question.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I should like to ask one question, too. It impinges on subsection (6) as well, but I cannot ask my question without it doing that. Subsection (5) says:
"… the London Board shall have power to let motor vehicles on hire …,
or apparently, to refuse to let vehicles on hire as they wish. Subsection (6) says:
"The London Board shall not keep for operation as public service vehicles more vehicles than are in their opinion required for the purpose of providing such transport services …."
Now suppose there is a private firm which wishes to run a line to, say, Brighton, but which is not allowed to do so because of the provisions of this Bill, though the firm can go to the Passenger Transport Board and hire a vehicle. Would it be possible for the Passenger Transport Board to say to them, "No. We think the services we are providing for Brighton are quite sufficient for the purpose, and, therefore, we will not let you a vehicle"? It seems to me that if they could do that, then that would be a very dangerous innovation. It may not be so: I merely ask the question.
LORD STONHAM: Is the noble Marquess aware that the London Board would not be able to operate services to Brighton? We are talking merely of private hirings, special contract hiring; not regular public transport services.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am not speaking about special contract hirings. I am speaking of a firm which
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wished to run, on certain days, a regular line to Brighton, or somewhere else—perhaps to see some sights in the neighbourhood of London. Would it be possible for the London Board to say to a firm of that kind, "No: in our opinion"—and they appear to be the final arbiters—"we think we are providing perfectly adequate transport for this service, and therefore we shall not let you a vehicle"? That may be an entire misapprehension, but I think we should have an assurance on the point.
4.6 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTER OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): This discussion has been most interesting. Perhaps I am guilty of an underestimation if I say that it has been rather more interesting than I thought it would be. What is more, I find myself in a somewhat peculiar position, it seems to me, because I am certainly not accustomed to noble Lords opposite flying to the defence of Government ideas as expressed in this Bill, when their tendency so far has largely been to do quite the opposite.
LORD SHEPHERD: We are not rigid.
LORD CHESHAM: In view of the noble Lord's service in the R.A.F., I shall not take up that remark. But, since he has mentioned it, I could not quite understand from him whether he considered that Her Majesty's Government were being rigid in this Clause or not; though from his definition, as I understood it, I should have thought that in this case we were well coming within his criterion of the way to strengthen the Board. I am certainly grateful for the support of the noble Lords opposite. I am grateful for the generosity with which they have recognised what we think to be right. I am, I must admit, in view of the next Amendment, just a fraction suspicious of the enthusiasm of their support; but I am, none the less, very grateful for it.
I am not very keen, if I may put it that way, to take up the amount of politics I thought was coming into the discussion at one time, and I certainly do not want to form a slightly strange alliance for the benefit of arguing this Amendment against my noble friends behind me. I am going to keep myself

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entirely to the merits of the case as I see them. I would say that my noble friend Lord Teynham put his case forward against a background which I accept, without actually checking his quotations, and which was, so far as I know, perfectly fair and perfectly accurate. I did not begin to dissent from what he was saying until such time as he began to draw his conclusions and to come to the reasoning for moving the Amendment that he has offered to your Lordships.
To be quite brief and to the point, I thought that my noble friend exaggerated his case. I thought the conclusions he drew were, if anything, over-exaggerated. His case would have been perfectly right, and a good one, if it was the fact that the London Board were going to be empowered to operate these services themselves. But that is not so: they are not going to be able to do that. Therefore I think that his case was greatly over-stated, in view of the danger that he fears (and my noble friend, Lord Grenfell, supported him in saying this), which was that it would create a great deal of havoc among private operators.
My noble friend Lord Teynham then went on to ask, quite crudely, whether Her Majesty's Government wanted large quantities of operators to be put out of business. Without the slightest vestige of political thought in it whatsoever the answer by any standard must be, "Of course not". I do not think—and I am sorry to feel that he should think—that Her Majesty's Government would dream up and put in any Bill a provision which would have that effect. There it is. That is his opinion, and I do not quarrel a bit with his right to hold it. But I do not believe that he is right in holding it.
With regard to the question of surplus vehicles, I agree that it is right that the London Board will have a large number of vehicles, because they need them. It is equally true to say that many of them are unused for quite a lot of the time. But they can go only to other operators, and they can go only on demand. There must be demand. Also, I do not think it justifiable to say that they will be let out at very low-cost prices. Because remember that there is a duty on the London Board to make whatever they
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can, as best they can, for the public purse; and they are under a duty to conduct their affairs with efficiency, economy, and safety. If hiring out these buses on a large scale will wear out all their buses, they are transgressing, perhaps, efficiency, and possibly safety. If they are not making what they should be able to make, then they are transgressing against their duty to act in the interests of economy. I do not believe that the operation of letting out these buses in fact constitutes a threat to a large part of the bus industry. My noble friend can put me right from his more expert knowledge if I am wrong, but I do not believe that there are a great number of firms who do nothing else but let out passenger vehicles on hire, and whose entire business consists of that alone. I believe I am rightly informed that the majority of them are also operators.
My noble friend also cast a shadow by suggesting that a company might be set up, perhaps under the Holding Company, to get round the law and in among the "private enterprise boys"; and "have at them" under some kind of guise. That cannot happen, because the Boards themselves cannot set up a subsidiary to do something that the Boards themselves cannot do.
LORD SHEPHERD: But surely the Holding Company can under Clause 29, can it not?
LORD CHESHAM: Unless I am mistaken, I do not think the Holding Company is able to do that. I thought of this point in advance, and I checked to see whether there would be some way of setting up a subsidiary company in order to use its power to put a lot more vehicles on the road into competition with private enterprise, and I came to the conclusion, and I thought I was perfectly right in doing so, that it would not be possible to do this. I thought it was a very important point.
LORD SHEPHERD: The point here is that the Holding Company has power "to form, promote and assist companies". I should have thought that under those terms it could form a company for the purposes that the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, mentioned. Personally, I think the Holding Company should have that power. If the noble

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Lord wants freedom and competition, I think he should be able to come to the nationalised industries as well as private operators.
LORD CHESHAM: I will deal with that point, or, at any rate, with that principle, when we come to the next Amendment. I do not think it would be a very good idea if I were to be led astray on that question at the moment. I still think I am right. I will certainly double-check the point with great pleasure, but I do not think it can be done in that way, and therefore I do not believe that that particular threat is of substance. My noble friend Lord Hawke introduced a point which interested other noble Lords as well. He did not think that the London Board should become a hiring agency and go into the hiring business. It is subsection (6) of the clause which prevents their doing just that thing, so his worry, too, is unfounded.
The noble Earl, Lord Swinton—and I was very glad to hear from him his views in support of what are the interests of the London travelling public, because, after all, that is the interest in regard to which this particular provision has been drafted—wanted to know the method of enforcement of the prohibition on the London Board from having more buses than they require for their services, and ensuring that they were not keeping a hire fleet specifically for the purpose. That obligation is on the Minister. The Minister has power to call for any information he requires from the Board, and, of course, if necessary, as I understand it, he is accountable. The noble Earl asked whether the vehicles would be hired out alone or with a driver, and the answer to that is that the power is to hire out the vehicle only, and not the driver as well.
In reply to the question asked by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, the Board have complete discretion both ways, either to hire, or not to hire, as seems good to them at the time. They must have that power, because I suppose there could be some rather peculiar people who wished to hire buses from them and the Board would much rather they did not have them. They would operate in this regard, so far as their
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discretion was concerned, in very much the same way as any other organisation that was hiring out buses. So far as the rather hypothetical case the noble Marquess quoted is concerned, which had reference to somebody wanting to run a regular service to Brighton, or somewhere like that, and depend on the use of the London Board's buses to run that service, I think that what was in the back of the noble Marquess's mind was that if the Board refused to hire the buses, then they would, so to speak, be "getting at" that service. I do not think it could work out quite like that, because they would in any case need to have a licence from the traffic commissioners to run regular services, which are unlikely to exist side by side in that way because of the control of the licensing system. The Board would have no need to use that particular weapon of refusing to hire buses to a competitor in order to improve their own services over the same route. That question is a very hypothetical one and one which is unlikely to arise. I do not think anybody could rely on the possibility of being able to hire buses to run any kind of regular service, because the Board has, and must have, discretion to hire the vehicles out only at times when they are not busy, and the buses are surplus for the time being.
The point of this is that this clause is, in my opinion, justified and necessary in the form in which it stands in order to enable the Board, if it is going to act more like a commercial body, to make the best use of its assets. That must be right as a help to the Board to discharge the financial duty which it is given under the Bill, and it must be right in the interests of the travelling public, who may otherwise have to face increasing costs by higher fares to meet those costs. I think they should be entitled to gain the benefit of what is, in my view, a very reasonable provision. Therefore I hope that your Lordships will wish it to remain as it is in the Bill.
THE MARQUES OF SALISBURY: I only want to get the position quite clear. As I understand it, if a private firm wishes to run a regular service on the same route to Brighton, it applies to the licensing authority for a licence, and the authority have the final decision on whether that licence is

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granted or not. What actuates the authority in coming to a decision? Suppose that London Transport, when appearing before them, say that it is unnecessary to have this extra service because they are providing all the service that is necessary. In that contention, would they decide in favour of the Board, or would they say, "That is all very well, but we believe in healthy competition and we do not see why this other firm should not run. too"?
LORD CHESHAM: The noble Marquess's point arises out of the discussion and is not directly contained in it, but I am happy to tell him what the situation is. If an application were put in for this hypothetical London-Brighton run, which is already being operated by London Transport, the view the Authority would take is not that competition is a healthy thing and we should get plenty of people on this. The licensing system is based on quite an opposite view. What he takes into regard are the existing services, the requirement for a new service and the possibility of improvement of the existing service. It is control of competition and not duplication to which he looks. This is a system which has grown up over the years and I think it works very well and to the satisfaction of the bus industry.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: But the final decision rests with the licensing authority?
LORD CHESHAM: Subject, of course, to appeal to the Minister.
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: I should like to get clear the question of letting out a bus without its driver. The noble Lord said that the Board would have this power. But if they let out buses without drivers, what is going to happen about maintenance, damage done to vehicles and the question of insurance? I do not think that any commercial firm, apart from the people who go in for letting out self-drive motor cars, would like to have other drivers monkeying about with their vehicles. That nearly always leads to disaster.
LORD CHESHAM: Of course, it will be done subject to the normal commercial arrangements for hiring out vehicles. We are trying to give the Board an
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opportunity of doing a little better by using a certain asset to better advantage. The surplus they have is in vehicles, not drivers. It is the vehicles which are standing about at the week-ends, earning nothing. Other firms do this hiring successfully. Naturally, before the Board would regard a vehicle as surplus it would make sure that adequate arrangements existed for normal maintenance, cleaning and so on. My noble friend must remember that drivers who drive public service vehicles have driving qualifications of a considerably higher standard than do many of the people who hire private cars for the week-end, and I think it is perfectly reasonable for the Board to take the normal commercial risks taken by other hire firms.
LORD GRENFELL: Would the noble Lord not consider that it might possibly be advantageous to the Board if these surplus vehicles were to undercut very heavily private enterprise rather than leave these vehicles idle? I think that is a rather pertinent point.
LORD CHESHAM: It is pertinent and it would be more pertinent still if they could use this particular weapon for some particular advantage; but, apart from being thoroughly dog-in-the-manger and beastly about it, I cannot see any point in their doing that. I tried to deal with that point earlier, when I said that it was the Board's duty to do the best they could. I think that if they were to let out their vehicles at very low costs, the Minister might well step in and tell them that they are hiring them out too cheaply and they must get more.
LORD LATHAM: Would the noble Lord agree that the London Passenger Transport Board had this power and operated it until 1953 and that there was no evidence—I can say this from personal experience—of any undercutting?
LORD CHESHAM: I have so far regarded this as a hypothetical question, which would be extremely unlikely to operate in practice.
LORD TEYNHAM: I thank the noble Lord for his explanation, but I cannot say that I am entirely satisfied with what he has told us. His statement that the Minister will have some control over the

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cost at which these vehicles may be rented out is certainly a great factor, and I appreciate the assurances that have been given to the noble Earl, Lord Swinton. I am still a little worried about the Holding Company and I hope that before Report Stage, perhaps when we come to Clause 29, the Minister will look into this question to see whether the Holding Company can in fact form a company for the purpose of hiring out these surplus vehicles.
LORD CHESHAM: I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend, but I think that it might be useful if I were to deal with this point now. I think all of us were half right on this matter. What I said I thought was the case was not strictly correct. The Holding Company could form such a subsidiary, but—and this is the important part—it would be subject to the direction of the Minister.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: If I may say so, the noble Lord who is dealing with this Bill so thoroughly ought to make quite clear what the powers are, because we accept it from him that he accepts full responsibility for the Bill's being carried out according to the intentions of the House. In that case, the intentions of the Bill must be clear beyond peradventure, otherwise the Minister will not know what his duty is.
LORD TEYNHAM: In view of the further explanations that have been given by the Minister, I do not propose to press the Amendment. I should like an opportunity of looking at the whole matter again before Report Stage, in view of what has been said. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.30 p.m.
LORD LINDGREN LORD LINDGREN moved to leave out subsections (6) and (7). The noble Lord said: I will admit right at the outset that the discussion we are to have on these two Amendments is much more fundamental than the discussion we have had on the previous Amendment. That Amendment, as we know, was on the question of the loan of vehicles to private operators. During his reply, the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, made use of the phrase that it was up to the Board to make the best use of its assets. It
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does not matter what form of transport you are operating, whether road, rail, sea or air, the fundamental economics of transport requires the 24-hour utilisation of your vehicle and, during its utilisation, as near 100 per cent. payload as possible. But, of course, when one is operating a system like London Transport, whatever is done by public advertisement and inducement to stagger hours, during a normal day there must be a heavy peak load in the morning hours when people are going to work, and another when they return from work to home. Therefore, for five days a week there is a requirement on a transport operator such as London Transport to provide and maintain vehicles to meet that heavy payload.
Between peak hours, and on Saturdays and Sundays, those vehicles are standing in the garage, on a slipway or roadway and are unused. For every hour that a costly vehicle is unused, either added charges have to be made in the period when it is used or there is a loss by the undertaking. The interest charges on the vehicle have to be met for 24 hours, even though its actual functional use may be only four or five hours a day. Therefore, the deletion of subsection (6), in particular, would give London Transport the opportunity it should have and which every ordinary private enterprise operator has; that is, to use his vehicles at off-peak times for contract work.
The noble Lord, Lord Chesham, said just now, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, that there are very few operators who are doing private contract work only. Most of them are operators and doing private contract work "on the side", as a utilisation of the vehicles. Noble Lords opposite are always chiding us on this side of the House that we want to eliminate competition. They are always talking about the virtues of competition: how fine it is, and how it brings out the best in everyone. And yet when we have a nationalised service which has a surplus vehicle which it can use in competition with private enterprise, they are afraid of it. They tremble; they go white—real fear!
LORD TEYNHAM: We are trembling sometimes only when it is unfair competition.
LORD LINDGREN: What is unfair in the competition? I challenge noble Lords opposite, who have wide knowledge and experience in private bus operation, to state any time when, prior to the 1953 Act, when London Transport had its private contract powers, it ever went into unfair competition with any private operator, even within the sphere which is given to it under subsection (5). In fact, their hire changes would be greater than that of the private operator, for the one reason that on a public service the standards of maintenance, their overheads and their costs are much higher than those of private operators.
LORD TEYNHAM: The noble Lord is not suggesting, is he, that the standards of privately controlled vehicles are any lower than with publicly controlled vehicles?
LORD LINDGREN: I was just going to make an observation. There are private hire operators whose standard of maintenance and operation is extremely high. But the noble Lord knows as well as I do that there are many who are operating, as I said on the previous Amendment, on a shoestring. There are private hire operators who are using any "odd bod" at weekends for driving their vehicles When they are taking out fishing parties.
LORD CHESHAM: When the noble Lord says "any odd bod", he means somebody who has a public service vehicle licence?
LORD LINDGREN: Yes. But during the week he is a bricklayer, or an engineer working in a factory; and for "beer money" he is going out taking a fishing party or the women's institute to Clacton on a Sunday. But you do not get that with London Transport. None of its vehicles is operated by spare-time drivers, even though they may have a public vehicle driving licence.
What we are asking is that London Transport should be able to compete with private enterprise in the use of its service vehicles. We are not asking that it should have any privilege over private enterprise. The private enterprise operator has that privilege now. Why should it be denied to London Transport? I am surprised at this attitude of the Government, who are always talking about holding the cost of living. One
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of the arguments against London Transport is that it would lower prices. Why should it? I do not think it would in actual fact. Where is the advantage of competition and private enterprise? Are noble Lords opposite saying that there is a ring among private bus operators; that they are all agreed on the hire charge per day, per vehicle, per man? Of course, noble Lords opposite know that that is not so. They know that while there are bus operators who operate on a standard comparable with that of London Transport, there are many others who do not. We are asking, by the deletion of subsection (6), that the London Board should have the power to go into the private hire section, so that it can provide Londoners with a safe vehicle for a journey to the seaside on Saturday or Sunday, and that it should be able to transport a works outing if it so desires.
LORD MCCORQUODALE OF NEWTON: May I ask the noble Lord one question? I do not quite know what he is driving at. Is he suggesting that the London Board should be given powers to buy whole fleets of extra buses, beyond what they need during the week, in order to use them on this private hire?
LORD LINDGREN: I thought I made that quite clear in my opening. If I did not, I will make it clear now. In order that any operator can meet his peak load activity, he must have a surplus of vehicles. As I said—and I know that I said it, because I remember the phrases I used—London Transport has to meet the early morning carriage of workers to work, and the return of workers from factory or office to their homes at night. It means to say that a vehicle is in use perhaps only 5 hours out of the 24.
LORD HAWKE: May I interrupt one moment? Why does the noble Lord want to delete subsection (6)? I think it is quite unnecessary. Subsection (6) would allow them to have enough vehicles to cover their peak load and hire out those vehicles.
LORD LINDGREN: But we want, in fact, to take this opportunity to give London Transport a power that it does not have at the moment: the power to use its surplus vehicles for its own operation on private hire work.
LORD HAWKE: It is already in the Bill. It is quite unnecessary to leave out subsections (6) and (7).
LORD LINDGREN: Unless I am greatly mistaken, this Bill perpetuates what the 1953 Act did, to deprive London Transport of this right of general hire of their vehicles outside the London Area. Prior to 1953 if any employer went to London Transport he could hire a fleet of vehicles to take his workers to Clacton. He could not do so to-day. We want to give London Transport that opportunity.
LORD CONESFORD: I intervene only to say that if the noble Lord wishes to give them that opportunity I think he must really move a totally different Amendment. They will not get that opportunity about which he is now speaking by deleting subsections (6) and (7). It will not start them on getting that opportunity.
LORD LINDGREN: The noble Lord is a lawyer; I am not. I am just a fellow with common sense. But by my reading the deletion of these subsections gives a very useful opportunity to air that point of view, and I believe that if they were deleted it would give London Transport the power to operate on private hire work.
We come now to subsection (7), which says:
"The London Board shall not have power to let motor vehicles on hire to other persons for use by them for the carriage of goods."
Why should they not do that? Here, in fact, they have vehicles for the carriage of their own goods; they have many specialised vehicles for the carriage of very specialised loads of their own. They have specialised equipment which is perhaps useful to industry in general. If London Transport have those spare vehicles that are out of use at an opportune time, why should they not be available for hire to private enterprise when they want to hire them? One cannot force private enterprise to take them, but here private enterprise is being denied the right to hire from London Transport specialised vehicles to help them carry out their private enterprise undertakings; and that, I think, is a hindrance to private enterprise. It might mean that certain private-enterprise undertakings might have to have their own special vehicles and keep them
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standing for long periods of time rather than in use. I have spoken for longer than I intended in moving this Amendment, and I hope that it will be agreed to, but I must admit that I have some doubt, in view of the opposition that was put by some noble Lords to the very innocuous previous subsection (5). I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 1, leave out subsections (6) and (7).—(Lord Lindgren.)
4.43 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: I feel now in a very much happier position. We have considered the Amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Teynham. That went in one direction; that they should do no hiring at all. The noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, has just moved an Amendment that they should do the exact opposite—a great deal more hiring—in fact that they should enter the general hiring business.
LORD LINDGREN: I do not want to interrupt the noble Lord, except to make this clear: that the Amendment does give that power. My knowledge is greater than that of the lawyer who interjected.
LORD GHESHAM: I do not think the noble Lord quite took my noble friend's point, and I will come back to that in a moment. But that is what the noble Lord wants. Or, if he does not want it, that is what he would get by this Amendment. So the position of Her Majesty's Government—and what is suggested should be done is for a limited power to hire, to make use of vehicles—is probably just about right. That, quite frankly, is the position that I propose to stick on.
With regard to the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, put forward in support of his Amendment, he will, I am sure, forgive me if I do not follow him into his at least semi-political views on the evil of the passenger transport industry. I think I will go straight to the point of the Amendment, because, to be perfectly frank, his remarks, though extremely interesting (I listened to them with great interest and I think everybody did), did not add much to any reason why this particular Amendment should be accepted. I thoroughly agree with

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much of his argument that the London Board should have power to utilise surplus vehicles when they are not on duty, so to speak, instead of leaving them—and he drew us a picture—standing about, in streets and slips, and so on. Certainly, we agree that if possible, they should be better used. Quite frankly, that is a very good argument for having subsection (5) of this clause; and I am at one with him there.
But while his argument for subsection (5) was, I thought, a very good one, I can see no particular reason why, as a result of that, we should feel in the least tempted to take out subsection (6), which is what he wants us to do. I do not see that there was any particular argument brought forward why the London Board should go into the general hiring business of passenger vehicles at large. And there is no reason, quite frankly, why it should. It is one thing to have power to make the best possible use of the assets you have, but what business is it of the London Board to invest its capital—our capital—in a great number of surplus buses which it is going to use only for hiring purposes and which it does not require for the purposes of which it is set up? I should have thought that the job of running the transport system in the London Area was a big enough task for anybody, and it is not the job of the Board to go into the business of hiring buses all over the country. This is really unreasonable, and I feel we should not accept this Amendment.
Coming to the goods side, if it is the Board's job to run a passenger transport system for London, it certainly is not its job to go in for general road haulage hire, and to have to carry a large stock of lorries for that job. I should be interested if the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, had anything to add on this point, because my opinion on the subject seems to be rather at odds to his. My understanding is that the Board has no very substantial fleet of goods vehicles and that, in fact, its fleet consists largely of stores-carrying vehicles, engineering vehicles, maintenance vehicles and so on, which are fully occupied with the tasks they have to perform. They do not work in a peak and off-peak way the same as buses do, and there has never been, so far as I know, any demand or any desire on the
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part of the London Transport Board to hire these vehicles out. The present Board never has had powers to do so, and I do not see why the new London Board should need them now. For those reasons (I have been as brief as I could), I trust that your Lordships will not accept this Amendment.
LORD STONHAM: I do not share the noble Lord's happiness that the brief subsection (5) honeymoon is over, because in the debate we had on it I thought we had heard more sound common sense from the Government on the subject of the Transport Bill than we had heard on any previous Amendment. I must confess I find it very difficult to understand why noble Lords opposite think that the deletion of subsection (6) will not make any difference to the powers of the London Transport Board to operate passenger vehicles.
Subsection (5), which we discussed at such length, empowers the Board to let motor vehicles on hire to other persons who hold public service vehicle licences. That is absolutely clear. Subsection (6), on the other hand, imposes a limitation—or seeks to impose a limitation: I would not say any more than that—on the number of vehicles the Board shall have. The words are:
"… they shall not keep for operation as public service vehicles more vehicles than they would keep if they did not possess the power conferred by the last foregoing subsection."
I admit that it sounds rather like saying "A man shall not take his wife out to the pictures as often as he would do if he was not also married to the woman next door"; but I think I understand what it means. Certainly it is a limitation on the number of vehicles which the London Transport Board should hold and run; and it is that limitation we seek to remove. I think the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, will agree that there would be a real difference in the powers of the London Board if this subsection were not in the Bill.
LORD CONESFORD: If I may interrupt the noble Lord, I really think he has got this wrong, and I will tell him why. If he will look at the concluding words of subsection (5) he will see that it concerns hiring to other people "for use by them for the carriage of passengers". If subsection (6) were deleted, London Transport Board would

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have no power themselves to run these vehicles. It is only a limitation of the number of vehicles. They cannot keep vehicles specially to let them out for other people to run. That is the only thing subsection (6) does.
LORD STONHAM: I am sorry I did not make myself clear, but I said, and it must be within the recollection of the House, that the one effect of subsection (6) which we desire to delete is the limitation on the number of road passenger vehicles which London Transport can run.
LORD MCCORQUODALE OF NEWTON: I am sorry to continue to interrupt, but what the noble Lord is saying is contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, said. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, whether he wished London Transport Board to have an extra fleet of vehicles to do this private hire work, and he said "No". I understand the noble Lord is now saying "Yes".
LORD STONHAM: I will try again. I think I used the word "run"; I will substitute the word "own". This subsection (6) seeks to limit the number of buses that the London Transport Board can own, and it is that limitation which we seek to remove. The noble Lord, Lord Chesham, in the previous debate said, in effect, that the Transport Board must have subsection (5) if they are to run their undertaking according to best commercial practice. Those may not be his exact words, but I think that is a fair paraphrase of what he said in justifying retention of subsection (5). And I agree with him. But in my view it is precisely for those same reasons of good business practice that we should not have subsection (6), in other words this limitation of the number of buses the Board can own, because I think it will conflict with the smooth and sound running of the business. Surely the Transport Board, who have an obligation to try to make their undertaking pay, ought to be the best judges of the number of buses they must own in order to discharge their responsibilities efficiently. That, surely, is the whole belief of the Government.
LORD CHESHAM: Which Board did the noble Lord say must be the judge?
LORD STONHAM: The London Transport Board.
LORD CHESHAM: The noble Lord in fact said—perhaps I am stupid to have misunderstood—"Transport Board" and I did not know which one he was talking about.
LORD STONHAM: I know that we have the Waterways Authority, the Railways Board and the Docks Board, and the London Transport Board is the only one of the four with "Transport" in its name, so there is not much room for misunderstanding; but I am talking about the London Transport Board. I would ask the noble Lord to say who in practice is going to be able to tell them that they own too many buses for their efficient purposes. I do not think anyone in practice would be able to tell that to the Board and the chairman of the Board. The thing seems to be totally absurd. I have heard of British Railways thinking they have too many trains and too many railway stations; they have said so themselves and they are cutting down. But I cannot imagine any authority in Whitehall telling the London Transport Board that they have too many buses. I think that the principal objection to this subsection is that it is in fact nonsense.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: May I ask the noble Lord whether it does not say that the London Board
"shall not keep for operation as public service vehicles more vehicles than are in their opinion …"?
LORD STONHAM: I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. That is precisely what that means—in their opinion.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: Why does the noble Lord want to take that out?
LORD STONHAM: Then we come to the point lower down; they shall not keep more in operation than in their opinion they need for their services, and
"they shall not keep … more vehicles than they would keep if they did not possess the power conferred by the last foregoing subsection".
I submit that the whole subsection is nonsense, because the London Board are the people to say how many buses they need for their purposes. Therefore,

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why do we need this subsection at all? The operative words are in the last four lines. They seek to ensure that the surplus of buses that the Transport Board have, say at week-ends, shall not be too numerous. That is really what it amounts to: the number of buses they have for letting of this kind shall not be too many. I think that this subsection is unworkable. I believe that if we on this side had moved its inclusion in the Bill—which would be quite an incredible hypothesis—the Government would have declined to accept it on the ground that it is unworkable. If I am wrong about that, if in fact it could be made to work and made to impose a limitation on the number of buses the London Transport Board own, then it is wholly wrong and would quite unfairly and stupidly limit the Board's freedom of operation.
5.0 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: I cannot understand what the noble Lord means by suggesting that this is unworkable, foolish or meaningless. Why should he assume that the London Board will not honestly try to do the job imposed upon them by this measure? If they do, the effect of subsections (5) and (6), taken together, is that they have to keep enough vehicles as in their opinion will enable them to perform their functions. Subsection (5) enables them, during such period as a particular vehicle is not required, to let it out on hire. The only point of the noble Lord in deleting subsection (6) would arise if he wanted the Board to be able to own a great number of vehicles, not because they thought they required them for performing the statutory duties which are imposed upon them, but in order that they should have a spare fleet for letting out on hire. If he wants that, then he would need to delete the subsection. But if he does not want that, there is no need whatsoever to delete the subsection, which carries out exactly the purposes which I have described.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: What the noble Lord really wants is for the London Transport Board to gamble with the taxpayers' money, to buy a large fleet of buses extra to their requirements, which is laid down, in the hope that they can hire them out.
LORD STONHAM: I do not want to delay the Committee or for the Transport Board to gamble with the taxpayers' money. But where the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, stops is at saying that the Transport Board shall have the number of vehicles which they believe they need for carrying out their functions. I think that is right and proper. He does not then go on to ask himself the question: what is going to happen if somebody else believes that they own more vehicles than they require for the proper execution of their functions? I think that this subsection (6) poses that problem. It is one that the Minister has not answered. The question I asked was: who is going to tell the London Transport Board that they have more vehicles than they need for their purposes? It is quite impracticable. That was the point that I was making.
LORD CONESFORD: I am sorry that the noble Lord still is missing the point that I was endeavouring to make. I quite agree, that of course there might be a difference of opinion as to what they need under the first part of that subsection for carrying out their statutory purposes; but if this were deleted they would not be limited to what in their own opinion they require for their statutory purposes at all; they would be at liberty to do precisely what the noble Lord's noble friend behind him says he does not desire that they should be able to do—to buy a whole fleet for no other purpose than to be able to let it out for hire under subsection (5).
LORD LINDGREN: I give way to the noble Lord's legal knowledge. My intention was to return to London Transport what they had prior to the 1953 Act, so that they could compete with private enterprise on normal private hire work. If the Amendment does not do that, perhaps it will give me a reason for withdrawing it. But that was the intention. Noble Lords exaggerate the position, because that is the situation which obtained prior to 1953. In their tours round London noble Lords may on many occasions have seen an ordinary double-decker but with "Private" showing on the front. If noble Lords wish to take their guests home from a cocktail party in one coach they can still hire one from London Transport, provided, of

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course, that the journey is within the confines of the London area. I think this subsection is a restriction on London Transport in regard to their ability to utilise their assets to the fullest extent. That is what they ought to be able to do, and that was my intention.
I will admit that so far as subsection (7) is concerned my argument is a weak one, except that you are putting on London Transport a restriction that is not imposed on any private enterprise industry. It stops London Transport from being brotherly. After all, any private enterprise undertaking can ring up another and say, "We are sorry, but we have had a bit of bad luck. Four or five of our vehicles are out of action, we had an accident yesterday, and we have some vehicles in the repair shop. Can you lend us a lorry to take our stuff around?". That subsection prevents London Transport from even lending to a fellow operator on a good neighbourly basis a vehicle to enable him to carry out his job—that is, of course, if London Transport said, "We are quite prepared to let you have the lorry, provided you pay us £2 or £3 a day for its hire".
I think that this is a restriction on them. I think it is unnecessary. I agree Chat they have not had the power to work private hire goods vehicles, and it was never intended that they should do so, because they are a passenger vehicle operator. But they have special equipment. Why should not they hire it out? Why should not they be allowed to hire out a breakdown van to help another operator? This subsection prevents them from doing so. But in view of what has been said, and of the fact that it is alleged that the deletion of subsection (6) would not really do what I intended it should do, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8:
London Board's road services outside London
8.—(1) The London Board shall have power to carry passengers outside the London Passenger Transport Area by stage or express carriage—
(c) with the consent of the Minister, by any service beyond the limits specified in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this subsection.
The Minister shall not give his consent under paragraph (c) of this subsection unless he is
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satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances which make it desirable that the Board should carry passengers on a particular route outside the said limits.
5.9 p.m.
LORD SOMERS LORD SOMERS moved, in subsection (1) (c), after "service" to insert, "over a route extending". The noble Lord said: After having heard the strictures pronounced by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, earlier on my noble friend Lord Teynham, I think I had better follow the example of my noble friend Lord Conesford and declare a total lack of interest. I am not a shareholder in any transport concern, and so far I have never driven a bus. The main purpose behind both Amendments Nos. 41 and 43 is one which, I have gathered from the remarks that I have heard so far, is not very popular on the other side of the Committee—namely, to limit the powers of London Transport. But this time it is limiting their actual running powers. Amendment No. 41 simply modifies paragraph (c) of subsection (1) by inserting the words "over a route extending".
As the paragraph stands, it seems to me that the Minister can give consent for London Transport to run a service practically anywhere in the country; and with the closure of various branch railway lines naturally they would be only too keen to snatch it up. But I personally am against any enlargement of the power of London Transport. They are most efficient in the work that they do. I am not at all afraid of competition. I am not one of those who, as the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, said, go white in the face and tremble at the knees at the thought of competition by London Transport. But, like my noble friend Lord Teynham, I dislike unfair competition; and competition between a Board with the immense financial power of London Transport and a small provincial company is obviously unfair.
There used to be a tradition in this country (I hope there still is) of disliking an attack on a weaker person by a stronger person. I think that that applies very much in this case. Therefore, in regard to an extension of routes beyond their present boundary—that is to say, ten miles beyond the London area and five miles in Kent—the consent of the Minister should be in regard only

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to the routes which they are running at the moment, or at least routes that start in London. I think these words would provide for that. I will say a few words about Amendment No. 43 when we come to it, but it seems to me that the purpose of No. 41 is sufficiently plain.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 29, after ("service") insert ("over a route extending").—(Lord Somers.)
LORD SHEPHERD: I hope it will not embarrass the Government if I again oppose an Amendment that has been moved by the Back Benches opposite. I agree with the noble Lord that we do not want, nor do we expect, London Transport buses to operate in the Midlands or Northern Scotland, as he suggested they might under this Bill. I do not think that is possible. I certainly should not mind having an argument with him about competition, but it is getting rather late and I am quite sure the noble Lord, Lord Mills, must be getting rather worried at the progress of the Marshalled List this afternoon.
I oppose the noble Lord's Amendment on the ground that it will mean that this extension could be only "over a route" and not an area. Much of London's lines of communication stem outwards from the central hub. They are particularly weak laterally, and if the Board is to be prevented by this Bill from providing services, which may not exist to-day, to connect with some of the railway stations to enable people to get to Central London (some of whom come by the branch lines, many of which are now being closed, and therefore alternative bus services must be provided outside the existing London Passenger Transport Area—I am thinking of my own locality), then I think the Bill is wrong. If lines have to be closed because they are uneconomic, the Board should have the right—in fact, the duty—to provide these services. If the noble Lord's Amendment were to be accepted by the Government, I should imagine that the Board would then be quite unable to provide these replacement services, which, I certainly think, will be needed in the next few years.
LORD HAWKE: I am not quite sure that the purposes the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, desires, about which I do not think there would be a very great quarrel, would be served by the existing
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clause or by any Amendment thereto. I am not sure that we have not got it a little wrong. The Act of 1953 gave powers to the London Passenger Transport Board which were the subject of detailed negotiations between the various interested parties at the time. That Board was authorised to run contract carriages from any point on their boundary to within ten miles outside their boundary, or in Kent five miles. This Bill enlarges the powers by allowing them to run stage or express carriages into those same limits. The safeguards in Clause 59 are intended to look after the interests of the existing operators in those fringe areas. So unless the stations that are closed down happen to be within that particular limit, I do not think Lord Shepherd's points will arise.
However, under Clause 8 (1) (c) it appears that the Minister can give powers to the London Board, in exceptional circumstances, to operate stage or express carriages anywhere in the country, and this seems unnecessarily wide. This Amendment would make sure that the Minister can exercise his powers only where the prospective route starts within the London Transport Area. Then in the next Amendment but one, No. 43, we attempt to cater for the exceptional circumstances—if my noble friend will forgive me for anticipating what he will move in a moment, but I think it is essential in order to explain Amendment No. 41. These powers exist in the British Transport Commission, and they could have been delegated to the London Passenger Transport Board, but, in practice, they have been very little used. They have been used when London airports have been fogbound in order to take passengers to other airports, and the like.
The original powers were given for possible delegation to satellites in the Provinces, but, under the new set-up, the new Board will be the only possible beneficiary. So although Clause 59 is a safeguard for existing operators, the Minister can override the Traffic Commissioners. We think that we should keep the powers of the London Board, plus those of the Minister, for what is reasonable and necessary for the running of the London Transport Board—plus the provision of emergency services, such

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as for the fogbound airways, and so on. These seem to me a very reasonable pair of Amendments, and I do not think Her Majesty's Government ought to find any difficulty in accepting them.
LORD LINDGREN: We had a very interesting contribution from Lord Somers when he introduced this Amendment, and for the first time he gave a definition of "unfair competition"—namely that an undertaking with a capital structure as large as London Transport's was unfair if it was in competition with a small operator without a great deal of capital. Is this not a unique argument against competition to be used by noble Lords opposite? Not so long ago we were discussing the Courtaulds-I.C.I. merger; every day we hear about brewers amalgamating, with larger and larger amounts of capital involved. Noble Lords opposite do not then ask for legislation. This Government would be more unpopular than they are now if they introduced legislation to stop these amalgamations of capital, which noble Lords opposite claim, on private enterprise lines, enable the industrial organisation, the commercial undertaking or brewery, to give a better service to the public.
Noble Lords opposite are saying on this Amendment, and in their previous statements, that because London Transport, with its capital structure, its knowledge of operation and its efficiency of operation is so good, it is unfair to those who are less efficient, who have less equipment, and who provide a lower standard of service to the public. Really! we get some fantastic arguments from noble Lords opposite. I hope that one day they are going to say that we should not have chain stores, only small shopkeepers. Every day we see concentrations of capital, rationalisation, a greater extent of service to the public, probably at a lower price, with greater efficiency. Why cannot the public have the benefit of the greater efficiency of London Transport, and why are noble Lords opposite so anxious to keep the inefficient private operator in business?
LORD STONHAM: There is no prize for the answer.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): I am very grateful to my
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noble friend Lord Hawke, for explaining so clearly the purpose of the first of these two Amendments, which I had found difficult to understand before he spoke, because I could not see any real difference between "service beyond the limits", and "service over a route extending beyond the limits". If you have a service, you must also have a route, unless the London Board were to get some caterpillar-tracked vehicles and to go over the fields, which I think would not be agreed to, either by the Traffic Commissioners or by the owners of the fields. But my noble friend has now made it plain that he would like to restrict this emergency power to services which must begin in London and end in London, with no interval between the two runs outside the London area. I would assure your Lordships that we are not making any assumptions in favour of the inevitable superiority of the London nationalised transport service, or the inferiority of private services. All we want is to make the best provisions we can, so that in exceptional circumstances the London Board's services may be utilised for the convenience of the public, which I think is a reasonable thing to do.
I would remind your Lordships that, there is nothing in subsection (3) of this clause to exempt the London Board from any of the requirements of the Road Traffic Act, 1960, so that the Board will always have to apply for the necessary road service licence from the traffic commissioners; and, also, that services of this kind can be authorised only when the Minister is convinced that the need for them arises from exceptional circumstances. I would suggest to your Lordships, that it would unnecessarily restrict the usefulness of this provision if we were to stipulate that these exceptional services must begin with the starting of the bus in London, and end by its return to its base on every occasion.
As regards my noble friend's other Amendment, No. 43, I have also given a lot of attention to this, to see whether it might be possible to argue that we mean much the same thing by "exceptional circumstances" as is stated in the Bill, and as is stated in my noble friend's phrase:
"… any temporary interruption or diversion of traffic by air or any temporary interruption

1113
of any railway service or other unforeseen emergency".
But I think the difference is considerably more than a verbal one, and it seems to us that the Amendments are too narrow to be acceptable. I agree at once that a great many, perhaps most, exceptional circumstances may be unforeseen; and they may often be in the nature of an emergency, because the Ministry of Transport certainly do not lay any claims to clairvoyance. They do not have the powers of infallible prophecy. On the other hand, in spite of all that their detractors say against the Ministry of Transport—and they do say a lot—the Ministry of Transport are capable of reasonable foresight, which they very often exercise in the interests of the public. I think that there are many exceptional circumstances, and perhaps even some emergencies, which can be foreseen and anticipated by the proper, careful exercise of calculation and prevision.
I would therefore suggest to your Lordships that the clause as it stands is the best middle way, if I may put it like that, between the views of noble Lords opposite, who would like a much wider extension of the London Board's powers to operate outside London, and those of my noble friends, who are apprehensive lest we shall give the London Board too great powers to carry on unfair competition with private transport operators. Certainly it seems to me, in view of the fact that the Minister has to satisfy himself in regard to these fairly strict conditions, that the interests of fairness are safeguarded.
With regard to the point in the second paragraph of my noble friend's Amendment, about revoking or modifying any consent or conditions, or consenting to the whole or part only of the service for which his consent is sought, I do not think there is any need for this definition. The Minister must naturally consider whether any part of a proposed service will meet an exceptional need, and whether there is any part which will not meet an exceptional need. He can always tell the London Transport Board to take back the application and make another. In Clause 28 (1) it is provided that:
"Any consent which the Minister is authorised to give under the foregoing provisions of this Act may be given for any
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case or description of cases specified in the consent, or may be general, and may be given subject to conditions."
I would suggest to your Lordships that it would not be in the public interest to restrict the Minister's freedom of action further than we have done in the Bill—although we fully understand the need for not encouraging unfair competition, which we do not think the Bill does—and I hope that your Lordships will agree that our proposals constitute the best and fairest solution to these rather difficult problems.
LORD GRENFELL: I am not sure whether I heard my noble friend aright, but I do not think the object of the first Amendment, as he put it, was that they should operate from a point within the London Passenger Transport Area and return. I do not think that is the point. I think it is that they must operate from a point within the London Passenger Transport Area. I do not think there is any requirement to make a circle, in other words. It is merely that they should not have the power suddenly to run, say, from Glasgow to Edinburgh; they would have to start within the London Passenger Transport Area. I think that is the real point of the first Amendment.
I must admit that in my own heart the second worries me a little. Although it says, "with the consent of the Minister", we do not know who the Minister is going to be in the distant future or what his policy is going to be. For that reason, we feel we should rather like to limit to a certain degree what he can do. But I hope my noble friend will withdraw this time, and then we might think it out rather carefully and perhaps come back to it on Report stage.
LORD HAWKE: There was one point in my noble friend's reply which gave me some slight feeling of disquiet, and that was when he started talking about the Bill as a fair compromise between the views on this side of the Committee and those on the other. My noble friend is supposed to be a Minister of a Conservative Government, and I should have thought the fact that we are putting forward views, not to lessen the powers of a nationalised undertaking but merely to limit them to what they are at the moment, would hardly have been

1115
considered very ultra-Montane or Right Wing. Therefore, I should have expected him to say that he would accept our version provided the wording, and so on, was correct for the Bill. I wonder whether in the circumstances, he would consider removing the words, "exceptional circumstances", which are open to very wide interpretation, and putting in something stronger, to the effect that there should definitely be an emergency, and at the same time strengthening the requirement that the service should start within their own boundary.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: I would not necessarily accept that the views of my noble friend and those who support him in this matter, reasonable though they no doubt are, are the views of the Conservative Party; and I was not thinking of this as a Party matter. It so happens that those of my noble friends who are moving the Amendment are on my own side of the House, but I assume that some of us on this side of the House are not altogether in agreement with the Amendment, and I would therefore not regard it as a compromise between Socialism and Conservatism that we are trying to make the Bill as fair as we can.
I shall certainly look into the question which my noble friend Lord Grenfell raised just now. I would not have thought that the wording which we have in this Bill was calculated to lead to any other result than that which he desires. I do not feel that the first of the two proposed Amendments is one which we should be justified in accepting because, as I have said, I think it would unduly restrict the usefulness of giving the Minister power to allow the London Board to give exceptional services which the public might really need. It would not be sensible to prevent them from doing that, whatever views we may hold about private enterprise and public enterprise.
I shall certainly consider what my noble friends have said in this discussion. I am always very glad to consider any suggestions for improving the Bill in this way. I should just like to make it clear again that we are trying to make the best of the benefits that can be derived both from public transport owned by the London Board and
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from private bus services, owners and haulage contractors, whom we believe also to be generally efficient—and I do not agree with anyone who says that one is much better than the other. We are trying to the best of our ability to do that which is fair to both and that which is best in the public interest.
LORD SOMERS: I should just like to say, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, that he must live on an extraordinarily good bus route, because there have been many times when I have used positively blasphemous language against the inefficiency of London Transport, and I do not think that anybody could deny that a great many of the provincial transport services are extremely efficient and well run. However, that really has no relation to the Amendment; and, on the strength of my noble friend's assurance, I beg leave to withdraw.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.37 p.m.
LORD STONHAM LORD STONHAM moved, in subsection (1), to omit all words after the end of paragraph (c). The noble Lord said: The proceedings this afternoon seem to have developed themselves into a sort of ritual. Noble Lords opposite move Amendments and urge Her Majesty's Government to take action with the object of limiting the powers of the London Transport Board, for the purpose of making things better for private undertakings, which is fair enough; the Government resist those proposals, and we listen to them being accused of rigidity. After that, we come along and move Amendments designed to give greater powers to London Transport, because it is our view that it would be to the detriment, and unfairly to the detriment, of the private undertakings. Amendment No. 42, which I now move, is another chapter in the serial, because we are not satisfied that the words which we propose should be deleted are necessary or desirable.
Paragraph (1) (c) says that the London Board shall have power,
"with the consent of the Minister,"
to run services beyond the limits specified in paragraphs (a) and (b). We feel that the consent of the Minister to those services should be quite enough. The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, indicated

1117
that that might be all right while there is a Conservative Minister, but that he would be apprehensive if there were a Minister of any other political character in charge. I think those fears are quite groundless, because if a Labour Minister of Transport were in charge, then I can assure your Lordships that the Transport Bill which would be very quickly introduced would be very radically different from the one which we now have before us. Therefore, for all practical purposes, when dealing with this Bill we are considering a Conservative Minister's reactions if and when it becomes an Act of Parliament.
The words which we wish to delete are those which say that the Minister shall not give his consent to these extended services
"unless he is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances which make it desirable that the Board should carry passengers"
outside the defined limits. The noble Lord, Lord Somers, in his Amendment No. 43, has attempted to define what he would regard as "exceptional circumstances", and I am grateful that that attempt has been made. I agree that what he has defined are exceptional circumstances, but they are not the kind that we on this side of your Lordships' House would be prepared to accept. I would ask the noble Lord who is going to reply to give us some indication of what circumstances he would regard as exceptional.
The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, was not prepared to accept Lord Hawke's idea on this question, and I agree with him. We ought to be told what kind of circumstances the Government have in mind as likely to arise which would make the words already in paragraph (c), "with the consent of the Minister", insufficient. It looks as if by using the words "exceptional circumstances"—"unless there are exceptional circumstances"—the Government are trying to reassure somebody that it is going to be only a most exceptional event for London Transport to be allowed to go beyond these limits. Here, again, it seems that an unbusinesslike restriction is being put on the London Board. Surely if they want to run a service, and they go to the Minister and ask for his consent, before they ever go to him they will have satisfied themselves that
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there is a demand for the service they want to run; otherwise, there would be no proposal, and it would be very stupid to ask permission to run a service for which there is either no demand or insufficient demand. In other words, they would be proposing to extend their service to meet a need. I should have thought that that was a highly desirable thing.
It is no use going into detail on the particular service, but let us assume that there was already in existence a service—it does not matter whether it be a railway or a private bus company running the service. It does not seem possible that London Transport would then go to the Minister and propose that they should run another service. Therefore I think I am right in assuming that no proposal would go forward to the Minister under subsection (1) (c) unless there were a real need. I think that is fair enough. Therefore the insistence on the words "exceptional circumstances" seems to us to be a sort of device for "holding the ring", as far as it can be held, for the private enterprise companies.
We on this side of the House feel that we should consider first, foremost, and all the time, the needs of the travelling public. I do not think anyone is yet in a position to say which parts of the country are going to be denuded of a public service that they now enjoy. It is generally thought that there will be parts of the country affected in this way. It might so happen that there would be such an area within the Home Counties where there is no private bus company in existence and no proposals to run a service; therefore, why should not the Transport Board make a proposal to the Minister to provide a service, or to extend an existing service, or to link it up with one they may already have? I should have thought that was a highly desirable proposal. I wonder whether the noble Lord will be able to say that he regards the example I have just given as coming within the term "exceptional circumstances". Because, if not, then I would submit that we have made our case for the deletion of these lines which limit the freedom of the Minister's judgment to approve a proposal from the Transport Board under subsection (1) (c). I hope I have

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made my point clear to the noble Lord, and I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, leave out lines 32 to 35.—(Lord Stonham.)
LORD HAWKE: The lengthy disquisition of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, on this subsection gives me the opportunity of saying something I should have said on the last Amendment. That is that, if the Government are redrafting this subsection, I think they ought to use some words which connote that the "exceptional circumstances" shall not start up a regular bus service but that they may start up a single service or a short series of services. They should not start up a perpetual service.
5.46 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: Your Lordships will forgive me if I speak rather fast, but I should very much like to give my answer to this Amendment before we reach the time to adjourn. Before I come on to talk about what we consider might be "exceptional circumstances", as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, asked me to, I think I had better first explain the background to the reason why we considered quite firmly that those "exceptional circumstances" should be dealt with in the subsection, and then I will explain why that should remain there.
The noble Lord mentioned a ritual in our proceedings, and certainly there seems to be a ritual in another form in that noble Lords opposite have, throughout their Amendments, been showing a strong tendency to try to persuade the Committee that these Boards should spend a great deal of time in engaging on occupations which are not there to be engaged upon. The noble Lord shakes his head, but that is so, and it has been so throughout, as he will find if he refers back through Hansard.
The point is this. London Transport—and what is going to be under the London Board—is by far the largest urban passenger transport monopoly in the country, and it is probably the largest in the world. I think the noble Lord will agree with that. I maintain very strongly that the job of the Board in running that monopoly in its area is quite enough for it to do. It ought not to be concerned
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in running services well beyond its area, and, indeed, possibly all over the country, unless there are exceptional circumstances to justify it. I think it would be held that it would perhaps be a reasonable quid pro quo (if one might might call it that) for having a monopoly territory if you had a restriction from going outside it. I should have thought that that was a perfectly reasonable proposition.
Their job is to run the passenger transport services in that area where they have a monopoly. They have no business to be running bus services all over the country, or to points distant from London. I do not think, if the power is to be left with the Minister to allow the London Board to operate beyond its area proper and the capacity belt, described in paragraphs (a) and (b) of Clause 8 (1), that that power ought to be left at large. It is a very wide power, and it certainly should be subject to some such qualification.
The intention of Clause 8 is to enable the London Board to continue running the services which have been running under the Transport Act, 1947, including services which the former London Passenger Transport Board were authorised to operate under the London Passenger Transport Act, 1933. The intention is to preserve these services and, in order not to be too rigid, to have power to adjust these services where exceptional circumstances come into play. In my view, these exceptional circumstances would be mostly where the Board are approached to operate some kind of on-demand service—for instance, to diversionary airports when these serve the London area or are adjacent. This is done now by the London Transport Executive, as agents of B.E.A., to Hurn and Southend. This power might be used for bus services in substitution for railway services where these were suspended due to accident, landslide, major repairs, or something of that kind.
LORD SHEPHERD: Would that cover the closure of a railway service in the outer suburbs of London?
LORD CHESHAM: I think that is dealt with elsewhere, is it not? I should have thought that that was not a question of diversion. I think that it would

1121
fall to the Minister to decide whether the circumstances were exceptional, but normally it would be a contingency of a temporary nature.
LORD SHEPHERD: At Westerham the branch railway line has been discontinued, and the Green Line are operating to and from London. Would the noble Lord not consider that it would be for the convenience of the public if the Green Line could extend their service to allow a bus service to and from Westerham to one of the main London junctions?
LORD CHESHAM: I can only say at the moment that I should like to look at this point. I think that I have said enough to justify leaving these exceptional circumstances in the Bill.
LORD SHEPHERD: This is an important point, and if we are adjourning now, I wonder Whether we could continue this discussion on Monday.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD MILLS): It might suit the convenience of your Lordships to adjourn the Committee now, and I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved, That the House do now resume.—(Lord Mills.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and House resumed accordingly by the Lord Chancellor.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION
6.0 p.m.
The following Bills received me Royal Assent:

Coal Consumers' Councils (Northern Irish Interests),

South Africa,

National Assistance Act, 1948 (Amendment),

Police Federations,

Kent Quarter Sessions,

Wallasey Corporation,

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Liverpool Corporation,

University of Keele,

Independent Chapel Mawdsley Street Bolton,

Assay Offices,

University of Sussex.

House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

HEALTH VISITING AND SOCIAL WORK (TRAINING) BILL
6.15 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is a short Bill but it deals with matters of considerable importance. Great emphasis is placed to-day on the value of measures to prevent illness of all kinds and, when people do become ill or disabled or weighed down by social problems, on helping them and caring for them in their own homes. This work falls upon the local authorities who need adequate staff and properly trained staff; and this Bill is concerned with the training of health visitors and social workers, two groups of people who devote themselves to the prevention of illness and to community care.
Your Lordships will be aware that health visiting dates back to 1862, when the Ladies' Sanitary Reform Association of Manchester organised and paid people to make visits; to concentrate on cleanliness, good management and good living; help the sick; and to advise mothers on the care of their children. Down the years responsibility for work of this nature has been placed by Statute upon the local authorities, and the scope of the work has been extended to include the well-being in society of the family as a whole. Among the responsibilities of local authorities to-day are care and after-care for the public in general under the National Health Service Acts and for the handicapped and aged, in particular, under Part III of the National Assistance Act, 1948.

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Social work is defined in the Young-husband Report as—
"the process of helping people with the aid of appropriate social service to resolve or mitigate a wide range of personal and social problems which they are unable to meet successfully without such help."
Of course, help of this kind has, in some sense, always been available, but it was only in the second half of the 19th century that a systematic attempt was made to enlist the co-operation of those needing help in working out plans to overcome their own difficulties. The pioneers were Octavia Hill, in 1864, and the Charity Organisation Society, in 1869.
This Bill, which is consequent upon the Jameson and Younghusband Reports, is one of the latest developments in the field of what nowadays are called the domiciliary services. Its purpose is to set up two training Councils, one for health visitors and the other for social workers. The Councils will have the duty to provide, or to secure the provision of, further training where they do not consider adequate provision to have been made. Their function, however, will not primarily be to provide training themselves but rather to guide other bodies in its provision. In this task of persuasion, encouragement and enlightenment the Councils will draw upon their own collective wisdom, under the chairmanship of Sir John Wolfenden, and upon that of the expert staff which they will appoint, and they will command authority by their award of certificates to candidates who have completed courses which they have approved. These certificates, in the case of health visiting, will be in the nature of a necessary professional qualification, and, in the case of social work, will indicate a recognised professional competence. They should prove a valuable aid to professional advancement.
It is not fortuitous that these two Councils are being set up by the same Bill. On the contrary, we are forging links between them Which we intend to be lasting, because we follow the Young-husband Report in believing that the rôles of health visitors and social workers will continue to be complementary. The co-operation between these workers which often exists already will become the natural order of things once there is a sufficient number of trained social workers to whom health visitors
1124
can refer cases. That is the reason we have provided, in paragraph 9 of the First Schedule, for the Councils to have some members in common. There can, however, be no better guarantee of a close working relationship between them than to provide, as is provided in paragraph 2 of the Schedule, for the Councils to have the same Chairman. Because we cannot envisage a time when association between the Councils will be unnecessary, we have resisted attempts to make it possible for the Privy Council to appoint separate Chairmen.
I come now to the detailed provisions of the Bill. Clause 1 and the First and Second Schedules provide for the setting up of the two Councils. They will cover the whole of the United Kingdom. They are to be called respectively the Council for the Training of Health Visitors and the Council for Training in Social Work. Each is to have a committee to advise on the exercise of its functions in Scotland; similar committees may be appointed for Northern Ireland.
Clauses 2 and 3 describe the functions of the Councils, very much on the lines recommended in the Jameson and Younghusband Reports. They will have the general duty of promoting training by encouraging the provision of facilities for it. They will establish national standards of training by approving courses and awarding certificates. The certificate of the Council for the Training of Health Visitors should take the place of those issued by the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health and the Royal Sanitary Association of Scotland, who have long set the standards for health visitors. The health visiting profession, like many others, is very much in their debt. The Councils will also have the duty of seeking to attract recruits for training courses. To begin with, the Council for Training in Social Work will be concerned only with social work in the local authority health and welfare services, and in similar services run by voluntary organisations. However, the Bill does not limit in any way the fields of social work in which the Council may eventually concern itself. On the contrary, under Clause 3 its functions may be extended to other fields by Order in Council. The courses to be provided may well prove to be suitable training for other forms of

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social work, and it is hoped that some members of the Council appointed by the local authorities will be people with wide experience.
Clause 4 provides for the Councils to be financed by the Exchequer. The annual sum involved is estimated at about £50,000, but the actual figure will, of course, depend upon the development of their responsibilities and upon the amount of their income from fees for examinations and certificates, and perhaps from publications. The Young-husband Report envisaged the need for research into the social needs of particular groups of people and related matters. Accordingly, Clause 5 of the Bill empowers Ministers and local authorities to undertake such research, where power is not already there, and provides that expenditure incurred upon it by local authorities shall rank for general grant.
The first Schedule describes the constitution and proceedings of the Councils. The membership is broadly based and provides representation for England, Scotland. Wales and Northern Ireland. The local authority associations are strongly represented, having ten members on each Council, but the professional and educational interests together will have a slight majority. So far as the Ministerial appointments are concerned, the interests to be consulted are specified in the case of all but one of the appointments to the Council for the Training of Health Visitors, and in the case of all but two of the appointments to the Council for Training in Social Work. These exceptions will permit necessary adjustments or the appointment of especially qualified individuals. There will be at least one general practitioner on each Council. The purpose is to establish a balance of interests. If, however, the Councils should wish their nets to be cast wider, they will be able, under paragraph 16 of the First Schedule, to appoint advisory committees composed partly of outside persons.
Those, my Lords, are the main provisions of this Bill. It is, as I have said, a small Bill, as Bills are apt to go, but I believe that its beneficial consequences for the prevention of disease, for community care in many forms, and, above all, perhaps, for attention to
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mental disorders outside the hospitals, will be vastly greater than either its size or the length of the introductory speech which I have thought right to inflict upon your Lordships this evening. I believe that the setting up of the Councils will lead to more people seeking training as health visitors and social workers, so that eventually the local authority services will be fully staffed with trained workers. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2—(Lord Newton.)
6.25 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, it would appear to those who are unfamiliar with the changing scene in the world of medicine that this Bill is concerned solely with a further contribution to the machinery of the National Health Service and to the administration of our insurance scheme. But it has, in my view, a much greater significance. I should like to emphasise this, in order that the Minister of Health and the powerful Treasury shall recognise that the adequate financing of this measure can yield important dividends in terms both of health and wealth. As the noble Lord, Lord Newton, said, there is an increasing number of patients who are seeking medical advice for complaints in which social factors play a large part. This is reflected in the fact that nearly 40 per cent. of the beds in this country are occupied by patients suffering from some nervous complaint; and one-third of the drugs which are prescribed in this country are prescribed to alleviate symptoms of some nervous disorder.
This new challenge to medicine was referred to by Sir Francis Fraser, Director of the British Post-Graduate Medical Federation. A report of a lecture which he gave to the Royal College of Physicians states that he said:
"… since the war it had been realised that an increasing number of patients were seeking the help of their doctors for conditions in which emotional or social factors were important or even dominant."
He went on:
"A concentrated study of the social and psychiatric factors of ill-health by the three branches of the National Health Service—hospital, local authority, and general medical

1127
practitioner—might be the best way of meeting the challenge. Family doctors, almoners and other social workers could provide much of the evidence required …
He then gave a special mention to the local authority, who are responsible for the domiciliary services in which the health visitor and the social worker are becoming an essential part of the team.
Furthermore—and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, will develop this aspect—the increased expectation of life brings in its train degenerative diseases, and the emotional element in the sickness records calls for some shifting of emphasis in the training of health workers. Indeed, I would say that to-day a regular visit from a well-trained individual in one of these fields, and the establishment of good personal relations, may well meet the needs of many of the unhappy individuals who throng the doctors' waiting rooms and the outpatients' departments of our hospitals to-day, and who consume endless boxes of pills. Successive Ministers of Health—because I am not to-day deploying a new idea—have agreed that we could relieve this pressure, and the expense, by improving our domiciliary services. Consequently, no effort should be spared to strengthen the provisions of this Bill. It may be a small Bill, so far as the number of clauses is concerned, but its provisions are of the utmost importance.
It seems to me 'that there is one major defect in the Bill, but before I address myself to that, I would remind the noble Lord of three points. The representatives of the health visitors and social workers still feel that they have not adequate representation on these Councils. I would remind the noble Lord who is in charge of the Bill in your Lordships' House that when the Bill dealing with the professions supplementary to medicine passed through another place, these professions were inadequately represented. I recall that I pressed on that occasion that they should have adequate representation, and I was rather shocked to find that in another place the representatives of these fine women had not been recognised. Also there still remains a grievance concerning a local authority's power to claim compensation if a woman serves an authority other than the training authority,
1128
although the training was organised on a pooling scheme. I think that if the noble Lord makes inquiries he will find there were at least two women who were asked to compensate the local authority because they had married and gone outside that area.
The other point concerns the chairmanship. I was a little surprised that the noble Lord accepted the position with such complacency. The health visitors and welfare workers have not been convinced that it is desirable for the same person to be chairman of both councils. While having the highest regard for Sir John Wolfenden—he is the most overworked chairman, I think, in the whole country—1 personally regard it as an anachronism that a man should be chairman of councils dealing almost entirely with women's work. Florence Nightingale would have been horrified at the mere suggestion and would have vetoed it forthwith. I ask whether your Lordships can imagine that a woman would be put in charge of councils which were concerned almost solely with men's work. There would be an outcry, and quite rightly so.
I come now to the fundamental weakness of the Bill. Not long ago we had a debate focusing attention on the professions supplementary to medicine, and it was revealed that a shortage existed in every one of these professions. Undoubtedly, health visitors and social workers are in some measure drawn from the same category of young women who supply these other professions. Consequently, good candidates are scarce. For this reason I regard the recommendation in paragraph 936 of the Younghusband Report as crucial. It says:
"We recommend that grant aid from central Government funds should be available to individuals for training in social work in the health and welfare services, as it is already for those who intend to enter the probation or child care services."
Then they recommend as a matter of great urgency that the necessary legislation should be introduced. Of course, it is not surprising that the urgency of the matter is emphasised, considering the shortage of these professional people and that fourteen years have elapsed since the appointment of the Mackintosh Committee on social workers and two and a half years since the Younghusband Committee reported. The noble Lord

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mentioned that a certain period had elapsed, and I am quite sure that he deplores this as we all do.
The Minister of Health in another place seemed to be absolutely unaware of the vital importance of this recommendation on which depends the immediate success of this measure. The Minister insists that these valuable students who offer their services for the National Health Service should try to secure a grant from the education authority. But candidates for social work are often women in their twenties and thirties who have no claim on a given education authority. I would remind your Lordships that the woman with some experience of life is the ideal person, who should have a later training in social work and then be fully qualified to go into the homes of the people to give good advice. If time is lost between an application and a decision from different education authorities, then the candidate, for whom to-day there is fierce competition from industry and other callings, may be lost to the service. Again I would remind your Lordships that in these days of full employment the demand for the services of a reliable woman of integrity is great, and she is not going to wait "cap in hand" week after week for an education authority to consider her request for a grant.
This matter is one of urgency, as Miss Younghusband said. I would ask the noble Lord, if Exchequer grants are made for those concerned with child care, why should they not be made for those training to care for the whole family? How can this anomaly be justified? As I have already said in my opening remarks, it is most necessary now to have our domiciliary services fortified by people who can go into the family and view the conditions, the grievances, from grandmother down to the youngest child.
On Monday of this week, May 21, the Daily Mail reported an interview with the Minister of Health, in which he said:
"I was a lucky man to come to the Ministry of Health at a critical time, when there was room for big and long vistas."
That was a remarkable statement, having regard to his failure to recognise that only an adequately paid staff can ensure the recruitment of nurses from this country in the future. I also found it difficult
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to reconcile this statement with his attitude towards this Bill in another place. He has a reputation as a tough champion of the Treasury. Well, even his reputation as a tough champion of the Treasury would not suffer if he took a long-term view of the urgency of strengthening the domiciliary service, because only by so doing can he hope to decrease the expenditure on the Hospital Service.
He also told the Daily Mail of his interest in mental health. Is he not aware that the psychiatric social worker is invaluable for collecting case histories? Professor Titmuss, whom we all recognise as a great authority in the field of social work, has said that at the present rate of progress it will take another 53 years before there is an average of one psychiatric social worker to each authority. While the training of a psychiatric social worker may not necessarily come within the province of these councils, nevertheless this is an illustration of the failure to recognise the vital importance of the comprehensive domiciliary service in the practice of medicine to-day. The Treasury is willing to give hundreds of millions of pounds for drugs and the Hospital Service, yet it fails to recognise that an Exchequer grant to the student social worker will accelerate recruitment, and consequently ensure an improved domiciliary service.
I say, again, that this is a short-sighted policy, for the domiciliary service to-day represents a form of preventive medicine, and, owing to the high sense of vocation of the women employed, it is relatively the least expensive branch of the National Health Service. Of course, I welcome this Bill, but I hope that your Lordships will support my plea that it can be strengthened and should be if it is to be successful.
6.40 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, the noble Lord Who introduced this Bill said, I think, that part of its purpose was to carry out more efficiently the preventive work and the care and after-care work mentioned in Section 28 of the National Health Service Act. That is some thing we were all extremely pleased to see, and from that point of view one must welcome this Bill. There were, however, one or two doubts that came to my mind as the noble Lord spoke, and I should like to put them forward—not in any sense

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opposing the Bill, but merely to express another point of view.
The first doubt I had was this. If one really wants Section 28 to work, do we require two Councils? Could not the work be done by one Council? I was for a long time a Member of the Council of the Institute of Almoners, so I have a great deal of respect for their training in the work they do. I wonder whether it is necessary to continue the split between the almoners and health visitors, by having, so far as I can see, in perpetuity, these two Councils. The demarcation of the work between the two bodies has never been laid down very clearly; in fact I doubt whether it can be laid down. They are bound to overlap, to a certain extent, in their work and functions; and, because they are separate and can overlap—this may sound rather paradoxical—a certain number of people may fall between the two bodies, with the result that those who most need assistance may not get it.
I believe that it is very important that there should be a good follow-up system for people who have been discharged from hospital. The same applies to people who live by themselves and who need to be seen in their homes. And this does not always apply only to elderly people; it applies also to middle-aged or even quite young people, if they are living by themselves. It is a very good practice that there should be this follow-up procedure. This is a difficult thing to obtain now, because there are two authorities involved: the hospital authority and the local authority, with its welfare services. From time to time one has seen things go wrong. One has tried in the past to bring these bodies together in order to have one system covering more people than under the present split-up system. I fear—I trust I am wrong—that when this Bill becomes law it may tend to perpetuate the separation rather than to bring the two together.
I feel that one of the most important parts of the Bill is Clause 5, under which provision is made for the carrying out of research. I wonder, however, whether more research should not have been done before the Bill was prepared, in order to find out exactly what is required from these various bodies, and
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in what way they can best come together to carry out the work laid down under Section 28 of the National Health Service Act. One thing that will assist, I think, is the fact that in many local authorities there has been a merging of the health and welfare committees. Indeed, that merger has now, I believe, been blessed by the Minister of Health himself, and I hope that this will continue. I do not want to give your Lordships a large number of figures, but a certain number of the bigger local authorities have combined their committees and quite a number of them have the medical officer of health to advise the welfare committee. So that local authorities have gone a long way towards bringing both services together under one head and getting them to think alike.
I should like to follow up what the noble Baroness said, because I am worried whether we shall have enough people applying to be trained as social workers. The need is very urgent indeed, and I would put forward two ways in which I think the situation can be improved. The number of people who are destitute (and by that I do not mean poor; because people can be destitute in all sorts of ways—even people with a great deal of money in the bank), and the number of people who require visiting, is growing very considerably, partly because the population is growing older, partly because it is also increasing, and partly also because many more people now go out to work and cannot look after their aged relatives as they used to. This is a trend that I find in the Borough of St. Pancras, where I work.
On looking up the records I found that in 1921, under the Poor Law, the Borough employed fourteen relieving officers. I do not want to go back to that system, but there were fourteen people involved in seeing that people did not get into difficulty. Now we have fifteen health visitors working there whose work is for the most part dealing with maternity and child welfare, though they are supposed to give some of their time to the older groups. In fact they have not a lot of time to give to them. And there are a further six Borough visitors whose work is entirely with the aged. At the same time a certain

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amount of help comes from the National Assistance Board. The number, therefore, of people who are available for regular visiting is not very large, and I feel it should be increased as soon as possible.
When I heard that this matter was coming up in this House I arranged for a series of about 100 random visits to be made to people who had recently been discharged from my wards of a hospital to find out what they really required. We found that the trouble was not that they were lonely, but that they felt cut off, isolated, and rather frightened that something might go wrong. I think this was due to the fact that there is not a big enough service which enabled them to be seen from time to time, in order to reassure them and to make them feel that, if something did go wrong, they would have somebody to turn to who could bring them some kind of relief.
The noble Baroness asked me to say something about the old people, and this is an important part of the work. If the Mental Health Act is going to be a success at all it will require a large number of social workers. A very great burden is going to be placed on local authorities, and if they cannot fulfil it the idea that it is possible to maintain people in their homes will fade away, and there will be the old demand for people to be admitted to beds in institutions—which is not only a very costly way of dealing with the situation but is not an attractive method and is somewhat inhuman. Therefore, I should like to support what has been said in favour of more money in the way of grants for the training of these workers. If we do not get the money we shall not get the people, and if we do not get the people what we are all saying to-night is a waste of time and we might just as well go away.
I have two further points, one dealing with the training itself. The Young-husband Report laid down a very hierarchial system of social workers. which involved patients being moved from one to another as the severity of their case demanded. I agree there has to be some difference in qualification, but I should like the training to be made as flexible as possible so that one would not have any development of this hierachical system. If you are going to
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train psychiatric social workers they must have a sound basis of psychiatry; and if you are going to train other social workers I should like them to avoid the tendency, which is arising in the almoner training, to be too "psychiatric" and not enough "social". I should like to see the emphasis laid more on the social work and not so much on psychiatry. That is a matter which we cannot debate here very fully, but I hope that the Training Council will bear that point in mind.
The other point, which I want to raise quite briefly, and which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, concerns the representation on the Council. I agree with what the noble Baroness said: that it is foolish that the people doing the work do not get more representation. It appears to me (I may be completely wrong, and I may have misread the Bill) that there is nobody on the Council who knows a great deal about the work of these social workers. Far more of the people who are going to employ them are there, rather than the workers themselves. That does not mean to say that I do not support this Bill—indeed, I think it could be an admirable measure—but I feel that it has certain defects Which may prove disastrous.
6.51 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, we have Listened to three very interesting speeches. The noble Lord who introduced the Bill did so very shortly and succinctly. There was the speech of the noble Baroness, with whom I do not always agree, but on this occasion I agreed with every single word she said, and I think it was most brilliantly and beautifully done. And the noble Lord who has just sat down, Lord Amukee, Whose knowledge and experience in medicine is as great as that of anybody in this House, has made several very important points.
I rise to speak in this debate for two reasons: one is that I am, and have been for a great many years, a county councillor and actively engaged in local authority work; and the other is that I have been, and am still, deeply interested in social work and the training of social workers. I think this is a very important Bill and it may have a great influence on the value and effectiveness of the many services provided by local

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authorities. It arises, as we know, from two very important Reports: the Report of Sir Wilson Jameson on Health Visitors, and the Report of Miss Eileen Younghusband on Local Authority Health and Welfare Services. We are very fortunate in this country, to be able to call on such remarkable people to help us in laying, as it were, the foundation for our legislation by such careful and such excellent Reports. We are deeply indebted to both of these people, to Sir Wilson Jameson and Miss Young-husband, for the way in which they have surveyed the ground and brought forward so many admirable suggestions, which are being embodied in this Bill.
In view of the number of people who are employed in the local authority services, and the number who are still needed, I believe it is most urgent to get this Bill on to the Statute Book. We have a high standard of training for many of our great professions—nursing, teaching, psychiatric social workers and so on—but in many of the welfare services of the local authorities there is a large proportion of people with no social work training at all. Health visitors, on the whole, have more trained personnel than the welfare services of the local authorities, but in both there is a very real shortage of trained people.
In the Jameson Report, there is an estimated need of 11,500 qualified health visitors, of whom 8,000 are working, and there is therefore, a shortage of 3,500. There is also, from the Health Visitors' Association, a demand which I think is a reasonable one, that as the numbers increase and the service becomes more and more valuable and more and more important there is a need for a register of health visitors. We know that they are State-registered nurses and in that capacity they are already registered, but there is this further qualification which they take as health visitors, and this is not registered. In the interests of that profession, and to protect those who take the additional qualification, I think it would be wise to allow them also to be a State-registered service as health visitors.
The Younghusband Report estimates that in the health and welfare services of the local authorities the increased
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need of trained social workers at the present time is 2,500, with an unspecified number of welfare assistants to help. To cover the shortages of almoners, family case workers and psychiatric social workers, about 800 are needed. Altogether, my Lords, we require in these services about 5,700 trained social workers, plus the 800 I have just mentioned. This is a very formidable total; and there is every reason, therefore, to get ahead with the Bill as fast as we possibly can.
I know from my experience on the county council how much more effective the welfare services could be if we had at our disposal a number of trained people. Parliament, in its wisdom, is continually passing new legislation and putting more work and more responsibilities on to the local authorities. On June 4 in Scotland we undertake to carry out the working of the Mental Health Act—a very great responsibility indeed—and we have practically no trained people, or people with experience in the care of mental health, although we are all most anxious that this idea of community care, which is so excellent, should be carried out. But that is going to be very difficult to do, because we do not have the personnel to help us do it.
Now I come to one of my criticisms of the Bill. I think that it will not be possible to meet the great urgency which I feel for the Bill by the arrangements that are being made for finance and the grant aid for students. Several training courses are now starting. Four training courses are actually in being, five more are planned to start in the autumn, and two more next year. None of these courses—and this is rather a curious thing—is at the moment being run in, or in conjunction with, the universities. None is in extra-mural departments; they are all in colleges of commerce or technology. Naturally, one has nothing to say against colleges of commerce or technology, but, knowing the kind of training that a social worker requires, it seems to me a mistake not to have included the universities among the centres in which training is given. I believe that one or two universities have offered to do this but they were refused, which seems to me a great pity. They are so obviously the places with the best environment for such training.

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Then there is also this problem, which may arise—I do not know whether it has arisen, although I believe it has in one or two places—that, with the desire to get first-class lecturers and tutors for these courses, if they are run in colleges of commerce or technology it will be difficult to get the university lecturers, unless these colleges are able to pay the fees and the salaries of those lecturers at the rate at which a university would pay them. It also seems a pity not to encourage and strengthen the link between the universities and the social training courses, rather than to let this go by default.
I think that the grant aid, which the noble Baroness has mentioned, is the great weakness in this Bill. There are to be no central grants for these students. Applications for grant aid must be made to the local authority through its further education department; and that, as I know—I am chairman of a local education authority—is inevitably rather a slow process. It has to be brought before the further education committee; it then has to go to the education committee; it may possibly have to go to the finance committee, and it may then have to go to the county council. Very often they do not all meet in sequence, and you are definitely slowing down the possibility of getting grant aid for these students quickly.
There is also the point which the noble Baroness made, in that if you are confined to local authority grants you are limiting the scope of recruitment to local areas and local levels. I believe that is a slowing-down process and also a limiting process. Look, for instance, at the Home Office, where I also have some association. The Home Office, knowing they were extremely short of child-care officers and probation officers, immediately organised their own courses; they got their own grant aid direct, and they have been able to go ahead very ably and very swiftly with the training of the personnel whom they want for their work.
When it came to organising the Youth Service with the urgency arising out of the Albemarle Report, what did the Ministry of Education do? They set up their own National College of Youth Leadership, financed 100 per cent. by
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direct grant. They give direct grant to the students, and any prospective trainee who is any good at all and who passes into the college or into any of the training centres for youth leadership can get direct grant. That is the quickest way to do it, my Lords: that is the most direct way to do it. In that way you will get your students far more rapidly and more effectively than by going through the rather elaborate machinery of the local education authority.
I read the debate held in another place on May 7, and I read the Minister's reply to the point that was made most forcibly by two Members who have worked very hard on this Bill, Dame Irene Ward and Miss Joan Vickers. They both urged the Minister to reconsider this method of grant aiding, but without success. The local authority machinery is all right; it works in the end; it grinds away slowly and it comes out all right in the end. But in my experience that end is generally something approaching two years from the beginning, if you are lucky, and sometimes it may even be longer. So I would urge the Minister most strongly to reconsider the question of these direct methods of grant aid. If the Home Secretary and the Minister of Education can get the direct grant from the Treasury, I cannot see why the Minister of Health should not be in the same position and should not be treated in the same way. If and when the immediate need is met and you want to slow down the training and the recruitment of these social workers, then you can return to the further education plan.
Then there is another proposal which was put up in another place and which I think might also be effective if the direct grant is not available, and that is the question of the pooling grant system. Again, that is successful at the Home Office, for instance, where the pooling of the expense in connection with the training of probation and of child-care officers works very well. One per cent. is taken by the Home Office and used to finance the probation training service, which costs £97,000, and the child-care service costs over £100,000. This pooling system is extremely successful, also, in the financing of health visitors' training.

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There will be two streams of people applying for grant aid: the new students who are training for the first time, and for whom direct grant would be by far the quickest and the best way to bring in the new recruits, and those who are already in employment in local authority services but are untrained—and I know that there are a great many of them. They will, we hope, be seconded by their authorities to take a training course under the Younghusband scheme, and their salaries will be paid by the local authority, their employing agency; but without grant aid it will be very expensive for the smaller authorities both to pay the salary of the officer While he is being trained and also to pay for a replacement during the time that he is away from his post with the local authority.
Therefore, a pooling system would help the poorer authorities very much indeed and those who would like to get their personnel trained but who might find it very difficult indeed. It might also help voluntary organisations who would like to take advantage of this social work training and put forward candidates for it. I hope that the Minister will consider some of these points, and will see whether or not it is possible to introduce another system of grant aid.
While speaking about grants I cannot help referring to the sum of money which the noble Lord, speaking for the Minister, has mentioned as being that which will be available for this work: £50,000, £25,000 for each council. This includes expenditure on the office accommodation, the clerical assistance and the executive staff. It seems to me quite impossible. I cannot see how you can possibly run a first-class council—and it must be first-class or it is not worth doing—on £25,000 a year. As I have mentioned, the probation training committee have £97,000 a year at their disposal. I cannot think how two large councils can possibly do an efficient and a first-class job on such a small sum of money. I only hope, as the noble Lord has said to-night, that this amount will be reviewed if it is found insufficient to meet the demands of the councils.
Then there is the question of research, my Lords. This, again, seems to me to
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be quite inadequately dealt with in this Bill. Research is essential in a service of this kind—just as essential as it is at the Home Office, where the research unit is working and doing first-class work which may well help us to solve some of the very difficult problems in connection with the treatment of offenders. But the research project that is likely to come in this field is going to be absolutely minute. I cannot see how it will even be possible to run a research unit with so little support and so little money with which to do it. Yet research might be one of the best ways of saving money in the end. One can spend money on research, and in other professions, in business or in a variety of fields things are discovered which, when put into action, save hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of pounds. I am sure research is essential in this field.
I should like, if I may, to turn for just a moment to the composition of the two councils, to which the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has referred. I am afraid I do not think that I can agree with the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, about having one council. I think this is a matter for which two councils, as planned, is a better arrangement than his suggestion of one council. But I agree with him, and with the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, that having provision for only one chairman written into the Bill is really tempting Providence. In fact, we are lucky, because in Sir John Wolfenden we have a very great man who has interests so wide that he will, with his experience and his capacity, make a good chairman for both councils. But in five or ten years' time, who is to say that the next Minister of Health, or the one after him, will be able to find somebody who will fit the bill as Sir John Wolfenden does? I think it should have been left open for one chairman, if one chairman is found, but it should not have been said that there can definitely be only one chairman. I think this is a matter which we should reconsider.
Another question which Lord Amulree mentioned, and which I think is extremely important, is that the function of these two Councils is to serve as training bodies and recruiting bodies. Yet far the biggest representation on them is the employing bodies, the local authorities. If there are to be training

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bodies, the most important training bodies in the country to-day are the universities, the social science departments, people who have very great experience behind them in training and in working out different types of social work training.
Yet there is no mention of the Joint University Council being on either of the two Councils. I think this is most unfortunate. I know that in another place the Minister said that they would consult the universities. But they are the most important of all, and just to say that they would be consulted is, I think, quite inadequate. Of course, you would be mad not to consult them; but I think you would be equally mad not to have them on the Council, because they are the people who really have the knowledge and the personnel, and I cannot understand why they are left out. I am sure that if we were discussing in your Lordships' House the training of military personnel, it would be most unlikely that we should leave out a representation from either the Navy or the Army colleges in trying to plan the training of officers. It seems to me just as unfortunate that we should have left out the universities on these two Councils.
There is a case, as Lord Amulree, has said, for including more professional people on those Councils. On the Health Visitors' Training Council, the two important organisations, the Health Visitors' Association and the Royal College of Nursing Health Visitors' Council, are not mentioned by name. I believe that, as paragraph 5 of the Schedule says that eight of the members after consultations with the Minister of Health, shall be health visitors, naturally those two organisations should be consulted. I think it is a pity not to have specified that members of these two big professional organisations should be on the Health Visitors' Council. There is also the question as to whether only one representative from Northern Ireland, when they, too, have a branch of the Royal College of Nursing Health Visitors' Council over there, is enough.
With regard to the Social Work Training Council, I have already mentioned the fact that the Joint University Council is not represented on that body, but there is not in fact a single organisation
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with experience of social work training mentioned among the long list of organisations. The British Medical Association is mentioned, as is the Association of Medical Officers of Health; but there is no mention of a single organisation of social work training. I think that is a great pity. The Councils should, if they are to be effective, really be training bodies and recruiting bodies, but they are in fact, as described in the Schedules, really employing bodies. This quotation from the Jameson Report, in Paragraph 374 on page 141, is, I think, very apposite:
"The constitution of the central bodies should adequately reflect the interests surrounding Health Visiting. It will clearly be necessary that employing, professonal and educational interests should be represented. The general balance of representation should be such that professional and educational interests—the Health Visitors' organisations, the training centres and the universities—should together be in a slight majority."
That comes direct from the Jameson Report.
My Lords, I hope that the Minister will reconsider some of these points now that the Bill has come into your Lordships' House. Personally, I hope that this Bill will be a non-controversial one, because I think all of us, on both sides of the House, are anxious to see the Bill go through and become a really important addition to our social legislation. Training is essential for all professions. People have fought for the training of nurses since the days of Florence Nightingale, and for the training of teachers, too. Nobody wants the sick and ill to be nursed by untrained people, or our children to be taught by untrained teachers. Many of the problems which have to be dealt with by the health visitors and the health and welfare services are immensely complicated and difficult. The noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, described, I thought most excellently, many of those problems. We must recruit for the service people of wide knowledge, understanding, and the temperament for this kind of community and family service. This Bill will, we hope, help to provide such people and to raise the standard of our welfare services throughout the country. But this will not be done unless there are some changes in the administrative structure of this Bill to make it correspond to the needs of to-day.
7.17 p.m.
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: My Lords, I find myself enjoying the comparatively rare experience in your Lordships' House of agreeing with all the points of substance which have been raised on both sides during the short debate on an important Bill. So I would hesitate to take up the further time of your Lordships by re-echoing the points and the observations which have so lucidly and clearly been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and others, were it not for the fact that I want no opportunity to be lost to convince my noble friend Lord Newton, and for him, in turn, to convince our right honourable friend the Minister of Health, that due weight and consideration should be given to the unanimity of opinion and expression of your Lordships' House. At the same time, I should like to pay some tribute to my right honourable friend the Minister because it is during his industrious term of office that this Bill sees the light of day.
I am not going to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, into that part of her speech where she dealt with the clauses relating to health visitors, but I want, quite shortly, to say a word or two about those clauses which relate to social workers. First, I should like to emphasise again that we should urge upon the Government the most pressing need to promote as soon and as effectively as possible the establishment of adequate and well-trained health and welfare services in all and every one of the local authorities.
When your Lordships' House was discussing the Mental Health Act, it was then declared that the Minister would circularise 145 county boroughs and counties requesting them to submit schemes on what they were going to do to implement the intentions of that Act. That has been carried out. Local authorities have submitted their schemes. But one wonders whether the intention of the Mental Health Act can be implemented unless the Minister is going to pay due attention to the points which have been rightly emphasised in this debate. I refer particularly to the suggestions first put forward so concisely by the noble Baroness, Lady Summer-skill, and others who have spoken.
In a field where there is a severe shortage of vocationally minded people, if all
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demands are to be fairly served it is essential that there should be equal attractions. The health and welfare services of local authorities are, we know, the Cinderellas of the social work field. The Joint Training Council for Social Work say:
"In every other branch of social work, including medical and psychiatric social workers, as well as youth leaders, child care and probation officers, a grant in aid is available from central funds at the professional training stage. We urge that social workers taking this course should not be made practically the only exception to a well-established rule."
By comparison with the provision available in these other fields I have mentioned, there is now, under this Bill, a positive deterrent to those employed by local authorities and engaged in welfare and health duties. People will not be recruited to these services, nor will those at present employed by local authorities be seconded by their employers to a Younghusband course for a period of two years.
In my estimation, these facts will be disastrous in the implementation of the Mental Health Act for five years—possibly for ten years—because every local authority, in these days of great shortage of recruits in the whole field of social services, must rely upon those persons of goodwill who already have some considerable experience. It is particularly over this point that this Bill stops short and defeats its purpose. If the poorer local authorities have to pay the full cost, they will naturally ask themselves what priority they can give to this work compared with all the other priorities in their budgets. They will ask, "How can we guarantee that staff trained with our money, out of our rates, will stay with us?" Your Lordships will appreciate, as many are members of local authorities, that the answers will vary in almost every local authority area.
We all know that it is this sort of problem that every local authority has to face. Some are better equipped than others; some grasp their opportunities for training their staffs; some give priority to other things. So that there is no certainty at all that any particular local authority will endorse a training application. I think that this is particularly true of local authorities which, because they have no further education courses within their areas, have to send their students outside, and so have to

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bear the full cost. This makes a difference of several hundreds of pounds.
To-day we are finding a ridiculous situation, in more than one place. I am told on good authority (I have had this from the Association of which I am Chairman; I refer to the National Association of Mental Health) that at the North-West Polytechnic, in London, there are in the same building two courses for social workers, one where central grants are available to the students of the child-care officers course and the other where students of general social work are not eligible for any central grant. This sort of situation is not limited to London. Exactly the same conditions prevail in Birmingham, at the College of Commerce. Can one think of a more ridiculous situation than having personnel, in all probability with a strong vocation, though taking a different slant of their social service, going to the same educational institution where one set has the advantages of a central grant and the other is denied them? I can think of nothing, in this second half of the twentieth century, that is more likely to lead to a continuance of the failure to get recruits than this sort of situation.
What are the alternatives? They have been fully enumerated by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood and others. At this time, when the Bill has been through another place, one wonders whether it would be possible for the Government to change their minds and provide central grants, as in the cases we have all quoted, or at least give due cognisance to the suggestion that a common pool should be established for training purposes. That common pool would be contributed to by every local authority. I hope that in due course my noble friend on these Benches will move an Amendment to this effect. I know that there is a precedent for this. I understand that the expenditure on the training of midwives and health visitors is pooled and reallocated. In one local authority with which I am closely connected—1 refer to the Borough of York—I am told that they are training midwives and receive back from the pool a sum of £5,315. If it can be done in respect of one category of social work, I have not yet read in the Reports of another place, or in any
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other direction, a reasoned and logical answer why it cannot also be done in this case.
I think that it is necessary to say a word on the financial proposal to create an equalisation fund, which will have as its source contributions from every local authority and will be administered to enable a two-stream channel to operate. It would provide the finances to enable a poorer local authority to send to one of the Younghusband courses, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, referred, an employee seconded, but who would not go to such a course if that local authority had to bear the full burden of paying for it. On the other stream, the equalisation fund would assist those areas that may require a far higher preponderance of personnel in these fields in their recruitment and their training grants. I hope that my noble friend Lord Newton will explore whether something of this kind cannot be done. The consensus of opinion that has been given, I think by every one of your Lordships who has spoken, is that social workers themselves, and local authorities, in the absence of a direct grant to provide vocational training, would find it best and fairest if there were to be pooled contributions for all local authorities.
As the noble Baroness and every other speaker has said, we do not consider that that is the best method, but at least it would show the earnestness of the Government to be fair to the welfare services; and it would show what has been shown before, both in the training service instituted many years ago (in which I played some part) for the probation service, and by the Children's Act, 1948, that the Government were anxious to stimulate the setting up of essential new services. Also, it would show a desire to ensure efficient services in all local authorities, rich or poor.
I do not want to detain your Lordships much further, but in the area of which I have particular knowledge—I refer to the provisions of the Mental Health Act—I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, that that Act cannot work without the proper application of these fundamental community services. The noble Lord will know, as I think I I know, that the hospital services are

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going forward in a dynamic way, but that the lack of adequate community services is blunting the effect and causing people to be sent back into hospital as re-admissions. It is no use my right honourable friend the Minister of Health and, through him, the Regional Hospital Boards, claiming that the average stay of patients in mental hospitals is being reduced, if it is misleading the public about re-admissions.
I can only reiterate what I said in your Lordships' House in moving the Motion during the debate on the Young, husband Report in February two years ago. Many of the public have been alarmed by the idea that the Mental Health Act will throw on to the community a large number of mentally sick people who need special care. The only way to reassure them is to provide a social works service—a service to which they can turn in the knowledge that effective help will be given. Even with its deficiencies, this Bill makes an improvement possible, but it could make it certain. So I add the plea, as a layman, to the view of almost every expert in the field, and that is to plead with the Government that they do not baulk at the final hurdle and ruin the whole concept and effectiveness of this Bill. Without adequate finance, which appears to mean a simple pool, the Bill is sure to flounder and to fail.
7.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I have had the honour of sitting in your Lordships' House for about 35 years, and I do not remember ever hearing a Government Bill receive quite such sharp criticisms from all sides of the House. At this late hour, it would be quite otiose for me to repeat the criticisms that have been so ably given by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and by the other speakers who have, on most subjects, shown a very high degree of unanimity. The fact is that many of your Lordships are closely connected with social work and admire the social workers. In this Bill, Her Majesty's Government have managed to hurt and annoy the social workers, and our speeches have reflected their bitterness.
I will venture to quote from a letter signed jointly by the representatives of
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the Association of Psychiatric Social Workers and the Institute of Almoners. They say:
"The under-staffed and under-paid social workers find it bitter to realise that the Ministry of Health places so little value on the welfare and casework services which the Bill is designed to promote and which the public has a right to expect."
Another body, the Institute of Almoners write:
"Social workers fervently hope that the House of Lords will show the same informed and realistic attitude to this issue as was demonstrated in their first debate on the subject and that there may yet be time to make the Bill a living force in the social services of the country."
These ladies, whom we cannot sufficiently admire, are placing great reliance upon us. I think we can promise the noble Lord, Lord Newton, a long and energetic Committee stage.
7.37 p.m.
BARONESS SWANBOROUGH: My Lords, I realise that the greatest pleasure will be given by the shortest possible speech, so I will only reiterate what everyone has said: that is, that the greatest of hopes come from every one of us for the Government to make adequate financial provision, so that the social workers, and all that that term comprises, should have real backing in the endeavour they are making to get the perfect training. Those of us who are in any way connected with the social services of this country are very jealous of the pattern we have set up. It is a pattern that can be a model for the rest of the world, and it would be foolish of us if we were, by skimping as to training, to vitiate the example which we are able to give to other countries in the methods we have evolved and the pattern that has come from those methods. But to attain the pattern, a standard of training, both as to technical skill and as to professional ability, is of paramount importance; and I think this is because of something which has not been mentioned so far; namely, that ultimately the influence of such training forms the character of the nation. That character is in itself a strength which we cannot over-emphasise in the pattern it can give to the world.
People who qualify in social service in all its various forms have a very special make-up. Their outlook is certainly

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dedicated, and their ability is strengthened by their own personal endeavour and without experience they cannot carry on the work at all. I, personally, think that if we are to have first-class standards of training for people who carry responsibility, it is necesesary to see that these standards are matched by a level of remuneration which is sufficiently good to make those doing the work feel that they have a salary which is sufficient for them not to be looking at their pay packets with apprehension It should also give the certitude that they are recognised as having responsibility in their own field and in the carry through of such responsibility.
All of us who are deeply concerned in having a really good welfare service for those who require it—and I would emphasise that this is really the reason we are all so interested in this service—look at the problem with the knowledge that the commodity supplied to the consumer must be in the right shape; and as the consumer in this case is, of necessity, a person who is usually in difficulty in order to qualify as a consumer, it is necessary that the help to that consumer be of the right calibre. The old person who is labouring under a great disability, the middle-aged woman suffering from marital distress, the sick, the lonely and the dispossessed, do not want to be handled by those who are academically proficient but by those Who are experienced and informed. They, the consumers, are not preoccupied with methods or legislative machinery. Standards of training and qualifications pale to insignificance before their need for human understanding and dextrous handling of situations beyond their own control.
We, who spend our lives in the social services, are clear that training is of paramount importance, but training without experience is of no value to anybody at all, and that is Why most of us who are connected with these fields of work would like to see that 50 per cent. of the training given by the training Councils would, in fact, be practical and would actually be on the ground. The Bill before your Lordships is undoubtedly a step forward in the right direction, but the Bill is of little value unless the country itself recognises that the social worker has a definite responsibility
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and should receive an adequate salary for the job. But we must understand, all of us, that no restrictive practices in welfare work should take place, because of standards of training that we are all advocating, and the volunteer should be welcomed to play his or her part alongside the professional, although each lin their own sphere and each with their own job to fulfil.
Volunteers working on a modern basis—and I speak naturally on behalf of the service with which I am associated—expect in their work for local authorities, whoever their local authority may be, to work to the officer who is qualified to hold that post. The volunteer today accepts that, as a principle of thinking to-day, charitable patronage has gone and statutory aid is here; and voluntary service to-day consists in integrating volunteer service into statutory aid. This leads to a standard of service on the part of volunteers working to the officer of the local authority. Such an officer, with accepted training and adequate responsibility vested in the post, is, I presume, the ultimate object of this Bill.
We are in no danger in this country of being short of people to do the job from the point of view of volunteers to help the professional; we are in no danger in this country of not having enough people ready to try out new schemes, but I am fearful that the love of the hallmark—a hallmark sometimes of doubtful quality—which is worshipped in other lands might possibly, by mistake, be adopted here. I am in favour of well-trained social workers, but I want to urge safeguards against a situation which has come to pass in the North American Continent, where voluntary participation in the welfare of the community has been frozen out because of professional views. This has led to impossible situations which are now the subject of much thought and discussion in the endeavour to rectify what has happened. I do not believe that this can happen here, but I do believe that we must watch and be careful. I would therefore urge that the Training Councils give to the professional social worker a type of training that includes information and experience of the work done by voluntary workers, because in this country so great a part

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of the auxiliary social service work is done on a voluntary basis.
Anyone in social work to-day realises that a knowledge of legislation and an understanding of day-to-day machinery, both of central and local government, are essential in the job, whether the worker be a professional or a volunteer. There could be no doubt whatsoever that this statement could be checked by asking those who are at the receiving end of the social services whether experience in handling and the knowledge which comes with handling are of paramount importance. This stock in trade can be learned, I contend, in the school of life, even better than from textbooks, and I would suggest for your Lordships' consideration something which would be completely new in the field of social service but which, through its careful planning and ultimate structure, could be yet another lead from this country to the world.
If knowledge and experience can qualify a young entrant into this field, why should not someone who has worked for many years, and is prepared to face a special test by a panel of examiners, call upon her experience and knowledge to satisfy the examiners as to her competence to hold a diploma, too? Should not an apprenticeship served in the maelstrom of helping human beings count in the nature of a credit towards a qualification? Is it right that man-made laws should endow with a special virtue a young thing, with a period of book learning and a time of field work, yet exclude another Who has spent years of his or her life in this same sphere, and has achieved in a far harder school, at greater expense to herself, those things that should count as credits towards the (ultimate? My suggestion is that a woman, widowed or in similar circumstances, could, having given a certain set number of years of consecutive work, be entitled to be examined and tested; and that, if such a test showed that her knowledge of theory and practice came up to that set in the papers for the social service worker, she should receive a diploma or certificate and rank as a professional.
I suggest this because in the field of social service there are many people who, for one reason or another, have not
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qualified originally and have worked in the field of social service for a variety of reasons. It may be that they are doctors' wives, or parsons' wives; or it may be that they are interested in one particular line of work but have not been able to leave home. They have worked hard, and in due course have suddenly needed to acquire professional status, often to earn their living. If such people were precluded from joining the ranks of the professionals it would be a great loss to the nation, because they would have to leave the field of social service. If my suggestions were carried to their logical conclusion it would mean that the number of professional social workers in the country would be strengthened in practical ways and that the establishing of late entrants would be a new and sensible way of using the skills and abilities generated through long years of service to the community.
7.50 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I was very surprised to hear the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, say that he never remembered in a great many years of service in your Lordships' House a Bill being so severely criticised as this one. I find it very hard to understand how he thinks that. Indeed, I should have thought the criticisms earlier this afternoon to which the Transport Bill was subjected were rather more severe than the criticisms your Lordships have addressed to me this evening. From the speeches to which I have listened I am happy to believe that your Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading this evening.
What I found particularly instructive and interesting about the comments your Lordships have made—and I recognise that all of your Lordships who have spoken are great experts in this field-was that really many of them were not so much criticisms of the Bill, although of course there were criticisms of omissions in the Bill, as divergent opinions about the nature of social work and "what it takes", if I may use a colloquialism. None of your Lordships took up what I might call extreme positions on this, but I recognise that there can be two extreme schools of thought. For instance, on the one hand it can be claimed that social work is so specialised

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that the training of the social workers must be dominated by the professional interests, and to hang with their employers the local authorities! On the other hand it can be argued that social work is not an esoteric profession, or at any rate ought not to be, and that experience of life is as valuable as theoretical training. As I say, none of your Lordships has taken up an extreme position, but I noticed divergent views upon this fundamental question of what the nature of social work really is.
As I listened, particularly to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, I was driven to ask myself this question: am I—a person who was an MP. for nine years and dealt with thousands of personal problems of constituents, including advising husbands on how to cope with their recalcitrant wives and vice versa—am I or am I not capable of being a social worker without two years' training in a college of further education? Your Lordships have not collectively given me an answer to that question. I have some faint hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, might say, "Yes"; she shakes her head; then I am quite certain that none of your Lordships would say anything but, "No".
However that may be, the real point is that we want more health visitors and social workers, and they must be capable of doing their jobs. The Government have been advised by two expert bodies on how to set about attaining this objective. This Bill is the result. It is designed to meet the interests of all concerned, the professions and what the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, called the consumers; and I take it that she would mean that the consumers are both the patients, if I may call them that, and also of course the employers, the local authorities. So much for the general principles underlying the Bill.
I should like to come now to the main points which have been raised in this debate. The first was the question of the chairmanship of the Councils. The noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill (and perhaps I should say she told me she would not be able to stay for the end of this debate), felt that there ought to be separate chairmen of the two Councils
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and she also said that in any case there should not be a male chairman. I think perhaps she was forgetting that among social workers the distribution between the sexes is fairly even. On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, even went so far as to suggest that perhaps there ought not to be two Councils and one chairman but one Council for both health visitors and social workers. That shows how there can be divergence of expert opinion on these matters.
I explained in my opening speech why the Government think it is right that the two Councils should have some members in common and that there should be one chairman, and I do not think I need say very much more about that. The arrangement provided for in this Bill seems to me to be a compromise between the two points of view of the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, on the one hand, and of the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, on the other.
My noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood, in her very interesting speech, raised, among other things, the question as to whether or not the estimated cost of expenditure by the Councils, which is put at £50,000 a year, was adequate; and she suggested that it was not. I would emphasise that this figure is just an estimate and we shall have to see how the thing works out when the Councils have been set up and start work. But the position is, that the balance of their expenditure—that is to say, the balance when regard has been taken of any income they have made—shall be met by the Exchequer, whatever it amounts to. That seems to me to be fair enough.
I come now to the question of grants to students. Many of your Lordships argued, and with great force, that they ought somehow to be paid from the centre. There is no dispute between any of us about the desirability of suitable candidates getting adequate grants. Perhaps I should first say something briefly about the position of health visitor students, because they were referred to particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill. Most of them are sponsored by local health authorities at a salary varying from full salary to around three-quarters of the salary, and most have a contract to serve the authority for varying periods up to two years.

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The noble Baroness, Lady Summer-skill, disliked this system and she mentioned specifically that she knew of two cases of students who had completed their training as health visitors and were required to compensate their local health authorities because they ceased to work for them. These matters were raised in another place on the Committee stage and my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary undertook to look into the question of these contracts of service and to discuss the matter with the authorities concerned and to give appropriate advice. Since then, information has been sought about the practices of local health authorities and the results are now being studied, and that includes the two cases specifically mentioned by Lady Summerskill.
I now turn to the position of social worker students, and, as I said just now, there is no dispute between us about the desirability of suitable candidates getting adequate grants. But the question is where the grants are to come from. It is the view of Her Majesty's Government, as it has always been, that the arrangements for giving these grants should fit in with the general pattern of grants for further education, because one cannot get away from the fact that training to be a social worker is a form of further education and there is prima facie every reason why this, like other branches of further education, should be treated in the same way and why the local authorities should exercise their responsibility in respect of students on these courses as on other courses.
Several of your Lordships mentioned exceptions to this rule: the case of youth leaders, those being trained to undertake child care and those being trained to go into the probation service. So far as youth leaders are concerned, the arrangement there is for a Ministry of Education grant for a limited period of five years, and for one course which is run at the Leicester College of Youth Leadership which is provided by the Ministry of Education. So far as the Home Office grants for child care are concerned, these were instituted as a result of the Curtis Report, which called for emergency action; and so far as training for probation work is
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concerned, the probation service is run by probation committees, which consist of magistrates, and not local authorities, and my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is in fact the probation authority for the Metropolitan magistrates' courts area. Whether you take the view that those are special cases, or whether you take the view that they are not special cases but rather anomalous, they are at any rate exceptions to the general rule that financing students for further education is the responsibility of the local authorities, and in the view of Her Majesty's Government there is no case at all for saying that student social workers should be treated as an exception.
There is no doubt that the local authorities are alive to the need for developing the community care services with trained staff. There was a good response to the pioneer courses. My noble friend Lord Feversham instanced as one reason why he disliked the prospect of grants being paid by the local authorities that they would be saying to themselves "What are our priorities to be in our budgets?" I should like to say to my noble friend that even Ministers of Health and Chancellors of the Exchequer ask themselves what the priorities are to be in their budgets. So that did not really seem to me to be a particularly strong argument.
THE EARL OF FEVERSHAM: My Lords, if I may interrupt my noble friend, may I say that the has misunderstood my intention. It was that, quite clearly, the well-established committees of any local authority are more likely to persuade a council of that authority to give them a larger share of the block grant than the committee of a new service; and it is the new service which wants particular stimulation when it comes at the present time.
LORD NEWTON: I listened to my noble friend, but if I misunderstood him I apologise. Let us look at it like this. I realise that all your Lordships who have stayed to the end of this debate are enthusiasts about social work. There are enthusiasts also for all the other forms of further education which it is the duty of local authorities to finance. I think we should leave it like this: that

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the position will be closely watched, as my right honourable friend the Minister of Health has said that it will be, and that my right honourable friend the Minister of Education is ready to take up with local education authorities individual cases of difficulty, and is also ready to issue guidance to local education authorities on further education grants for both health visitors and social workers. I should also like to remind your Lordships that in another place my right honourable friend the Minister of Health said that there are many ways in which pressure can be brought to bear upon local authorities that do not discharge adequately the duties which are placed upon them by Statute.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I wonder whether I might just say one word about the emergency aspect, because 5,700 people are required to make this service really effective. That is a great many people, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, said, competition at the moment for people in all professions is so great that unless the Minister of Health really puts his back into this effort and works hard for it, we shall not get the 5,700 people.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I do not understand why my noble friend imagines that it is only my right honourable friend the Minister of Health and herself, and people who think like them, who are conscious of what she is calling an emergency. The local authorities are the employers of these people when they are trained. They are what the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, called "the consumers." I should have thought they were in a position to recognise the situation as well as anybody.
BARONESS SWANBOROUGH: My Lords, I may have been foolish, but when I said "the consumers" I meant the patient, the receiver of the social service workers' efforts, and not the local authority.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I recognise that. But it seems to me that the local authorities, who are the employers, are also the consumers of the services of these people when they have been trained. But I do not want to make overmuch of that.
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My noble friend Lord Feversham asked me why expenditure on social work training cannot be pooled, in the same way as local health expenditure on health visitor training is pooled. I should like to attempt to give him the answer to that. It is a fairly complicated one. The position is that employing authorities incur substantial expenses in seconding nurses for health visitor training, because this is the normal entry into the profession. Also, some of these same authorities are themselves incurring expense in providing the training courses. This is pooled. Social workers, on the other hand, will be largely recruited after having been fully 'trained. The employing authority will not have to pay secondment costs for all recruits; nor will the local health and welfare authorities provide the courses. These will be run by the local education authorities as part of their normal further education activities. The expense of seconding existing staffs is not, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, such as to warrant a pooling arrangement.
The other matter of some substance which was raised in the debate by the two noble Baronesses, Lady Summer-skill and Lady Elliot of Harwood, was the question of professional representation on (the councils. The Jameson Report recommended that the professional and educational interests—that is to say, the health visitor organisations, the training centres and the universities—should together be in a slight majority. This kind of majority is provided on both the Councils, and I shall try to explain how that works out. The Council for the Training of Health Visitors has 31 members besides the chairman. Of the professional and educational interests, 8 are to be appointed after consultation with health visitor organisations, 6 after consultation with universities and other training bodies, and 2 after consultation with the General Nursing Councils. This makes 16. Of the interests other than professional and educational, 10 are to be local authority members and 3 are to be medical members. This makes 13. Of the unidentified members of this council, there will be one Northern Ireland member and one member to be

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appointed by the Health Ministers without consultation. These add up to 2. So, even if it turns out that neither unidentified member belongs to the educational or professional group, that group will still have a slight majority, one, over the remainder—that is to say, 16 as against 15.
The Council for Training in Social Work has 32 members besides the chairman. Of the professional and educational interests, 10 are to be appointed after consultation with social work organisations, and 7 after consultation with universities and other training bodies. This makes 17. Of the interests other than professional and educational, there are to be 10 local authority members and 2 medical members. This makes 12. Of the unidentified members, there are to be 1 Northern Ireland member and 2 members appointed by the Health Ministers, without consultation. That makes 3. Here also, even if it turns out that no unidentified member belongs to an educational or professional group, that group will nevertheless have a slight majority over the remainder—seventeen as against fifteen.
My noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood made certain recommendations about the bodies that she thought ought to be consulted. I think she even suggested that certain bodies ought to be specifically written into the Bill as being entitled to have members on the Councils. I do not think I can do more than say that her observations have been noted by me, and no doubt will be noted by my right honourable friend. But I suggest that it would not be right to tie my right honourable friend's hands too tightly in this matter.
There are two other "mall points to which I think I ought to reply before I sit down. The noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, complained that candidates aged twenty or thirty have no call on the local education authority for grant. That, however, is not the case. There is no age bar, and the local education authorities can make their grants to candidates of any age, provided that they are resident in their area. Then my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood complained, I think, that no courses for training in social work had been started
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in the universities. There are the pioneer courses which my right honourable friends, the Ministers for Health and Education, promoted in advance of this Bill and in advance of the setting up of the Training Councils. Apart from this, I do not think it unreasonable that the Government should have followed the recommendation of the Younghusband Report that the two-year general training in social work should be given outside the universities, mainly in colleges of further education.
My Lords, I hope that I have answered the speeches reasonably adequately. I do not expect to have satisfied your Lordships completely, but at any rate I hope you will feel that I have dealt sufficiently with your comments. I trust that you will now feel able to give the Bill a Second Reading.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, may I say just a word, before the Question is put, I did not interrupt the noble Lord when he was speaking, but he did take up the comment of my noble friend Lady Summerskill, about there being two chairmen, instead of one, for the two Councils. He cited the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, as seeking one Council, and he seemed to brush aside the suggestion made by my noble friend on that basis. He forgot to mention that the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, also supported Lady Summerskill in that suggestion. My noble friend went one stage further. Having asked for two separate Chairmen, she then made the point about these being women's organisations, and said it was curious that they should always have male Chairmen. I should have thought that the suggestion made by Lady Summerskill would have enabled there to be one male Chairman and at least one female Chairman. I hope that the noble Lord will bear that in mind when this debate is over.
LORD NEWTON: Perhaps, with your Lordships' leave, I may reply to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. I did not, of course, seek to suggest that the solution propounded by the Government was the right one, because Lady Summerskill was on one side of the scales and the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, was on the other. I recognise that the point was

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also made by Lady Elliot of Harwood. The reason why I cited both Lady Sum-merskill and Lord Amulree was in order to show that there are divergent expert opinions on this matter. I did not go into it further, because I hope I explained with reasonable care in my introductory remarks why the Government
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have put into the Bill the provisions they have.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at sixteen minutes past eight o'clock.