Lords Sitting of 13 November 1962

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of St. Albans

SUSSEX PLACE, REGENT'S PARK
2.36 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will inquire into the circumstances of the Crown Commissioners' proposal to demolish Sussex Place, Regent's Park, contrary to the recommendations of the Gorell Committee and despite the fact that the London County Council architects consider this course unnecessary, and to ask how far this is a consequence of the particular plans of the developer.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, the Government are already aware of the considerations that led the Crown Estate Commissioners to their proposal that Sussex Place should be rebuilt. These were set out by the Commissioners in their Third Statement on the Future of the Regent's Park Terraces, published in June last. The Gorell Committee, when reporting in 1947 (Command Paper 7094, paragraph 62) did not rule out rebuilding with a front that is an exact replica of the original structure—which is what the Commission propose—as a means of preserving the design of the individual terraces. They said that the choice of method must be left to the Crown Estate Commissioners when the time came.
It is correct that earlier this year the London County Council took a different view from that of the Commissioners. Since the publication of their statement in June, the Commissioners have arranged further detailed inspection by
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the Council's Architect. They have also themselves reviewed the problem in the light of further points made to them by a number of people, including a Parliamentary delegation and representatives of amenity organisations. They are now in touch again with the London County Council and we should await the outcome. The Commissioners' conclusions have arisen from the state of the present structure and their own views as to its future, including the importance of more and good residential accommodation, and not as a consequence of any particular plans of their selected developer.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the Crown Commissioners have been less than frank in regard to the statement of their plans, and that in fact there has been public criticism of them by the L.C.C. for frankly misleading the public in regard to this matter? Further, is he not aware that to say that the Crown Commissioners are merely carrying out the wishes of the Gorell Committee is to mislead, when the Gorell Committee gave as their unanimous opinion that certain terraces should be restored and preserved—not merely that replicas should be built—and one of these was Sussex Place? Are the Government not aware, in fact, that the L.C.C. take the view that Sussex Place is structurally sound and, were it not for the plans to build garages underneath it, there would not have been a question of pulling it down?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I do not want to anticipate the outcome of consultation between the Crown Commissioners and the London County Council. I do not know in what respects the noble Lord thinks the Commissioners have been less than frank, but they are now reviewing the question with the L.C.C. Their own view regarding the structure of Sussex Place was that it was suffering from what is called settlement; that is to say, the walls were gradually sinking into the ground, which would in course of time probably make things very uncomfortable for the inhabitants.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, will the noble Earl say whether a Minister is answerable for the Crown Commissioners, and, if so, which

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Minister? If there were an appeal against the London County Council on the decision would this prejudice fair consideration by the Minister of Housing and Local Government? Would the noble Earl not agree that it is a good thing that there is a London County Council with a first-class architectural department to safeguard the amenities of London and will he think twice about abolishing this admirable body and its staff?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary is, I suppose, a matter for the Minister of Housing and Local Government. With regard to responsibility for the Crown Estate Commissioners, as the noble Lord will remember it used to be with the Minister of Agriculture, but that has now been changed. It is now, I understand, with the Treasury.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this terrace, and many other terraces around Regent's Park, though they have a great tradition and great architectural and aesthetic beauty, nevertheless consist of houses that are uncleanable, impossible for people to live in in these days; and that merely to preserve them from settlement is rather a waste of assets and money, and that it is a good thing that somebody should think of a new design for the whole area?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, what the Crown Commissioners are trying to do, and what I think was recommended by the Gorell Committee is, so far as possible, to modernise the houses and make them fit for modern requirements and, at the same time, to preserve the appearance of Nash's scheme for all the terraces of Regent's Park. In nearly every case this can be done by reconditioning without any rebuilding, but in two cases—Sussex Place and Clarence Place—the Commissioners had been advised that the only way to effect modernisation and to preserve the appearance was complete rebuilding, with a replica of the facade so that it would look exactly the same as Nash designed it.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, would not the Government agree that tradition and great aesthetic qualities are good reasons for preserving the
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originals? Although there is no dispute that the interiors need to be modernised, would the Government none the less agree that there is a dispute on whether it is necessary to pull them down? Are we not then going to find ourselves in the position of pulling down beautiful buildings all over the country and merely building better designed replicas?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Yes. The dispute is a purely technical one in the case of 2 out of 23 terraces. There is no dispute with regard to the other 19. In one case, Park Terrace, the London County Council are in agreement with the Commissioners that, structurally, they will have to be pulled down. In the case of Sussex Place and Clarence Place the only point of difference has been not whether their appearance, their architectural frontage, shall be preserved—everybody is agreed about that—but whether, technically, it is better to do it by attempting to recondition it or whether it is more satisfactory to go in for complete renewal instead.
LORD SHACKLETON: Renewal or wrecking?

HYDE PARK SOUTH CARRIAGE DRIVE
2.43 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in his speech at the opening of the underpass at Hyde Park Corner on the 17th October, 1962, the Minister of Transport said that he had been thinking of some very juicy ways of using the South Carriage Drive; and, if so, what he meant.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY of TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, I understand from my right honourable friend that on the occasion referred to by the noble Lord he did say that he had been thinking of some very juicy ways of using the South Carriage Drive. He meant, my Lords, just what he said. My right honourable friend is constantly thinking of possible ways of improving flow of traffic in London, and some of

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these ways would affect Royal Parks. In these cases, my right honourable friend must, of course, consult his right honourable friend the Minister of Public Building and Works, whose first reaction is that the use of part of the South Carriage Drive would be seriously detrimental to the amenities of Hyde Park. But discussions between my right honourable friends will continue.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for his answer, which has made the whole subject as clear as mud? May I ask him this further question: do the Government recognise that the Royal Parks, and the rest and recreation that they provide, are among the greatest treasures of London? Secondly, can he give the House this assurance: that the Minister's plans for the Park, by whatever adjective they ought to be described, cannot in fact be carried out without further legislation?
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, before the noble Lord answers that question—
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, I know the noble Lord wants to ask a supplementary, and he shall do so, but I think that perhaps it would be right if we were to take one supplementary at a time, in order to help my noble friend.
LORD CHESHAM: May I also be allowed to say, "Hear, hear!" to that, my Lords? So far as the amenity of the Parks is concerned, Her Majesty's Government are of course fully aware of its very high value—and that is perhaps one very good reason why my right honourable friend the Minister of Public Building and Works should be charged with preserving just that amenity. But, at the same time, my noble friend must not overlook that my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport is charged with the traffic problem of London, and it is his duty to think about any scheme which seems good to him; which is in fact what he has done. It is then for further discussion, as I indicated in my original reply, whether that scheme, after consideration
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of other factors, can be thought a good one or not.
LORD CONESFORD: Would my noble friend answer the question about legislation?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, so far as I am aware it would require legislation, but I do wish to reassure my noble friend upon this matter. There is no question of, as it were, bulldozing a traffic scheme into the Park in spite of intense opposition from everyone concerned.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, could I ask the noble Lord, so that the House may better understand the workings of his right honourable friend's very fertile mind, what is the Ministerial definition of the word "juicy"?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I do not think it is for Ministers to interpret the language. Personally, I should prefer to rely on the definition given in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. There are a number of definitions given for the word "juicy", some of which apply to fruit and other things; but one of the definitions given, your Lordships may be relieved to know, is, "of rich intellectual quality".
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: Hardly applicable to the Minister of Transport. My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord this question? Before the Minister of Transport goes in for this juicy publicity, which he likes very much, affecting the work of another Minister, is it desirable that he should go in for this speculation without consulting the other Minister whose Department is involved? Surely that is common sense and common Ministerial practice, except in this case. Finally, could the noble Lord say when the discussions between the Ministers are likely to come to an end and a decision reached, and whether a statement will be made about it in this House?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I should have thought that the noble Lord's observations would be far more applicable if my right honourable friend had said he proposed to do this thing. He said he was thinking about it—no more than that—and I really do not see that there is very much harm in saying

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he was thinking about it. Certain changes have been taking place, and it is, as I have said, his job to think of such matters—which he most certainly does. I cannot exactly say when the discussions between my two right honourable friends will come to a conclusion on this matter, but what I believe the House will be really interested in is that they are taking place, and the necessary interests are being represented. The noble Lord's opening remarks, since we are very much now on the subject of fruit, seemed to me, if I may say so, to be verging towards sour grapes.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, will my noble friend the Parliamentary Secretary confirm that when it was agreed that there should be an underground car park under Hyde Park the Government gave something in the nature of an undertaking that there would be a discontinuance of parking of cars on the surface, at any rate in the vicinity of the underground car park; and when the Minister of Transport is thinking of the use of the Park as an overflow for traffic from other parts of London will he bear in mind that undertaking given and repeated by my noble friend in June last year?
LORD CHESHAM: I think my noble friend is verging now on to another question, because I do not think the question of the car park can be really related to the South Carriage Drive about which we are talking. I will repeat once more for his assurance and for that of the House that the matters of the amenity of the Park are to be taken into consideration just as closely as the requirements of the traffic; and I know of nothing which would cause me to retract in any way the assurances that my noble friend refers to as having been given earlier.
THE EARL OF ARRAN: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that the whole of the Hyde Park scheme has been a monumental flop?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, no.

TEMPORARY CLOSURE OF SYMONS STREET
2.51 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: 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 when the present street works in Symons Street, Sloane Square, started; what their purpose is; and when it is expected that this street will be again open to traffic]
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, Symons Street was closed to traffic on August 4 by the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea acting under Section 25 of the Public Health (London) Act, 1936. The purpose of the closure was to enable the construction of a new sewer and extensive repairs to an existing sewer to proceed. The Borough Council estimate that the works, including relaying the road, will be completed by March I next year.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very full reply to my Question, but I should like to ask whether it might be possible for the work to be done by some sort of shift system because that road is a very important thoroughfare and the work seems to be subjected to a very large amount of delay.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I do not speak directly for the authority concerned, but I am told that, in fact, this work was not intended to cause so much disruption. It involves the laying of a very large sewer 400 feet long, and it was intended to keep the street open for one-way traffic by tunnelling from each end. Unfortunately, water got into the tunnel, there was considerable subsidence which weakened the road, and it was necessary to close it. I think that the promptness with which the Council got on with the repairs shows there has been no delay in this matter, because it is a very big job.
LORD AMULREE: I thank the noble Lord for his reply.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is the noble Lord not depressed by the length of time taken? If this had been a

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main road instead of, apparently, a side road although a very important through-fare, it would have been done much more quickly. It is inconceivable that a road can be closed for so many months for this reason.
LORD CHESHAM: I am afraid it is not inconceivable. As I say, I am not sure what is the actual size of the sewer which is being constructed for the benefit of the citizens of that part of London, but I know it is a very large one because one of the troubles is that a 5 ft. 6 ins. brick-built sewer which was intended to run over it collapsed into it and caused the job to become a much greater one than it was intended to be. They are coping with the results of the accident very well, as I understand it.

U.N. AND DEFAULTING NATIONS' VOTES
2.53 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: 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, with regard to the recent Resolution taken in the United Nations on the South African Republic, how many of those countries who voted affirmatively are in default in their subscriptions.]
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: the noble Lord is, I think, referring to the Resolution adopted on November 7 by the General Assembly concerning apartheid. According to the latest statement on budget contributions issued by the Secretariat on November 1, 10 of the 67 members of the United Nations who voted in favour of the Resolution were at the time in arrears with their subscriptions to the regular budget of the United Nations for 1961; 43 of these members are now in arrears with their contributions to the special accounts for United Nations operations in the middle East and the Congo.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, arising out of that reply, may I ask whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to instruct their representative at the United Nations to press for the payment of dues? Secondly, is there
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any contemplation that it would be in the interests of the efficacy of the United Nations if these nations who are in arrears were to have their rights to vote suspended pending their payment of contributions? That would contribute to the solvency of the United Nations.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, we are of course concerned at the failure of members to pay their contributions, but we hope that in the present session the General Assembly may adopt a resolution accepting the recent advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, and that many defaulters will thereby be persuaded to pay their arrears on the Middle East and Congo accounts. With regard to the second part of the supplementary, I think your Lordships are well aware of the terms of Article XIX of the United Nations Charter, which provides that a member loses its right to vote in the General Assembly if the amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of contributions due from it for the preceding two years.
LORD BARNBY: Is it to be assumed, then, that those who are in arrears are not in arrears for a period of over two years?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Yes, that is correct. There is no member who is yet in arrears to the amount of its contributions for a period of two years.
LORD BARNBY: Could the noble Earl give an idea of what would be the position of the United Nations if every member exercised the privilege of delaying its subscription for two years?
The Earl of DUNDEE: That would mean that the deficit would be very much larger than it is.

BRITISH UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR TEST
2.57 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question of which I have given private Notice; To ask Her Majesty's Government to make a further statement on the arrangements to carry out an underground nuclear test, and why it is necessary for the test to be held in the near future.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I understand there is a similar private notice Question in another place and therefore I would ask leave of the House to defer my Answer until the reply to that is given.

COMMON MARKET: PERSONAL STATEMENT BY THE LORD CHANCELLOR
2.59 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): My Lords, it was my misfortune, owing to pressing duties elsewhere, not to be in my place when the noble Earl, Lord Avon, in his speech last Thursday, referred to a speech I had made at Bristol. He said that he did not take any comfort from my assurance that we are not finally committed by what one Parliament does because another Parliament can undo it. Had I been here, I should have immediately intervened to tell your Lordships that the noble Earl had misrepresented, I am sure quite unintentionally, the purport of my speech. At Bristol I repeated what I had said on this important constitutional issue in this House on August 2.
I then stated the obvious truth that, under our Constitution, no one Parliament can bind the actions of a future Parliament. I must confess that I was somewhat surprised at the publicity this indisputable statement received. But I was at pains to make it clear that I was, if I may quote my own words [Official Report, Vol. 243 (No. 115), col. 421]:
"not implying that it would be right for us to repeal"
the Act applying the Treaties. I stressed that such a step could only be justified under International Law in exceptional circumstances and, as I said to your Lordships, to do so without such justification and without the approval of other member countries would be a breach of the international obligations assumed on entry into the Common Market. In my speech I placed great emphasis on the word "exceptional". Perhaps I should have made my meaning clearer if I had said "most exceptional." Your Lordships will see, therefore, that the purport of my speech was quite different from that ascribed to me by the noble Earl and later, I think, by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury.
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When I spoke in this House on August 2, I hope it was clear to your Lordships that I was not seeking to give aid and comfort either to those who would, or to those who would not, wish to see this country enter the Common Market. All that I was endeavouring to do, and all that I endeavoured to do at Bristol, was to state clearly the constitutional and legal position. I am grateful to your Lordships for allowing me this opportunity to make this correction.
3.2 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I am sure that we are all extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for the statement he has just made, clarifying earlier remarks of his. The noble and learned Lord mentioned me in this connection, and I may perhaps be allowed by your Lordships to say just a word. Your Lordships will remember that I never mentioned the Lord Chancellor by name in the remarks that I made, and I did that of set purpose, for I did not wish to be thought to be referring to a single speech but to a school of thought which undoubtedly exists.
I quite agree with the noble and learned Lord that his speech at Bristol does seem—or seemed to me—to come into the category which I have mentioned. I would add only this. Even now, having heard the noble and learned Lord's explanation, I am still not quite clear why he raised this hare at all, except to reassure his hearers. It is perfectly true that he made an express qualification, that this power of Parliament ought only to be used in exceptional—and I think he now says, most exceptional— circumstances. But what could be more exceptional than the question of whether this country should or should not enter into a political federation with the other nations of Central Europe? If, of course, he was making merely an academic constitutional disquisition on the subject—and a most interesting one—then I only say that we all should wish to accept that. But I still feel, after having heard him, that it was a fair point to raise.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Marquess feels that. If he will be good enough to read again the speech I made on August 2 I think he will recognise

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that those feelings are completely unjustified. I did not seek to raise any hare at all, either in this House or in Bristol. I reviewed the position, and this was just one passage taken out of a fairly lengthy speech at Bristol and, indeed, a passage repeating what I had said to your Lordships. I have raised no hare and have not sought to do so, nor have I sought to bring aid and comfort to either side. I am sorry to hear the noble Marquess coming back to suggest that my speech at Bristol had been of a different character from what it was.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I said only what, as the noble and learned Lord probably knows, was widely understood in Europe. I would only add that, having heard the noble and learned Lord to-day, I entirely accept what he has said.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to say this, although I was never in any doubt about what the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor meant by his speech on August 2. I was in Bristol on the day he spoke there and read his speech at first hand in the local paper. Although I did not like his making it very much, I do not think that in that speech the noble and learned Lord really veered away from the statement he had made in your Lordships House on August 2.
On the other hand, I should like to be allowed to point out that the amplification which the noble and learnd Lord has made to-day confirms me in the view which I expressed last Thursday about the possibilities of the Opposition, if it becomes the next Government, having to deal with the future effects of a Treaty, from which there is no escape, by giving notice, and which prejudices the sovereignty of Parliament with regard to amendment. If we were to refuse absolutely to proceed with the results of the Treaty, then we should be held up to opprobrium in the international sphere of diplomacy, and indeed possibly before the International Court.

RETIREMENT OF MR. McDERMOTT
3.6 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF HOME): My Lords, if the House would allow me, I should like to make a short statement referring to the retirement of Mr. G. L. McDermott from the Foreign Service. I do this only because there have been statements in the Press which have been so misleading that I wish to take a Parliamentary opportunity of telling your Lordships' House about it.
I should like to make a statement on the report in the Press that the Foreign Office were in breach of their own Regulations in the matters of the retirement of Mr. G. L. McDermott, in that Mr. McDermott was not given copies of the disciplinary complaints laid against him by his superiors.
This report is quite incorrect. Mr. McDermott was not dismissed on disciplinary grounds but was retired, with his full pension and gratuity, under the provisions of the Foreign Service Act, 1943. This Act enables the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to retire Foreign Service officers who either do not fulfil their promise or lose the qualities of initiative and energy which are necessary if they are to hold positions of greater responsibility.
As laid down in the procedure followed for retirements under this Act, Mr. McDermott was given a copy of the memorandum laid before the Senior Promotions Board of the Foreign Office setting out the case for his retirement. He was invited to comment on it in writing or to appear, if he wished, before a subcommittee of the Board to make his comments in person. He chose to comment in writing, and his comments were circulated to the members of the Board. A revised memorandum was then prepared in the light of these comments and, after clearance by the Promotions Board, was sent to the Retirement Board. The Retirement Board consists of three eminent people not in the Foreign Service and is under the chairmanship of Lord Strang. It is not an appellate body but must satisfy itself that the Promotions Board reaches its decision fairly and without being influenced by extraneous consideration.

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A copy of the revised memorandum was sent to Mr. McDermott and he was again reminded of his right to comment or to appear. He again commented in writing and, at his request, copies of his letter were sent to the members of the Retirement Board and were submitted to the Secretary of State. It will be seen, therefore, that Mr. McDermott did not exercise his right to appear in person at any time; indeed, he stated in a letter to the Chief Clerk of the Foreign Office dated June 19, that, subject to full consideration being given by the Promotions Board to his written comments, he was ready to retire under the 1943 Act.
I would only add that the Foreign Secretary is responsible for seeing that the Foreign Service is efficient. We cannot afford to carry passengers in it. That is neither fair to the Service nor good for the country, and the Foreign Secretary, I think, must act under the Act of 1943 when he considers that it is desirable, in the interests of the country and of the Service, to do so.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, we are all very grateful to the Foreign Secretary for making this statement on a matter which, as he says, has produced a good deal of Press comment and, indeed, a certain amount of discussion in another place. There is one point that I should like to elucidate, if I may. The Foreign Secretary's statement says that:
"Mr. McDermott was given a copy of the memorandum laid before the Senior Promotions Board of the Foreign Office setting out the case for his retirement."
That Board, I understand, is composed of all Ministers in the Foreign Office except the Foreign Secretary, and of ail official Under-Secretaries of the Foreign Office, too.
It is obvious that the statement which was put before the Senior Promotions Board must have been based on various reports sent in from different quarters concerning the service of Mr. McDermott. I should therefore like to ask the Foreign Secretary whether he is fully satisfied that it is in harmony with natural justice that any report which may adversely affect the whole service future of a member of the Foreign Office should not be seen and initialled by the officer concerned, prior to its being used
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in determining his retirement from the Service. It seems to me that the Senior Promotions Board were working on a memorandum. Some of them, if not all of them, must have been aware of the contents of the different reports upon which that memorandum was based.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I will not deal with this particular case, but there were reports on this particular member of the Service. Of course, when a Service officer is in any post there is a routine report on him which comes in. In this case there were a number of special reports, some of which were given in writing to the Promotions Board, and others were conveyed directly to the Permanent Under-Secretary and to myself. I do not think that in every case it is desirable that the individual concerned should see these reports or should know exactly where they come from. Nobody ever wants to see an officer retired from the Foreign Service if he fulfils his job. But I am certain in my own mind (I have seen these reports and know all about this case) that a just procedure was adopted and that Mr. McDermott was given every chance to fulfil his position in the Service. I am glad that he was a very able man. But people must pull their full weight in the Service.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I quite understand the position taken up by the Foreign Secretary, but I should like to ask whether that procedure which he has outlined would be quite on a par with the method followed in the military Service Departments on reports, and whether there are not in the case of Service Departments three classes of report—namely, those which are favourable, those which are marked "Confidential" and those which are adverse. I do not know what is always the actual difference between a confidential report and an adverse report, but in the Services, if there is an adverse report, the officer has to be shown a copy of it and initial it. Could one say the same of the procedure in the Foreign Office?
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, this is not a case of dismissal from the Service. This is a case of a man being retired, and, as I have said, he has been retired on full pension and with a bonus.

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As I have said, I do not think that in every case it is right that the officer should be shown the source of a report or should know what is exactly in the report. But I will have another look at this case in the light of what the noble Viscount has said. I think that I should make the distinction here that it is not a dismissal from the Service, but a retirement.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for that undertaking. What we are concerned about, as I think he will understand, is that even under the procedure that he himself has indicated there shall be no scope for a breach of natural justice. It is true that a man has the right to appear or to write; but unless he knows what are the points against him in terms of efficiency, or not taking sufficient interest in his work, or whatever it may be, I do not see how he can give a proper answer to the charges that are before the Promotions Board.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, the man had the charges that were made against him, certainly in broad terms, and, indeed, in a good deal of detail. That was the subject of the memorandum sent to Mr. McDermott, and upon which he commented and which he was willing to accept without a personal interview. The whole purpose of the three men outside is to see that all these regulations are kept by the Promotions Board. I think that this is a fair procedure.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, does not the Foreign Secretary agree that the unfortunate thing about this case is that it gives the impression that, in order to succeed in the Diplomatic Service, yon have to be a "Yes" man?
THE EARL OF HOME: No, my Lords: yon have to be efficient and prepared to do the same kind of work as your colleagues. I must point out to the noble Lord that in Berlin the members of the Commandant's Staff and the members of the Service generally there were working 18 or 19 hours a day at times. Everybody had to pull his weight or they would never have got through this difficult and dangerous time.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I am not saying that the Foreign Secretary is
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wrong in what he says; but it is the impression which this case has given that is so unfortunate.
THE EARL OF HOME: My Lords, I am sorry that that impression was given. There is nothing political in this. The views have to be expressed through the Ambassador. I did not know what views Mr. McDermott held about Berlin or any other political subject. All I was concerned about was whether or not he carried out his duties efficiently. I am sorry that mis-statements got into the Press, but that is not my fault. I cannot help it if the newspapers accept statements without checking them up to see whether they are true or not. All I have done is to take the earliest opportunity to give Parliament the true facts.

INQUIRY INTO THE VASSALL CASE
3.18 p.m.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I think the House will be aware that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was to answer during Question Time in another place a series of Questions arising out of the Vassall case. I think it would be in accordance with the convenience and, indeed, the wishes of the House that I should repeat to your Lordships what he has said in answer to various Questions. My Lords, these are my right honourable friend's words:
"I told the House on Thursday why I was satisfied that the Committee of senior experienced civil servants whom I had appointed were the appropriate body to investigate the facts of this case and report on them to me. Right honourable gentlemen opposite have argued that what is needed is an Inquiry undertaken by an independent person, such as a High Court Judge. In my view, an Inquiry of the kind asked for by right honourable Gentlemen opposite is wholly inadequate to meet a changed situation, which has arisen since I answered Questions arising out of the Vassall case last Thursday.
"There have been a number of developments which have led me to decide that it is now appropriate to set up a Tribunal of Inquiry under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act of 1921.
"A Motion asking the House to set up a Tribunal of Inquiry will be tabled tonight and moved as first Order to-morrow. I shall tell the House then why I believe it necessary that the Tribunal inquiring into this should be armed with all the powers conferred upon it by the 1921 Act."

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That is the conclusion of my right honourable friend's words. I have only to add, of course, that the Act requires that a similar Motion be put upon the Order Paper of this House, and I shall accordingly be putting down such a Motion here and moving it to-morrow at an early stage in our proceedings.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble and learned Viscount Leader of the House for giving us the Prime Minister's statement. I think that the Prime Minister has come to a right decision, and our only comment is that perhaps it might have been better if he had come to that decision earlier in the proceedings and discussions and not left it until now. However, when we come to deal with the Motion, if we have any further comment to make, we can make it then. I welcome the announcement.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount for his welcome for the announcement, but, of course, I do not accept the comment with which it was accompanied.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
3.20 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON): My Lords, before I refer to this Bill at all there are one or two things I should say. First, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor for agreeing to participate in the later stages of the Bill, should his authoritative voice be essential. I am also looking forward to some assistance from my noble friend Lord Lothian, who is now available to speak on Scottish affairs, and who took some part in the deliberations which resulted in the three Reports on which so much of this Bill is founded. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, who speaks for the Opposition on Scottish affairs, regrets that he cannot be with us to-day. He is, as your Lordships know, Chairman of Glenrothes New Town, and he has an important appointment there which he and I both feel, in view of current Scottish industrial difficulties, he should not break.
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Before talking about the details of this Bill, I should like to look briefly at the intentions underlying so many of its clauses. The Bill is designed to help in the fulfilment of two of the main purposes of penal policy: deterrence of potential offenders, and the reformation of those who have been found out. The deterrence provisions cover only a limited field, and the reformation provisions refer almost exclusively to offenders between the ages of 17 and 21.
The provisions in the Bill follow very closely the three Reports made by the Scottish Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders—which in the rest of my speech I will refer to as SACTO. SACTO is a group of people, under the chairmanship of Sheriff Harald Leslie, with wide experience of social questions, and especially of the problems of delinquency. The Government are deeply indebted to their skilled and devoted labours which have produced these three Reports, and are producing others still in the pipe-line. Many of the other provisions in the Bill follow those already made for England and Wales in the Criminal Justice Act, 1961. All this skilled advice and experience represents the best advice we can get on a subject on which human knowledge is admittedly still most inexact. On many points many learned individuals hold differing opinions, but I am sure that all agree that we are working always towards a better solution to the problem of the prevention of crime.
First, then, a word on deterrence. I know your Lordships will not fall into the trap of supposing that the sentencing powers of the courts and the amount of crime are in some sort of inverse arithmetical proportion. It would seem rather that, in the case of deliberate crime, at least, the main thing that deters the potential wrongdoer in every one of us is his place in society. What keeps most of us straight is our personal relationships with family, friends, neighbours and others whose respect we value, and the knowledge that detection in a crime would lose us these relationships. In this sense, as has been so often and truly said, detection is the best deterrent. But if a man has lost the personal relationships of normal society—and this is the tragedy of the recidivist prisoner—then

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the prospect of deterring him from further crime is relatively low. On the other hand, though we know very little about how much connection there is between penal powers and the prevention of crime, we certainly cannot accept that there is no connection at all.
Now a word on the treatment of offenders. In recent years the accent has been turning steadily away from retribution towards rehabilitation, and here the most fruitful ground is among the young. The treatment of youngsters up to 17 is still being examined by the Kilbrandon Committee. This Bill gives a new look in the treatment of those from 17 to 21. It enables the court to direct the young offender not only where his offence is best paid for, but where, on the best advice, his particular personality has the best chance of rehabilitation.
It takes time physically to build new penal institutions and reorganise old ones, but let me for a moment give your Lordships the ultimate pattern that this Bill will produce. The young offender has been found guilty. Before sentence, if he is to be remanded in custody, he will no longer be lodged in prison to mix with adult offenders. He will go to a remand centre. Here the most careful dossier will be prepared about his background, and an assessment of him will be made. This will be conveyed to the court before it passes sentence. There is nothing in the Bill about remand centres, but the first one is already operating satisfactorily at Polmont, and another is being got ready, near Airdrie.
In pronouncing sentence, if the court is satisfied that the offender must be detained in custody, it has three courses open to it under this Bill. First, there is the short, sharp shock of three months at a detention centre, followed by six months supervision after release. The first detention centre is already operating in Perth, and a second will open soon, also in Perth. Alternatively, the offender can be sent to borstal for a longer course of rehabilitation and training—normally 15 to 18 months, followed by 12 months' supervision after release. The Bill frees the borstal authorities from the disruption caused by returned inmates. Personally, I am sorry
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that borstal has such a bad name. Though much structural work has still to be done, our borstal institutions are, on the whole, adequate, and great effort is made in them to give boys of very varied types a chance of returning home as normal members of society I hope that both industry and the trade unions will play a greater part than they do now in helping ex-borstal boys to find permanent employment.
Thirdly, and alternatively, the court can send the offender to a new type of establishment, to be known as a young offenders' institution. This is a new type of establishment created by the Bill. This will in fact be a youth prison, able to deal with short or long sentences without contact with mature criminals. The sentence, except for the shortest, will be followed by 12 months supervision after release. We hope to open the first young offenders institution in Dumfries at the end of next year.
Part I of the Bill, except for the last two clauses, brings all this into effect Clause 1 deals with the circumstances in which the court may, after due investigation, decide that detention in one of these institutions is the only possible course. Where neither detention centre nor borstal is appropriate it empowers the court to impose detention in a young offenders institution. Clause 2, as it were, creates the young offenders institution. Clauses 3 to 6 lay down one year's supervision as part of a borstal sentence, prevent the offender from doing a second term in borstal, and provide for a recalled borstal inmate to be detained in a young offenders' institution, instead of borstal. The clauses also follow England in reducing the maximum period of borstal training from three to two years.
Clauses 7 to 9 deal with detention centres. Clause 7 differs from the English provision. In view of the availability in Scotland of the young offenders institution, SACTO considered, and we agree, that the short, sharp shock of a fixed period of three months in a detention centre is most likely to achieve the best result. The only exception, in Clause 9, is an extension of that term where an inmate is later sentenced in default of payment of a fine. Clauses 10 to 11 deal with transfers between penal institutions.
Clauses 12 to 15 deal with supervision and after-care. I cannot go into details

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on how this will all be done. In view of the importance of the subject, the Secretary of State has asked SACTO—just as the Home Secretary has asked the Advisory Council for England and Wales—to examine the existing arrangements for providing after-care and to make recommendations for its extension and improvement. The Government must await the Advisory Council's Report, but I should say that, once it has been published, the Government will press on with the admittedly difficult task of providing an after-care service adequate for this new commitment. While we cannot foresee what administrative arrangements the Council may recommend, existing legislation enables us to adopt one or another of a number of different methods, and there is every reason to believe that an improved service can be introduced without the need for further legislation. Clause 15 extends the after-care provision to certain classes of adults, on lines recommended by SACTO.
Now, my Lords, we come to the, we hope, increased deterrent effect of Clause 16. This again follows a SACTO recommendation. Section 8 of the Summary Jurisdiction (Scotland) Act, 1954, increased the sheriff's summary powers of imprisonment from three months to six months where an offender convicted of a crime of dishonesty or violence has two previous convictions of an offence of the same kind. SACTO had two criticisms to make of this provision. The first was that six months itself was not long enough to ensure effective treatment and that the extension of powers should be to one year. The second was that the turning point—the time for the heavier sentence to turn the offender away from a criminal career—lay rather at the second conviction than at the third. The Government accept this view, and Clause 16 makes the necessary amendments to the 1954 Act provision.
Your Lordships will welcome Clause 18 and the Second Schedule, which bring the provisions relating to supervision following release from approved schools into line with the provisions in the English Criminal Justice Act, 1961. Clauses 19 to 22 derive originally from the Report by Mr. Victor Durand. Q.C., on the disturbances at the Carlton Approved School. While we have been fortunate enough to have had no similar
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incidents in Scotland, the Government feel it wise to have similar provisions for the immediate removal of troublemakers from approved schools and for increasing the powers of the Secretary of State in relation to approved school management.
Now we come to Part III of the Bill. On the advice of SACTO, limits of fine—fixed in 1908 and since whittled away by the decrease in the value of money—are drastically increased in Clause 23; not only for that reason, but also to increase the effectiveness of fines as part of penal policy. Here the deterrent is strengthened. Clause 25, dealing with the enforcement of fines, introduces into Scots law some provisions of English law, particularly the "means inquiry" procedure, which we learn have been found of value in reducing the number of imprisonments in default.
Part IV is headed "Miscellaneous Provisions". The clauses cover points where practical experience has shown that the administration of the law could be improved. I will mention only a few. Clause 30 deals with informing the court of the previous convictions of an offender after conviction and before sentence. This is a rehabilitation clause. In the past, when the prime purpose of the court was to punish in accordance with the gravity of the offence, it was a concept of Scots law that an offence could be aggravated by previous convictions. However, it limited the previous convictions which could be quoted "in aggravation" to convictions for like offences. But it is now recognised that it is mot enough to "make the punishment fit the crime": the court has to find the treatment that will fit the offender. For this purpose the court must have full information about the offender's background. The Government feel that the time has come to remove any inhibition on the provision of full information to the count. Clause 30 therefore abolishes the concept of quoting previous convictions "in aggravation of the offence" and permits the prosecutor to inform the court of previous convictions for any offence, and, what may be more important, what treatment the offender has already received whether in custody or not, as a result of his previous convictions. It will be for the court—and the Government are

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sure that this is right—to consider what effect, if any, the information it receives should have on the disposal of the case.
I hope that none of your Lordships will ask me exactly what happens now, and before Clause 39 becomes law, to one of your Lordships who commits a serious crime in the Isle of Man and flees to Scotland, but I am assured that it is not worth the risk: we will assuredly pick him up. All that Clauses 39 and 40 and Clause 26 (to which I have not previously referred) do, is to simplify the machinery of reciprocity between countries in the British Islands. Clauses 32 and 33 improve appeal procedure and the remaining eleven clauses of Part IV are all machinery.
Part V and the Fourth Schedule deal with legal aid. Because of doubts whether the Criminal Legal Aid provisions of the 1949 Act would prove practicable, if brought into force, a Committee was set up under Lord Guthrie to examine the question. The Guthrie Committee, which reported in 1960, found that the existing non-statutory arrangements operated by the legal profession did not cover all needs and, furthermore, that they were too great a burden on the profession. The Committee accordingly reaffirmed the need for an Exchequer-financed scheme and made fresh proposals, both on the arrangements for establishing financial eligibility and on the extent to which legal aid should be made available. In so far as they require legislation, the Guthrie recommendations, with some modifications, are implemented in Clause 47 and the Fourth Schedule.
Finally, I refer to Clause 48, which allows the appointment of two more Judges of the Court of Session, who also sit as Judges in the High Court of Justiciary. There are now 16 Judges, the maximum number for which provision is made in existing legislation. With the present work of the Court of Session and the High Court, these Judges are already fully occupied, and there is certainly no reason to expect any substantial decrease in the amount of judicial work in these Courts. Furthermore, the introduction of criminal legal aid may well involve the court in some extra work. So this provision is fully justified.
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My Lords, this is the sort of Bill that should start in your Lordships' House. There can be nothing Party-political in it or in your Lordships' views on it. All we want to do, and I ask your Lordships' help, is to send it on its way as the best and most effective instrument we can devise for achieving its laudable and far-sighted intentions. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Craigton.)

BRITISH UNDERGROUND NUCLEAR TEST
3.38 p.m.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I think it might be for the convenience of the House if we left for a moment the mushroom cloud of Scottish Law and if I now replied to the Private Notice Question which was put to me earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson.
My Lords, this is the text of an Answer given by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to a somewhat similar Private Notice Question which was put to him in another place. The Answer is as follows:
"An underground nuclear test in connection with the British nuclear deterrent took place in Nevada by courtesy of the American authorities last March. We have for some months been planning another test which is necessary to develop the results of the scientific experiment in March. Owing to the heavy pressure upon the facilities at Nevada we have not been able to arrange this, as I had hoped, in the early months of the autumn. It will, however take place in the next few weeks.
" As the Minister of Defence pointed out, this is in no sense of the word the beginning of a new series. The House will recall that together with the American Administration we observed a voluntary nuclear moratorium for a period of nearly three years. The Russians resumed testing in the autumn of 1961 and, after careful discussion with the President during my visit to Bermuda, I agreed both that the American tests were necessary to defend the strength of the free world and that we would put Christmas Island at their disposal.
"The Russians have announced that they will end their series of atmospheric tests on November 20. The President of the United States announced on November 4 that the present series of atmospheric tests in the Pacific were ended but that underground nuclear tests free from fall-out were continuing in Nevada.
"During the whole of this period we have made one underground test and we propose to make one more in Nevada, both in connection with our deterrent. I am only too

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anxious, as is the President of the United States, to enter into an agreement either for the banning of atmospheric, under-water and outer space tests, or still better for a complete banning of tests, including underground tests, under effective international control and verification."
My Lords, that is the text of the Prime Minister's Answer.
3.40 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Viscount the Leader of (the House for repeating in this House the statement which has been made by the Prime Minister in another place, but I should like to ask him whether he is not aware that the Prime Minister, in his letter to Mr. Khrushchev on October 28, expressed the view:
"that we should be able to reach an early conclusion of an agreement about the banning of tests of nuclear weapons …"
He went on—and I want to emphasise these words—to ask Mr. Khrushchev to take the action necessary to make all this possible. Is the noble Viscount the Leader of the House aware that on November 7, a few days later, Mr. Khrushchev stated that this was a good moment for talks on ending all tests? Does the noble Viscount agree, therefore, that in the interests of the success of such talks it would be wise at least to suspend the projected underground test in Nevada?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I think I am aware of all the circumstances to which the noble Lord referred. The fact remains that the Americans are now continuing underground tests, as they have publicly announced; the Soviet Government are continuing their atmospheric tests at least until November 20. Obviously if by any chance it were possible to complete and sign a treaty forthwith, we should be prepared to reconsider our position; but I hardly think that our own single and rather belated test underground is likely to loom so large in the world situation as the facts to which I have drawn attention.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, if within a few days or a week or two the Geneva Nuclear Test Conference resumes its work and then in the middle of those discussions—because the noble Viscount said it would be in the next few weeks that the Nevada test will take place—that
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test took place at a time of delicate negotiation, does he think that would be helpful to the conclusion of a successful agreement?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I think that is hypothetical. I know that the tests of the two great Powers are proceeding on the lines I have indicated, and as long as that is the case I think my Answer stands.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
3.43 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
LORD GREENHILL: My Lords, what ever dangers there may or may not be about a mushroom cloud arising from the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. I am sure that those who remain in the House will be interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, said, and I hope in what I have to say too. First of all, I should like to associate myself with the observations made by Lord Craigton on the reasons why my noble friend Lord Hughes, who had intended to be present to-day, is not present. He was torn between two considerations: that of maintaining as much business in Scotland as is possible from certain talks he is having about Glenrothes, and the fact that I found myself well enough to come down to-day and thereby play my little part in Scottish affairs.
May I say at the outset that I accept in full the description that the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, has given in regard to the intentions of this Bill. One does not want to belittle for Party reasons any efforts made the effect of which, one hopes, will be to the benefit of social conditions in Scotland, or indeed in any other part of the country. But when one looks at the Bill as a whole one finds a variety of matters of interest included in it, from the first reference made in the Explanatory Memorandum to the sentences which may be imposed on young offenders from 17 to 21, the preliminary work that was done by the body which the noble Lord described as SACTO—the Scottish Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders—and the part played by Lord Guthrie's Committee, representing, I think, the Law Society of Scotland, which dealt with the one item which was given

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to them by way of remit, and upon which they reported, upon the extending of legal aid in criminal cases.
Taking all in all, I do not think there is anything of a controversial nature that one would consider it necessary to air at this Second Reading After all, in so far as there are items which may need amendment later, that can well be done in the Committee stage; therefore, with your Lordships' permission, I will confine myself briefly to one or two observations of a general kind. My attention has been drawn, for example, to what in the Explanatory Memorandum is headed Item 8, which says:
"Part IV contains miscellaneous amendments to the law relating to criminal procedure. Clause 30 abolishes the concept of libelling an offender's convictions for previous offences 'in aggravation of the offence before the court at the time and also the' cognate offences rule, and empowers the prosecutor to inform the court of previous convictions for any offence."
It is perhaps because I have been, in my capacity as baillie and police judge, as we call them in Scotland, impressed by the risk of ascertaining or asking for previous convictions that this seems to me to be a somewhat major change in policy. Now it will be within the power of the court to obtain information about previous convictions for any offence, and one wonders whether that may not tend to prejudice the judgment, certainly of the police court judge and even, one would say, of the sheriff's substitute, if he knows the whole picture of a man's misdeeds before the one that he is trying at the time in the court. Perhaps, therefore the noble Lord will try to ease my mind on that particular point.
Then there is a power taken in this Bill, not perhaps in line with the general purposes of the Bill, to appoint two additional Court of Session judges. It has been, perhaps wickedly, suggested to me that there may be some kind of political escape in this particular clause, in the sense that the Lord Justice Clerk vacancy has now been filled, and this may be some kind of indirect way of filling a political vacuum. I just say that because it has been suggested to me that it may be a possibility.
On other grounds I am a little disturbed about something which appears in the Custodial Sentences for Young
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Offenders Report of the Scottish Advisory Council, and which I think is reflected in the present Bill. As the noble Lord will be aware, on page 25 of their Report, in more prominent type than normal, appears this statement:
"Proposed withdrawal from Justice of the Peace Courts and Burgh (or Police) Courts of the power to impose Custodial Sentences on Young Offenders."
It is true that the judge in a burgh police court has not the power to give an accused person a penalty of more than 60 days' imprisonment, and that the present statutory maximum detention is three months; therefore he could not possibly, as it were, give the whole of that term. But, it seems to me, speaking not only for my own native city, that not only has there already been a reduction in the number of burgh police courts, but there has also been a tendency to reduce the amount of work which they are asked to do and which they would perhaps like to continue to do. That applies also to justice of the peace courts, of which, as a justice of the peace, I have a little experience. There, too, while I am not pretending that they have so high a standard of judgment as to warrant their continuing the whole of their present functions, I nevertheless view with regret the taking away of some of these powers, which in any event were not excessive.
The general purpose of this Bill as the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, clearly indicated, is of a twofold nature. One is that because a crime or an offence has been committed, therefore a punitive measure Should be taken against the offender. The other is, that although he has deserved some punishment for his offence it should nevertheless be associated, particularly in the 17 to 21 group, with some kind of what the noble Lord called rehabilitation—what we might call some kind of reform; some kind of re-adaptation to a better way of life as the result of a period in one of these detention places, prisons or approved schools, or whatever they may be.
While the Scottish Advisory Council indicated rather strongly the imperative need for the remand home, that position has now been greatly improved, as indeed the noble Lord has indicated, by the opening of one home, which I think has already been completed at Polmont, and by others to which he referred. So

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that, I suggest, no longer remains a matter of such importance as it was at the time the Committee were dealing with it.
One point I should like to make, because I think there is a tendency to assume that the rate of crime has increased considerably in Scotland, although I myself do not think that that view is wholly justified. Let me quote some figures which are published in the 1961 Report of the Scottish Home and Health Department, Prisons in Scotland. In chapter 6, under the general beading "Accommodation and Building Works" and under the sub-heading of "Overcrowding" they say—I refer to paragraph 114:
"with the increase in the prison population there had to be increasing resort at Barlinnie and Edinburgh to the expedient of accommodating three or more prisoners to a cell."
I will not enlarge upon that statement because I think it is enough for the purpose. But I think we should bear in mind also the figures given in Appendix No. 10 of their Report under the general beading "Average Daily Number of Prisoners." I think the situation shown is by no means as bad as the impression that is sometimes given. They begin, for example, with the years 1909 to 1913, when the average estimated total population of Scotland was 4·9 million and the total number of every class of prisoner was 2,817. Between 1928 and 1937, a decade, when the average population was 4·9 million, the number goes down to 1,700; and in the last year, 1961, when the estimated total population was almost 5·2 million, the total was 2,997. I suggest, therefore, that this impression that there are far more prisoners to-day to be dealt with than formerly is due not so much to the numbers having increased as to the fact that the buildings in which they were housed, the accommodation provided for them, was so old-fashioned and so totally inadequate that the only means of accommodating them was by increasing the number per cell. And noble Lords will know that the number was increased to three, instead of to two for fairly obvious reasons.
I think that is all I want to say at this stage. I give the general trend of this Bill my favourable comment, but I ask your Lordships to remember that we are passing through times when the
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very concept of the criminal is far different from what it was many years ago: nowadays, it is recognised that the criminal is not an anti-social person so much because he is wilfully destructive or criminal in intent, as because there is in him a measure of—how can one put it?—lack of control, often due to circumstances not within his own control. Indeed, a consultant psychiatrist told me only the other day that he was quite sure that, of those he was to visit at Wormwood Scrubs just about now, four out of five that he would be examining had a history of some bad early home upbringing; some bad parentage, if you like; some kind of fault in the home that conditioned these chaps into a state in which they found themselves at cross-purposes with the police force.
Therefore, one sees with a good deal of interest and a good deal of hope, references in the 1961 Report, Prisons in Scotland, to increasing steps that are being taken—and not merely to get supervisors. I am, if I may say so, a little sceptical about the worthiness of supervision by those whose training may be good, up to a certain point, but not adequate for the particular purposes for which they are appointed. One does ask oneself whether the supervisors themselves ought not to be under some measure of supervision in order to ensure that they are doing their job adequately—and an important job it is.
I should like to convey to your Lordships my own personal impression, and what I believe to be the impression of my colleagues, especially those who come from Scotland, on this whole matter. We are certainly faced, in these troublous times, with problems with which we feel it is now a public duty to cope. We cannot do too much in order to counteract the harm to society caused by these people, unless some public remedy is taken in the way of making our citizens better than they are to-day. Let us remember always that we are dealing with a very small minority of people, rather than with the generality.
4.1 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I hope that my Scottish friends will forgive my intrusion into their little "tea party". It is sometimes regarded as not quite tactful for an Englishman to interfere in

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Scottish affairs. I might say, my Lords, that up to a point I have been encouraged to take part in this "tea party" owing to the absence of my noble friend Lord Hughes. But I was very happy to do so, because this Bill deals with a problem in which I am very interested, and perhaps particularly so in my capacity as chairman of quarter sessions in a Northern county. The Bill is, of course, a non-controversial measure, as the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, indicated, and, while I am not sure I go quite so far as he does in the encomium he paid to it, I do agree that, on the whole, it is a Bill which deserves commendation. There are blemishes in the Bill, many of which, I hope, may be removed at the Committee stage.
I am particularly glad to see that this Bill gives a lead against what I personally regard—and I think most people who are interested in penology would agree with me—as the pernicious habit of passing short-term sentences on prisoners. This has been condemned by people who are really concerned with this problem, and yet magistrates up and down the country—and I am sorry to say that this is particularly true in Scotland—have never, in my view, given adequate attention to the dangers of this system of short-term sentences.
As chairman of quarter sessions in a Northern county, I frequently have had to deal with lads who stray across into our part of the country, where they get into mischief and are brought before my bench. In the great majority of these cases there is a history of short sentences—two, three, four, and even more, sentences of two, three, or up to six months' imprisonment. So much is this so that when we retire into our room, one or other of my fellow magistrates almost invariably makes a sarcastic comment to the effect: "One of these Scottish short-sentence cases again!" I see from the excellent Report of the Scottish Advisory Council, Use of Short Sentences of Imprisonment by the Courts, that in 1958 no fewer than 11,000 offenders were received into prison to serve these short sentences. This represents 90 per cent. of the whole of the prison population—a very high proportion—compared to a figure of 70 per cent. in England. That is a very remarkable difference, if I may say so. I do not wish to hold up the
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English as being perfect in this regard, because I think that far too many of these short sentences are passed in England as well.
LORD REA: My Lords, would the noble Lord forgive me? Is there an official definition of what is a short sentence? It seems to me that at the receiving end a nine months' sentence is quite long.
LORD CHORLEY: The Council, I think, took six months. There is no official definition, but they regarded six months as being a short sentence. That, in effect, means four months, because, on the whole, such prisoners earn remission, which is one-third of the sentence. So that in most cases the sentence served comes to four months.
My Lords, the Scottish Advisory Council backed the opinion of penologists generally, I think, when they said (I quote from the Report) that:
"… the short sentence has only limited value …"
I think (they might have used a very much stronger expression than "only limited value". I should have been prepared to say that, in very many cases such sentences were bad, if not pernicious, in that frequently they have the effect of manufacturing criminals. Going in and out of prison every few months for periods of three or four months, I think your Lordships will agree, is likely to have the effect of manufacturing criminals, because it means consorting all the time with the criminal population.
The truth of the matter in Scotland, as the Council bring out very clearly, is that the probation system is not sufficiently used. It is not used to anything like the same extent that it is in England. I think this comes out very clearly on page 17 of the Report. I have the impression over a number of years—it may be that it is a wrong impression—in dealing with cases of this sort, that these short-term sentences are frequently passed as a matter of routine by the magistrate responsible, without any real thought about the effect of such a sentence and as to what perhaps would be a more appropriate method of handling the young criminal in question. Such sentences are often, perhaps, imposed with a feeling, "He is a bad lad and

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ought to be punished." That is a very short-sighted policy, something one would have thought that, in this century, we were getting away from—and I believe that the Advisory Committee feel that to some extent that is happening in Scotland. Yet, according to the figures issued by the Council, no fewer than 1,500 first offenders were dealt with in this way in 1958. That is a very substantial figure, when we put it against the total population of Scotland and the total prison population. No fewer than 1,114 young people of under 21 were dealt with in this way. It really makes one ashamed—or it should make one ashamed—that these sentences are still being imposed, or were still being imposed as late as the year 1958.
I am very glad indeed to see that this Bill takes care of these youthful offenders in the same way as has been practised in England now for twenty or thirty years, in that a youthful offender of this age must not be sent to prison by a magistrate without a certificate that, in his opinion, there is no other possible effective way of dealing with the person in question. That brings the magistrate up against the problem, and prevents his dealing with it in that routine sort of way which I have the feeling has so often been adopted by the Scottish courts with these young fellows. Even with the older first offenders, I should like to see something of the kind, although I can appreciate the difficulties standing in the way of so doing. It is not easy to frame a requirement, particularly in an Act of Parliament, which would insist that nobody shall be sent to prison unless that is the only effective way of dealing with the case. I am not suggesting that the short sentence is altogether bad; there are cases where no other remedy is available. But I am suggesting that it is used far too much: in Scotland particularly, and also in England. This, I think, appears very clearly from the Advisory Council's Report.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, would my noble friend allow me to interrupt? There has been no difficulty in defining the circumstances, in England and Wales, in the First Offenders Act for adults. The magistrates have to show reason why they send first offenders to prison.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, that is just what I am saying, and this Bill applies just to Scotland. To this extent I think it is a very considerable advance, because in my view, obviously, many of the Scottish magistrates have not approached this problem with that attitude of mind. It may sometimes be very right to use a short-term imprisonment, so to speak, for the purpose of backing up the probation officer, giving a lesson to the probationer who is kicking over the traces. In my view the golden rule in sentencing is to keep a man out of prison as long as is reasonably possible, and I think that more and more magistrates are coming to that conclusion.
For prison is an expensive business. It is expensive both positively, in that it costs the community a great deal of money to keep a man in prison, and negatively, in the sense that his services to the community as a workman are suspended during the time that he is in prison. And, at any rate in the short-term sentence cases, it has no reformative effect whatever. Of course, in long-term sentences it is possible—and the whole system is now directed to the aim of trying to do this—to reform people in prison. But reforming a man in prison is a very difficult job. The surroundings are bad, many of the people with whom he is consorting are bad bits of leather, and I think it is very much easier to reform him outside. A good probation officer has a very much better opportunity of doing so than the prison officers, however wholeheartedly and self-sacrificingly they may be trying.
The Advisory Council rather took the view that many of these short sentences are imposed because the court has no power of sentencing for longer periods. I doubt whether this is quite as often the case as they think, but no doubt it is so in a substantial number of cases. I think that the increased power of sentencing up to twelve months, which the Bill provides, is a considerable improvement on the present position, and I am glad that the Government have accepted the view of the Council to that effect. The Council are satisfied that other penal methods are more effective than the short sentence, and I a sure that they are right about that.
It is rather interesting to notice that at one stage in their Report they draw

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attention to the fact that the statistical officer at the Home Office, Mr. Wilkins, found in an investigation he made in connection with house-breaking offences and offences of violence, that the English courts sentenced on an average to three-and-a-half times as long terms as the Scottish courts. You may say that the English courts are altogether too rigorous, perhaps, but it has seemed very significant to me that so many of these young fellows who have come before my own court have, in fact, been sentenced to the short terms in respect of just this sort of offence. It is the type of offence which needs to be dealt with pretty severely, and my impression is that the longer and severer sentences of the English courts are probably more to the advantage of justice than the procedure which has been followed in Scotland.
The Council point out—and I am sure that they are right—that in many cases a swingeing fine is more likely to be effective than a short term of imprisonment. It teaches the lad a lesson, and it does not deprive the community of the value of his work. It means that he continues at work, and he may, in fact, work harder, because he has to pay the fine and in order to get rid of it he may be prepared to work overtime. In that way the community, at any rate, does not lose his services and may gain as a result.
Often fining has not in recent years been effective, because of the decline in the value of money, as the noble Lord pointed out. I am therefore very glad indeed that in putting up the maximum of these fines a pretty generous attitude has been taken, so to speak, and the maxima have been increased by four and five-fold, which certainly will enable the court to impose really swingeing fines, instead of the rather negligible amounts which have been imposed of recent years. But I feel that some effort will have to be made to bring home to the magistrates that they have now got these powers, and some encouragement given to them to use them. I frequently have found, particularly in country districts, that magistrates still think in rather old-fashioned terms, and by no means always impose up to the limits of the present possibilities in respect of fines. It is absurd to find in respect of quite serious offences fines of £3 and £5 being imposed on men who are earning £20 or
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£25 a week, and even more. It is a bagatelle, and I hope that the magistrates will take advantage of their new powers, and will make an effort to punish by means of these fines.
My Lords, I do not want to say a great deal more. I think that the provisions in some of the clauses in the middle of the Bill giving greater elasticity—which I believe exists already in England—in respect of transferring young offenders from one institution to another, to which the noble Lord referred, are of very great value. Not only in prisons and reformatories, but outside the sphere of criminal justice altogether—in workshops and factories—it is astonishing what an evil effect two or three people can have throughout a large institution. We often see that great strikes are brought about because of a little knot of disaffected men, and that is undoubtedly a difficulty which the people who are in charge of approved schools, borstals and other institutions of this kind, have all the time to meet. The best and most self-sacrificing efforts of the housemasters and others may be entirely ruined as a result of two or three bad lads in the institution. If they can be picked out and got rid of, it may make all the difference. I am very glad, therefore, to see that these powers of transfer are now provided in this Bill.
Finally, I should like to refer to the proposed increase in the possibilities of supervision after release. I think that the extension of this to people who are released after short-term sentences can be of considerable value, but, again, it must be used with discretion. In many of these cases it ought not to be used, and if it is used it may very well have the reverse effect to that desired, because many people come out determined to go right, and they will resent what they feel is an extension of the punishment by putting them under supervision for twelve months. I think that, as in all modern penology, the thing must be fitted to the individual man himself, rather than imposed in a routine way. The great danger with all these things is doing them in a routine way and not having regard to the personality of the man in question. But for a certain type of young fellow, it is of the greatest value to keep him under control after he has been released from the prison or the institution, such as it may be.

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The Bill is not very explicit about who is going to do the supervising. It says that he can be released to a society or can be released to an individual. I should like to see the probation officers brought into this very much more. I am not altogether pleased with some of these after-care societies. Many of them do very valuable work, undoubtedly, but quite often there is some religious slant about it, or something of that kind, which the lad does not like and which may upset him and destroy the whole value of it. In some cases, no doubt, it is the best thing, but by and large the probation officers are the people who are trained in this sort of work. Very often it will mean a man's going back to a probation officer with whom he has been in the habit of working and who he knows is taking a fatherly interest in him, and that would be very much the best way of handling it. So I hope the Government will be able to see their way clear to bring the probation service into this side of the business a great deal more than appears at first sight to be contemplated by the Bill. With those remarks, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this Bill, and I hope it will be as successful in practice as it appears, on paper, that it will be.
4.22 p.m.
LORD GUEST: My Lords, I intervene in this discussion only to give, as a Scots lawyer, my general support for the provisions of this Bill. I might say that I would hesitate to describe the noble Lord's introduction of this Bill as being in a mushroom cloud. Personally, I thought—and I hope your Lordships will agree—that his exposition was extremely clear and helpful. So far as Parts I and II of the Bill are concerned, these are matters of policy upon which I wish to say nothing except that I think Sheriff Harald Leslie deserves congratulation for the excellence of his Report and for the thoroughness with which he went into all the matters which were concerning him. I have only a few comments to make upon some of the other clauses in the Bill.
Clause 16 extends the sheriff's power of imprisonment on summary trial to one year in the case of persons who are convicted of an offence involving dishonest appropriation of property for the second time—that is, a second offence, with one previous conviction. The
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sheriff's summary powers at present are limited in general to imposing three months' imprisonment, and in 1954, by the Summary Jurisdiction (Scotland) Act of that year, his powers were increased to the imposing of six months' imprisonment for this offence where there were two previous convictions and certain other offences—namely, those involving personal violence. It is now proposed, under this clause, to increase the sheriff's power in connection with offences involving dishonest appropriation of property, upon a second conviction, to imprisonment for one year. That power is given to a sheriff only in regard to statutory offences, and in Common Law it is as I have already described.
I wish only to sound a note of caution in this connection. In Scotland, unlike in England, an accused person has no right to elect to go to jury trial. As we describe it in Scotland, the Lord Advocate is master of the instance. It is for him to decide, either through his advocates depute or through the procurators fiscal, in what form the prosecution is fit to take place. I think it would be desirable—and I put this forward to the noble Lord for his consideration—that, in cases involving serious issues of credibility which would now normally go to trial by a sheriff upon an indictment (that is, for jury trial), then, notwithstanding the sheriff's increased powers, they should still go to jury trial. I say that for this reason: that it seems to me to be fair that, in cases where serious issues of credibility are involved, the accused should have the opportunity of a trial by his peers, and should be given the wider right of appeal which is given to those convicted on indictment: and, if it were thought desirable, I think it would be welcomed that the Lord Advocate should possibly give such as assurance as that.
Clause 30, which is the one which has already been spoken to by the noble Lord, involves a radical departure from Scottish criminal practice. At present, the practice in Scotland is to libel in the indictment cognate offences as aggravations of the offence which is being charged. That practice is now to cease under subsection (1) of Clause 30, and, as a corollary, the prosecutor is given power to put before the court any previous convictions, even though these may not be cognate to the offence charged. I

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pause here to observe that in Scotland, unlike in England, previous convictions are not before the judge before the accused has been found guilty. We consider that this is a good practice, because it prevents any possible bias in the mind of the judge in assessing the accused's credibility before the jury have arrived at their verdict. I realise that there are two views upon this matter, and that the practice in England differs. I do not wish to be contentious about it, but I am personally relieved that the Scottish practice of preventing previous convictions from coming to the knowledge of a judge before a verdict of "Guilty" is being preserved.
Under this Bill, as will be observed from this clause, after a verdict of "Guilty" the prosecutor is allowed to put the whole picture of the offender's record before the court in order to enable the judge, before sentencing the accused, to be in possession of all the history, so that the most appropriate punishment may be meted out. It may be thought that this is a wise provision and would aid rehabilitation, because it may well be that an accused person has been sentenced for an offence wholly dissimilar to the offence with which he is charged, and it may not be irrelevant to inquire as to the reaction of the accused to the sentence imposed after that previous conviction when sentencing him for the offence with which he is charged and which is wholly dissimilar. I feel certain that procurators fiscal will exercise a wise discretion in deciding what previous convictions should be laid before the court, and will not pile up these against an accused person so as to act to his detriment.
The next clause which I wish to make comment about is Clause 35, and that is a clause which gives power to a constable to search for forfeited articles. He is given this power without the necessity of obtaining a warrant; and he is also given power, in his search for forfeited articles, to open lock-fast places. This is a considerable inroad upon private rights. Normally, a search warrant is required from a magistrate, and this is a safeguard to the liberty of the subject. Under the proposed clause, a constable could, at his own hand, open a lock-fast place without any warrant and merely say that he was searching
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for forfeited articles. The noble Lord did not indicate what necessity there was for this clause, and I would suggest for his consideration before the Committee stage that the matter might be looked into with a view to considering whether some limit should be put upon a constable's powers in this connection. For example, it might be thought suitable that, (before a constable was authorised to search and to open lockfast premises, he should have the warrant or authority of the chief constable. There is precedent for this in the Prevention of Crimes Act, 1871, Section 16, in the case of a search for stolen property, which is a somewhat similar problem.
Finally, my Lords, I wish to say just a word in regard to Part V, Clause 47, which brings into operation in connection with criminal proceedings the provisions of the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act, 1949. Scots lawyers, I am certain, will welcome this Part of the Bill. For too long have Scots advocates and solicitors laboured under a disadvantage vis-à-vis their English brethren, in defending criminals who have no means. From time immemorial in Scotland advocates and solicitors have given free legal assistance to persons accused of serious crime. Recently this has been seen to operate as a severe hardship to the profession, who have often to pay out-of-pocket expenses and receive no fees for their professional assistance. It was recognised by Parliament in 1949 that legal aid should be given in these cases, but it is not until this year, 1962, that it has been thought suitable to apply this Act to Scotland. And, as I say, I feel that Scottish lawyers will welcome this as a reform long overdue.
4.32 p.m.
LORD CRAIGTON: My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome given to this Bill. I will follow Lord Greenhill's suggestion in not making a long speech in reply. I will try to answer specific points, and we can get down to details in Committee. There are, however, one or two points to which I should refer. The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, referred to the SACTO recommendation which he felt would take away the custodial powers of the inferior courts. I should like to point out that this recommendation was not accepted by the Government. The Government think that a

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court should normally have sufficient powers to deal with the offences it is empowered to try. SACTO would have reduced the inferior court's power while maintaining its jurisdiction. Instead, in the Bill we have increased the inferior courts' powers, inasmuch as the Bill enables them to send to a detention centre for three months, although otherwise they can only sentence to custody for 60 days.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Guest, raised a very important point, in expressing misgivings about the extension of the powers of imprisonment of the sheriff court in Clause 16, particularly on the grounds that where there was real doubt about the credibility of the evidence against the accused he might be deprived of: the safeguards arising from prosecution under solemn procedure. I can assure your Lordships—and the noble Lord gave me notice he was going to make this point—that the Lord Advocate intends to issue to procurators-fiscal instructions that in any case to which Clause 16 applies, where they are aware of any real doubts about the credibility of the case against the accused person, they should refer the case to the Crown Office so that a decision can be taken as to whether the proceedings should be under solemn procedure.
The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, whose speech I enjoyed so much, referred to short sentences, I am sure we all agree that short sentences, particularly in the case of persons who have already been detained for other offences, do not allow an opportunity for remedial treatment. The difficulty, of course, is to find alternatives. The Bill does increase the possibilities of using alternatives: I will go no further than that. First, powers of fine are increased in Clause 26; secondly, Clause 16 increases the sheriff court's powers of imprisonment in some cases, so as to avoid the necessity for short sentences. Thirdly—and the figure of 11,000 quoted by the noble Lord includes 4,000 imprisoned for nonpayment of fines—there are provisions in Part III improving the machinery for the enforcement of fines. I must also mention Clause 1 (1) which requires the court to consider all the alternatives before sentencing a young offender to detention.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Guest, referred to the differing practices
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in England, and it is perhaps one of the finest examples of the flexibility of the Constitution of the United Kingdom that, 250 years after the Treaty of Union in 1707, we have within one State two separate systems of law, each satisfactory to the inhabitants of the country to which it applies. I sometimes wonder whether, if we undertook a careful study of each other's system, both systems might not benefit. And this is something that should be done sooner or later.
In much the same context, the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, made comparisons with England and welcomed the cross-Border provisions. There has been some cross-pollination between the English and the Scottish law. It is always going on. In the last few years there have been several examples in which the Scots law has been taken to the improvement of the English law; for example, diminished responsibility and the attachment of wages. This Bill shows signs of the reverse process—in Clauses 25 and 30 and in the linking of the cross-Border provisions covered by Clauses 26 and 40. We are learning from each other and learning to get closer together. This is a point we should all bear in mind: there is more to be learned from each other.
The noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, saw some politics in the powers to appoint two more Judges. I can assure him that that is not so. It is a question of sheer volume of work; and in any case it is only the power to appoint: the decision on appointments has not yet been made. On Clause 16, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, said—and I think he is right—that this is a major change of policy. But my noble and learned friend, Lord Guest, adequately answered the point, and there is nothing more I shall add. Finally—and it is always good to finish a Second Reading debate on a satisfactory note—I appreciate what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Guest, said about Clause 35. In principle, I agree with him, and I will see to it that an Amendment is put down at the Committee stage to try to take up the point he has made and for which I am very grateful.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

SUPERSONIC CIVIL AIRCRAFT
4.38 p.m.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA LORD BRABAZON OF TARA rose to draw attention to the possibility of constructing supersonic aircraft and point out the threats and consequences arising therefrom; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name. I hope you will forgive me because I find myself in rather a curious role for me—the role of trying to stop what is, in fact, a very imaginative project. But trees do not grow to the skies, and you have to stop somewhere. If you wanted railways to run at 110 miles per hour between London and Edinburgh, no doubt you could do it for a few millions; but nobody seems to think it worth while, and I agree with that.
Civil Aviation to-day is in a very depressing situation. The airlines of the world have been helped by their respective Governments and given facilities for the production of giant aircraft, airports, and all the arrangements for landing and traffic. They agree their fares internationally; yet even with that they collectively lost £50 million last year. This I maintain is a problem which might be looked at through the whole business side, because there is much that can be done which of course requires money, and I think it would be well-spent. But here we have a proposition to spend £120 million of the taxpayers' money to produce a supersonic aircraft which will put civil aviation in the red forever. The Boeing 707 costs an operator £2 million. To buy one of these supersonic aircraft will cost about £6 million. Civil aviation cannot afford it.
Your Lordships may well ask: Is it wanted? I venture to say, and I do not think that anybody will contradict me, that if we introduce these aircraft, they will not carry one single extra passenger in the air. Those who go by these machines will be the people who would normally go by 707, and that type of machine to-day cannot get a load factor of 50 per cent. This is a prestige stunt, on the basis that if we do not do it, somebody else will do it. And the Government are about to make their decision upon it.
Here I would quote from the remarks made by Mr. Halaby, the F.A.A. Administrator, speaking in America. He says:
"We have to review our position in the light of any governmental announcement from England and France, and it is anticipated shortly."
That is the trigger effect that any announcement from the Government will cause. I maintain that it is preposterous to indulge in this, for the only advantage that a few businessmen may arrive in New York two hours sooner than they do at present.
There will be advanced, no doubt, the wonderful word "productivity". Productivity means this. If you have an aeroplane which is very fast by virtue of its speed, you can get in more journeys per day and consequently take more money. We have had all this story with the 707. I would just say this. Even if we had a machine that was going at the speed of 3 mach, which is over 2,000 miles an hour, the journey from your house in New York to your house in London would take 5½ hours, only two of which would be in the air. Even to-day, in going to Paris, about three-quarters of an hour is spent in flying and 3 hours in messing about on the ground. It has been rightly said that the only thing fast about flight is flying. Nothing else. There is plenty of work to be done in other directions.
I should like now to say a word about prestige. What price prestige? I believe that one can do a tremendous lot in helping various things by Government assistance. Take the motor industry. There are millions of people throughout the world who are interested in racing motor cars. Have we ever given any assistance to that? Not a shilling. And yet some private firms, out of their meagre resources, have carried us to victory—a remarkable performance, for which they deserve our greatest credit. We are a maritime nation, so we say, and we have tried to get back the America's Cup for a hundred years. Would it be a good thing, from the point of view of prestige, to help, say, the great University at Southampton? If we gave them £1 million, they would get it back for us in two years easily. Is it worth it? I do not know. The point I am trying to make is this. Who decides how much money

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shall be spent for prestige purposes?—because in this case the Air Ministry are taking £120 million of our money for prestige.
I am somewhat surprised to hear that Her Majesty's Government are making an arrangement between the great French firm, SUD, and Bristol to join up in order to make this aeroplane. I am surprised that any French firm would have enough confidence to join with us in anything, for the reason that we have not a very good record in completing aeroplanes. We start them and we have a habit of not finishing them. May I quote just one or two examples? The great aeroplane which was named after me was, first of add, three years late and then the engines which it wanted did not arrive until three years after the aeroplane was scrapped. Transport Command ordered the V.1000. All the money was spent on the development side and then it was scrapped. Finally, there was the imaginative project of Brackley's to have great flying boats. They were very nearly built, and then scrapped. Altogether, I suppose we must have wasted about £80 million on not producing aeroplanes.
I want to know this from the Opposition. This is a ten-year project. Do we readily decide to go through with it from the point of view of the nation? And will the Opposition pledge themselves to continue to help right to the end? Beoause I should have thought that SUD would have been a little nervous, first, due to our past and, secondly, owing to the fact that we cannot guarantee a Government for ten years in the future. Consequently, I think that it would be almost dishonest of us to pledge to co-operate with this great French company unless the Opposition say that they will continue to back this project. I hope that whoever is going to reply will try to give an answer to that.
I am, of course, convinced that technically it could be produced. Supersonic flight is with us on the military side to-day and we are learning much about it. I want to say just one or two things about this machine, were it produced. I am told that the engines will make just about twice as much noise as the ordinary one of to-day. That would seem quite impossible, but I am told
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that it is the fact. I doubt very much whether the inhabitants of Staines can bear it. There comes an end to human endurance. Frankly, I am surprised that the citizens of Staines have not marched in their thousands and wrecked London Airport. It would be a splendid thing to do. I have always maintained, and others have agreed with me, that civil aviation should be civil. It is far from it to-day.
I want to talk for a moment about the technical side of things. There is the question of fatigue. I have now been on the Air Registration Board for something like twelve years and I have been through all the horrors of fatigue. When we passed the wonderful Comet, it was airworthy in three dimensions but not airworthy in four. In other words, when it was new, it was perfect, and yet, due to fatigue, after a certain number of hours it was not airworthy. We know little about that. We know still less about what will happen to these metals which in every flight will get heated up to high temperatures three or four times a day. That is something that will require a lot of investigation, and I am sure it will be given it. It is a technical problem of great complexity.
I now raise a question which is a new one in flight, and that is the effect on human beings of cosmic rays at 70,000 feet, which is the sort of height at which these machines will have to fly. There are various kinds of cosmic radiation. There is the galactic type and the solar primary radiation. They cannot be wholly imitated in the laboratory, and there are such things as solar flares which, if they occur during a flight at that height, will make things quite intolerable.
Here I should like to mention this fact. Nobody knows what the genetic effects will be on passengers subject to these conditions. We know that this type of radiation upsets the genes in chromosomes, and such disturbances may produce what are called mutants. We have been warned by people abroad that no young woman, especially if she is pregnant, should ever take the risk of going into such machines. There is no doubt that if these machines are to be made we shall have to indulge in countless long experiments on animals before we can say it is safe. It would

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be a tragic thing if you sent your best girl in a supersonic aeroplane and then found yourself the father of an orangoutang.
I now come to what I consider to be the most crucial part of the whole project, and that is the sonic boom. Your Lordships know that when the speed of sound is exceeded shock waves are generated and there is no possibility of silencing or stopping them. They are basic to the fact that you are going faster than the speed of sound. Some people say that at a low speed, Mach 1·2, the boom might be tolerable. Well, even at that speed, at 70,000 feet it is rather like a sudden clap of thunder—not very agreeable at any time of the day or night. This is not wholly understood, and I am told by the experts abroad that if you designed a machine which would give you a pressure of only 1 lb. per square foot there are conditions of air currents and meteorology which could easily turn that into a pressure of 10 lb. a square foot. That would smash your windows. From a political point of view, I cannot imagine a better vote-catching stunt that smashing all the windows of two or three streets in the middle of a cold winter's night: people would then really appreciate the advance of technology.
We are to be subject to this, with no warning, but just a bang at any time of the day or night if we accept supersonic aircraft. I believe that people will stop it. I know that it has been advanced that we shall fly these machines at this speed only over the sea. That sounds very nice to start with. But are we going to be the only people who fly them? The route from New York to Central Europe will be over England, and we shall get the sonic bangs here. Do not let us make any mistake about that.
I hope that I have not exaggerated this case. All I ask is that your Lordships should plead that we should wait. Could there not be some international agreement to delay at least for ten years this project while it is explored further? That would be an advantage to us all. We do not want one to take advantage of another. It has been said many times that technology is in advance of human wisdom. How true that is! How much better would it have been if inter-
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nationally we had stopped the development of nuclear fission! How much happier the world would be! Because a thing is possible is no reason for doing it. I should like to quote some words from Bo Lundberg. He says:
"How splendid would it not be if aviation took the lead in proving that spectacular technological advances could and should be balanced against the harms and hazards they might inflict, and that the balance should be guided by ethical rules and standards! This would indeed be an even greater service by aviation to mankind than the safe transportation of people."
Again I plead for a policy of hurrying slowly. We have a great Minister of Aviation, a young man capable and imaginative but if he pursues this policy, he will, as I believe, ruin civil aviation from the point of view of paying, for ever. He said the other day, in a great speech before the Society of Aircraft Constructors:
"Space beckons us with a golden finger".
My Lords, it beckons us to the three brass balls of the pawnbroker.
4.58 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, we expected an entertaining speech from the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, and we certainly got it. It was also a forceful speech, and one that ranged into technical questions to which it is difficult for us to find a final answer. But I must confess that I was surprised that he did not get a few of his facts a little more accurate. I must make clear that, although I speak from this Box, I cannot bind the Opposition to future policy in the matter of this or any other project that this Government start. We do not know what state we shall find the country in when we take over, although we are glad that the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, obviously thinks that there will be a time in the near future when the continuance of this decision will rest with the Party on this side of the House.
I really find this argument that the Government should not subsidise developments because of certain technical difficulties one that is not entirely satisfactory. The noble Lord talked about the fact that airlines were in the red to the tune of £50 million. I might mention the fact that railways have been known to lose money also. But it

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is perfectly true that there is not enough international planning. I see little chance in a competitive world of an agreement on a standstill of technological advance.
If I had had my way—and perhaps the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would have been with me on this—I would not have allowed the development of television, and certainly not commercial television, at the rate at which it has gone. This was essentially a matter within the control of this country. But I do not quite know what it is the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, is asking for. I do not know whether he is asking for a moratorium on the assumption that in twenty years' time these problems will be solved, or whether he is asking that we should not advance beyond the present speed and type of aircraft. There are not the signs at the moment that in another twenty years' time the problems to which he referred will be solved, and I should have thought that ten years was a reasonable period for development of an aircraft which, as I think must be appreciated, is not as revolutionary as many people think.
The supersonic transport aircraft is a natural development of existing types, and in the type in which the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud Aviation are co-operating we are operating in a field which is well known and, in fact, traversing a perfectly well-established path, flying no faster than many existing aircraft already fly, making their supersonic bangs, using the same sort of fuels and alloys and the same sort of engines. Not only is the present proposal, which is for a Mach 2·2 aircraft, possible, but the designers are confident that it can be achieved. I will add further that the same traffic control procedures will apply. I would remind your Lordships that there are aircraft in existence in the world to-day—conventional type aircraft—that have flown at greater speeds than this. They have flown at 1,600 miles per hour and, of course, there is an American research aircraft which has flown at 4,000 miles per hour. We are proposing, and the Government are supporting, a proposal for an aircraft to fly at Mach 2·2, which is considerably less than these figures.
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The noble Lord did not refer to the controversy as to whether the Government are sponsoring, and whether the aircraft manufacturers should go in for, an even faster aircraft, the Mach 3 aircraft, which would go at a speed approaching 2,000 miles per hour. I am sure we are right not to consider this, because the developments in fuel and safety, and the consideration of the different problems, have not gone far enough. Indeed, there is not a fuel in existence that could be readily made available against the problems of heating that would arise. But when we come to this aircraft, we do not find that the difficulties are insuperable. The noble Lord referred to fatigue. We are well aware, from the tragedies of the Comet aircraft and of the difficulties that have confronted aircraft designers, that this is a problem, but a problem which the manufacturers, the Ministry, and Farn-borough in particular, reckon can be overcome.
As to the subject of cosmic radiation, I hope we shall hear from the Government what the dangers are. I would only say to the noble Lord that radiation is not the only danger which threatens him. He probably at the moment has in his liver quite a considerable amount of D.D.T., dieldrin, and other toxic chemicals, the effect of which is almost identical to radiation. This is a matter which perhaps I should not develop now. If he will join with me in reducing the amount of toxic chemicals we throw around, I shall be very pleased indeed. The risk of cosmic radiation, which some people have emphasised, is undoubtedly one of the things to be answered. I am told that it is not a serious difficulty, and that certainly a number of people are already flying at greater heights and that anxiety has not arisen on this matter. But we shall look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, what he has to say on it.
This particular aircraft is not something that is being hurried. Design studies have been going on already for several years, and it will probably take anything up to fifteen years or more from the time the original work was begun on it with the 300 models they have made at Farnborough, and it seems to me that fifteen years is a reasonable time with-out

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hurrying too much. One of the main objections of the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, was that of cost. I am assured—and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, can answer this—that in fact the cost of these aircraft will not be significantly greater than the cost of the existing types of aircraft that are operating to-day. How far the Boeing 707 has been Government financed from line original development from defence work, and so on, I do not know, but there is little doubt that a great deal of the development costs in the past has been paid for by Governments in one way or another. The actual operating costs are likely to be not significantly higher, and may be even lower, with the sheer cost advantage of the extra speed. To this country, with its Commonwealth interests and our world-wide interests, speed is not unimportant. The fact that people will be able to get to Sydney in twelve or thir-teen hours is something which will help again to bring the world closer together. The time to New York will be quite fantastically small—it will in fact be only three hours.
It has been suggested that we should do well to wait and see what others do. One thing I should have thought for certain was that whether we go ahead with this, and whether the Americans go ahead, General de Gaulle certainly will go ahead. The decision has already been taken in France, and the problem which confronts us is whether or not we are going to opt out of this business entirely. If we are not, the Government must take a decision—a decision which they have taken a good deal of time over already. I should like to remind the House of a quotation from the former Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Supply. Mr. Erroll said in 1955 that the Corporation were satisfied that they could hold their own commitments on the North Atlantic route well into the 1960s with the Comet IV and the long-range Britannia, and that they placed great emphasis on the superior performance of turbine-propeller aircraft compared with jets, and did not envisage that the absence of jet aircraft would seriously endanger Britain's air traffic in the early 1960s. When the time came we had to use a considerable amount of foreign exchange in buying Boeing 707s.
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I should like now to turn to this question of noise. I am told—and perhaps the Government will tell us whether it is correct—that whereas the noise on the ground may be slightly higher, it will in fact be less once the aircraft gets airborne and beyond the runway. Indeed, the existing calculations are that the inhabitants of Staines will be less bothered by these supersonic aircraft than they are by the existing aircraft. These aircraft have a shorter take-off, and they will climb more quickly. The calculations suggest that at the existing check point, which is just over four miles from the beginning of the runway, the noise will be slightly less than it is with existing aircraft. This matter is a matter of profound importance. There is no doubt that noble Lords who have interested themselves in it have real reasons for concern. What the inhabitants of these areas have to suffer is intolerable, but they will have to go on suffering, whether we have a supersonic aircraft or not. They may even look for some slight relief on this matter.
On the question of sonic booms, I can only say that these are going on all the time. Aircraft are flying over this country, and many other countries of the world, at supersonic speeds, and for the most part we are not bothered with them at all. What Is quite certain is that the flight plans of these aircraft will have to be designed in such a way as to minimise this. Even if we get these peculiar meteorological effects to which the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, referred, I am told—and this again is a conflict of technical arguments—that they are likely only to have the effect of producing the noise of rather distant thunder and that the risk of breaking windows during an election is one that any Government of the day will not have to worry about very seriously.
I should like to put the arguments in purely national economic terms in favour of this. We know that, whether or not we go into the Common Market, our national existence and progress will depend on our ability to make the best use of our brains and produce products of a kind we are better at producing than other countries. We shall not be able to rely to the same extent on our natural resources. We must get into the lead in that most advanced technical

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field, and we must capture markets in it. There is every chance that if we go ahead now, we shall be well ahead, along with the French, of the rest of the world; and this may make a difference to our balance of payments to the tune of possibly over £100 million in the first five years of the 1970s.
We have gone—and I think it is something which we should welcome—a long way to achieving excellent cooperation with the French over this. I am told that the present President of Sud Aviation, General Pouget, has excellent relationships with the British end of this joint project and that there is a measure of agreement and of operational unanimity. It is perhaps interesting that the independent design studies of the aircraft, when they were operating separately, were rather similar. I myself think that if this country is to maintain any technological lead in the world—and this is a field in which we have to compete; it is not just a question of seeking prestige or of seeking power; it is a question of the living standards of this country—the Government must help. The Ministry of Aircraft Production at Farnborough have already given a great deal of help, but again speaking personally—obviously I cannot bind my noble friends on this side of the House, and there may be many other people who will not be bound by what may be said by the noble Lord, Lord Chesham—I am convinced that we ought to go ahead with this project.
If the present Government improve their record in regard to the cancellation of aircraft contracts of one kind or another, no one will be better pleased than us on this side of the House. But I do beg the Government not just to listen to the anxieties of the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara without producing counter arguments. If we lived in a perfect Socialist world, in which we planned all our resources, then no doubt we should be able to avoid this sort of competition. But we still live in a pretty competitive world, and although there are many things to which I should certainly give much higher priority than this if I were in a position to plan them, in the present circumstances as we find them I believe we ought to go ahead.
5.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, it is characteristic and one of the great values of this House that we can have a debate so authoritatively argued, in such a balanced manner, on a subject upon which, as I understand it, no final decision has been taken. We have all been greatly interested in both the speeches which have been delivered. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I thought, put the issue a little too much on one side, as possibly, he may say, my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara did on the other.
I would say that the issue which is before us now, and which must be before the Government is this: is it wise to embark on this project now? The noble Lord said that it will take a very long time; and I think he is probably right. It took quite a long time to produce Spitfires and Hurricanes off the drawing board. Some of my noble friends may say it is rather odd that somebody who did that kind of perhaps not wholly unimaginative thing should have hesitated today about the Government's doing something in the same field. Indeed they may be surprised that my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara, who certainly has never been unimaginative, unconstructive or unforward-looking in these matters, should feel his difficulties
Once we take this decision—though it may take a long time to carry it out, just as it did to produce the Spitfires—we are committed to it. I do not say that it is impossible to draw back—it is not. Both this Government and other Governments have drawn back from projects after a very great deal of money had been spent, but it is always much more difficult to do so—if hopes are dupes; fears may be liars. You hope that the thing is going to turn out all right—it requires only another few million pounds more. After all, in these days we think in millions, and tens of millions of pounds, when in old days a Spitfire cost £10,000, or less, to produce. But the fact that the costs are so colossal ought surely to make us think all the more. I do not think there has ever been a time when it is more difficult to know and to decide what to do. It is very important that we should be in the van of progress, but the cost of any undertaking of this sort is so colossal that we cannot do everything.
It was easy in the old days to build the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the

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Mosquito, and to set scientists out on the hunt for radar and all that sort of thing. But now we have to balance, and it is only one or two projects which can possibly be embarked upon. That makes it all the more necessary to make sure that we make the right selection. I am not sure about this myself. I have not the knowledge to be dogmatic about it, but I would put two or three questions to the Government. I must say that as a commercial proposition this seems to me to be singularly unattractive. What aircraft construction company would go into this? It is true, I suppose, that they must have Government subsidies in any project of this kind. But how confident are they, and what proportion of the money is the construction company going to put up?
This is a commercial aeroplane in which people are going to fly and which is going to be run by airlines. What is the view of the airlines about this? They have had some uncomfortable experiences. If you are going to make an aircraft you have to sell something, in the way that the Viscount was sold; you have to sell a great quantity of it to make the thing worth while at all. Both the constructors and the airlines themselves are anxious about that. We must not, I think, be just led away on imaginative flights about doing something scientifically rather wonderful if it is not going to produce in this aircraft a commercial result.
I am speaking from a business point of view with some experience of having had to—not run airlines commercially, I am glad to say, but help with the running of them as a Minister, and I have travelled a great deal by air and have been in touch with all the people who have made a success or a failure out of running airlines, whether in America or on the Continent. I remember that M. Perrier, I think it was, the very able chairman of Sabena, some years ago put on a service from Brussels; it was not a very fast service but it was a service that left Brussels at 12 noon or half-past twelve; it gave two excellent meals on board. It landed in New York at half-past nine or ten in the evening, so that you could drive to your hotel for a good night before you went into your business or social enterprises the
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following day. He found it was exactly what both the business and the social world needed. He told me that it was booked up for weeks ahead. He had the greatest difficulty in getting on it himself if he wanted to go to New York. He said to me, "I will give you the V.I.P. precedence, but you will have to let me know some weeks in advance if you want to travel by it". It was not very fast but it was enormously successful from a commercial point of view.
This is a thing on which we can all have our own opinion; but, after all, most of us have had to travel a good deal across the Atlantic. Is it really going to be so attractive, and are we—unless the cost comes out of a nice expense account, which again means that it comes from the Chancellor of the Exchequer—going to be prepared to pay an enormous amount more money to get to New York in two and a half hours instead of five or six hours? Quite frankly, I do not believe it, and I am not impressed by the sort of idea that if somebody else goes in for this we must go in for it, too. I know that if in business my competitor goes and sinks a few millions in something I think is likely to be a loser, I do not, for the sake of prestige or because he has done it, go running to spend a few millions on something, I will not say equally foolish but with about the same sort of prospects.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves this question of operating cost, why does he think this aircraft is going to be so much more costly? He must have read all the technical papers on this question which argue that it is not going to cost the passenger any more at all, or has he some figures to suggest it is?
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I have read a good many of these things and I have seen a good many estimates. I have seen estimates made in Government Departments and commercial airlines, and they have not always come out quite right. But let me make the noble Lord a present of it. Suppose you can run it at the same price as now. As the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, pointed out, all the subsidised airlines of the world are running at a loss at the present time, certainly all those on these transatlantic routes. I do not believe you are going to attract any more people by having this supersonic airliner. I think

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the only hope of getting more people is to have very cheap fares, which is what some airlines are now undertaking. I do not want to put my case too high. Let me accept that the running costs will not be greater, although it is going to cost heaven knows how much to build it.
I would put this point. We have not an unlimited amount of money to spend. I am all in favour of spending absolutely the maximum amount we can spend on research, but surely we cannot just take these items of research in watertight compartments. We cannot say, "Here is this air proposition. Let us go and spend £50 million upon it." Surely we have to take the whole of development in the whole field of industry, in the air, on the ground, at sea, and see how we can best spend our money. I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that we have to be as efficient as we possibly can. We have to develop research. We have to make industry as efficient as we can, whether we go into the Common Market or not—and I think it will be a good deal easier, although the competition will be keen, if we do go into the Common Market. But I would put this question. Would it not be much wiser for us to take another look at the whole of this, and, whatever the figure is—be it £50 million, be it £100 million: take £50 million—would you rather have it spent on this project—which may turn out all right; I do not know—or would you have that £50 million spent on universities, on the technical colleges, on helping research, development, expenditure for making more efficient industries in which we know we can make a great success?
Then I would ask this. I have not heard the answer; I did not hear it from the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. If this succeeds you will produce a very good supersonic airliner. What indirect benefits are there going to be got out of this—I do not know, but I want the Government to tell me—for the Royal Air Force? I have always taken the view in this House, very often against others, that the aeroplane in defence is going to have a much longer life than people thought, and that view I think has turned out to be right. But it is a limited life, and, even so, if you go on with this experiment, what are you going
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to get by way of indirect value in aviation or outside? That seems to me most important. When you come to all the nuclear developments, of course you get these terrible weapons developed, but at the same time you get fascinating and fruitful developments which can be used in civil life. The same is true over a wide field of industrial development. I do not know whether this is going to have any result of that kind.
That is what makes me doubtful about whether we should commit ourselves definitely to this project if we are asked to do so. When Lord Melbourne's colleagues wanted to do something which he regarded as singularly unwise he had a habit of saying, "If only they would have the goodness to leave it alone." Well, while I do not go so far as that—I have read what I can but I am not an expert—I have remembered all the other claims that are going to come, or ought to come, for this £50 million; and, frankly, I am most doubtful whether it is a good bet for us to commit ourselves to go right ahead.
5.32 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, my admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, is second to none. He is our number one aviator, as his licence tells us; his advice has always been sound, and he is the father confessor in more ways than one of our civil aviation. But I am afraid that on this occasion he sounded to me much more like the advisers of Canute. This type of airliner about which we are talking to-day is the inevitable next step in the progress of civil aviation, and to have doubts about it, or to think that we can prevent it from happening, is to be, as I have said, like the advisers of Canute.
We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that this type of aircraft is not so revolutionary as is often thought. It is the inevitable next step. I for one do not believe the horrors that the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, painted for us of the progeny that we are likely to get as the result of our wives flying in such aircraft. Our aircraft industry has been in the vanguard of civil aviation right from the beginning. We have already heard from Lord Shackleton that the aircraft industry is one of our biggest exporting industries. It seems to

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me that this is something the Government must continue to support; they should see that this industry of ours, which has been and still is in the vanguard of the world, continues to be so.
We missed the boat over teaming up with the French in the production of the Caravelle. I will not go into the reasons for this, but it seems to me that some of the advice which the Government and the industry received at that time smacked a little of what we have already heard here to-day. If we had taken the right initiative at that time we could have shared in the success of that most successful aircraft. We have now been asked to team up with the French in a similar and more forward-looking project. I am glad to see that my right honourable friend the Minister of Aviation has been to France to discuss the subject with his opposite numbers.
It has been said to-day by my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara, and I think by my noble friend Lord Swinton, that people will not travel in this new type of aircraft but prefer the slower ones. That was said about the jets, and look at what has happened to the Britannias.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I said that I did not think it would attract any more people.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: That, I think, will remain to be seen. The fact remains that the trend of flying passengers is always—or has been so far, and there is no reason to believe that it will be otherwise—towards the latest type of aircraft. My noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara, I think unfortunately, rather played down the success of our aircraft industry in citing an aircraft the name of which we know well. It seems to me that he has forgotten the success of the Britannia, that of the Viscount, that of the Vanguard, and also the orders that have already come for the VC.10, the Trident and so on. It seems a pity that he should have pushed doubt into the minds of the French as to our abilities in regard to producing successful aircraft. They are there for us all to see. The Viscount has been one of the most successful aircraft ever produced. This project is a logical step into the future. I commend the Government for the steps that they have
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already taken; I commend the aircraft industry; and I only hope that nothing will deter them from going forward to keep us, as we always have been in the forefront of aviation.
5.38 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I intervene with some trepidation because all the speakers hitherto have spoken with so much authority, whilst I have no technical knowledge or great experience of aviation. But I am encouraged greatly by finding myself in such close agreement with my noble friend Lord Swinton; and, just as he has not finally made up his mind, I find myself in a similar position. It may be that the Government have some overwhelming grounds about which we have not yet heard for supporting this venture. But I beg the House to consider—this was put, I think, both by my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara and by my noble friend Lord Swinton—that it is proposed to spend great sums on this venture, and if those sums are spent on it they will not be available for various other ventures, because there is a limit to what the Government can spend.
The next thing I would say is that I have observed that in the field of transport Governments are capable of more insanity than in almost any other field of action to which they devote themselves. It was not many years ago that we were told that it was necessary and desirable to spend a vast sum of public money on a new Cunarder. That is now universally admitted to be nonsense. That gives me some encouragement to examine this project a little more closely. I am unimpressed by the argument of my noble friend, Lord Gosford, when he says that this in an inevitable next step. If this can be proved to be a wise one, let us take it, but do not let us say that it is inevitable merely because a lot of people shout that it is progress. If on examination it appears to be fairly silly, then it will not be inevitable and, if we are wise, we can avoid it. Even if it were inevitable that somebody should build an aircraft of this type, it would not be necessary that the British Government should spend a vast amount of money in making it possible in this country unless that happened to be the best use of the money.

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By a curious coincidence, before I had noticed the Motion of my noble friend, Lord Brabazon of Tara, on the Order Paper, I had actually drafted a Question which I was going to put down to Her Majesty's Government, and it was roughly in this form:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they agree that supersonic aircraft would add to the danger of flying, would increase nuisance by noise to the detriment of the health and happiness of our people and would cause our airlines to be even less profitable than they would otherwise be; and, if not, whether they will publish the evidence that leads them to a different conclusion."
My Lords, I think all those questions are worth putting.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: Hear, hear! Put it down.
LORD CONESFORD: My noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara says, "Put it down"; but that would be unfair to my noble friend Lord Chesham, who is about to give us the answer to all these points. It is only after we have carefully considered his answer that we must all think of what further Questions we should put down.
Is it not true that it will add to the danger of flying? Is it not true, notwith standing what was said in his most inter esting speech by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that it will increase nuisance by noise to the detriment of the health and happiness of our people? Finally, is it not true, as suggested as at least possible by my noble friend Lord Swinton, that it will cause our airlines to be even less profitable than they would otherwise be? But should the Government dispute all or any of those propositions, could they not publish the evidence which brings them to a different conclusion, or at least tell us Where that evidence is to be found? My Lords, I hold a very old-fashioned view—
LORD WALERAN: Hear, hear!
LORD CONESFORD: It is possible that my noble friend may agree with this old-fashioned view. The very old-fashioned view I hold is that, if vast sums of public money are to be spent, it is on the whole better that they should be spent in promoting, rather than in injuring, the public interest. It is a
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very simple, old-fashioned proposition, but it is not demonstrably nonsensical.
My Lords, let me mention one or two things in the field of transport. I gather that it is very important to close certain canals because they might Jose a little money; but I also gather from some speeches that it is vastly important to give huge sums to the air corporations on the ground that they lose a great dead of money.
Then I remember a matter on which I co-operated with my great friend the late Lord Birkett, the debate on saving the Lake District. My Lords, many of us know that there is an enormous increase in the demands for water from our great cities, from agriculture and from a number of other users. We all know that this threatens the survival of things that are very important to all of us—the greatest beauty of some of the most priceless areas of our small country. What are we told when it is suggested that we might get fresh water from the sea? That it would be rather more expensive—it would be cheaper to take the Lakes. My Lords, is it not conceivable that money would be better spent on converting salt water to fresh water than on producing a supersonic aircraft? Is it not at least deserving of consideration?
My noble friend Lord Swinton mentioned the universities, a subject very near to the heart of my noble and learned friend Viscount Hailsham. The Government cannot afford to give all the money to the universities that I am sure they would like to devote to them. It might produce a tremendous return; it might keep a lot of first-rate scientists in this country—scientists who will almost inevitably, as things are, transfer their activities abroad.
My Lords, there are so many alternative uses for the money. Against all this there may be overwhelming reasons for backing this particular project, but I do beg the Government not to back it merely because somebody says, "This step is inevitable". There is nothing whatever inevitable about it. Let us go into it, if it is wise. And let us refuse to go into it, if to go into it at this moment would be foolish.
5.46 p.m.
LORD WALBRAN: My Lords, I am sorry I was not in your Lordships' House at the beginning of this debate because I agree very much with certain things the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, has said, and I particularly agree with much of what my noble friend Lord Swinton has said and which I am glad to see has been supported by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, who seemed to be a little upset when I said, "Hear, hear!". The noble Lord spoke about danger. He apparently worked on the assumption that there was more danger in the air than in any other form of transport, which, according to factual figures, is quite untrue.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I was not saying that. I thought that this aircraft was going to be rather more dangerous than the existing aircraft. I travel by air quite cheerfully, and I hope to continue to do so in any aircraft.
LORD WALERAN: I am glad to hear that the noble Lord was not basing his assumption on the basis that the air as a form of transport was dangerous—more dangerous than any other form of transport.
My Lords, I do not think—and I said this in your Lordships' House earlier this year—that any operator wants to change his present equipment. I do not believe any operator wants to have to get new aircraft if he has not amortised his present aircraft. I think I said at the time that the only people who were doing so were the United States of America, and I said—and it is in Hansard—that I thought they were trying to keep up with the Joneses because Russia might produce a supersonic aircraft.
We in this country are talking about joining with France in a Mach 2·2 aircraft. The Americans are thinking in terms of Mach 3. A very eminent designer in this country put it very nicely when he said that our present techniques melt at 2·4. I believe that what the Americans are trying to do, and will do, is to design the shape of the aircraft for Mach 3, make it in our present materials and fly it at Mach 2·2, until they get the techniques of the materials to be able to make it fit to fly at Mach 3. Therefore I think it is an
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entire waste of time to make a, thing for Mach 2·2. If France wishes to do it, let her do it. Why not? We are researching down at Filton with steels and that sort of thing. Surely it is sensible to design in that, as the Americans are doing, even though France wishes to go and make something at vast cost.
As my noble friend Lord Conesford and my noble friend Lord Swinton have said, let us keep in advance. Let us design the right way. But also let us not forget this point, which was made by my noble friend Lord Swinton, of the scheduling of the aircraft. When we want it to leave at a specific time, in comfortable time to get to our destination, we do not want to get there at the wrong hour. Let us think of this, and let us think of the possibilities which have already been announced in the Press, of making an aeroplane that will fly us over the right period of time to get to another place at half the cost.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, does he seriously argue that the best form of design for a Mach 3 aircraft is suitable for a 2·2?—because this is the basis of the whole argument. The slender Delta is the type for 2·2, and not the other one.
LORD WALERAN: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord opposite will realise I am no technician in this matter. But I should have thought it was quite possible to design an aircraft in the materials available which would fly at Mach 2·2 and which if you had the right materials would fly at Mach 3. I am not excluding variable geometry.
5.53 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, the House will have listened, as I have done, to the noble Lord who moved this Motion with both respect and attention. We listened knowing that he speaks on such matters with great authority born of long experience, and this time we have heard him put forward his various reasons why he can find no good thing in the project to develop supersonic civil aircraft. Now, my Lords, I think it is for me not only to say something on the points that he and other noble Lords have raised, but also to add a little on the other side of the picture. If the picture was as he painted it, anyone

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would think that Her Majesty's Government must be completely mad to consider having anything to do with the project at all; and that is not a fact, as it happens. In explaining something of it, I think I had better begin for a moment right at the beginning.
My Lords, since the early days of flying, with which the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, was himself very much concerned, civil aviation has almost always benefited from major increases of speed, achieved through the design of military aircraft. The rate of replacement of aircraft types has on occasion been slightly embarrassing, but the pros, in the shape of saving journey time, making possible lower fares, and helping the expansion of traffic, have outweighed the cons. I do not think, for instance, that anyone would deny that the long-range jets now cruising at over 500 miles an hour are probably some of the most commercially successful aircraft flying to-day. Equally clearly, I think, there must be some limit to the process, and until a few years ago there was considerable doubt as to whether the knowledge gained from supersonic flight could, in fact, be usefully applied to civil aircraft, because it was thought operating costs would be too high. Since 1956 there has been an intensive programme of applied research, itself costing over £3 million, carried out in industry and Government establishments, and the French have been engaged on a similar kind of programme. Since 1960 the British Aircraft Corporation have been working on detailed, designed study contracts, and the result of all this has been to establish the technical basis of the project thoroughly, so that we can see it is in no sense speculative in that respect.
Recent advances in aerodynamics and aero-engine technology arising both from these studies and in parallel with them, and the detailed studies themselves, have, persuaded us of the feasibility of producing a civil airliner which would cruise at about 1,400 miles an hour. But what, my Lords, is just as important, is that there is every indication that the operating costs that it will have on medium and long-range services—please remember that, my Lords; on medium and long-range services; that is, services of stage length of about 1,000 miles—are certainly not out of line with those of the
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best subsonic jet airliners at present in service. The noble Earl, Lord Swinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, who made a point of the cost, will forgive me if at this stage I do not adduce all the evidence which has been taken into consideration' in these studies, because I should be speaking here very technically for a week if I were to do that. But I think that noble Lords will wish to know—and I should like to make this point—that, as I have said, the operating costs are not out of line, provided that the development cost of the aircraft is supported, and does not have to be spread over the cost of the aircraft themselves when they come to go into service. I make that point, because I think it is one of considerable importance.
I do not think either, my Lords, that it is at all unreasonable to predict that, in the next twenty years or so, super sonic flight will be the normal thing over that sort of range. I say that with the more confidence because all countries which have a major aircraft industry have been carrying out extensive studies of the various possible forms which supersonic transport might take. The United States have; Russia has; France has, as well as we ourselves. And, my Lords, it is certainly not possible——
LORD WALERAN: My Lords, might I interrupt the noble Lord for one moment? He has mentioned operating costs. But, as I know the published figures of this research in America, it is load factor cost that has gone up. The number of passengers who have to be carried to make the aeroplane economical, is a good deal greater than with the present aircraft now flying.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I have not been in a position to study the figures in America——
LORD WALERAN: They are published.
LORD CHESHAM: I still have not studied them, whether they are published or not.
LORD WALERAN: It is your job.
LORD CHESHAM: Whether it is my job or not, I still have not studied those figures; and, as the figures published in America must presumably apply to a different project——
LORD WALERAN: No.
LORD CHESHAM: The noble Lord says, "No", but, as I say, I have not seen these figures and I was not aware that the Americans were engaged on the same project. They may be; perhaps the noble Lord knows better than I. But I really cannot make very much of a sensible comment on what he has said. What I was going to say, my Lords, is that it is not within our power unilaterally to decide whether there should or should not be supersonic transports. As my noble friend Lord Gosford said, if we decide not to produce them we can be quite sure that somebody else will. To that extent, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, is right—to that extent; and I am going to come, in a few minutes, to the exact significance of that as we see it.
Like other noble Lords I was a little surprised to hear the view put forward that this aircraft would be of no benefit or appeal to passengers, because I should have thought that they would have liked it very much. A Mach 2.2 aircraft would, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, mentioned, cut the present Atlantic crossing time from eight hours to something less than four, and, for example, the trip from London to Sydney from 27 hours to about 13. Those cannot be described as just marginal benefits; and if, as I say, the costs are comparable, or are anything like comparable, I cannot believe that they will not appeal to any travellers other than businessmen, and fairly successful businessmen at that.
My Lords, I know, as the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, pointed out to us, that there is a great potential market for low-cost travel, unspectacular as it may perhaps be, and certainly subsonic, and therefore, in the terms in which we are talking, relatively slow. I cannot see that there is anything inconsistent here, because over the long ranges slow aircraft are by no means necessarily low cost, and it is in the shorter ranges that the slower and more modest aircraft will be able to exploit the market to which the noble Earl referred. It is not right to look at the matter as if there were a choice, or had to be a choice, between the two, because the short-range subsonic aircraft and the long-rang supersonic aircraft are quite complementary develop-
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ments. There is room (a matter on which my noble friend Lord Waleran expressed some doubt, in view of the likely coming into service of the supersonic aircraft in the seventies) for the necessary rundown of present aircraft, and there is still room for their further development for the short-haul jobs which they can do best. So we really are not wasting our time and resources at the present moment.
We are convinced that the need for speed on the longer-range routes exists and will remain, and that the supersonic airliner will inevitably come to dominate those ranges. I apologise to my noble friend Lord Conesford for the use of the word "inevitable", but I hope he will take it in the context in which I said it—that it will inevitably come to dominate those ranges: not that it is inevitable that it comes, but that it will, I am sure, do that. When it does that, the major airlines of the world, including our own, I have no doubt, being engaged in an industry which is extremely competitive, will feel the need—not just the need, my Lords; I think they will feel the obligation—to re-equip with these aircraft. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, and other noble Lords, were worried that if they did so they would be even further in the red. All I want to say is: are they likely to get out of the red, operating over the years as airlines, if they are not equipped with up-to-date aircraft?
The major question then arises, whether we should participate in the development and production of these supersonic airliners with which they will all need to re-equip. We know—this is undeniable—that it will be extremely costly, far beyond the resources of private industry. It is with such considerations as this high cost in mind, and such considerations as noble Lords have mentioned, that we have carefully explored the possibilities of international collaboration on the project. We have set up helpful arrangements with the United States for exchanging information on what I might call the environmental aspects of the project, sonic boom, air traffic control and matters like that, but the indications are that they will prefer to develop an aircraft of their own, although they have not yet, as I understand it, reached any decision on it. They hold different views about the objectives,

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and are believed to be pinning their faith to Mach 3 aircraft—which, as my noble friend Lord Waleran pointed out, considerably increases the cost, poses problems of construction in steel or titanium, and increases the operating problems of sonic boom and cosmic radiation quite considerably. I am coming back to those in a minute; but what seems to me still more important is that a Mach 3 aircraft would knock only about another quarter of an hour off the trans-Atlantic flight time. What seems to me to be important, and where I think the benefit lies, is in cutting the time from eight hours to four hours, and not in knocking another fifteen minutes off the four hours.
With the French, the situation has been rather different, and our contacts have been most encouraging. It became clear very early in our discussions that there was a great deal of common ground between us, both in general objectives and in ideas on how the project ought to be tackled, and for a year now there has been very close contact between airframe and aero-engine firms on both sides of the Channel. As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, mentioned, the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud-Aviation have jointly produced a basic design for a slender-wing, light-alloy aircraft with a cruising speed of Mach 2.2, powered by four Bristol-Siddeley turbo-jet engines. There would be two versions of it, one for the longer ranges and one for medium-long range, with only minor structural modifications separating them. The firms have also put forward proposals for the management of a joint project covering development and production, the essence of which would be equal sharing by the two countries of costs, work and returns on the whole project. That, quite frankly, does not sound like lack of confidence in us on the part of the French.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I do not want to interfere with the sequence of my noble friend's argument, but is he going to tell us at the appropriate moment, within a million or two, what he estimates the commitments and cost to this Government will be?
LORD CHESHAM: Yes, my Lords, I will do so right away, since the noble Earl mentioned it. The figure is £80
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million to £85 million, spread over ten years.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: For us and the French?
LORD CHESHAM: No, for us; that is our share of it. My Lords, if I say that that is about the figure the noble Earl will take it that is all I can say at the moment, because there have been the series of negotiations at Government level between the two Governments. As the noble Earl no doubt knows, my right honourable friend the Minister of Aviation met the French Minister for Transport and Public Works in Paris and they reviewed in detail the various problems affecting the joint project. And I find it encouraging (again it does not seem to me to indicate lack of confidence on the part of the French) to tell you that both Ministers agreed on the full report they would make out to their respective Governments with a view to an early decision.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, is it not the case, in matters of this kind, that in the past, when this kind of estimate, difficult to make, has been put forward, it has sometimes been exceeded—even up to double or more? I cannot imagine, from what has been said about the general difficulty, that a sum of £80 million to £85 million is going to cover the cost in ten years from now.
A NOBLE LORD: Five years.
LORD CHESHAM: Ten years. Yes, my Lords; to do other than to estimate as you can see at the time of the estimate is to make nonsense of the whole business of estimating. If the noble Viscount is going to take the last 30 years and to ask if we are going over that estimate, we can only go seriously into the project or estimate of what we think it will possibly be rather than what we think it will cost. You cannot do better than to take the estimate honestly made at the time of doing it. I cannot stand at this Box and say the estimate will not be exceeded or that it would be jolly good to put another £100 million on for luck, because the noble Viscount would not be satisfied with our accuracy if the Government were to estimate in that way.
VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I think I said it is difficult to make estimates at all, but in the programme of certain aircraft developments in the past thirty or forty years I seem to see that figures for these projects are put up with great hopefulness and they prove to be quite inaccurate as in fact they cost a very great deal more money.
LORD CHESHAM: That may be, but I do not think I could get away with standing up here and saying that that is our estimate but it is completely inaccurate. The noble Viscount would not be very pleased if I said that.
A NOBLE LORD: My Lords, may I interrupt?
LORD CHESHAM: I should like to finish my sentence. What I am trying to say to the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, is that when I say that figure of money which I mentioned I have to say it with some proviso because, as I have just said, the Government are considering the Report of the Minister of Aviation with a view to coming to a decision very soon.
LORD WALERAN: If we are talking about estimates misleading, I would mention the quarter-hour difference in time between the Mach 2 and the Mach 3 aeroplane flying between here and New York. My noble friend Lord Gosford, with his slide rule, has made it a matter of 45 minutes and that is not allowing the holding time at either end. There is not only the flying time but the holding time at each end.
LORD CHESHAM: The holding time for aircraft and the time taken in taxiing and getting passengers out does not vary greatly with the cruising speed of the aircraft. I think I was perfectly correct to talk about flying time. I do not think it alters the tune of my argument very much—it does not alter it at all. It is a much more complex and difficult-to-operate aeroplane and is not worth the modest amount which is sawn off the time.
My Lords, I should like to go on to two other matters of considerable importance: first, noise, including the question of sonic boom, and then radiation. So far as noise is concerned, one
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of the factors which the airframe designer was specifically required to bear in mind from the outset of the design study was the need to keep noise level of the aircraft as low as reasonably possible. This has already had considerable influence on the design. I think that what has been said on the subject of take-off is right, except that at the moment of take-off the noise level may be expected to increase on the sides of the runway and it is reasonable to say that, otherwise, what has been already said on the subject of noise is right. Later on the noise level will certainly not be designed to be anything other than on the level which is imposed on subsonic jets.
So far as sonic boom is concerned, of course, I realise that aircraft cannot be allowed to go about our skies or anyone else's skies breaking windows or blasting off roofs, but the present indications are that there is a good prospect of keeping the limit of flying noise within those limits which are also imposed on subsonic jets. We have a lot more research work to do into the effects of supersonic boom, but we are in close touch with the programmes that are engaged on in the United States and in France. I think I can say with some emphasis that there are means of minimising the effect of the boom by adopting special operational techniques and by not flying supersonically below certain levels. From the evidence we have so far, we can conclude that it would be possible to confine the disturbance to a level that will not be unacceptable, because if it were otherwise, the whole project would appear in a very different light.
The possible effects of radiation—because of the height to which the aircraft will fly—is another matter which we are going into very carefully indeed, because, as has been properly said, it is something on which the Government would naturally not wish any risk to be taken. The subject has been reviewed by the Aeronautical Research Council, and the Royal Aeronautical Establishment has collated the results. Generally, they point to the conclusion that for passengers the risks involved at flying, not at 70.000 feet but at 55,000 to 60,000 feet, which would be the height this aircraft is intended to fly, are really negligible. At greater heights, where,

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for instance, a Mach. 3 aircraft might be expected to operate, it might well be different, but as things are the evidence would certainly not support the dire results the noble Lord predicted. That would be no reason for not continuing research, but so far the evidence does not support the noble Lord's prediction.
On the question of solar flares when radiation is increased, there seems to be every prospect that by the installation of suitable appliances in flying control and in the aircraft, these can be predicted with sufficient warning to enable the aircraft to descend out of the danger area—it probably does not have to come down more than 10,000 or 20,000 feet, which it can do in a reasonable time compared with the warning it is likely to get. In the normal way, solar flares do not occur often, but when one does, it can be powerful. I think the plans to cope with this should obviate any unreasonable danger of this kind. The dangerous effect of cosmic radiation is cumulative, and therefore further investigations are being made into possible hazards to members of crews Up to now it seems unlikely that the conclusion will point to the need for reduction in the normal total of hours they fly.
I realise quite well that there are financial risks involved in a project so large and advanced as this one, but they have to be weighed against the advantages. We believe that at present we have a lead over the rest of the world in this field, perhaps of several years, and that we should think most carefully before we decide not to participate in the production of the first supersonic civil airliner to go into service. If we did so decide, we should no longer be in the front rank of aircraft constructors, and to that extent I will admit the element of prestige to which the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, called our attention, as did my noble friend Lord Swinton. But that much-maligned word goes far beyond the mere waving of the national flag, because the specific project before the Government offers a unique opportunity for collaboration with France on a major industrial undertaking and harnessing for a common purpose the skill, resources, and experience of the combined French and British aircraft industries. Perhaps it is even
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a shape of things to come. I was extremely glad to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, had to say about this.
So far as our domestic aircraft industry is concerned, our declared policy is to maintain a strong and healthy industry, for both strategic and general economic reasons, and to assist the manufacturers to increase their share of the world market for a transport aircraft. If we were to abandon this project, it would indeed be a grave set-back to our hopes of remaining a major supplier of civil aircraft to the world's airlines in the 1970s.
Finally—and I should like the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, to listen to this——
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I am listening to all of it with great care.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Earl. I should have said, "listen especially". This project would present a major programme of advanced technology, from which benefits would flow to many other allied industries, in the fields of metals, non-metallic materials and fluids, electrics and electronics. That we should remain in the forefront of technological progress is not a matter of prestige, but a matter of survival; and this, too, is a most important consideration which the Government must weigh in reaching their decision.
The Anglo-French design has progressed to a degree unequalled by any other proposal that we know of in the world. We have a unique opportunity to exploit it. Even if the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, is right when he says that there must come a point when someone has to call, "Stop", this is not it. If we are going to exploit this, the time to do so is now.
6.26 p.m.
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: My Lords, I must thank everybody who has taken part in this debate, whether they agreed with me or not, because I have been interested in every point of view. Of course, if the Government had proposed to spend a lot of money on short-range aircraft, I should have been enthusiastically on their side, because nothing is more to my heart than making flying popular. But in this particular

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machine we have chosen a long-range machine; and it is in the long-range aircraft that civil aviation has failed. The people in the business never assessed how many people wanted to do these long journeys across the Atlantic, and we have ordered 707s costing £2 million each—with what result? There is not the traffic, and they cannot fill their machines even 50 per cent. That is the very traffic you are asking for this supersonic machine, because it is not a short-range machine; it must be automatically a long-range aeroplane.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the design actually calls for fewer passengers than the Boeing 707 and that the "breakeven" point comes with a considerably smaller number of passengers?
LORD BRABAZON OF TARA: My Lords, operators want as many passengers as they can get in order to get a pay-load which will try to wipe out these enormous overhead costs. But never mind.
The noble Lord's reply was extremely interesting, I must say, and I cordially agree that along the allied investigations into metal and that sort of thing there is great benefit in going on with an enterprise like this. Of course, he was
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only guessing over the cosmic light situation, because it cannot be imitated on the ground. The people on that side who are keen on this always forget that it is impossible to imitate a cosmic situation. Also, what are we to say on sonic boom? Everybody who is keen on designing this machine makes out that it is going to be a delightful experience to hear it in the middle of the night or at any time. We are guessing—we do not know. I do not mind guessing, but you are guessing with the taxpayers' money. You are going to make this machine. Good luck to it! I only regret that when it is finished I shall not have the privilege of saying, because people will not listen to me, "I told you so". I beg leave of the House to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, much as I should have liked to take part in this debate, I beg leave to move that this House do now adjourn.
Moved, That this House do now adjourn.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and House adjourned accordingly at half past six o'clock.