Lords Sitting of 18 December 1963

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chester
The Earl of Lindsay—Sat first in Parliament pursuant to the provisions of Section 4 of the Peerage Act, 1963.

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
2.34 p.m.
LORD COBBOLD: My Lords, I have the honour to present a Message from Her Majesty The Queen, signed by her own hand. The Message is as follows:
"I have received your Address praying that the Pensions Increase Acts (Extension) (No. 1) Order, 1963, be made in the form of a draft laid before your House on the 26th of November.
"I will comply with your request."

SCOTTISH HERRING FISHING INDUSTRY
LORD BOOTHBY: 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 are aware of the serious situation that has arisen in connection with the herring fishing industry on the West Coast of Scotland; and what steps they are proposing to take.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON): I am aware that a number of drift net fishermen were dissatisfied with the poor market response to landings of herring made by them at North-West Coast ports late in November and that they decided to discontinue herring fishing about three weeks earlier than is usual. The drifters have certainly not done as well during the autumn fishing in the Minch as they did last year, but this year they had better fishing in the summer
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months, and over the year as a whole the herring catchers have sold their catch for very much the same total price as last year.
Representatives of the catchers who saw my right honourable friend the Joint Under-Secretary this morning have asked that "oil and meal" subsidy arrangements should be changed to cover all surplus herring; but this could be done only by an amendment of the Order. My right honourable friend promised to discuss this with the Secretary of State for Scotland but was not able to hold out any promise of early action.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, arising out of that Answer, I should like to ask my noble friend whether it is not a fact—and I understand it is—that all the herring fishermen now ask is that the 25s. subsidy on meal and oil should be extended to cover all surplus herring landed from now until the end of January, just to tide them over a difficult time, and whether he does not think that that is a fairly reasonable price to pay for saving the herring fishing industry, which is now facing something nearly approaching destruction.
LORD CRAIGTON: My Lords, even if we wanted to do that, it would not be practicable because it can be done only by amendment of the Order. But although my right honourable friend will look at this matter most carefully, we are not wholly convinced that the situation is as serious as my noble friend has suggested.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, having eaten a herring for my breakfast this morning, may I inquire whether it was an all-purpose herring?

THE INDONESIA-MALAYSIAN FRONTIER
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any further statement to make on the military situation on the Indonesia-Malaysian frontier, which according to Press reports still continues to give cause for grave anxiety.]
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, I have nothing of substance to add to the statement which my right honourable friend the Minister of Defence made in another place on December 11 last. No significant event has been reported since that statement. As my noble friend knows, our forces are at present co-operating and will continue to co-operate with those of the Malaysian Government in the defence of Eastern Malaysia.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that statement, may I remind him that there have been repeated reports over the last week or ten days of military aggression across the frontier and violations of Malaysian air space and other acts of a warlike nature on the part of Indonesian forces? Can my noble friend give us any further information as to the consultations going on between ourselves and the Malaysian Government with a view to an approach to the Security Council of the United Nations, and possibly to the dispatch of a team of observers to the threatened area?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the question of the United Nations in this context was, as I am sure the House will recall, fairly fully discussed in supplementaries following on the Question which my noble friend put to my noble friend the Leader of the House on December 5 last, when he stated that this is essentially Malaysian territory and this is really a matter for the Malaysian Government.
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether we can take it from his first reply that there has been no great intensification of the fighting in Borneo during the last fortnight?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think that my noble friend can take it from the reply that what I have said was correct; that in the last week there has been no significant development in this particular area.
LORD REA: My Lords, would the noble Earl say whether the relationship with Indonesia has been completely broken off or whether there are still channels of approach through which some sort of solution might be arrived at by negotiation?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend realises that Her Majesty's Ambassador is still in situ—I think that is the correct expression.

UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTION ON PORTUGUESE TERRITORIES
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what instructions were given to the British Representative on the Security Council in regard to voting on the Ghana resolution on the overseas territories of Portugal, which was adopted by the Security Council on December 10.]
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, The United Kingdom Representative was instructed to vote for the resolution, subject to a separate vote on operative paragraph 3, on which he abstained, and to certain reservations on operative paragraph 4. The former referred to a previous resolution of the Security Council, on which the United Kingdom abstained, and the latter to a resolution of the General Assembly, on which the United Kingdom also abstained.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, this resolution was, of course, condemnatory of the Portuguese development of their overseas territories. May I ask my noble friend whether he is not aware that the Portuguese have in fact built up a completely multiracial society in their African Provinces; and that they are now giving them increasing rights of election on an entirely non-racial basis to the local councils, the district councils and the provincial councils? And, secondly, may I ask whether he is aware that under the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373, which we invoked in 1943 in order to get the Azores bases, it was laid down—and I quote:
"that as true and faithful friends they shall henceforth be friends to friends and enemies to enemies."?
Would it not, in the circumstances, have been more decent to have abstained, as did the French?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I do not agree that this resolution was

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condemnatory. Our vote on this resolution and the speech of the United Kingdom Representative simply showed our continued support for the application of the principle of self-determination to the Portuguese territories. This is quite a different matter, as my noble friend knows, from laying down how this shall be achieved.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, was this resolution proposed by Ghana? Is not Ghana the country in which the Chief Justice has just been dismissed for preferring law to tyranny? Cannot hypocrisy go too far, even in the United Nations?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I do not think my noble friend was asking me for information.

ARMS FOR SOUTH AFRICA
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: My Lords, with apologies to my noble friend the Leader of the House and to noble Lords for postponing it till to-day from Monday, 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 now intend to place an embargo on sales of arms and equipment to South Africa following the Security Council resolution of December 4; what is the estimated loss to British manufacturers; and what broad categories of arms and equipment are now deemed not to be subject to the Security Council resolution.]
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, following the Security Council resolution of December 4, as well as the resolution of August 7, the position of Her Majesty's Government is that we shall not export to South Africa arms, or material and equipment for the manufacture of arms, which would enable the policy of apartheid to be enforced. We made it clear in the Security Council that we reserved our position in regard to the continuing supply to South Africa of arms and equipment appropriate to the Republic's right to self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter particularly in view of our arrange-
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ment for co-operation in the protection of the sea routes. I am afraid that I cannot give any estimate of the possible loss to British manufacturers.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend if it is a fact that every Government, whether British, British Commonwealth, British Colonial or foreign, whether governed by arbitrary Government or democratic Government, or by any race, must supply its police with what might be called police arms for the maintenance of law and order? Is it proposed to sell such arms to South Africa? And is it or is it not proposed to continue to supply them to Basutoland?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I made it plain, I think, in my first answer, that the policy of Her Majesty's Government is not to export to South Africa arms, or material or equipment that could be made into arms, which would enable the policy of apartheid to be enforced. I think that that answers the question.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: No, my Lords. May I ask my noble friend to face this fact. It seems to me that he is evading it. Short of interfering with the policy of another country, which may or may not be a good thing to do, does it not remain a fact that police must be supplied with some arms, even in Britain, where we seldom use arms and deplore the use of them? Is it not a fact that the Labour Government and the present Government, and the next Labour Government, will be very remiss if they do not supply the police with arms for the maintenance of law and order? And is it our intention to deny South Africa and Basutoland the use of such arms?
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, may I ask him whether he does not think that it would be absolutely deplorable if Her Majesty's Government supplied the South African Government with arms for this purpose?
LORD CARRINGTON: Certainly, my Lords, that is the policy of Her Majesty's Government, as I have now said on two occasions. I am not trying to evade anything. I think that my noble friend is mistaken. What I said was that if the arms which would be

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supplied to South Africa were capable of enforcing apartheid, then they would not be supplied.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, is any pistol so capable?
LORD CARRINGTON: Every weapon is considered on its merits.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: What weapons will be supplied and what weapons will not be supplied to the police?
LORD BOOTHBY: None.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House, in view of the difficulty in differentiating between weapons that are capable of being used for defence and weapons that are capable of being used for internal intimidation, and in view of the fact that spare parts are being supplied from this country to South Africa—for example, for the Saracen armed personnel carrier, a weapon which has been used in South Africa for intimidation—whether the Government will reconsider the whole question of the sale of such weapons and spare parts, of any kind whatever?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, the policy of Her Majesty's Government has been reconsidered very recently, in the light of the decision we have to take on what to do on the resolution before the United Nations. I do not think that I can undertake that we will examine it again; but with regard to the applications for spare parts, of course they are all examined on their merits.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, will my noble friend say what they are going to do about Basutoland, and how law and order can be preserved there without police arms?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend will put down a special Question on Basutoland.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: It will be too late.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, will the embargo include sporting guns and 12, 16 and 20-bore shotguns, which technically could do
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harm? If we prevent their export, we may lose some very valuable markets, because British craftsmen still make the best sporting guns in the world.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I think it is very difficult, in question and answer of this kind, to say, off the cuff, which weapons will be and which will not be exported. What I have tried to do this afternoon is to explain to your Lordships the principles on which the Government's policy is based.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, will the Minister try to enforce the embargo in such a way that it will not harm that very valuable trade?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I will certainly look at that point.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House if the position is this? We have certain strategic defence commitments with South Africa: they are particularly naval. Would it not be quite reasonable if, apart from those commitments, the Government could interpret their Answer to-day as excluding anything else which could be used, inland and internally?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, the policy of Her Majesty's Government, I must say again, is that we will not export to the Republic of South Africa arms which can be capable of being used for the purpose of carrying out the policy of apartheid. That is the position of the Government at the present time.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is certain that the Government can draw this distinction between arms that can be used for naval protection and those that can be used for internal intimidation? May I ask him to draw the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the possible loss, not economic but in other fields, of the continuation of the supply of these arms? In this context, may I ask him to draw to the attention of the Minister a statement made by the Nigerian representative to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association at Kuala Lumpur, in the course of which he says:
"Nigerians cannot understand how the British Government can claim not to know that

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military aircraft which it is sending can be used over the veldt as well as over the sea routes around the Cape, and if the British Government continue to grant export permits for sending military aircraft to South Africa, it could give rise to a situation where many African States were forced with reluctance to envisage leaving the Commonwealth, when the former Mother Country acts towards her African children thus."
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am beginning to wish that the right reverend Prelate and his friends on my left would fire at my noble friends on my right and leave me out of this because I am obviously in a position halfway between the two. With regard to the right reverend Prelate's question, I have seen the statement to which he referred. All I would say is that I think we must be sensible about this. No one believes for one single moment that the South African Government are buying Buccaneers, extremely expensive aircraft, for the purpose of enforcing a policy of apartheid.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: My Lords, my noble friend has just said that Ministers have been in recent consultation about this matter. Must they not have decided at that time what type of arms on which to put an embargo and what type of arms may continue to be exported; and in these circum stances why is it so difficult to answer the last part of my Question, which asks merely for the broad categories of arms and equipment which are now deemed not to be subject to the Security Council resolution? If my noble friend is not able to answer the Question to-day, will he undertake, in view of the controversy which is apparent in your Lordships' House on this subject, to clarify the whole situation after the Recess?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, of course, I will do everything to help my noble friend. But what has happened is that Her Majesty's Government have established a policy in principle, and every issue must be decided on the basis of this principle.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, have we not arrived at a most curious position, where noble Lords opposite are seeking to bring pressure to bear on their own representatives in the Government to export arms to South Africa in the interests of the arms manufacturers in this country—?
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: Oh, no—bunkum!
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: That is what is in the Question on the Order Paper—despite the fact that the United Nations have recommended that this action should not be taken. It is absolutely terrible that in the middle of the 20th century, noble Lords should make these speeches.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, that does not seem to be either a question or addressed to me.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: The noble Lord asked for help.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, in view of my noble Leader's urging that we should be reasonable, and in spite of my noble friend Lord Boothby's decision, on behalf of the Government, what policy should be, and in the interests of employment, with due regard to the noble Lady, should we not agree that the dynamic buoyancy of South African economy will quickly enable them to provide for themselves all the arms that are needed for their own defence? Would it not seem, therefore, that this whole embargo complex is an aspect of the propaganda developed by the Afro-Asian bloc in the United Nations with the object of subordinating throughout Africa the interests of the whites to the non-whites? And, further, would he not say that there is in this propaganda a distinct resemblance to the current blackmail campaign being carried on by Arabs against the Hebrews?
LORD BOOTHBY: My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, may I ask him to bear in mind that Purdey's are at the moment in no urgent need of financial assistance?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I think it may well be true, as my noble friend behind me says, that in the end the South African Government will be able to manufacture their own arms. But I do not think that is the point. The point is that Her Majesty's Government do not think it right to sell these arms for the purpose of enabling the policy of apartheid to be enforced.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER: My Lords, may I ask the Leader of the

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House to take note that there is undoubtedly a growing public concern about this matter, as is evidenced by a recent resolution passed on Monday by the Executive Committee of the British Council of Churches? May I ask, therefore, that Her Majesty's Government will reconsider their policy in the light of these views?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I think I have answered that question already. I will, of course, take note of what the right reverend Prelate says; and I have noticed the resolution to which he has drawn attention.

DETAINEES IN ADEN
2.52 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask the Private Notice Question to which the Leader of the House referred last night: whether Her Majesty's Government are now able to make a statement on the present situation in the Aden Protectorate, in the light of the questions and answers in the House yesterday?
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): My Lords, the questions were raised in this House yesterday whether those persons detained during the present state of emergency in the Federation of South Arabia are able to obtain legal advice and aid should they wish to do so. I can now give the House an assurance that any of those detained can obtain advice from their legal advisers should they so wish. There is no full legal aid scheme such as we enjoy in this country operating in Aden. There is, however, provision for making available legal aid to anyone accused of a serious offence before the courts who is not in a position to pay legal fees. I might add that there are a number of lawyers among those detained.
Under this present public emergency decree made by the Supreme Council it is specifically stated that anyone detained thereunder may appeal to a tribunal, the chairman of which would be appointed by the Chief Justice, for his case to be reviewed. Copies of the emergency decree under which these
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detentions have taken place have been sent for from Aden, and a copy will be placed in the Library of the House as soon as it is available.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, it may be rather difficult for some of us to come to the House to refer to it during the Christmas vacation. Perhaps the Minister will have the courtesy to send me a copy as soon as he has it. I hope he thinks now that we were not quite so much out of order, and did not make mistakes in thinking who we were, in putting our questions yesterday. I am obliged by the Answer the noble Duke has given. We shall look upon the rest of the information which comes to us with great interest. I hope very much that the lawyers among the people interned at present without any charge will be able so to act that they will be brought to trial as soon as possible.
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, I will certainly see that a copy of the decree is sent to the noble Earl. I should like to take this opportunity of saying how sorry I am if I appeared in any way discourteous to the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition, who is infinitely more experienced in the ways of the House than I am. I can only assure him that I intended no discourtesy.
LORD FRASER OF LONSDALE: My Lords, have the Government of Aden any police arms? If so, who supplied them, and what are they for?
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, I think I shall have the House with me when I say that that is an entirely different question.

EPISCOPAL CHURCH (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to remove a disability restricting the clergy of the Episcopal Church in Scotland in the exercise of their office in England, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read la,—(Lord Polwarth.)
On Question, Bill read 1a; and to be printed.

CRIMINAL APPEAL BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to enable the Court of Criminal Appeal to order new trials in cases of fresh evidence; to make corresponding provision for new trials by court-martial; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read la, and to be printed.

STANDING ORDERS OF THE HOUSE
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That Standing Order No. 44A (Printing of Bills brought from the Commons) be amended as follows: —
Leave out ("on a day on which") and insert ("at a time when").—(Lord Carrington.)
On Question, Motion agreed to; the said Amendment made, and to be printed.

BUILDING SOCIETIES (SPECIAL ADVANCES) ORDER, 1963
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, your Lordships will recall that one of the main objectives of the Building Societies Act, 1960, was to ensure that building societies concentrated mainly on their proper and traditional rôle of lending money on the security of owner-occupied houses. It was found difficult to formulate a satisfactory legal definition of owner-occupied; the object was achieved however by creating the class of "special advances", to include all advances made by building societies to any corporate body (as distinct from advances made to individuals) and all advances of more than £5,000. Special advances were to be restricted in any year to a maximum of 10 percent. of a society's total advances. The Act contains power to vary the figure of £5,000.
Since 1960 not only has there been a general rise in the price of houses,
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varying from one part of the country to another, but there has also been an in creasing demand for the more expensive type. There has been full consultation with all concerned, and agreement has been reached that the figure should now go up from £5,000 to £7,000, a figure which should remain appropriate for some time. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Building Societies (Special Advances) Order, 1963, be approved.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

DEVELOPMENT OF CENTRAL SCOTLAND AND NORTH-EAST ENGLAND.
2.57 p.m.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM)THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM) rose to move to resolve, That this House takes note of the White Papers on Central Scotland and the North-East (Cmnd. 2188 and 2206). The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I hope your Lordships will accept my apologies if, because of urgent Government business, I am unable to be present in the House during all the later stages of the debate. The reasons for the present problems of unemployment in Central Scotland and the North-East are, I think, essentially different from what they have been in the past. The problems arise to-day from the fact that these areas were to a substantial extent the cradle of our Industrial Revolution. The availability of coal and iron ore was the basis of our industrial development, and, consequently, the iron and steel industry, and major users of steel, especially the ship building industry, were located in these areas.
As the manpower requirements in the older industries, such as coal, ship building, railways and heavy engineering, have shrunk, we are faced with structural unemployment here to a greater extent, I think, than in other parts of the country. The need for greater diversification, by bringing in new growth industries, has therefore become increasingly urgent. New jobs created by the Government have not made up for the decline in jobs that is

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going on in the contracting industries. We want to press on, therefore, with diversification in order to ensure that the people of these regions are able to make their full contribution to national prosperity. We aim, broadly, to bring work to the people rather than people to the work.
The special employment difficulties of Central Scotland and the North-East are, I think, best illustrated by the employment figures. Their unemployment rates have for a long time been substantially higher than those of the rest of the country, and the recent November figures show that unemployment is still running at 4.5 per cent. in the Northern Region, and 4.2 per cent. in Scotland, compared with—and this is the point—1.2 per cent. in London and 1.4 per cent. in the Midlands. It was for these reasons that we put in hand full inquiries into these two areas, where I think all noble Lords, on both sides of the House, would agree that the problems were greatest. The inquiries by the Lord President in the North-East and by the Secretary of State for Scotland into Central Scotland suggested long term measures which were needed to stimulate the economic development of the areas as a whole, and these recommendations are contained in the two White Papers of which I am asking the House to take note.
Before I deal with these recommendations, I want to mention how the process of adjustment in Scotland and the North-East has already been helped by the Government's policy of limiting the expansion of industry in the more congested areas and, at the same time, offering inducements to industry to go to the areas where it is most needed. These inducements, as noble Lords will remember, have been made much more attractive recently. It was, in fact, in the Local Employment Act of this year that we brought in standard grants for plant and buildings, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced in this year's Budget free depreciation, so that all firms in development districts could choose the rate at which they could write off capital expenditure on plant and machinery. Here I think I have good news to tell your Lordships, because since the 1963 Budget the response has been really
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encouraging. The Board of Trade have received no fewer than 1,266 applications for the new standard grants. Of these, 392 are for Central Scotland and 374 for the North-East; and they are, of course, in addition to the continuing flow of applications for Board of Trade loans and Board of Trade factories. The significant point is that the total rate at which projects have come forward for Board of Trade assistance has been more than three times as great as in the previous year.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, could the noble Viscount help us? These are interesting figures of the number of applications. Could the noble Viscount say how many have been accepted?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: I cannot, off-hand; but I will see whether, in the course of the debate, one of my noble friends is able to answer the question put forward by the noble Lord. These are all applications which have been received and on various dates have been dealt with by the Board of Trade.
I was discussing the programme of advanced factory building. Since the beginning of 1962, plans for 32 have been announced, and 28 of them are for Scotland and the North-East: in fact, 16 for Scotland and 12 for the North-East. Of these 32, we expect 15 to be completed by the end of this year, and a further 8 during the first half of 1964. We expect most of them to be let by the time they are completed, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Industry is considering the possibility of further advance factory building. In addition, before the White Papers on Scotland and the North-East were published we had, of course, already begun to increase the share of these two areas in social investment of roads, housing and education. Again, as your Lordships will recall, we have offered special credit facilities to the shipbuilding industry to the extent of £75 million. The effects of this shipbuilding loan scheme have been felt, naturally, in all the shipbuilding areas, of which Scotland and the North-East are the largest.
Our restraints on industrial expansion in the more congested parts of the country will continue. They have been, and are, an essential part in our efforts

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to steer industry into the development districts. One cannot prohibit all expansion and industrial building in congested areas. For example, some expansions must be close to the parent firm, and some industries with a special local market cannot be expected to operate elsewhere. Again, service industries need to be close to their customers. I must say that I was very surprised that in connection with the proposals made in another place recently for the future use of the Woolwich Arsenal, I noticed that the Opposition urged that industry should be brought into the area. One really cannot have it both ways. It has been argued that we are too lenient with developments in the more congested areas, but I am sure that many firms in Birmingham and the South-East would testify that we are in fact very tough indeed. I should like to assure your Lordships that we intend to continue to be so.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: You are going to set up arms production in Nottingham, are you not?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: Yes, but the proposition put forward by the Opposition in another place was that the factory space occupied by the Woolwich Arsenal should be reserved for more new industry coming in. That is the point I was making to your Lordships.
I should now like to deal with the main recommendations of my right honourable friends the Lord President, on the North-East, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, on Central Scotland. In particular, they recommended that increased activity in the whole of the areas could be generated by concentrating efforts to diversify the industrial structure, and to improve the whole range of services in those places which have the conditions most favourable to self-sustaining growth. They also laid great stress on the growth points concept. I do not think I need explore fully the history of this concept of regional development. It was set out in the Toothill Report on the Scottish economy, and the National Economic Development Council in its Report on Conditions Favourable to Faster Growth, said:
"It is possible that regional development would benefit if policies were directed towards larger areas than at present and towards the
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encouragement of growth points within these areas."
I think there has been a general welcome for our acceptance of this growth area policy. The areas have been very carefully chosen, with special attention to factors such as the availability of land for factories and houses, the presence of labour resources and water supplies, good communications, or the possibility of providing communications if they do not exist, and of an existing nucleus of industry.
There has been some criticism of the exclusion of certain contiguous development districts. I think this was bound to happen. Whenever you draw a dividing line, immediately those on the wrong side of the line inevitably feel keenly disappointed. But we have to recognise that concentration of our resources inevitably involves exclusion, and our resources are obviously not unlimited. If we try to spread the special advantages too widely, they really become valueless as inducements to the better distribution of economic activity, which I think all of us consider to be essential.
I believe your Lordships would agree that if we look at Scotland and the North-East, we find that both these areas have great natural attractions. They are surrounded by beautiful countryside to which there is much readier access by everyone than is available to those of us who live in the Midlands and the South. The quality and skill, and the character of their people are excellent. In visits I have made to both Scotland and the North-East in recent years, I have been constantly impressed by the spontaneous tributes by management coming from the Midlands and the South, or from the United States and other foreign countries, about the excellence of the labour force and the adaptability which it shows in settling down to new factory techniques. Here is a first-class labour force, only too willing to make its contribution. We are taking positive steps to match both its natural attractions and the character of its people by improving communications, housing and town centres, by accelerating the clearance of derelict land and by improving training, education and health services, so that we can ensure that these areas will become increasingly places in which employers and workers will be proud to live.

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The particular significance of the growth area concept rests, I think, mainly on the increase in the public service investments which we propose for these areas. Central Scotland and the North-East have about 13 per cent. of the total population of Great Britain, but we propose to spend in these areas no less than £210 million, which represents 17½ per cent. of the total for Great Britain, and to increase this in 1964–65 to £230 million, more than 18 per cent. of the national total. This is, therefore, a deliberate and substantial discrimination in favour of these areas. Very large sums are involved. Take the road programme. New or improved highways are going to link Glasgow and Edinburgh, the docks on the Forth and Clyde, and the airports at Prestwick, Abbotsinch and Turnhouse. Improved communications between the A.1 and the Tyne Tunnel and a new route for the A.19 will, as far as the North-East is concerned, greatly improve communications there. Then, of course, we have the new towns at Washington and Cram-lington in the North-East, and the great expansion of existing new towns in both the North-East and Scotland, which will, again, in turn, involve considerably large extra sums of expenditure.
The measures we have agreed upon in the White Papers for Central Scot land and the North East are, as your Lordships appreciate, not short-term. They cannot make dramatic changes in the next few months, and it is no use anybody pretending they will. But they are intended to do what they are designed to do; that is, to ensure permanent and long-term improvement. I should like to stress the objectives of our regional development policy: to secure a more even spread of economic activity; to preserve the character of the individual regions; and to effect a more even improvement of the general quality of life in those regions. The differences in employment prospects between the Midlands and the South, to which I have drawn attention, and those two regions must be evened out and a much fairer balance achieved than exists to day. For this reason we have firmly pledged that, even if it were necessary to moderate the growth of public service investment in the country as a whole, exceptions would be made for these
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growth areas, where the programmes will be maintained so long as the necessary resources are available. I hope your Lordships will agree that this is a unique and very significant pledge.
In addition, we have decided that some assurance ought to be given of the continued availability of assistance to new or expanding industries; to new industries which go there, and industries already within those areas which seek to expand. We shall not, therefore, regard a fall in the local unemployment rate in any part of the growth area as sufficient in itself to justify the removal of that area from the list of development districts. In other words, under present assistance arrangements any removal will require strong evidence of a general and sustained improvement in the region as a whole. I think these are important points for your Lordships to consider.
May I now turn to the machinery for carrying out our intentions? My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is responsible for carrying out the plan as far as Central Scotland is concerned, and his main instrument will be the Scottish Development Group, which comprises representatives of the Scottish Departments and of the other Departments concerned. The Scottish Development Group will confer in detail with local authorities, with industrial interests and, of course, with the Scottish Council (Development and Industry); and I am very glad to notice that the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, Chairman of the Council, is going to speak later in the debate. I have seen for myself the great contribution he and his Council have made in securing new industrial development for Scotland. In fact, the last time I saw my noble friend was in the early autumn when he was just about to go over to America to attract new firms from there to Scotland.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask whether the list of machinery set up for Scotland specially excludes the Scottish Trades Union Congress?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: I said that it would confer with industrial interests, which certainly does not exclude the trade unions.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I should like the "industrial interests" to include the trade unions.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: I have noted what the noble Lord has said. The industrial interests would, naturally, include the trade unions.
I have noticed that in another place the Labour Party spokesman suggested that, so far as the Labour Party is concerned, they would establish, as he described it,
"a real regional organisation with regional controllers of each of the Departments concerned in each regional capital, working regularly together.…"
I really do not know what he was complaining about, because I consider that our arrangements both for Scotland, which I have just outlined, and for the North-East, fit pretty well into what he had in mind. May be the noble Earl will have something to say about this.
In the North-East, we propose to work through the regional representatives of Whitehall Departments, who form, under the chairmanship of the Under-Secretary in charge of regional development in the Board of Trade, what is called the North-East Development Group. This Group will meet frequently and will have a direct link through its Chairman with my right honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development. The Group will also co-ordinate the implementation of the plans in the White Paper. I do not really think there is all that amount of difference (although the noble Earl may say that there is) between what the Labour Party have in mind and what, in fact, we actually propose. We strongly believe that this is the right way to get speedy and effective action in the region. Existing Departments have a wealth of knowledge and experience within their existing responsibilities; their regional representatives are senior and responsible people, and I think they have shown by their enthusiasm the full measure with which co-operation will be gained within this North-East Development Group.
In addition to the concern that all of us feel about the level of unemployment as a whole in these two areas, what worries the majority most is the position
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of the unemployed young people. In Scotland, between August and November, it is true, youth unemployment fell by 49 per cent. and in the North-East by 52 per cent., compared with the bigger fall in Great Britain as a whole of 64 per cent. These falls were due to the placing of school-leavers in jobs. In November, boys and girls unemployed in Scotland amounted to 5,600, a better figure than in November of last year when it was 7,000, but still far too high, In the North-East there were 5,885 young unemployed compared with the lower figure of 5,389 in November, 1962. I am hopeful that this fall in the youth unemployment will continue to be shown. We have not yet had the December figures but I hope that an improvement will be shown when these figures are known. Many local education authorities are playing their part in encouraging children to stay on at school and by providing special courses of a strongly vocational character which are open to young unemployed people. But, of course, only the increased diversification which I have stressed earlier in my speech can bring about a long-term solution to this problem.
In the short term the Government are anxious to see a further development of training opportunities both in the North-East and in Scotland, although again I think we must be aware that in the first eleven months of this year 39 per cent. of boys entering employment in the North-East obtained apprenticeships and 38 per cent. in Scotland, compared with the lower figure for Great Britain as a whole of 33·5 per cent. A considerable expansion of facilities for training is under way, and the special needs of Scotland and the North-East have been recognised by allotting more than half of the new places in Government training centres to those areas. We are also encouraging the work of the North-East Training Council with financial assistance, whose operation is at the moment on Tees-side, and we look forward to the future growth of the Council's activity throughout the whole of the North-East. Six first-year apprenticeship classes are being run at Government training centres at Hillington, Motherwell and Granton, and two more will be started in the course of next year.
But, of course, again in the long term, the Industrial Training Bill, which I

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hope will be shortly coming to your Lordships' House, will I believe make a very major advance in the whole of training. The Training Boards which will be set up under the Bill are designed to ensure that methods of training that exist in this country to-day are brought more universally up to date—they are good in parts and bad in other parts—and standards improved to see that all young people, not merely apprentices, should be given when they come into industry particular forms of training suitable to them. They will also provide retraining for adults who become redundant in the contracting industries and who wish to move into the new and expanding industries, and one sees how important this is when one looks at the shortage which exists in so many parts of this country to-day in the skills in the building and engineering industries.
So far, my Lords, I do not think I have struck a very controversial note, and I do not intend to do so. But I should like to examine what are the main respects in which the Labour Party seem to differ from our policy. When I was in another place many Members of the Opposition used to urge on me and my colleagues that we should direct industry to places where it is needed. To be fair—and the noble Earl will contradict me if I am wrong—I do not believe this is the policy that has been officially accepted by the leaders of the Opposition. But I must make it clear to your Lordships that we are not prepared to direct industry. We do not believe it would work in a free society, and certainly among the consequences they would have to direct labour as well as industry itself. Therefore, we shall continue to rely on inducements and on persuasion.
The Opposition, I know, has urged that projects should be launched in partnership between private enterprise and the Government. This, of course, can happen in certain circumstances, and I will cite the Fort William Pulp Mill as an example where that in fact has been done. But, in general, it seems to me that our existing arrangements, under which substantial grants and loans can be given if industry goes where we want it to go without the Government interfering in the detailed
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operations of the particular firm, can surely be described as the best type of partnership that can exist between Government and private enterprise. I certainly do not think that active participation by the Government in the management of the firms prepared to move to development districts would in fact be anything but disastrous.
The Opposition have not taken any very clear position, as I see it, on our policy of discriminatory public investment in the growth areas. So far as I can gather from what was indicated in another place, their policy seemed to me to be to
"schedule all under-employed industrial areas as development areas, without any muddled distinctions between growth areas and development districts".
I do not think there is any muddle in our White Papers. I think they make very clear the significance of what those areas are. Of one thing I am absolutely certain—I have indicated this earlier. If the Opposition seem to be thinking of spreading this power more widely, in fact to offer equal priority for public service investment to every area with unemployment above the average would in fact nullify our intention to stimulate economic growth where conditions are most favourable and where growth in time will stimulate the whole of the surrounding area.
The noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, is to move the Amendment on the Order Paper and I understand he may divide the House on it. I hope he will—and I am sure he will; 1 have a great respect for him—provide better reasons than were produced by his colleagues in another place when this matter was debated. Unless he really has new arguments to produce, I fail to see why he should seek to divide the House. To-day we see a general improvement in our economic position. We can successfully maintain that progress if we gain co-operation from both sides of industry—and I would repeat, both sides of industry—to control inflationary tendencies by keeping down costs and prices and making prices stable. The improvement that we see over the country as a whole has been reflected in Scotland and the North-East, and our short-term measures are beginning to have some effect. But, as I have indicated, these are short-term

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measures only. In order to make full use of resources of manpower and skills in these areas it was essential that we should make special plans to deal with the long-term problems. The plans that we have set out show the part that the Government themselves intend to play, but the results that we hope to achieve cannot be wholly brought about by Government action. As a Government we are playing our part in the public sector, and we are convinced that by so doing we can make these areas attractive to new industries. We can also, by providing very considerable financial inducements, encourage firms to come up.
We believe that the steps we are taking as set out in the White Papers will, so long as industry responds to these inducements and so long as this partnership concept—the Government playing their part in the way I have described and industry taking a solid and responsible attitude on their side—is accepted when the recommendations come into effect, bring new life, new hope and new vigour both to Scotland and to the North-East, and we believe they deserve the commendation of this House. I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That this House takes note of the White Papers on Central Scotland and the North-East (Cmnd. 2188 and 2206).—(Viscount Blakenham.)
3.30 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH rose to move, as an Amendment, to add at the end of the proposed Resolution "but is of the opinion that these proposals fail to ensure an immediate substantial reduction in unemployment and fail to provide for regional development considered necessary to prevent depopulation and long-term unemployment within those areas."
The noble Earl said: My Lords, first of all I should like to thank the noble Viscount for having given the Government's point of view as to the contents of the White Papers and also their objectives, at least as they see them. I would only comment—in case he has to slip out, as he said, from the debate—that I think this is one of our most important debates this Session, and unless you have to put something on to the back of the Leader of the House, we think
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we are entitled to the full attendance of a Cabinet Minister. I do not know exactly what is the urgent business outside, but we are not accustomed to a debate of this importance being introduced by a Cabinet Minister and then for him to say he will have to leave during the debate.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: My Lords, I hope to be here for most of the debate. I did not want to appear discourteous to some later speakers if I was absent.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I hope the absence may be brief. I thought I had better point out what is the usual practice for all Parties. I am quite sure that when we are the Government, in a few months' time, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, would point this out to our side. As the noble Viscount is almost a "new boy" here, I thought it would be as well to point that out.
My Lords, we are of course, dealing with a vastly important question. We are dealing with a question which has been with me all my public life: how to deal with unemployment in a capitalistic system, and that has been with us all the time. It never left me, at any rate in all the public life I have had to live. But when I look at the change in the attitude of the Conservative Government over the years, then I think perhaps the slogging and the working and the argument of organised labour in this country to bring about such a tremendous revolution in the minds, in the thinking, and now in the endeavour to produce a satisfactory policy to deal with this problem, has been worth while. What we are afraid of, as we say in our Amendment, is that the White Papers submitted do not provide, as we think, the necessary provision for reducing unemployment at the present time; nor do they satisfactorily lead to an organisation of industry and the nation in order to prevent unemployment in the future. That is the object of our exercise this afternoon.
The position is this. I have read the debate in the other place, and I have really not heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, if he will excuse my saying so, an adequate answer to the magnificent case submitted there by Mr. Douglas Jay. Unfortunately, it is too close to the date of the debate there

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for me to break a rule that we must not quote from another place within so short a time as this; but if it were possible to do so, I think I could prove my case easily upon that point.
One of the first things that we have to say is this: in dealing with the problem facing our nation as a whole we miss, in the White Papers which have just been submitted for these two regions only, the evidence of any real thinking about targets. I would ask the Government: what are your targets? What are you planning for? How many jobs have you to create now, and how many progressively for the next decade or two decades in the areas? Where do you want the personnel to be trained, and for what? The Government talk about the real necessity for changing certain habits of industrialists in setting up their industries here or there, and say that this point can be dealt with only by what is called diversification. What is their target in diversification? Have they considered, in connection with diversification, what is to be the exact target of their youth training? I was most interested and pleased at the announcement of the noble Viscount with regard to the growing success in these areas of apprenticeship. But apprenticeship to what? What is going to be their ultimate target for diversification, and in what direction? I think the noble Viscount will find, if he looks at some of the economic newspapers which have been commenting on the White Papers, that they have not been unmindful of some of the points that I have mentioned to-day.
Then there is the question, when these two particular White Papers are studied, whether the Government are not, in fact, in each of the Papers, pleading guilty to the charge that they are planning in isolation. I would go wider than some of those who have criticised from the point of view of their reference entirely to the White Papers, but certainly Scotland has areas which are left out. There are beautiful red colours shown in Central Scotland in the Scottish White Paper. What has been left out? The Government are planning in isolation. I do not propose to look in detail at the areas in Scotland, because my noble friend Lord Hughes will know a great deal more about the Scottish side of the case than I could. But obviously,
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if big inducements are to be given in special areas of this kind, just in one part of the country, the question arises: is there in the Government's mind a target as to what they want to reach, or to avoid, in all the other areas that are left out? How many do you want to divert from the existing areas? How many industries do you want to be transferred, either in small numbers at a time or in blocks? I can see no evidence in the White Papers that, on the basis of true economic planning, this question has really been faced.
Let us look at the North-East—but perhaps, before I come to that I may make this comment. It is, of course, true, in a correct judgment of Parliamentary procedure, that one could say that to-day we are confined to discussing these points in respect only of the two White Papers that are submitted. But I am afraid that we think we are also right in saying that we should go a little wider. We want to deal not only with what is left out in the development areas in respect of which these White Papers submit their proposals, but also with what is left out at this stage, especially when the noble Viscount who is Chairman of the Conservative Party Organisation is already warning us in his speech today, "you cannot expect to work wonders in two months' time from now". Is that the date of the Election? Therefore, we have to think of the whole country, and not only of these two White Papers—especially after that remark from the Chairman of the Conservative Party Organisation.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: My Lords, in order that there should not be any misconception, I did not use the words "two months". I think the noble Earl will see that I said "some months".
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: No; it was two months. We shall watch Hansard most carefully. Our hearing is exceedingly good. Therefore, we say that we have to consider at the same time these other, wider-spread development areas.
I am sure that, if the noble Viscount has taken so much part in the Government's consideration of these matters he cannot have missed reading, say, the Report of the Welsh Grand Committee

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last week. I read it; I hope he has. At any rate, here is a great Principality, with far greater population than is contained in the two special areas now selected in Scotland and England. Last February the unemployment rate was 6 per cent. overall. In some of the different parts of Wales to-day there are points where the rate is as high as 8 per cent. I am happy to think that the overall percentage there has gone down since last February, and I hope that it will remain down. But the whole position of Wales certainly should have been treated with much more urgency than appears to have been the case. Indeed, when we read that it is hoped that the planning for Wales will be over a much longer period—20 years or more—it does not seem to fit in with the ideas of more progressively minded people in Wales. I do not think it would be right for me to discuss Wales at length. I am only saying that this is a part of planning at the present time in isolation. Wales is left out of account.
What about Cornwall? There is over 5 per cent. unemployment there. It may have fallen 1 per cent. in the last few months, but it was 5 per cent. earlier in the year. Nothing is mentioned about them. What about Merseyside? We put points forward in the other place about that, and our Party there were given no real answer; and we have not had one to-day from the noble Viscount. We have heard nothing about what is going to be done there. As for the inner parts of Lancashire—areas like Burnley, with all its intense troubles to-day; what are you doing for them? What about the North-West? What about Cumberland and the coast there? You are planning in isolation in those places. I feel almost like saying to any Welshman who is here, "Look you!" Please understand, that your planning here to-day in these two areas is going to have an effect on all the others.
What have you considered a target as to what you want to do in your reconstruction of the economy, so that you do not have the result of the last twelve years—almost complete freedom of action arranged by the Government to swell up London and its suburbs, and other parts of the South, at the expense of other industrial areas? Are you going to make that good as a
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whole? You do not say a word about it.
The noble Viscount seems to suggest that the men who have been established in the great industrial Government organisation at Woolwich, who have been in steady employment, who have bought their own houses and live in the area, in Woolwich, in the suburbs of Eltham, Abbey Wood and in other districts, do not need to be considered. The noble Viscount does not seem to think that labour has any real interest in it. That is not the right way to settle this overall question. These things ought to be dealt with by proper economic planning in which every kind of target is set, and then if it is found to be right it is pursued. But I am amazed that, after our having had to say, "Well done, Conservatives!", for at last giving up the cry that you had in the 1950 and 1951 Elections of "Set the people free! No controls!", there are now apparently no targets except to keep the Labour Party out of office. There seem to be no other targets. As a result, we now have a national Budget well over 50 per cent. larger than it was, owing to inflation which could have been avoided quite easily under really top-class planning. That is the situation.
Let me come back to the White Paper on North-East England. How does it work there? My noble friend Lord Hughes will be dealing with Scotland a little later. The Government are planning in isolation. Am I not right in saying that the whole of Durham is a development area—is that not true?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: Not the whole, no.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I should say that the whole of Durham is reckoned to be a development area, except that in the plan now submitted there is going to be started what is called a growth zone. Is that not correct? That is the fact. In the White Paper the area is coloured green on the map. I agree that it is a widespread area. It gives all to the East Coast side—that is to say, East of the Great North Road; but all the rest, the North-West and the South-West of Durham, is left altogether out of this question of growth zone. But are not

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these points that specially need assistance, as well as the assistance the Government have rightly given to the shipbuilding industry?
One can take places like Bishop Auckland, Willington, Crook, Stanley—places like that, in the declining coalfield: these are the areas which are likely to suffer depopulation. Is there not need to stop the drift? Does not the White Paper itself say that in ten years 80,000 people have gone from that area to the South? Not a word about it here. Well, perhaps I am not being quite fair; it is assumed in the White Paper that if you can get some growth in the zone marked for special assistance, it is bound to affect the other places. Is it? We do not know anything about what is going to be there, except for the blessed word "diversification"; there is no other information available to us. When I look at the lack of targets in the whole of this White Paper, I am just astounded at the calmness and quietness of the Government in thinking that they have already made a great success of it.
I know it is a good thing to be able to say that the Government are giving special inducements to firms, who not only are to be helped by loans, capital, special conditions, grants and so on, but are to be given special concessions with regard to taxation—and, not the least, the capacity for dealing with what are usually called depreciation charges by writing off even new developments at a very early date. These are all very important. In drawing up these considerations have you considered the effect on the rest of industry in the country, until you know the target in the industry which you are going to put in that area? In fact, if you are going in for a regional scheme of this kind, then other questions arise, for the economy of the country as a whole depends on the depth and the breadth of the Government's examination of the problem.
When you talk about the industrial inquiries you are making and say that this is to include new schools, new hospitals, new roads and the building of factories (a number of which have already been mentioned), have you considered the problem of skilled labour in actual building construction? You have
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given certain guarantees of what the actual expansion should be in house-building. Have you considered the present position in regard to skilled building labour? I saw a comment the other day that a very considerable proportion, some 10 to 20 per cent., of skilled building constructors were employed in the shipyards; but they have now got to reckon that they will certainly not need much more than 20 per cent. less than that because of the general decline in the shipbuilding industry. So that on every aspect of this matter one sees that the Government have not considered what labour is available for building construction. At least, I could find no indication of it in the noble Viscount's speech.
What sort of pace will be made with the actual operations proposed in regard to the construction of factories, the building of roads and the various activities which have been mentioned? The targets ought to be set out in the White Paper—and they are not here. We are going to leave it to a machinery which the noble Viscount has commented upon. He has made favourable comments about the construction of the machinery for the Scottish area, and I will leave that to my noble friend Lord Hughes; but looking at the White Paper on North-East England, we see that the target there is not a true target. No particulars are given as to what it is proposed to construct; no particulars of which trades and industries they are going to train for; no particulars as to what is going to be done immediately and effectively to deal with the pockets of unemployment in Durham, details of which I should like to know.
May I ask the noble Viscount, for example: is it true that West Hartlepool has now been taken out of the zone on the East side? Is it true that Saltburn at the South-Eastern end has been taken out of—or in fact was never put into—the growth zone? Saltburn has an unemployment percentage of 10·9—say 11 per cent. Although Hartlepool has recently had some little help in shipping and its percentage has dropped, the figure of unemployed is still one of 8 per cent. What sort of target have you there? I can assure the noble Viscount, when he makes the comments he has done about the Opposition's attitude in the other House, in regard to the

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lack of constructive thinking and real economic planning, that I do not think he has met our point in this House, either. When I lock at the White Paper and see what it says about the machinery, the main idea—I expect it must have been his own idea—in the mind of one whom we must now call Mr. Quintin Hogg seems to be that if we can put all into one house, the D.S.I.R. and the other Departments—I think altogether there are four or five separate Departments, with staffs of civil servants—that is the answer. I have to admit that that is not really the basis of the plan for machinery in Scotland; that seems to be a better plan than the one for the North-East of England.
But we are not satisfied. I am sorry to have taken quite so long—I did not want to take so long—because there are eighteen names on the Paper, and I do not want to go on too late tonight. But there it is. We think that we are right in putting down our Amendment, and that the Government have no real plan or target for dealing with immediate unemployment or for preventing unemployment in the future. I beg to move.
Moved, as an amendment, to add at the end of the proposed Resolution:
"but is of the opinion that these proposals fail to ensure an immediate substantial reduction in unemployment and fail to provide for regional development considered necessary to prevent depopulation and long-term unemployment within those areas."—(Earl Alexander of Hillsborough.)
3.52 p.m.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will accept my apologies if, by reason of diocesan engagements in York, I have to leave before this debate is completed. Those of us who live and work in the North of England, and especially those who live in the North-East part and those who live in Scotland, are grateful for these White Papers. A programme for development and growth is called for and we welcome it. There is one facet of the problems which face us in the North-East of England, particularly, on which I should wish to speak. It is the matter of unemployment; and more particularly I want to say something about unemployment as it affects young people.
Here is a problem of first importance. The figures, of course, vary from month to month. They are aggravated by the
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"bulge". But when Lord Hailsham, as he then was, visited the North-East early this year, the unemployment figures of those under 18 were 5,684 boys and a much smaller figure for girls. I believe there are still some 6,000 young people unemployed, while there are tens of thoustands who have slipped into dead-end jobs in order to get some kind of employment, however unsuitable it may be. Some of these youngsters get three, four, five, six or even seven jobs between the age of 15, when they leave school, and the age of 18, when no further statistics are available; and we do not know what happens to them because they are treated as adults.
But, leaving them on one side for a moment, let us look at those who are actually unemployed. We cannot say that these unemployed young people are depressed in the sense that we used that term in the 1930s, which have left so terrible an impression on many of our minds—and I speak as one of those who worked very nearly in the East End of London in the middle 'thirties. They are not broken people in the sense that those were, but in some ways their plight is worse than was that of those who were unemployed in the 1930s. Then almost everyone in certain areas was out, and even those with work were badly off. But to-day, with comparative affluence everywhere, the 5 per cent. of unemployed feel themselves terribly isolated in society. The unemployment rate for a youngster on National Assistance is 37s. a week. That is enough for him to do a good deal of mischief with, if he is so inclined. It is sufficiently little for him to be made to feel cut off from his working mates and to occupy the rôle of a scrounger. It makes him think that a society which has no use for him is not worth having. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if he and his fellow unemployed prove to be troublesome members of society.
Let us look at the problem a little more closely. Of the class of secondary modern schoolboys who leave at the age of 15, about 40 per cent. have no worthwhile qualifications. They are not of the calibre to take apprenticeships. It will simply not do to concentrate on the other 60 per cent. only. The State has a duty to all its citizens, and it would be a dereliction of duty to ignore the 40 per cent. to whom I have just

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referred. In many cases these boys have not gained a great deal during their last year or two at school. They have probably hated it, they have probably kicked against the traces, waiting only for the day when at the mature age of 15 they will be "men of the world". What do they find?—either no work at all or, as I have already said, dead-end jobs; jobs which lead nowhere worth while when they are 18 and the responsibilities of early marriage and a family are upon them.
What is called for in the light of the facts that I have outlined? Two things seem to me to be clear. One is that a diversification—I come back to that "blessed word"—of industry in the North-East is needed. Too long we have relied too heavily on heavy industry, coal mining, shipbuilding, chemicals, metal manufacture, heavy engineering, markets for which may well decrease as each potential customer becomes more self-sufficient in supplying his own needs.
Very recently—last month to be exact—an interesting experiment was carried out. A party of 55 boys, accompanied by four police cadets and two industrial chaplains, left the Sunderland area by coach for London on a visit which was called a "Holiday with a Purpose". It was an attempt on the part of the Church to deal realistically and helpfully with a pressing human problem. Of these 55 boys, 44 got jobs in London and eight elsewhere. This is very good, and Mr. Godber, the Minister of Labour, who spent half-an-hour with all these boys and their Members of Parliament, congratulated those who initiated the scheme. He said:
"I want to say most emphatically that we will he glad to give all the help we can, not only to this group but also to others that can be organised to come either to London or to other parts of the country where greater opportunities exist for them. I do not look upon this as in any way seeking to attract young people away from their homes permanently, but to give them opportunities for training and employment."
I am all for efforts like this, but only if it is recognised that they are in themselves admissions of defeat. This the organisers of the scheme themselves clearly recognise. Why should we drain off our young people from the North-East, to make the problems of the
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already overcrowded cities of the South even greater? The White Paper speaks of "net outward migration"—a somewhat cold and impersonal term, but we know what is meant. It notes that net migration for the area has averaged 8,000 per annum for the ten years to 1961, and it estimates that it will be 4,000 in 1963. I find it a little difficult to see quite why the figure should be halved, with unemployment as it is, but there must be reasons for that which my mind cannot compass. Then, it contemplates a stable 2,500 per annum migration during the period 1963 to 1981. My Lords. 60,000 people will migrate before 1981, if the figures are not an under-estimate. But this is surely defeat for the North—and disastrous defeat. Should not every effort be made so to diversify industry in the North-East that we turn the tide of migration, until we think in terms of an influx of manpower into the North-East, rather than sit down under the inevitable conclusion that the drain southwards must continue?
The second need, to my mind, is for a new look at, and vigorous action in regard to, training of our youth. When the regional plans begin to be implemented, the need for trained labour will be very great, and the training must begin now. Existing firms cannot be expected to bear the full burden of this training, and Government help to accredited firms would seem to be called for at once. Some of this training—and here I come back to the point I made a few moments ago—must be for semi-skilled work for that 40 per cent. of school-leavers to whom I have already referred as having virtually no qualifications. Here is our great need: investment in the training of our youth. The talent is there in the he shape of many a boy without hope of a job, on whom large sums have already been spent through the educational services. Is this earlier investment to be wasted because of a failure to continue training fruitfully after his schooldays are over?
Paragraph 95 of the White Paper on the North-East refers to the Government training centres at Felling and Tursdale. I understand that 24 unemployed boys are catered for at Tursdale, and this number, we are assured, will be doubled but, unless my arithmetic is wrong, we are still on the wrong side of 50, which

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does not make very much of a dent in the problem. The other Government training centre, at Felling, caters only for those employed in apprenticeships, as do mainly the technical college pre-apprenticeship courses, which are said to cater for nearly 1,000. Half a million pounds will not build many miles of road, but half a million pounds spent on the training of school leavers would save many a lad from drifting into unemployment or into "dead-end" jobs, or even to the South, and could help in the permanent cure of a malaise which will be healed only when the accent is put on persons in a way which, one is bound to feel, the Government White Paper in some measure fails to do.
4.5 p.m.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, it is a great honour and a particular pleasure to offer to the most reverend Primate, on behalf of your Lordships, our warmest congratulations on what he was too modest to inform us was his maiden speech in this place. In so doing, perhaps I should reassure him at once that, in introducing, as I did earlier this afternoon, the Bill 10 remove restrictions on Scottish clergy from exercising their office in England, I had no intention of starting an invasion of his See. In his choice of subject, and in the way in which he dealt with it, he has reminded us that this is fundamentally a human problem rather than merely a material and economic one. He has lifted the subject out of the Party political arena—a course in which I shall do my best to follow him. I am sure I speak for all your Lordships in saying we greatly hope that he will come down here as often as he can, aided by the wonderful new communications with which his native North-East is about to be supplied.
I welcome these White Papers because they round off a year which I think, in retrospect, will be realised to have been of considerable importance in the efforts of all of us to bring prosperity to these parts of the country. In January of this year I was privileged to open a debate on the development of Scotland, and there were a number of measures which we then suggested which we can take satisfaction in having now attained. I said that, if we were to attract new industries and help the expansion of our
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own, we must have a bigger and juicier carrot in the form of Government grants and loans. What is more, we must let the donkey see the carrot. In other words, we must have a definite price-list of the benefits available to industry; and I made the suggestion of differential fiscal measures to encourage investment in these parts of the country. It seems that, as a result of that debate, and in other ways, we have convinced the Government of the essentials of our case. In April, the Government introduced these new measures for increased and standardised benefits to attract industry, along with this right to choose one's own rate of depreciation on plant and factories for tax purposes.
For years now the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) has propounded the need, not just for a policy of remedial action against local pockets of unemployment, but for a positive and long-term policy of encouragement of regional growth, and this culminated, of course, as the noble Viscount who opened this debate told us, in the work of the Toothill Committee and its Report. With the publication of these White Papers we have a virtual acceptance, at least, of this theory. We see a new line of thought in Departments—not least, I suspect, in the Treasury: and, in place of the previous policy, we now have one in which I believe a great deal can be achieved by the active partnership of Government with industry, with local authorities and all the other organisations.
I think it is fair to say that, over the last thirty years, Scotland has led economic thought in this field of regional development, just as she did in other fields in the days of Hume and Adam Smith. It is gratifying to all who have worked over these years to see its acceptance, particularly for people like the noble Lords, Lord Bilsland and Lord Elgin and Kincardine, both of whom have asked me to say how much they regret their being prevented from being here to-day.
The noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, spoke of the long fight of organised labour against unemployment. He asked, also, whether the Scottish Trades Union Congress were included in the bodies working to carry on from this point. I can assure him

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at least that the Scottish Trades Union Congress is one of the five main constituent bodies of the Scottish Council, and that over the years it has played a very active part in helping us to formulate our policies and in our deliberations. I gladly acknowledge their work along with us in all that. I think, finally on this, that it must be a matter of satisfaction to the team in the Scottish Development Department who have put so much hard work into the proposals now before us.
I do not intend to cross the Border further and to trespass on the territory of the North-East, however accustomed my forbears were to doing so some time ago. That field will doubtless be defended with ability and skill by other noble Lords, just as it was in those days, too. But I must say that, while the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, paid a tribute to the Toothill Report, I was a little sorry to see that, in the White Paper on the North-East, there was no acknowledgement of the basic study done in that Report, not merely for Scotland, but for the whole of Britain. It made it look a little as if the former Lord President had appeared in the role of a fairy godmother, had done a few quick pirouettes around the stage and waved a magic wand over a child, thus endowing it with eternal good fortune before making a spectacular exit to another place. The last thing we would suggest is that we have any copyright in these ideas; we are only too glad that any other part of the country should benefit from them.
My Lords, one thing is clear; and that is that the plans cannot do much to relieve the immediate unemployment problem. We have nearly 100,000 people still out of work in Scotland, due to contraction of some of the older industries; to increased productivity; to the larger numbers of school-leavers and, possibly, to less emigration to the South because of fewer opportunities here. What is encouraging, as the noble Lord said earlier, is the response to last April's new inducements, as is shown in the great increase in the number of inquiries about Scottish locations from companies, both outside and inside, who are seeking to expand. The staff of the Scottish Coun-
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cil can see this clearly from the greatly increased volume of work coming into their hands.
This autumn a group of us spent six weeks touring North America from coast to coast, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, seeking to sell Scotland—and, indeed, not just Scotland, but Britain as a whole—to American industrialists. This time (and we have done it at regular intervals) we saw far more interest in opportunities in Britain than at any time in the last five years. That is very encouraging. They were particularly interested in the new financial help we can offer them; and we were able to quote them firm terms for it. At the same time in Scotland itself we are seeing a welcome improvement in shipbuilding and in some of the other industries that have been in depression. All this means more jobs; if not at once then comparatively soon.
The next most immediate prospect for employment lies in the programme of construction and public work of all kinds outlined in this paper. We welcome the figures and details given on the quantitive side, but we must press on for the quickest possible progress to be made. Here I agree with the noble Viscount opposite that we need more targets. Certainly the target for 1970 for many of the major road developments seems to be far too leisurely. I know that there will be the problem, again mentioned by the noble Viscount, of the capacity of the building industry to cope with this. But we must give more encouragement to them to modernise their methods and increase output. We look froward to the Report of the Committee looking into methods of Scottish building industry.
This ties in, too, with the need for increased facilities for training and retraining our workers in the new skills. It is a paradox of our position that, while on paper we have a large supply of labour, there is a grave shortage in many of the key trades. This is a problem to the solution of which managements and unions will have to make a big contribution. But the fact remains that the Government must give a strong lead, and I am sure that places in Government training and retraining centres will have to be stepped-up well beyond the figure of 1,700 for Scotland proposed

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in the White Paper. That figure is only 7 per cent. of the 25,000 redundancies arising in Scotland each year.
There are some other aspects of Government influence which are either given insufficient emphasis in the Paper or are not covered at all. There is, for example, no mention of the rôle of Government as employer; no mention—despite their professed anxiety to see more offices moved out of Greater London—of the possibility of moving Government offices and other establishments to the development districts. There is no mention of the part to be played by Government spending on defence, civil research and development, far too much of which is still tied to the South by the policies of Departments and to suit their convenience. This is an issue which we regard in Scotland as of vital importance and shall continue to press with all our might.
The importance of communications is acknowledged in the Paper; but what I think cannot be too strongly emphasised is the fact that their importance increases the further one gets from the centre of gravity of population. Roads we have already mentioned; and I will come to railways later. Now that the Ports and Harbours Bill has been published. I hope that every encouragement will be given to the plans for new port development which are awaiting the word to go ahead. Good air transport is vital, whether to the South or overseas; and I am glad that airports figure in the Paper. Our air services have improved, but there is still a long way to go. British European Airways have done a good job, but they have a virtual monopoly of the domestic services; and we shall press the Government to see that we are given the services we need, with or without Government aid. Our international services from Prestwick are of vital importance to many companies as an essential link with their customers and associates in North America and on the Continent. There is at present a move afoot to restrict the passenger rights of certain overseas airlines out of Prestwick, and this move we shall oppose very strongly, because it could lead to a serious reduction in, or even an elimination of, our direct overseas air services.
The final paragraph of the Scottish White Paper contains a proposal of
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considerable interest to us in the Scottish Council, as doubtless will be its equivalent in the North-East Paper to the corresponding body there. I refer to the offer by the Government of Exchequer assistance to us for the task of selling Scotland, and of publicising the facilities and advantages that we can offer. We in the Scottish Council are honoured at this recognition of all the work we have already tried to do in this field. We do not know yet just what is proposed, but we must make it clear that we shall accept such a grant only if it in no way restricts our independence of action or the scope of our other activities.
My Lords, there is one problem which has just been touched upon and which, although not strictly within the scope of the Paper, will be affected by it. That is the position of the other areas of Scotland and, in particular, the outlying ones, such as the Borders, the Highlands and the North-East. I am glad to see that there is mention of further regional studies to be made sometime in the future. In the short view, the White Paper proposals could actually work to the detriment of these other parts of the country and they would be more gravely affected by some of the proposed railway closures. I hope that in this respect everyone who stands to be adversely affected, and has good reason to do so, will in due course make the requisite objections.
Scotland is a whole just as Britain is a whole; and we cannot allow these other parts of the country to languish: because I am convinced that they have a potential. As an earnest of this belief, as an encouragement to industry and to the inhabitants and as a lead to government, we in the Scottish Council, two days ago, decided on a new form of spearhead operation. We intend to seek out a few individuals in each of these areas with sound and practical experience of industry and of those parts of the country, to provide them with men on the staff of our Council to work with them and seek out all possible opportunities for industrial development which I am sure exist within the areas themselves. What the results will be we cannot tell; but at least it shows our recognition of the Government's view expressed in the White Paper that:
"The restoration of the economy will ultimately depend on the vigour with which

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all sections of the community make their individual contributions."
I think this is the essential point to remember about the Paper as a whole. The plans have been criticised by some because they are not industrial plans—and this is true enough. But they cannot be provided by Government alone. They are plans or programmes for a social and industrial structure which will favour industrial development. I think we sometimes tend to place rather too much faith in economic planning. Certainly my own faith, both in economists and in planners, is tempered by my realisation of what they can do. To a number of measures already planned or in train, these White Papers bring a brave new look. By themselves, they will not bring the millennium, but, for that matter, neither will any other plan I have heard of. We have heard talk of plans, but we have heard very few details of these plans. I think that their importance lies less in particular proposals than in the implications of a fundamental change of policy, establishing, as it does, a position in the whole field of regional development from which it is unlikely any future Government can retreat. And no retreat must there be, even in the face of short-term economic fluctuations, because it is essential to have continuity and consistency if these plans are to work.
They have undoubtedly given a timely boost to morale in Scotland. Meanwhile, much more will need to be done, by many people, before all is really well with our economy. But, with the help of industry itself and of the many other organisations concerned—help which I am sure will now be forthcoming—the plan can be a real investment in Scotland's future, and of lasting benefit, not only to Scotland, but to the country as a whole.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him a question? In view of his position in Scotland and the silence of the Government, could he indicate to us what, in his estimation, is the number of new jobs that need to be provided in Scotland, say, in the next five to ten years, in order to deal with the drift of population and the existing unemployment?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I certainly have figures, but I am not prepared to quote them without a chance to look them up.
4.24 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to me to start my remarks by associating myself with what the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, said, in congratulations to the most reverend Primate on his maiden speech. I do not wish to do so in exactly the same words as the noble Lord, because it did not seem to me that the most reverend Primate was being strictly non-political. It seemed to me that he was talking exceedingly sound politics, and I hope that we shall always have sound politics from the occupants of the Bishops' Benches. That does not necessarily mean that they will come down on the side of one Party or another. I have always found that the Church has made its most effective contribution in debates when it does so along lines adopted by the most reverend Primate this afternoon, on those subjects in which both Church and State have a most direct interest, and I agree wholeheartedly with the remarks he made.
I am a little disappointed in the rest of what the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, said, and I would warn him against being a little prematurely complacent about the contents of the White Papers. I have no doubt that he has read them more than once, but when he reads them more thoroughly he will find that there is a very great deal more of promise in the White Paper than of actual proposals. I am very conscious of the fact that if the Labour Party and the Liberal Party were to keep quiet about suggestions for the improvement of the economy for a period of a year or so, the Government would have nobody to fall back on for the formulation of policies except the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, and the Scottish Council. So he is entitled to a certain amount of satisfaction in that, after an interval of a year, the Government have put into a White Paper some of the proposals which he put forward in the debate in your Lordships' House at the beginning of this year.
Having said that, I would go on to say that it seems to me that there is

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not the slightest doubt that the White Paper on Central Scotland—I apologise to your Lordships if I confine myself to the White Paper on Central Scotland, but I have no doubt that there are Members who will deal with the other White Paper—has been a great disappointment to those who are looking for vigorous action to cure Scotland's economic ills. It is admitted on all sides that the most hard hit areas are the Highlands and the Border, and they are left completely out of the Government's plans except for vague promises of future investigation, such as in paragraph 8, where it is stated:
"…the Government are fully conscious of the many problems affecting the economies of other parts of Scotland; problems often just as vital but on a smaller scale. They are pressing forward with their examination of these areas, which may need measures different in scale and character from those set out in this Paper."
And the modest carrot they offer to Dundee, in paragraph 69:
"Dundee's need for regular air communications to the industrial and commercial centres in the south is, along with airfield requirements for the area, now being urgently considered."
I will come back to Dundee later.
The White Paper simply teems with fine phrases—there is no doubt at all that it is beautifully written—many of which put a gloss on twelve years of Government failure. I hope that your Lordships will permit me to give some examples:
"Many of the measures described in this Paper are already being taken or have been announced. These are now incorporated in a fully integrated programme and are reinforced by a wide range of new measures specifically designed to accelerate growth in the most favourable places";
or,
"But this has not occurred at a fast enough rate fully to offset the changes in the older basic industries. Thus employment opportunities in the area have not kept pace with the natural increase in the population. The result has been unemployment on a scale averaging about twice the United Kingdom level since the last war, in spite of heavy emigration in the younger working age groups."
Perhaps I may be forgiven for drawing the notice of the most reverend Primate to the net figure of migration from Scotland in the last ten years. It was not 80,000, but 280,000.
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The White Paper goes on to say:
"But the net loss of younger people cannot continue at its present level without serious damage to the prospects of long-term economic recovery.
"Another consequence of the run-down of the older industries in Central Scotland has been the physical decay of so many of the older industrial areas which grew up in an age of coal, smoke, dirt and overcrowded housing conditions."
Unfortunately, most of the areas referred to in my last quotation are outside the Central Scottish Area and are being offered nothing in this proposal. I am not one of those who subscribe to the point of view that everything should be done everywhere at the same time. To that extent, I am in agreement with the noble Viscount, but I must say that it upsets me a little to find myself in agreement with him when he says, in effect, that we must use our resources to the best advantage, and if they are to be spread out there is going to be very little available for everybody. This, in effect, means that by concentrating at this stage on the North-East and Central Scotland a great deal less is going to be done in these other areas, and, in the short-term, at any event, they are going to be worse off. I was rather interested in what was said by my noble Leader when he referred to the many areas with high unemployment which are in effect being told by the Government, "It isn't your turn. You are not the worst." Or, "You are not the area in which the best can be accomplished. You must wait."
One of my complaints about the White Paper is the extent to which it is general rather than detailed. Perhaps it was in keeping with this attitude that the noble Viscount objected to my noble Leader as being too specific in attributing "two months" to him, rather than "some months". My main complaint about the White Paper is that the general is always preferred to the specific. As I said before, the White Paper is well written: the language is beautiful, and if words alone could solve our difficulties we should indeed be home and dry. The last quotation from the White Paper which I made places a reliance on planning which is staggering. And remember what Government policy was, year in, year out, from 1951 to 1962. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, rather unwisely I thought, let

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out a remark which is typical of what has been going on all these years: that even when planning is accepted, it is accepted with a degree of suspicion.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, with great respect to the noble Lord, I do not feel any unwisdom in having made the remark. I stated what I believed to be the case.
LORD HUGHES: Quite so. None of us makes remarks which we ourselves believe to be unwise; it is only other people who think they are or are not unwise. After all, if we ourselves thought they were unwise we would not make them. What could be most alarming, to both industrialists and workers, is the fact that the policies now being applied with some success—and there are policies which are being applied with considerable success at the moment—are the very ones which the Government have so regularly refused to operate in the past.
For example (and it is coincidence that what I have noted here before the noble Viscount spoke are the two subjects on which he himself spoke with considerable stress in his opening speech), there is more than one paragraph in the Paper where glowing tributes are paid to the value of the policy of building advance factories; and one of the few details given in the White Paper is the number which are presently being built and those which are to be started in the near future. Yet for years Ministers were urged to put into operation this policy of building advance factories, and they declined to do so. The argument always was that the industrialist did not want an advance factory; he wanted a factory tailor-made to his requirements. My late friend and colleague Mr. John Strachey on many occasions pressed Ministers to put a policy of advance factories into operation, and on every occasion he was met with a blank refusal. Then, recently, in the last two or three years, a change was made, and once again the Government found a Labour scheme worked when their own ideas had failed.
Another proposal pressed by the Scottish Council and by, I think, almost every organisation in Scotland, political and non-political alike, was the subject of specific grants. We complained bitterly and regularly of the fact that the industrialist coming to locate a factory in
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Scotland did not know whether he would get a large grant, a small grant or no grant at all. We asked, year in, year out, for a policy of specific grants, and even eighteen months ago we were told it was impossible. When we spoke about preferential systems of taxation for areas of high unemployment eighteen months ago we were told it was impossible. But what speech, propaganda and exhortation failed to achieve, the heavy unemployment, the adverse unemployment of last winter, and the adverse by-election results which followed it, turned from being impossible into being practical, and the Budget of this year brought in both specific grants and a tax policy which discriminated in favour of people going to selected areas.
I am not surprised that we have had a great increase in the number of applications. After all, the reason why so many people put this scheme forward was because they believed that that sort of thing was necessary in order to get industrialists to go to these particular areas. When one realises, therefore, that the only measures which are really successful are those which the Government did not initiate but which they reluctantly accepted only after up to ten or twelve years of pressure, one could be reassured by the White Paper only if it contained some real evidence of positive thinking along similar lines or on new ones. What do we find? We find that in a document of 168 paragraphs fewer than a dozen paragraphs contain specific proposals for action. The greatest part of the document is historical, and most of the references to the future are very general and sometimes even very vague. On top of that, as befits, I must admit, good writing, a certain amount of fiction creeps in from time to time. The White Paper is essentially a programme of public investment, and public investment is the field which has been made most costly by the Government's interest policy.
This brings me to a number of specific questions on policy, and, first of all, to housing. The White Paper proposes an increase of some 9,000 houses a year in the growth areas of Central Scotland. Where these houses are being constructed for the New Town Development Corporation, notwithstanding the fact that they operate at much higher rentals than do the local authorities in these

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areas, the very large sum of from £80 to £100 per annum will fall on the Exchequer for each house built. What is to be done where the houses in the growth areas are required to be provided by the local authority? Is the subsidy to remain at the present level of £12 or £32, depending on the local authority's housing finances? Can you expect these local authorities to pay an annual subsidy of anything from £50 to £80 a house—especially if, as appears in paragraph 29, they are to be
"unfettered by any consideration of 'local housing lists '"?
How is this going to work? What local authority are going to build two lots of houses when they are going to get the same subsidy for both, and one lot they must earmark for people not on the housing list at all? I can imagine no better way for a town councillor to lose his seat; and remember that town councillors are just as conscious of the need to preserve their seats as are Ministers.
May I also ask about schools? Paragraph 91 states:
"The major increase which is planned in growth area housing will demand a corresponding concentration of school building."
In paragraph 92 it says:
"It is clear that an even higher level of investment will be necessary for school building generally."
Yet, within the last month, many local education authorities have complained bitterly at the cuts made in their school-building programmes. An example is Fife—and in Fife is one of the growth areas. After savage; cuts in their school-building programmes, they sent a deputation to St. Andrew's House, and after prolonged discussion with—I do not know whether it was officials, or officials and Ministers, they came away with some increase. But even a growth area, including one of the New Towns within that growth area, could not get anything like what they originally requested for school-building programmes; and the most the Convenor of Fife County could say when he came away from the meeting was that he was gratified, but not satisfied.
It is obvious that no unnecessary difficulties should be placed in the way of industry if successfully located in Scotland. For that reason, one welcomes the statement in paragraph 66:
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"Good air communications for both domestic and international journeys have become an essential part of any modern expanding economy. Business men need to be in the closest touch with their markets and to be able quickly to follow up any new opportunities, wherever they may be. The availability of an airport within reasonable travelling distance, offering both domestic services and either direct international flights or convenient connections thereto, is increasingly important in attracting new industrial and commercial enterprises."
If one takes this in conjunction with paragraph 69, about the urgent consideration being given to Dundee's air problems, this might be taken as quite a good augury for an air service for Dundee at last. Yet as one who regularly came to London and went to Edinburgh to interview Ministers in connection with an air service for Scotland, I am very conscious of the fact that I and my successor were told every time that this is not a matter for the Government; that it is a matter for the air lines concerned.
Now what has happened? Has the urgent consideration of Dundee's need made it possible at last for something to be done after twelve years of refusing to intervene? When will the decision be made? How long does urgent consideration take? After all, they have had twelve years. How much urgent consideration do you need to add to twelve years of waiting before you come to a decision? Will it be given to-day in this debate? Will it be given this month? Will it be given next month? How long, my Lords, how long?
Paragraphs 75 to 80 stress the importance of adequate supplies of fuel. Will the Government not consider at this stage the desirability of making electricity cheaper for industry in Scotland by providing finance to the Electricity Boards on the same basis as it was supplied for the strip mill, and is to be supplied for the pulp mill? There would be no question of electricity becoming dearer in Scotland in the next six months if they would do that. In fact, I am quite certain that my noble friend sitting behind the Front Bench would be able to bring the cost of electricity down in his part of Scotland if money was made available on the same sort of conditions as it is made available in what the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, said was the best sort of co-operation between the State and

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private enterprise, where the State puts forward the money at a comparatively low rate of interest—and that is all that is expected.
To leave electricity and go to other fuel, when will the Government take steps to bring to an end the extra charge for coal which has been paid by Scottish undertakings? How can you expect to compete when the Coal Board charge an extra 10s. a ton for every ton of coal which is used? There is a comparatively small paper mill on the borders of the new town of Glenrothes which pays this 10s. a ton which adds many thousands of pounds a year to its operating costs. Will the Government intervene in this matter?
Paragraph 83 deals with the 85 per cent. grant for clearance and rehabilitation of derelict areas. I had better quote this exactly, because it is somewhat incredible. The paragraph says:
"This concession was then introduced only for a limited period, but the Government have now decided to continue until further notice the arrangements for making an 85 per cent. grant available in all development districts…"
What is the exact difference between a grant being available for a limited period and being available "until further notice"? How does the local authority go about working on that? Under the old basis, they knew that for a period of a year, or whatever it was, these grants were going to be paid. Now the position has been changed, and they may find that in a month, six months, a year, eighteen months, or at some time in the future, near or far, they are told, "In a month's time the grants come to an end". It seems to me that something much more specific than a continuation "until further notice" is necessary. This could be a worthwhile part of the proposals, for a great deal of land in industrial areas is going to waste because something of this kind has not been available before.
Paragraph 126 stresses the suitability of Central Scotland for office accommodation. In a debate in January, to which the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, referred, that point came up. It is true that there are many places in Central Scotland which are suitable, and no place more so than the new towns, because they can build offices to suit
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the requirements of incoming industry. They can provide houses for the people who may be shifted up to work in those offices. They could, for instance, quite easily provide accommodation for Government Departments. There was an inquiry some time ago into the possibility of moving Government Departments out of London. I would suggest to the Government that example is much better than precept, and that the Secretary of State for Scotland, with his colleagues, might make some arrangements for one or more Ministries to move some or all of their activities to either Central Scotland or North-East England.
The policies which are working in Scotland to-day are not Tory policies, but policies which the Tories have turned to on the collapse of their own. Their success is limited only because they limit the scope of the policies, and that I would suggest to the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, is the fundamental difference between his colleagues and mine. He and his colleagues are content to take a policy here and a policy there from other people and to apply it, and they are then surprised in two ways: first, that they have a limited success in each of the ones that are implemented, but, secondly, that put together they do not solve the whole problem. You will not solve the whole problem until you apply the whole solution.
I do not expect that at the end of this debate a majority of your Lordships will be found to be supporting the Amendment which was proposed by my noble Leader, and which I am endeavouring to support. But I must confess that that does not worry me in the slightest, because I am quite satisfied that in some months—maybe two months—a majority of the electors will find this Amendment to their satisfaction.
4.47 p.m.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, I was very interested to hear the closing remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, about supporting the Amendment on the Order Paper. The chief thing, it seems to me, about the Amendment, are the words:
"but is of the opinion that these proposals fail to ensure an immediate substantial reduction in unemployment…"

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Neither Lord Hughes nor his noble Leader referred to those words. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said that he does not think there will be many of us supporting the Amendment. I cannot see that he supported it himself. And neither, perhaps, did the noble Earl. I quite understand that there are a great many things to think of, but I was interested when I saw this Amendment on the Paper and I thought I would wait to hear the suggestions of noble Lords opposite for an immediate substantial reduction in unemployment.
We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, that the Tories were following Labour policy. If he could have told us of such a scheme, I am sure we should all—not only the Back Benchers but perhaps the Front Bench as well—do well to follow the Labour Party. But we have heard nothing about it at all.
LORD HUGHES: One has a limited time in which to speak in a debate with eighteen speakers. But, unlike some Members in another place, the noble Lady will probably still be in the House after the General Election, and I have no doubt that she will have an opportunity of hearing the most specific proposals.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: I had hoped to hear them to-day, because they are on the Paper to-day. All sorts of strange things may be on the Paper then, from either side. It is to-day I am speaking about. I keep to the present, and not the vague future.
I am one of those who entirely support the idea of regional planning and the principle of what I would call "select and concentrate." I also support the idea of the positive attitude of growth areas. I know quite well what happens when you "select and concentrate" on a certain area: you are bound to create a good deal of feeling, of sadness and disappointment in other areas. I remember well what happened when I went to the Ministry of Education in 1951, and the school building programme was very far behind. I had to make a desperate effort to see how I could get enough schools up and ready for the children of what was called (that awful word!) the "bulge," who were coming along. I had to do something
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that was extremely unpopular. I had to cut down and keep to a certain building programme, and then increase it gradually. There were areas where schools had been promised, and I had to tell them that the schools would not now be begun. Week after week I was questioned about the number of new schools started, and I said then that my yardstick was going to be the number of new schools completed. I think anyone looking back on that period would now agree with me that that was the right way to do it. Of course, it was difficult; and there were the hard cases.
I believe that the Government have also chosen the right region—that of Central Scotland. After all, we have there 75 per cent. of the population and 90 per cent. of the industry; and, as a whole, there is similarity in the problem of all the places there. I believe that if we achieve real success in this region, with a really prosperous stripe across Scotland, it will affect the whole of Scotland for some time to come. I am in favour of this principle of "select and concentrate," though I have one proviso, to which I will come a little bit later. As there are a great number of your Lordships who wish to speak, I will pick out, if I may, what I see as one problem; that of mobility and emigration.
We all know that it is necessary to get a labour force that is mobile, which can move from areas of unemployment to growth areas where perhaps new factories have gone. What we are asking for in Scotland is sufficient mobility; but, in accordance with the White Paper, not a superabundance of mobility which means that the labour force is mobile over the Border and into England. We must try to face that particular difficulty. I am not one of those who feel it would be a great pity if in the future there were no enterprising young Scots who wanted to leave their own country and go to England or overseas; and it seems to me that the White Paper carries out that idea. One can see it very clearly in the figures for university students now. In the old clays, more students attended the university in their own home towns. Now, thanks a great deal to the increased grants, they are able to leave, say, their home town of Edinburgh and go to universities in England;

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and English students can go to Edinburgh University. They can move around because there is sufficient money, and they are anxious to get away from their own surroundings and see something of the world.
As this process increasingly continues, we must, I believe, look at this problem of the mobility of labour and emigration as one. In what particular way can we help? The White Paper is quite right in talking of the obvious requirement of a sufficient number of good houses. I have read and re-read Chapter 6, and I agree with it. We cannot expect a family who are perhaps already settled in a house to move to another district where they may have to wait on a housing list. I am not going to say how the problem can be solved, because I do not know; but I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, say that it was impossible to have some houses on the list and others not. But if we want people to go from one district to another, are we to tell them that they can go but that we cannot give them a house; that they must go on to a waiting list? And these, my Lords, are the people of whose labour we may be desperately in need; and who may at the moment be unemployed. Can we not make some arrangement for the building of new houses which these people can offer to buy as soon as they move?
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, has misunderstood me. I did not say that. I said that one could not expect such houses to be provided by a local authority which had to provide two lots of houses under the same conditions.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: I see. It would be a different condition here. This would be the condition for those moving into that area and the others. But even with what the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has said, I think it is going to be very difficult. Think of the feeling of the people who are already in that area. They have their employment there; they are on the list waiting for houses. But because there is not enough labour for the new factories which have gone up in that area, new labour is needed. The people are willing to go, and, some way
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must be found of providing them with homes.
Again linking it up with emigration, I am quite certain that if many of the people—young men, for instance—who are leaving Scotland and going to England at the present time, knew there was going to be a good house for them in Scotland they would stay. If they want to get married and bring up a family what they need is a good house. If we can show that homes can be provided in Scotland I think we should see a great change in the outlook for mobility of labour and emigration. With that mobility I would also include training and re-training. The noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has already spoken of the training scheme. People going to these areas want to see that there are training schemes for their boys who are growing up. Mobility may mean not simply geographical mobility, but the moving from one skill or trade to another skill or trade; and to secure that mobility we must see that there is more chance of training.
The White Paper tells us that there is to be a great increase in housing in the central area of Scotland. Whilst I know the difficulty of having different types of housing (I could discuss it at length, but time is short) I would ask the Government to see that from the start we have realistic rents. I am always being told that people in Scotland are accustomed to paying low rents and therefore will never pay anything but low rents. My Lords, people have come to England from Scotland in their hundreds to find jobs. Have any of us heard of any of them going back to Scotland because they find the cost of lodgings too high; or because a higher percentage from their pay packets must go on rents? There may be some, but I do not think there are many. They are accustomed to pay higher rents in England, and I believe that we shall not solve this problem unless we face up to a higher standard of rents in Scotland. I have been told on many occasions by industrialists with factories in England and in Scotland that although they may be paying the same actual rate of wages, they may be paying a higher rate in Scotland because the rents paid by employees are so low. I think this matter must be looked into.
Chapter 6 of the White Paper sets out what we must do—the increased number

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of houses, measures for mobility and so on—to stem emigration. But then we come to the crux of the matter: how are we to do it? If we are going to build more houses, more schools, more training centres, more technical colleges and factories; and if we are are to extend our universities (though there is nothing in the White Paper about a new university, I am glad to say), how do we mean to do it? I think we are all agreed that it is quite impossible for all this building to be done in what I may call "traditional" methods. I want to see the traditional methods carried on but I want to see the building industry extended to the full. I want to see more people working in the building industry. But, my Lords, whatever we do, we shall not get sufficient building done unless we look to the less traditional, what I believe is called industrial, building.
We have had various papers from the Government on this subject. There was a Paper on housing in May (Cmnd. 2050), which spoke of the necessity of this type of building. Now we hear of a National Building Agency that is going to give advice on new forms of building. I hope this idea is going to be pressed, because it is of advantage in two ways: we shall have some chance of getting the building we want, and it will spread employment—the immediate employment we are asked about in this Amendment. You are going to get all the employment possible in the constructional industries in Scotland—all the building industry, the traditional industry. If you can do more in factories in way of industrial building, you will be bringing in new people, and that will increase employment.
How much is being done? I know there is a certain amount in Scotland, but perhaps we can be told what is now being done in these ways and what is planned to be done. Because if we cannot get something like that done, the rest of our hopes based on many of these schemes are simply valueless. When is the Board of this Agency to be appointed, with Scottish representatives? When is an office to be opened in Scotland? As I read the Report I kept on saying to myself "When?", when I came to this part.
Here I come to my last point—the proviso I made at the beginning to giving
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my support: the need to select a particular area and to concentrate. Can we really get this work done with speed and with a sense of urgency? That is what is required. And the great point about concentrating on one particular region, such as this, where the problems are similar throughout, is that there can be a scheme of urgency that will really inspire the people of Scotland to help the Government work it out. The people like to see how the scheme is getting on, and I ask the Government to give us progress reports from time to time. We have them on housing—statistics of the number of houses that are built. I think we get them quarterly. I ask now, that we shall have definite progress reports, and I should like those progress reports under the headings in this White Paper: housing and movements and roads and everything else. Those reports might sometimes be discouraging, at other times encouraging. I believe it would give us that necessary feeling of urgency in getting the job done.
I read that the Scottish Development Group still has a good deal of work to do, two more surveys to be undertaken and further discussions, and after that it is to continue to phase and coordinate the execution of the development plan. Perhaps I am wrong—I daresay I am—but the words "phase and co-ordinate" seem to me a little leisurely. I want to see behind this a driving spirit, real energy. I speak here from personal experience when I say that when you have been working hard on a plan—and I congratulate the Development Group on the work they have done—when you have been working at it in detail, when you have had discussions and negotiations and you get to the end of that stage, you are very tempted to sit back and relax and say you have reached the beginning of the end. I believe this plan is good. If we can carry it through with speed and real urgency it will be a great thing for Scotland. But we have not reached the beginning of the end; we are just about to reach the beginning of the beginning, and I think that that is what we want in this debate to put to the Government.
For my own part, I think it is a great step forward for the Government to have given us this scheme, and I am

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grateful for the work that has been done. But the plans must now be carried through with drive and enterprise and dauntless perseverence in overcoming the innumerable difficulties there are certain to be. Then I think all concerned with it, from the Secretary of State for Scotland to the individual workman, anybody who has had a share in working this plan out, will derive satisfaction and will have earned the gratitude of a reinvigorated Scotland.
5.5 p.m.
LORD TODD: My Lords, it is now almost a year since I first ventured to address your Lordships. That was on the occasion of a debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, on the state of the Scottish economy. During that debate many noble Lords stressed the need for some comprehensive plan to deal with the situation. To-day I should like to speak for a short time in connection with the White Paper on Central Scotland, which sets out to do that and presents a plan designed to promote the development of the area. I am very much with the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, in feeling that I do not object, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, seemed to, to the local character of this development plan. While it is true that Central Scotland is only part of the problem, it is, I believe, a major part, because given a flourishing Central Scotland then the solution of problems relating to the other areas would, I think, be made a great deal easier.
I think, too, that the programme put before us is, on the whole, a comprehensive and well-balanced programme. No doubt there is criticism one can make of individual features: for example, I feel so strongly about the rehabilitation of the derelict areas of industrial Scotland that the amount allocated by the Government seems to me a bit on the small side. I say this because I believe the image of industrial Scotland is vitally important when it comes to attracting industry and business, quite apart from the depressing effect of bad surroundings on young people growing up in the area. This question of rehabilitation of the areas is important, I believe, from the point of view both of immigration and of emigration.
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When I spoke in our previous debate on the Scottish economy I stressed the need to encourage in every way possible the growth of industries which involve the location in Scotland of a substantial element of research and development. From some references in the White Paper I think this is, in a measure, recognised by the Scottish Development Department, but I should like to return to this matter for a moment because of what I believe to be its crucial importance. We live in an age in which consistent prosperity for any given area in a country is absolutely dependent upon continuous technological innovation in its industries. It was, indeed, lack of innovation in the traditional industries of Scotland that brought about the economic decline we witnessed in the first half of this century. But let me make it clear that in this respect the Scottish industries were not exceptional. Innovation in mature industries which are essentially craft-based rather than science-based is an extremely difficult matter, and the performance of these industries in other areas than Central Scotland has been very similar; much the same thing can be seen in the heavy industries of North-East England, which is also the subject of a White Paper before us to-day. One can see it in Lancashire, in South Wales, and not only in areas like those in this country but in foreign countries.
The factors which contribute to difficulty in innovation in mature traditional industries—I mean such industries as metal manufactures, shipbuilding and heavy engineering—are numerous and complex. Not all of them are clearly understood, and I believe incidentally—and this stands rather apart from the Paper we are debating to-day—that there is a great need for a comprehensive study to be made. Such a study of these factors underlying difficulties of innovation in mature industries might perhaps be undertaken jointly by Government, by industry and by the universities. I believe it would be most rewarding.
But some of the problems and difficulties are, I think, fairly evident. It is characteristic of most of those industries that they tend to rest on what I might call standard-product production—that is to say, they rest on the production of some item or material

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which is consistently demanded by customers; and they depend, too, on the exploitation of a rather rigidly set group of skills or technology. It is interesting to note that in such industries major technological innovation, as distinct from what I call slow product improvement, is usually brought about not from within the industry itself, but through invasion from outside by other industries, usually science-based industries. I think the invasion of the textile industry by the chemical industry is a recent example of this kind.
The adherence to exploitation of a standard set of skills in a mature industry, on the one hand, it is true, leads in due course to the setting up of resistance and reluctance to change on the part of management. It also leads—and this is as bad, if not worse—to the setting up of a rigid social system of hierarchy of skills within the industries themselves. This hierarchy gives rise to difficulties, not merely in the matter of demarcation problems as between skills in the industry, but it induces a powerful resistance to change on the part of the workers in it. If such industries—and they are the main industries in Scotland—are to survive, the need for a radical change must be recognised not only by management but also by the workers, too, despite the fact that temporary difficulties and hardships will be involved.
We have seen this process already getting under way in Scotland. The process of change leading, if you like, to a streamlining of Scotland's traditional heavy industry is already under way, but it has a good deal further to go. For this reason, I attach the greatest importance to the development of re-training schemes for adult workers and to the massive improvement in housing conditions and communications in Scotland in order to increase the mobility of the working population. The noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, raised this point, which I believe is an important one.
The streamlining, that I have been referring to in Scotland's heavy industry can, of course, be carried through without creating excessive unemployment only if the new industries are concurrently developed, as it is suggested they should be in the plan before us. But it is essential that some, at least, of these
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should be science-based industries with a strong research and development element, because it is from this element that technological innovation is most likely to come; and that innovation is going to be the life-blood, not only of these industries, but indirectly, and for the reasons that come out of what I have just said, the life-blood, too, of the traditional or mature industries that we have been accustomed to in Scotland.
Innovation is, of course, a much less difficult thing to bring about in the newer industries, particularly the science-based industries, although sometimes I wonder whether it will always be so in some of the alleged newer industries, because one sometimes wonders whether this difficulty of innovation is not in part due to maturity as well as simply to the nature of the industry. I think everyone is aware of the fact that, once firms get beyond a certain size, many of them seem to run into difficulty in keeping what might be called the entrepreneurial spirit alive. They tend to become rather static.
In summary, my view is, as your Lordships realise, that economic growth and continuing prosperity depend on technological innovation in industry; and innovation not only requires the spirit of the entrepreneur, but needs the backing of technical knowledge at all levels. Here, I believe that Scotland has a great deal to offer, and I submit that it would be wise for the Scottish Council to emphasise this point in its publicity. Scotland has in its developing institutions of technical education an excellent instrument for the lavish provision of technicians and other trained personnel necessary for modern industry and business; and it is a flexible and, I believe, progressive instrument with a long tradition of innovation in technical education behind it.
I think it is worth while just to recall, in connection with its progressive character, that the first sandwich courses that were ever organised in Britain were operated in Glasgow in 1881. If you follow the course of technical education up to now you will find that there is at the present time at the Stowe College in Glasgow a most exciting experiment in apprenticeship training going on. Although it is possible to be prejudiced, these institutions are, I believe, working on human material which is second to none, as the technical record of Scots

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in the past has shown. Behind these institutions such as those which I have been mentioning, stands the new University of Strathclyde, which is now being created on the base of the Royal College of Science and Technology in Glasgow. After all, this is the first independent technical university in Britain. It is in a phase of vigorous growth and, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, mentioned last week in our debate on the Robbins Report, it is venturing out into the fields of industrial management, social studies and modern languages in addition to the rapidly developing borderland fields of science and technology. Strathclyde aims at scientific and technological education and research at the highest level, and it will seek to maintain and to develop even further the close contacts which it has always maintained with industry in Scotland. These are facts which I believe should be publicised, because backing of the type that you give to such institutions is getting every year more and more important to industry.
I would add here how much I welcome the presence in the University of Strathclyde—and, indeed, in other Scottish universities—of many students from all over Britain. I believe we have got to break down the isolation of Central Scotland, to stop people from the southern part of this island regarding it as a remote and almost foreign land separated from England by something like 150 miles of shocking road, starting from Lancaster and finishing in Glasgow. Incidentally, I am glad to see from the White Paper that there is some possibility that work on the road between Glasgow, Carlisle and Lancaster is going to be treated with a little more urgency than it has been in the past.
Glasgow, my native city, is a place whose image in much of this country has been rather unfairly set by its past history, and by a small group of sordid novels which have enjoyed great popularity in the country. But I think that modern Glasgow is a progressive city. I believe it has a great deal which it can offer in the way of amenities to the newcomer. Let us make no mistake, it is now, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the industrial heart of Central Scotland about which we are talking in this White Paper. I would conclude by saying only this. I hope
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that the Scottish Council and the development department will act with real vigour and dispatch in getting on with the proposals in the White Paper. It is all very well to give us a programme; but it is up to them and to the people of Scotland to produce the development and growth that follow from it.
5.20 p.m.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, there are a handful of Englishmen taking part in this debate, and therefore I am not going to trespass on their preserves. My remarks will be concerned entirely with the White Paper, which I welcome. I consider that the whole principle of the development areas, growth points and so on, is sound. Nevertheless, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, I am outwith the Central Scotland area and a member of the other 25 per cent. I am quite prepared to take any setbacks which might arise through the activities of this White Paper, but I do not think they will be great; and at any rate they will be very limited in time.
Paragraph 8, to which reference has already been made, gives hope that the Government are fully conscious of these problems; that they are pressing forward with the examination of these areas and will produce measures to cope with the situation. I think that is most important, and I hope they will do it with the same thoroughness as that with which Toothill Report has analysed the problems of Central Scotland. I am convinced that it is only by taking a very large area and analysing the problems together, rather than looking at isolated matters, that these difficulties can be solved. Once the problems of Central Scotland have been solved, the problems presented by the other 25 per cent. of the population are nothing like so great. I venture to hazard a guess that about 60 factories strategically placed in the North-East of Scotland would produce a very different picture in that part of the world. That is not outside the bounds of possibility.
I should like to know what effect the proposals of the regional water schemes and the new housing developments, and so on, will have on the already extremely heavy rate burden. No mention is made as to whether it will be 100 per cent. grant-aided, whether local authorities will be left to carry half, or some, of the

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burden, or what it may be. These things are, of course, very, expensive indeed. Paragraph 13 mentions the
"considerable expansion of the opportunities for training and retraining."
I should have said that "considerable" was the wrong adjective to use. If one is dealing with 7 per cent. of the annual redundancies I should have thought that "modest" was a better adjective to use. However, that point has been mentioned by several speakers, and I merely agree with them.
Paragraph 14 appears to me to be vital to this whole scheme. It is a question of co-ordination. How is this co-ordination to take place? Who is going to produce the drive so necessary to get anything going? This co-ordinated problem must take into account the requirements of the building industry, building materials, labour, transport, and everything else outwith these areas. One cannot just stop the rest of the country and merely consider an area in isolation. Who is going to be responsible for drawing up the detailed master plan? Who is going to do the detailed phasing of material supply, labour supply, transport—which will be a critical matter—and all the other things that go to make up a large operation of this kind?
It is easy to talk glibly of modern methods prefabrication, non-traditional building, and so on; but unless the officials concerned are behind them such methods will not work. A number of the officials in the local authorities in Scotland, and even in the Scottish Office itself, are absolutely set against any form of prefabrication and non-traditional building. They are the first obstacle to be converted. They may have very good reasons for their opposition; but it is certainly there. I would suggest that one could kill two birds with one stone by setting up a branch of the Building Research Station in Aberdeen where there is a fine nucleus of technical research institutions because, in the same way as in industry, it is a good thing to have one's technicians congregated together. One gets a pocket of people who can all talk "shop" together. I believe that demonstration of buildings and methods to be used in the climate in question would answer, through actual demonstration,
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the criticisms and prejudices which exist among departments and many local authorities.
I should like to know whether the "Critical Path Method" which is advocated by the Building Research Station for programming jobs will be employed, and whether, owing to the large size of this scheme, consideration will be given to employing a specialist industrial firm which uses computers when these matters become complicated and laborious. These computers can produce the kind of answer that no individual firm or no individual builder or contractor can produce. On this I speak with feeling, because during the war I was responsible for programming a couple of ordnance factories which were large-scale jobs, and it was a mighty "headache". I agree that the arrangements to publicise Central Scotland are very necessary, but it can be done in such a way that it does not entirely prejudice the rest of Scotland. I should like to put in a plea to see that if possible it is done in that way.
In regard to paragraph 19, on airports, this is a most essential aspect. I suggest that the abolition of what I think the Army might call airport "bull" should be a priority. In other words, efforts should be made to avoid one's being herded about and made to wait, and all the other difficulties which are apparently inseparable from air travel. It is high time that firm steps were taken to mitigate this sort of treatment. When people come here from America (where I am told they can just buy an air ticket, get on the aeroplane and that is that) they are in many cases quite upset by the sort of things that happen in our own air services. The prospective industrialist is a rather fickle chap, very easily upset and put off. So I strongly put in that plea.
Port modernisation is probably a somewhat overdue measure and should be integrated into the master plan. When one talks about transport, what about the rail lines North of Inverness? The phrase "take account of" is a wonderful phrase, one that can mean anything or nothing at all; but that is all we have in the White Paper. On the question of power stations, would it be feasible in the planning stage to contemplate the possibility that one or more

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of these stations might be required, before it has become obsolete, to switch to oil-firing owing to shortage of coal? I do not know whether that is a possibility, but it might be worth considering at the time of design.
As regards the grant for the rehabilitation or removal of old buildings—which I gather is 85 per cent., leaving 15 per cent. to be paid by the local authorities—would that apply in a development district if unsuitable old factory buildings were removed and the site used for housing? I do not know whether or not it would apply, but I should like to know whether it does in certain circumstances. I hope that the Scottish Development Group will work in the closest conjunction with the Scottish Council. I think that this recognition of their valuable services, which the Government give in paragraph 32, is long overdue. I do not know whether or not the contribution will come in a form satisfactory to the Scottish Council, but I hope that it does.
The chief beneficiaries, when all is done in Central Scotland, should be the working population. That is quite right. Nevertheless, I think this newspaper cutting is relevant:
"Production at the British Motor Corporation's Bathgate factory was affected again yesterday when 120 transport drivers came out on strike—the 59th at the factory in 29 months. As a result, 500 men were sent home and only the engine machine shop was in production. It will also likely be affected if the strike continues."
I do not attempt to lay blame on either side at all, because these are wild-cat strikes, but if you want to get industry into Scotland or anywhere else you will not get it that way.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I put this point? I think the record for industrial relations in Scotland is as good as, if not perhaps better than, is to be found in other parts of the country. I hope that the noble Viscount's words will not be a disservice to Scottish relationships.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: No; this is a question of one particular factory in Bathgate, where measures similar to those proposed in the White Paper were taken to get industry there. In 29 months 59 unofficial strikes have taken place. I think the Scottish T.U.C.
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might seriously consider this matter with, the employers.
LORD SHEPHERD: But the noble Viscount will agree that he is quoting an isolated case, and that, as a whole, the record in Scotland is very good.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: Unfortunately in this part of Scotland, we have only isolated cases of industry. The White Paper talks about considerable travelling to work and considerable mobility. I must say that, except as a very interim measure, I should deplore this travelling. If one spends an hour travelling to work, does an eight-hour day, and then spends an hour travelling back, it seems that nearly 25 per cent. of the working day is spent in travelling. I think that should be avoided, if at all possible. Under modern conditions, with the building of new factories on new sites, the objections to living fairly near a factory can be overcome, and I believe that every effort should be made to do so because of this great waste of time and the unpleasantness which can arise from it.
On the question of incentives, mentioned in paragraph 118, the independent Advisory Committee is to give decisions on whether or not an industrialist will be getting a grant. It seems to me that, if this Committee meets only quarterly, as so many others do, there is bound to be very great delay. It is absolutely essential, if you want to attract an industrialist, that he should be able to get a decision within a week. That would fairly shake the normal procedure, but I believe that is very necessary.
One matter that struck me as perhaps requiring a little more thought—I do not know whether that is possible—is the office development, which could easily take place in places outwith this particular part of the centre of Scotland which we are discussing. I think that a depreciation allowance or unlimited depreciation should apply to office equipment. After all, computers are very expensive things. There are also mechanical accounting machines, and a very high degree of mechanisation in an office. If the idea is to attract people to these distant places, I should have thought that encouragement was very necessary. The Government have been singularly unlucky, or ineffective, in attracting their own offices

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to go outside London, and perhaps the lack of encouragement has something to do with it. In paragraph 142 the Government quote figures of what they are going to spend in these areas, and they compare it to what has been spent elsewhere. But that is only a valid "crow" if they also quote figures for what they spent, or did not spend, in preceding years. However, I think it is essential that publicity is co-ordinated and carried out so that it does not jeopardise the rest of Scotland.
Just to show that enterprise is not dead around Aberdeen and other parts, I should like to quote a few firms who, without Government assistance and without carrots, have "got there". These firms have world-wide reputations and a world-wide export market. In the engineering field there are the Consolidated Pneumatic Tool Company, Hendersons and Gray's. In the textile field there is Crombies; in shipbuilding there is Hall Russell (who, incidentally, built the first Clipper boats; and they built the "Thermopylæ" in that shipyard before the Clyde built their Clippers) and there is Lewis. In the paper world there are the Culter Paper Mill, Stoneywood Paper Mill, Mugie Moss Mill, and Tait. In the field of agriculture, there are the Caledonian Milling Company, Scottish Agricultural Industries, Lawson's Bacon Curers and the canned food industry. Peterhead has the Cleveland Twist Drill Company and the Euclid earth-moving people. Fraserburgh has Maconochie Bros., and I see that Maconochie's are importing their tinplate front Wales. It may be that they will start taking it from Scotland: we ought to have some tinplate of our own. In Buckie, the B.T.H. have a small factory, and there are many other examples which show that enterprise is not dead in that part of Scotland. On the question of emigration, Hadrian tried to stop us migrating. He did not succeed. You must have Scotsmen about the place: they are useful as Prime Ministers, and offices like that.
5.40 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I rise to oppose the Amendment; and, looking at it, perhaps I exclude the word "immediate". The Amendment reads:
"…that these proposals fail to ensure an immediate substantial reduction in unemployment…".
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If I may leave out the word "immediate", I do not believe that the proposals fail to ensure a substantial reduction: I think they do. This word "immediate" makes an alteration, in a measure, to its sense; but I feel that—and I will develop this as I go on, although it has been mentioned by several noble Lords already—the urgency of the matter is of the first importance. I shall refer only to the Central Scotland Report, as I have no competence to refer to the Report on the North-East of England. But I do feel that this imaginative and businesslike programme appears to offer the best feasible plan for the industrial belt. It is good to know that other plans are to be expected, and that the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) have got spearhead schemes in hand for the North and for the Borders. Of course, we can find faults in detail, but I believe that the Government are to be supported in what they are taking in hand.
But, my Lords, does the White Paper contain enough sense of urgency, of immediacy? I feel that the sense is there, but it is hidden away in humdrum, undramatic, governmental language, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, drew attention. He made this point, but I feel—and the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, said the same thing—that urgency is necessary. More than that, I feel that the sense of urgency should be made patent in everything the Government do about it. If speed is of the essence, then, as the White Paper says, first things must come first—and I would add, "and that right quickly". I am not sure that I have yet assimilated the word "infrastructure", but, whatever it is, let us get on with it. It started late enough, and I think we must remember that. Infrastructure!—roads, railways, ports and air.
It is interesting that the actual trunk road programme set out on page 13 differs little from the Release put forward in April, 1962. That means that the big increase which the plan proposes is in classified roads. So far, so good. To digress, I think the Government have done quite right in concentrating on the duplication of the A.8 as a first task. Now it is drawing to an end, and we hope that it will soon be completed—

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and I see from the plan will be replaced, as to its middle section, by a motorway. But this is not the time or the place to go into technical details as to terms of the classification of the roads concerned. All I would say in supporting massive road development in the belt, is to repeat what I have said here before: that the major flaw, as I see it, in the road plan is the absence of an Edinburgh by-pass.
If your Lordships will glance at the map and mark—and I mean mark heavily—the line of the Pentland Hills, which extend from Edinburgh almost down to Lanark, you will mark a barrier of hills which is uncrossed by any road for 22 miles. Now this fact squeezes all the traffic between the industrial belt, the South-East and the A.1 into the City of Edinburgh. It astonishes me, and many others, that this situation is allowed to continue. With the traffic from the Forth and the Tay Bridges superimposed upon the growth traffic which we are discussing to-day of the central belt, a by-pass is needed—and a by-pass which was foreseen years ago. In a big city like Edinburgh no internal ring road will do to-day, and without it the beautiful city with its aesthetic values will have to be "Buchananised".
But, in addition to the place of such a by-pass road in the industrial pattern of Central Scotland, and in the light of the Buchanan Report, here is an opportunity, presented to Edinburgh on a plate, for a really forward-looking plan; for a by-pass road, complete with large parking spaces at the termini of public transport, with covered bus stations or access to public transport, so that as many people as possible will be able to do what they will have to do in the years to come—namely, use public transport within cities and thereby contribute to the very survival of cities as cities.
I go on from there to an industry in which I have a great belief. We must not forget that one of the industries in Scotland which have the greatest growth potential is that of tourism. Edinburgh, with its beauty and its Festival, is a capital asset of incalculable value to that end. I believe that, in terms of industry—and it is industry that we are discussing, the
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industrial belt—we must remember tourism, not only in Edinburgh but elsewhere up and down the country. It is a pity that more mention is not made of it in the White Paper. We should, I believe, remember that in many countries in the world tourism is a major undertaking which contributes very largely to their overseas balance of trade.
Before I leave roads, let us remember that if £105 million has been set aside for all Scottish roads in five years, there will be precious little left if £90 million is going to be spent on the central belt, as outlined in the White Paper. I mention this only because my deduction from this is the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth—namely, that the targets for 1970 are (I think he used these words) too leisurely. I agree with him that that would be the deduction from the figures that I have given.
As for railways, it must be remembered that Scotland has been deeply shocked by the threat of the Beeching closures. Rightly or wrongly, Scotland has been deeply shocked; and if, as I believe to be the case, the Government are not committed to these closures, then let them say so, and let them say so in no uncertain terms. If ever there was a contradiction of the suggestion that this plan was an election stunt, here is that contradiction. Surely it would have been vote-catching to say, "No closures in Scotland". They have not said so. I wish they would. But we must be sensible. Some sort of overhaul is necessary, but the knowledge that railway accounting has been operated on an antiquated basis makes one doubt, and doubt very markedly, the validity of some of the findings in the Beeching Report. Too much has been said, I think, of passenger trains travelling light of passengers without taking into account—and I make this point very strongly—the unsuitable and slow timings of many of the train services which are in existence to-day. Further, there is the fact, which any railwayman knows, that empty passenger rakes have got to be worked back in any case even if there are no passengers in them. Whether it is empty or full, the fact remains that the rake has got to be worked back to terminus to be ready for the next day,

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and every passenger—there may be only one or two—is a profit.
I have one specific suggestion to make in terms of the rail plans and that is in regard to the railway service to Livingston New Town. I urge upon my noble friend that this should not be closed and that a statement should be made to this effect. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the reverse should be the case. The line has a great potential at the moment for freight and extra sidings are being added as we speak. With the population of a quarter-million coming to surround the area, a great regional hospital and, perhaps, a university, the passenger traffic should be fostered. Indeed, the right course might well be to include the line in the electrification network of the future.
I will now turn to the ports. More so in ports than in any other type of transport facilities, by virtue of the long-term nature of the task, immediate decisions are needed. Surely the case for the development of Leith Docks is sound; and if it is sound then every day counts in giving the signal to go ahead. Is the National Ports Council alive to the need for speed if this plan for Central Scotland is to have its fully integrated infrastructure? My Lords, perhaps this would be a convenient moment for me now to interrupt my speech in readiness for the Royal Commission.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

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

Nigeria Republic.

Expiring Laws Continuance.

Electricity and Gas.

House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

DEVELOPMENT OF CENTRAL SCOTLAND AND NORTH-EAST ENGLAND
6.12 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, having interrupted my speech, I turn now to air transport. With all the disadvantages that stem from a very odd climate, the future of air transport is assured in Scotland. Again, speed of decision is of the essence. The new runway at Turnhouse should not await (if, in fact, that is what it is awaiting) a decision about the ownership of the airfield as a whole. Perhaps the Minister of State, who is to reply, will be able to tell us when we may expect to see the new runway at Turnhouse taken in hand.
Alas! the decision about Abbotsinch is disappointing to many people, including myself, though it may be satisfactory to Glasgow; and it is an expensive decision. I believe that, if it had not been for the general run-down of the railways, Prestwick, linked with the centre of Glasgow by a railcar service—as I believe London Airport should be connected with Victoria or St. Pancras—would have rendered a better service to the community than will ultimately be provided from Abbotsinch. And by "the community" I mean the community of Central Scotland, as distinct from Glasgow and its immediate neighbourhood. I am tempted at this moment to comment on my noble friend Lord Polwarth's reference to Prestwick and the overseas services from it. It is worth recalling that the new terminal is now completed, and I believe that that is another factor adding to the disappointment that Prestwick has not been made the airport for Glasgow.
While on the subject of air services, let it be remembered that airports are not the whole story. The airlines are also concerned. B.E.A., in my view, have thrown away a great measure of good will by their reaction to the British Eagle services, which have been added in order to increase the frequency of services with Scotland. B.E.A. had a certain measure of sympathy from us all over their operation of the unremunerative services with the Highlands and Islands; but to tell Scotland that they have not the aircraft to increase the frequency of services with the South,

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and then to react as they have done to the British Eagle additional service, is just plain silly, so far as good will is concerned. The Toothill Report emphasised the need for frequent services, not for two planes leaving for the same destination at the same minute, which is what B.E.A. are doing at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, talked of Dundee. It makes me wonder what he must feel about the amount that B.E.A. are losing in this duplicate service with British Eagle which they might be spending on putting down aircraft within reach of Dundee. I cannot help feeling that it would be fair in a debate on Scottish affairs to describe this as "just a carry-on".
While on this subject, my noble friend Lord Stonehaven referred to airport "bull", as he called it. I think I am right in saying that British Eagle do not insist on this. I have never travelled by their service, and so far have had nothing to do with them; but my information is that they permit the walk-on service. My noble friend Lord Stonehaven referred to air travel in the U.S.A., but it is also the case in Australia that one is impressed by the simplicity and the speed with which one can walk on and travel from place to place by air.
There is another matter on which I should like to touch, and that is the question of the Government as an employer—and my noble friend Lord Polwarth referred to this point. First of all, let us press the Government to continue to disperse Government undertakings in areas such as Central Scotland and North-East England, as they have done in the case of the Post Office Savings Bank and the National Insurance offices at Newcastle. Let them carry on the good work and spread these in the development areas. I think I am right in saying that the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, made this point. Do not let it happen, as I believe it has done, that Government contractors are urged to establish their factories within easy reach of London to facilitate inspection and the like. The whole job would be so much more cheaply done with good and fast communications, such as those of which we are speaking, with the cheaper operation of manufacture in development areas.
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Several references have been made to migration, and on this subject I should like to support my noble friend Lady Horsbrugh. I think it is fair to try to get this question into proper proportion. I speak as one who has served over 30 years abroad, and left Scotland, if not gladly, certain happily and with a spirit of adventure, as my father did before me. I have heard it said—and I should not be surprised if it is right—that there are ten Scotsmen abroad for every Scotsman in Scotland. I think there has been too much sentimentality around the subject arising from the hardships that sprang from the Clearances. It must be remembered that many emigrants, even in those days, were not unwilling to exchange the rigours of life in the Highlands with little or no prospect of improved conditions, for the rigours of life abroad with a wide horizon of opportunity. I hesitate to make this point, but I think it must be said, lest I be misunderstood. It is a grievous thing for a man and a family to be compelled by dire necessity to move, to have to tear up roots that linger in the soil. But let us be proud that many a Scot migrates because he wants to.
My Lords, as I said when I began, these development and growth plans deserve our wholehearted support, and in giving them mine I make no apology for outspoken criticism of certain details. Nor do I apologise for repeating the appeal which other noble Lords have made for immediate decisions, particularly in transport matters. I oppose the Amendment.
6.21 p.m.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, I promise to be as brief as I can, and I also propose to look at this matter from a rather different angle—that of what the noble and gallant Viscount on the Bench behind would describe as "the tribal areas." I may say that I am extremely proud of being one of those tribesmen. Although what I have to say applies to the whole of Scotland North of Forth and Clyde, I speak more particularly for those people, nearly 135,000 of them, who live in the counties of Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, and the North Westerly Islands of the Hebrides—an area of nearly 7,000 square

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miles, all to the North or North-West of Inverness. We have just heard from greater experts than I could hope to be, on both sides of the House, about this White Paper for the development of the central belt. Although, like most other things it is probably imperfect, one still feels that the Paper is a move in the right direction, and will bring much good to an area which much needs it. Needless to say, no Highlander begrudges any advantage that may come to this area which so badly needs it, and has needed it for a long time. But we must realise that, with the added opportunities of employment in this already fairly crowded area, it will be bound to become a lodestone for many other parts of Scotland, and especially my own area, which will only add to the depopulation of this vast place.
I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Ferrier, that we have through the ages, of our own volition, gone abroad, in various types of service and for various reasons. But except for some very horrible times in history, which the noble Lord also mentioned, we have been able to keep a stock in the North, in the Highlands, which has proved of tremendous worth to the country as a whole. We have heard rather vaguely that there is to be another White Paper dealing with possible suggested developments for other parts of Scotland, and I would urge that this is done with all speed. The development of Central Scotland must proceed as quickly as possible, but we must get this other Paper out as quickly as possible, too. Already a vast amount of damage has been done in the area from which I come by the iniquitous threat—I repeat, the iniquitous threat—to close all the rail lines North of Inverness. I have already spoken on this subject in your Lordships' House and your Lordships probably know my views upon it. They are shared, I think, by practically 99½ per cent. of Scottish Members of your Lordships' House and even by some who are not Scotsmen.
I would remind your Lordships that no less a person than the recent Leader of this House put our minds to rest by informing us that extensive closures could not be indulged in for a number of years. I raised the point again a month later, and my noble friend Lord
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Chesham gave me the same reply but in different words. On more than one occasion we have been told in another place—if one can understand straightforward, plain English—that there would be no closures of this kind until adequate alternative transport had been provided. I see no sign of it. There is not one mile of road which could possibly take the place of these railways. There is not one improvement on one single road that could improve the existing roads, which are the same as were there in 1912. I have looked them up. All that we have been given is a rather insulting and exceedingly stupid idea of a few extra buses for the public to use. If this closure goes through, I should like to get hold of the Minister of Transport, put him on to one of those buses in Wick, and see what he feels like after ten hours' travelling in that bus to reach the railhead at Inverness—and very likely in the winter he would not get there at all.
I shall not continue much longer, but I want to push this point in, because it affects the development of Scotland as well as development of this one area. There is, in fact, one inadequate main road, as many of your Lordships know, between Inverness and Wick and Dounreay, the atomic station. It serves several expanding communities who have expanded, as they were told to, in the last few years. Apart from that, there are two roads, one to South-West of Ross and Cromarty and one to the North-West of Ross and Cromarty. They are—if you can so call them—the only trunk roads we have. Where, therefore, is the alternative satisfactory transportation that we are to have? It just is not there. Quite frankly, if, after the promises we have had in your Lordships' House and another place (and I can see no sign at the moment of their being fulfilled), the Government decide to close these railways, it will, in my opinion, be one of the most cynical breaches of faith in which any Government have ever indulged.
I hope that the Minister of Transport will not only take some heed of the feelings of most Scots people, especially those who are most affected, but also remember his own motto of "Keep death off the roads", since, with the annual increase in motor traffic, the accident rate

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has gone up in my own area very considerably. If we lose our railways Heaven alone knows what the result will be; in the summer we can hardly get along as it is. Noble Lords may say that I have gone away from the point, but I do not think I have really. I would finish by saying that without transport, and good transport, there can be no development. The only thing there can be is depopulation.
6.31 p.m.
THE EARL OF MAR AND KELLIE: My Lords, I have two points to make in this important debate and I shall not take up more than five minutes of your Lordships' time. The Government's proposals for Central Scotland seem to have been largely welcomed by most speakers this afternoon. One aspect, however, which causes me concern and has caused concern to two or three of my noble friends who have spoken before is the feeling that unless more support is given quickly to the Highlands and Islands, to the North-East and to the Borders the drift of population away from these areas, particularly among young people, will inevitably tend to increase, and could increase alarmingly in a few years. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend Lord Craigton will give urgent consideration to the approach on this subject made, or about to be made, to Her Majesty's Government by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry).
A subject not mentioned in the White Paper is forestry. This forms the second point I wish to make and concerns an outlet in Central Scotland for forestry products, especially thinnings, grown in the area. Since the war much encouragement has been given by Her Majesty's Government to private growers to put more land under timber and to produce it by the best methods of management and sylviculture, and much, over Scotland as a whole, has been done to provide outlets for thinnings such as the Fort William Pulp Mill and the chipboard factories at Inverness, Annan, and Hex-ham in Northumberland. I understand that there is also a possibility of another pulp mill to be situated in the South-West.
All these installations are very distant from the expanding forests of Central Scotland. Transport costs are high, and
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for ever going up and eating away the net profits of an enterprise which has been encouraged by Her Majesty's Government. For instance, it is unlikely that the delivered price of pulpwood can be more than 85s. a ton, but delivery costs from Central Scotland to Fort William or the South-West will average out at 35s. a ton, a high proportion of the delivered price. The position is similar with material for chipboard, where the delivered price is equivalent to about 95s. a ton, and the delivery charges from Central Scotland amount to between 35s. and 40s. a ton. The situation is such that it has not been considered economic to try to get into these distant markets. Bearing in mind the ever-increasing volume of thinnings coming on to the market as a result of the extensive post-war plantings and the location of existing and projected outlets, may I urge Her Majesty's Government to give urgent thought to the establishment in Central Scotland of suitable timber-consuming industries, not only for the benefit of growers but also as one means of helping to overcome the unemployment position.
6.35 p.m.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, I wish to congratulate the Government and the authors of what to my mind is an excellent Paper, which gives a great deal of evidence of much research, thought, foresight and application. But it is a blueprint which depends for success on the various essential parts being ready to take their place in the scheme at the right time, a process which will call for a great deal of organisation and the closest possible co-operation between all the departments and the other authorities concerned. That is, surely, only one part of what is required to enable Central Scotland to take her full part in the economy of the country. The other part is to get industry established and employment provided.
I venture to speak on this particular aspect of the matter because of my experience as chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, which has a duty under its Act to do everything it possibly can to improve the social and economic conditions of the people in this district, a district which includes all Scotland north of a line joining Dundee to Dumbarton, two-thirds of the land area of Scotland and covering some 20,000

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square miles. In this connection, one of the Board's principal officers has for many years devoted much of his time to making known to industrialists just what the North of Scotland has to offer, and we have had some successes. But our experience is that, having secured the interest of an industrialist and his decision to come to the North, we then turn him over to the Board of Trade, and in most cases many obstacles then appear which take time, much time, and patience to overcome.
The credit-worthiness and management of the firm is investigated, it would seem, without any real sense of urgency. There does not seem to be anyone who can give a quick decision on whether the industrialist may set up in his new location and, if so, what assistance shall he forthcoming, what rent he will be expected to pay, or if he builds for himself, what grant he will get, though the latter is a matter which has since been clarified. The poor man is passed from one department to another, from one individual to another, until he becomes so frustrated that he feels inclined to give up altogether. I suggest that, in these circumstances, when an application is received by the Board of Trade it should become the duty of one official to see it through all its various stages. That would greatly speed things up and save much waste of time and feelings of frustration.
Just as, it seems to me, there should be one official taking charge of an application in the Board of Trade, so there should be one department, and only one, wholly responsible in relation to the transfer of Southern Industry from one location to another; and it should deal with every aspect of that move and with the setting-up of any new industrial project. In that connection I am glad to note that that Scottish Development Group is to be kept in being, but I would ask: is the Group concerned only with the infrastructure—a horrible word but it seems to describe what is meant? Has it responsibility only in connection with the setting up of the industry; or does the sole responsibility continue with the Board of Trade? I should be much obliged if my noble friend, when he comes to reply, could clarify the position.
I am also glad to note from paragraph 8 of the White Paper that the Govern-
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are conscious of the economic problem of other parts of Scotland and are pressing on with their examination. I hope most sincerely that their conclusions may soon be available, because many small communities in the North have not far to go before they reach the point of no return and cease for all time to be viable communities.
At this point I would ask whether applications to set up industry in parts of Scotland other than in the central area are to continue to receive consideration. I ask that because time and again my Board, having persuaded an industrialist that it would be to his advantage to set up in the North of Scotland, hear from him that the Board of Trade has directed him to some other part of the country. Just recently we had persuaded an industrialist that Dundee was the place for him, only to hear later that on the advice of the Board of Trade the two extensions which his board had planned were to go one to the North-East coast and the other to Cornwall.
In another instance we had advised a large number of industrialists who were known to be contemplating extensions or new projects of the advantages which the North of Scotland had to offer. Many replies were received, some showing a great deal of interest; others saying the Board of Trade had already suggested to them they should go to some other place; and others, again, stating that their needs for the moment had been met but that when they had further extensions in view they would certainly consider the North of Scotland. Some weeks after the main body of replies had come to hand we received a letter from the chairman of a large concern, who apologised for being so late in acknowledging our letter. He said that he had been in the United States and that it was only on his return that he had learned of the facilities which existed in Dundee, as the Board of Trade had told him only of East Kilbride and one other place in Scotland; and in the meantime his board were in process of negotiating with the Development Corporation of East Kilbride. We easily got in touch with the gentleman and took him to Dundee, with which he was so satisfied that he said he would certainly go there. Then, some ten days later, I heard from him that at a meeting of his board held that day he learned that in his absence they

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had committed themselves irrevocably to East Kilbride. I venture to ask again, is it any use trying to get industrialists to go to any part of Scotland other than that part with which the White Paper deals? Will the Board of Trade agree to setting up new industries in the crofter counties in the North-East, Aberdeen, Inverness, or Perth until the requirements of Central Scotland have been satisfied?
Apart from these slight criticisms, which have little to do with the White Paper itself, I welcome the White Paper, because it plans the central foundation on which the economy of Central Scotland may be raised so as to ensure full employment and prosperity for that part of the country. But let us not forget that much remains to be done. May all play their part in raising on that foundation a worthwhile structure!
6.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I, along with many other noble Lords, believe that the White Paper is good as far as it goes. It sets out a sound pattern or sound framework for development. It sets out various measures for progress in communications, and in this connection I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, in his view about the attitude of B.E.A. in relation to Eagle Airways. I make a point of this, because I know that in the OFFICIAL REPORT we do not find in brackets the words "Hear, hear!" when some noble Lord makes a remark, and certainly there were many noble Lords who said this in connection with Lord Ferrier's remarks.
Then, again, on this framework, we have the promise of new houses and the development of the New Towns, and importantly—a point which the noble Lord, Lord Todd, made—there is the realisation, and I hope we shall see more than realisation, that a real effort must be made towards the rehabilitation of the derelict areas. Nothing is more important, when people are thinking of coming to a new district, than that they should see it in an attractive condition, and not with dumps and pits all over the place. Moreover, this is a way in which we could give immediate employment to quite a number of people.
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Again in relation to the framework, we have the human side, which is most important. I refer to the training of the people. I am not competent to speak on this training, but I feel, with many other noble Lords who have spoken, that what has been done so far is inadequate to cope with the task that faces us. There are nearly 100,000 unemployed. Many of them will have to be retrained, and I think a crash training programme, not only by the Government itself but by industry throughout Scotland in collaboration with the Government, is of great importance.
The second thing which makes me say that I believe this is a sound Paper is the fact that it recognises the importance of carrying on with the growth areas once they have started to develop. This, as your Lordships know, is something that Toothill suggested several years ago, but in fact it is no new principle. We all know it in our ordinary daily lives—"Back your luck" or "Do not change horses in midstream"; and although it has taken the Government a long time to face up to it, they have done it. I think it is of tremendous importance that it should go on.
The third point which makes me feel that this Paper is a good one is the fact that there is a positive Government approach to regional development. Whether it is sufficiently positive, time alone can show. But in trying to judge whether it is sufficiently positive, I think we need to look most carefully at paragraph 14, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, referred and which is the "guts", if I may put it that way, of the whole of this White Paper. It is said that arrangements will be made so that all concerned can work together to bring about expansion in an orderly and efficient way. The noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, when he introduced the Motion told us a little about these arrangements, but I am afraid that even when he gave us some description of them I was not entirely clear about them, or satisfied that what he said is sufficient. Other noble Lords have spoken on this point. For example, I am not clear whether any body, and if so what body, is going to rule on the matter of priorities; because there will have to be a rule of priorities. There

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is too much of trying to do things in too short a time. I am all for trying to do it, but if there is not a clear decision—for example, that certain roads must be put here or houses there—there will be confusion, and less speed than if there is a clear decision on priorities.
Again, in paragraph 14 we are told that everyone will know what part he and all the others concerned have to play in the expansion. This, I believe, is almost as important as the machinery to decide priorities. The noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, referred to this. She told us that she thought the Government ought from time to time to issue progress reports, and I would support her in this regard. 1 do not mind what form the progress reports take, but it is essential that all who are concerned in this matter should have a feeling that we are part of it, know where it is going and know how it is going; and so I ask the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, most earnestly, to think about this question of progress reports and to tell us all how things are going, so that we may play our part and feel we are playing it in a way of adventure and enthusiasm.
The second general point that I want to make is in regard to the building and constructing industry. Your Lordships will have seen from the White Paper that if all the things that are outlined are to go forward there will need to be an expansion in the building industry of some 30 per cent. At the present time the building industry has some 180,000 employees, and a 30 per cent. increase would mathematically make a further 54,000 jobs. I know it will not work out in exactly that way, but the point which I think is important is that it should provide a great number of jobs. And if it is pushed hard now it should provide jobs immediately, which is the anxiety of the Opposition in moving their Amendment. So I hope every effort will be made to push on with construction. But I think we all recognise that it is a difficult thing to expand an already pretty overburdened industry by a further 30 per cent. in a short period of time. There is, for example, the problem of training. Not only must the Government work on training and re-training, but I hope that
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they will consult with various construction contractors on what part they can take, whether in Scotland or in the South.
Then, several of your Lordships have spoken about the importance in all of this of standardisation, prefabrication or modern methods of construction. Again, I am sure that this is something which is of tremendous importance if we are to get the best out of the building and contracting world. In this moment of urgency, in this crash programme of building on which the whole of the White Paper and the future development depends, I think it is tremendously important that both the employers and the workers should realise that this is not an ordinary time and that they should be prepared—I know that this is delicate ground—to be not as rigid as perhaps might normally be the case, for example, in regard to demarcation in various jobs. One knows that the building industry employs joiners, plumbers, electricians, plasterers and masons, and so often when one is trying to build something it is found that they say, "We cannot do anything now until the plasterer comes", although his work may be in some quite small part of a house and a jack-of-all-trades could easily do it. I hope that in these present conditions those concerned will recognise that perhaps what is right in normal times may not be the best thing in exceptional times.
Lastly, on this question of building and how we can increase the figure by 30 per cent., I have talked to one or two big contractors who have had it in mind to do jobs, or are doing small jobs in Scotland, but whose real base is in this country. When they have tendered in Scotland they have certainly had the feeling—I should not want to put it any more strongly—that there has been considerable favouritism, to their detriment. Perhaps it is understandable and human nature. Again, in these exceptional times I hope that we shall no longer have a position of that kind, but rather that we shall invite and encourage one and all of the contracting companies of this country to come to our help. Paragraph 158 of the White Paper says that the Government are confident that contracting industries will rise to the challenge. I say only that I hope that that confidence is well

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placed, and I suggest that nothing is more important than that the Government should follow this up straight away to their best ability.
To sum up, I think that the most important thing in this White Paper is the arrangement to carry things out, to ensure that they are carried out, and, allied with that, the essential need that the people as a whole shall be told not only where they are going, but how they are going and what progress is being made in this great adventure for the development of Scotland. This White Paper deals only with Central Scotland, but, of course, none of us who has spoken to-day forgets that that is only one part of Scotland. For those who are there it is the most important part, but those who live to the north or to the south believe that their part is at least as important, and that their country is at least as beautiful—and who is to say they are wrong?
6.55 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON): My Lords, it has not always been our experience in recent years that a debate covering the affairs of Scotland can take place in an atmosphere of genuine hope and optimism, but to-day we are in that happy position. Hope is legitimately engendered by the imaginative proposals in the White Paper which so many of your Lordships have received approvingly. Optimism is justified by the positive signs of improvement that we can already detect.
I will try to answer some of the major points raised in this debate. If I fail to answer some of them my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn may deal with them in winding up. If not, I will write to noble Lords whom I have failed to answer. My noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie was the only noble Lord, other than the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition, who referred to what is really our main concern—namely, unemployment. I think I should refer to that first. We do not underestimate the seriousness of the unemployment problem, but, equally, in a spirit of guarded optimism, we must not allow ourselves to be over-depressed by it. The current unemployment figures show encouraging trends. Over the three months, August to November, the
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increase in unemployment was only 664 as compared with the normal seasonal rise of 8,500; and something like 5,000 jobs are likely to mature this winter from Scottish schemes for which industrial development certificates have been issued.
What are the reasons for this? I suggest to your Lordships that these signs of improvement can be directly attributed to the measures taken by the Government earlier this year.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, that is a little like a target for which I was asking. Can the noble Lord give me the exact figure of unemployment there now, overall?
LORD CRAIGTON: I have the figure. For Scotland it is 89,241–4·1 per cent. I was saying that this improvement is directly attributable to the measures taken by the Government earlier this year—measures such as the improved standard grants, free depreciation, the £75 million credit scheme for the shipbuilding industry, the increase in public investment, the additional overseas aid, from which Scottish industry with surplus capacity has benefited, and the renewal and extension to all development districts of the scheme to encourage small local authorities' projects which they can complete this winter. The White Paper is thus the logical evolution of the steps we have been taking over the past years. Undoubtedly, there will be other steps that will have to be taken, but we must make haste prudently, and must always be prepared for unforeseen changes at home and in the outside world.
Let me remind your Lordships of one of the many foreseen changes with which we have had to deal. It was absolutely crucial to get the Scottish coal industry operating more efficiently. The Government have given Lord Robens and his colleagues every support in their successful efforts. This really is a success story. Already productivity per man has increased by 25 per cent. in the last three years, and the net loss per ton has been cut down by nearly two-thirds. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, referred to the current price for coal in Scotland, and in particular to the surcharge of 10s. per ton. These, as he knows, are matters for the commercial judgment of the National Coal Board; but the long-term prospects

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are good, and I have no doubt that Scotland will not be disadvantaged in what it can offer in terms of energy prices to industry.
Those and many other similar changes and contractions have been accompanied in the same period by the starting of new growth industries. The strip mill, the motor vehicle industry, re-established in Scotland after 40 years; and now the accessory firms, which are beginning to settle in at places as far apart as Irvine and West Calder. We have electronics at Glenrothes; ball bearings at Irvine; office machinery at Cumbernauld—to mention only a few. It is significant that all these major developments are located in one or other of the growth areas. It was in fact the combination of the locational judgments of these firms and the Government's own policy of planned overspill expansion in the new towns and in other areas taking Glasgow overspill that made a growth areas policy something much more than a paper theory and a paper exercise.
This policy has evolved from the events which I have described and is now formally defined in the White Paper. What is really new is that we carry this evolutionary policy a major step forward by a coherent pattern of development throughout the whole region, coupled with special additional investment and a commitment that this special treatment—both in industrial inducements and in investment—will be maintained until there is a substantial improvement in the economy of the whole area. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for the support he gave the Government and the White Paper, and I must express my own gratitude for the continuing and constructive help given to Scotland by Lord Polwarth and the Scottish Council.
A number of noble Lords—Lord Mar and Kellie, Lord Cromartie, the Leader of the Opposition. Lord Polwarth, Lord Hughes and the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh—in one way and another expressed anxieties that the special measures we are taking to reinvigorate the economy of Central Scotland are being taken, as one noble Lord said, in isolation and will accelerate the drift of population from other parts of Scotland, and in particular from the Highlands and Islands. On this, there are two considerations I
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would ask your Lordships to bear in mind. The first is that the analysis given in the White Paper shows that the prospect of a long-term recovery in the whole Scottish economy will be seriously damaged if the net loss of young people in Scotland as a whole continues at its present level. It is essential, therefore, as a first step, to press forward with the measures we have announced for Central Scotland which contains 75 per cent. of our population and 90 per cent. of our manufacturing industry, and includes most of the run-down areas to which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, referred and from which we are losing so many of our young people every year—perhaps a trainload a day—from Scotland to the South. It may well he that initially a faster rate of growth in the area which is the heart of the economy will attract some element of population from other areas; but surely this is preferable in the short term to the movement of these people out of Scotland altogether.
The second consideration is that although, for the reasons I have given, priority has had to be given to Central Scotland, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State fully appreciates the importance of the need to survey the problems of other areas. This work has already begun, and noble Lords will be glad to know that the Scottish Development Group is giving priority and particularly close study to the Highlands and Borders, in view of their specially urgent problems. We are also embarking on an examination of the North-East and South-West which present different conditions. My right honourable friend hopes that in the next year or eighteen months it will be possible to have completed studies for all these regions.
The noble Lord, Lord Todd, made another of his valuable and constructive speeches and gave us much food for thought and action—and perhaps even more food for thought and action on the part of the Scottish Council. None of us would disagree with the estimate given by the noble Lord of the particular value which research and development activity within industry can have in stimulating faster growth. There is no doubt that science-based industry, as it is rather loosely called, can thrive in Scotland, and indeed is thriving now. The noble Lord suggested that the Scottish Council should emphasise in its

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publicity how much Scotland has to offer. I need not remind him that the Ferranti complex in and around Edinburgh employs some 5,000 people; and that Rolls Royce have moved an engine design and development unit from Derby to Hamilton; and, as announced only the other day, that Honeywell Controls (who are already a large employer in Scotland) are now starting to manufacture magnetic tape computers at Newhouse, providing about 2,000 jobs in the next five years. All this growth is the best sort of advertisement and encouragement for further growth—which, of course, is the object of the White Paper.
I now come to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, whom I always like to hear so much. He seemed to have great difficulty in making a case against the Paper. He liked the way it was written; I am grateful to him for that—and I say that quite seriously. We made a special effort that this White Paper should be readable and written in ordinary Queen's English; and I am very glad that the noble Lord was so kind about it. I am only sorry that nobody else was, because we went to a great deal of trouble over it.
Lord Hughes did not approve of our facing the harsh facts of life—facts which had to be put down if we were going to justify the White Paper. We put down the hard facts in the knowledge that he would undoubtedly quote them against us. He twitted the Government because we had streamlined the grant arrangements and increased the number of advance factories. Who initiated these policies is not so material as whether they are the right policies. On this I could only presume that the noble Lord agreed with the White Paper. He quoted paragraph 25 on Housing. He asked: how are 9,000 houses a year to be built? How are the local authorities going to pay for them? The noble Lord does not expect to quote half the paragraph without my finishing the quotation for him. Of course, 9,000 houses would be a great weight on the local authorities, but he did not quote to your Lordships the next three lines, which say:
"Building in the growth areas will be largely sustained by the new towns and by the Scottish Special Housing Association, whose activities will be expanded."
So that explodes that bubble.
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The noble Lord also spoke about school building in the new towns and growth areas. This is a very difficult point, and there are two conflicting considerations. We have to give special treatment to areas of rapid expansion, but we must not overload the constrution industry too much in any particular locality. I can assure the noble Lord that this is a point which exercises me, too. I have looked most carefully at this, and I am satisfied that our resources have been allocated as fairly and as intelligently as possible.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I should like to intervene very briefly to say that the Fife County Council, which I quoted, believe from their past experience that they can do considerably more than the Government can permit them to do. I appreciate the point which the noble Lord is making. If events in the next year or so prove that the county council can undertake more, will their programme immediately be expanded?
LORD CRAIGTON: Knowing the Fife County Council, I am sure they will not be backward in putting their case up. Obviously I cannot bind any Government as to what might happen in two years' time, but if things turn out better than we think, then Fife should obviously come back to the Government for another go.
LORD HUGHES: I should be quite happy if you would give a commitment over the next six months.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, may we ask the noble Lord whether he will see that in the housing developments there is a proper percentage of houses to rent and which do not have to be bought?
LORD CRAIGTON: That was not exactly the point.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: It is very much connected with local authority building.
LORD CRAIGTON: Well, local authorities in Scotland build mostly houses for rent. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, asked us what was meant by saying, in paragraph 83 of the White Paper, that the Exchequer grant of 85 per cent. for the rehabilitation and clearance of derelict land will be maintained

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until further notice. I think I plead guilty to a little loose drafting here. There is no intention of cutting off or cutting down the grant abruptly, but it would be wrong for the local authorities to hold back in the thought that it continued indefinitely. Indeed, the Local Employment Act, which empowers the grants to be given, itself has to be reviewed by Parliament in 1967.
My noble friend Lord Stonehaven asked me whether the grant was payable for clearance of derelict premises. In principle, the grant is payable for clearance and rehabilitation of land in development districts where this will promote prospects of employment in the area. But each case is considered on its merits, and if the noble Viscount has a particular case in mind I should be very glad if he would let me know about it.
The noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Perth asked about progress reports. Of course, yearly these will be given in any case in the annual report of the Scottish Development Department. At more frequent intervals other Ministries issue statistical reports of unemployment and the like, and these are debated in both Houses. I do not want to add to the paper war without considerable thought, but we will consider the noble Baroness's suggestion and will let her know about it.
My noble friends Lord Stonehaven, Lord Ferrier and Lord Cromartie asked about rail closures, and I think I should say something about this. The present position is that the proposed closures to passenger traffic of 42 lines, including the Highland lines, and 345 stations in Scotland have been published. This is 42 out of 51 lines and 345 out of 442 stations in the Beeching Report. Objections have been lodged, and the Scottish Transport Users' Consultative Committee procedure for determining whether hardship will be created must be followed in every case. Public hearings have been held by the S.T.U.C.C. for the first 14 lines which were advertised in June. These public notices are the first stage in the procedure laid down in the Transport Act, 1962, and the timing of them is entirely for the British Railways Board. If there are objections—and, as I say, there have been objections to all the proposals—
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the next stage is for the S.T.U.C.C. to consider whether any hardship will result, and to make recommendations about alternative services. In the meantime, the closures cannot take place, as the ultimate decision when objections are raised has to be taken by my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport, and he has taken no decisions relating to Scotland yet. But before he considers his decision, the S.T.U.C.C. will report to him on hardship.
Local authorities and others affected may make representations on other matters direct to the Minister of Transport, and he will consult the Secretary of State for Scotland in every Scottish case. This will ensure that all relevant factors are taken into account. In addition, in relation to the Highland lines the Secretary of State will take account of the views of the Highlands Panel and will consult the new Highland Transport Board as appropriate. My right honourable friend has, as the House knows, given an assurance that where a railway closure is the right course in the long run, the Government will ensure that it is not carried out in such a way as to leave an area bereft of facilities for the transport of passengers and freight. My noble friend Lord Cromartie should really give us time before deciding whether we are or ever will be cynical about the best interests of Scotland. I can assure noble Lords that all relevant factors, including the economic and social implications, and the adequacy of the roads and of alternative services, will be taken into account before final decisions are taken on the particular closure proposals to which reference has been made.
My noble friend Lord Stonehaven asked a rather technical point about water schemes. which is something that interests us both very much. I should like to write to him about it. My noble friends Lord Perth, Lord Polwarth and Lord Stonehaven asked me about the importance of co-ordinated effort among all those concerned in implementing the White Paper, and this is very important. As the White Paper makes clear, it is of course fundamental that each element in the pattern of development must be properly phased and fitted in to form a completely articulated whole. This will now be done on a wider scale than we

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have ever attempted before. But the task is essentially similar to that which we have undertaken since the war in the New Towns, and we have learned a great deal about the problems and the techniques involved. The success which we have achieved in developing the New Towns has in no small measure been due to the confidence and optimism which a firm commitment to pre-planned expansion stimulates among all those who have a part to play in turning the plans into reality.
It is just this which we are now attempting to provide for the growth areas. Meetings have already been held with local authorities at official level, as the first stage of drawing up programmes, and next month I propose to take this a step further by myself meeting the elected members of some of those authorities, when I hope we shall be able to reach a broad measure of agreement on what needs to be done in their areas and what the priorities should be. We are very much aware of the fact that, although the Government with plans and with money can provide the essential basis for permanent success, there is still, if Scotland is to succeed, much to be done.
I come to the last point now, which was raised by the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition as well as by my noble friends Lord Polwarth, the noble Lady, Lord Todd, Lord Stonehaven and Lord Ferrier—in fact nearly every speaker mentioned it. The need now, having produced a plan, is for more trained personnel to fill the new jobs that have been and are being created, and for more and more trained people to build new factories and houses in which the people will live and work. This is something that can be done only by the Government, the local authorities and the unions working together with management for a common end. First and foremost, confidence in the future is essential. The Government have given a firm commitment to maintain public service investment in Central Scotland over the coming years at about the same proportion as in 1964-65, and my noble friend Lord Blakenham dealt with this at some length. Confidence will lead to increased
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building but, as my noble friend Lord Perth said, if we are to get the right buildings at the right place and at the right time we must use all our efforts. These are some of the things which we are doing to achieve this.
We have been for the past year or so—I have done it myself—showing the local authorities the value of consortia and standardised sizes. We have made some progress and we shall persevere in this. The Ministry of Public Building and Works are to set up a National Building Agency, and it will have an office in Scotland. The purpose of this agency will be to assist local authorities and others to make greater use of industrialised building components, and to encourage new approaches to traditional techniques. The Younger Committee has for the past fourteen months been studying Scottish building practices and will report soon.
At the request of the Ministry of Labour, the particular problems of labour deployment in Scotland in this traditionally mobile industry are to be the subject of a special research project in the University of Glasgow. The trained labour force—and here I answer a point raised by the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition—in the building industry must he increased, and the Secretary of State is raising the matter with the Scottish Trades Union Congress, whilst the Ministry of Public Building and Works and the Ministry of Labour have arranged for discussions between both sides of the industry and their related professions. In expanding their general training arrangements, the Ministry of Labour are catering especially for the building and engineering industries. If the need became evident, the Ministry would be ready to consider a further expansion of their programmes. All these steps, taken together, will give powerful impetus to the construction industry.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, before the noble Lord goes on, might I ask him one question? I think that what he has told us on the building industry is most encouraging. If I understood him aright, there is to be a National Building Agency set up here, with an office in Scotland. Could we not have it the other way round: the headquarters in Scotland and the office in England?
LORD CRAIGTON: I will note my noble friend's suggestion, but I think the answer is going to be what he knows.
LORD STONHAM: What does he know? Is the answer, "No"?
LORD CRAIGTON: Yes, my Lords, I think the answer would be "No". So much for the effect on the building industry. But confidence, once established, will bring more jobs, too—and here, again, is a point the noble Earl, Lord Perth, made.
We need to provide more trained personnel for industry generally, and to achieve this the following steps have been taken. I may say that I am coordinating both these subjects and am giving all of the steps that have been taken because I have not seen it done previously and I think it is most important to realise that the Government are approaching this question on every front at the same time. Twelve new technical and commercial colleges are now being built, and a further thirteen have been approved. At the same time, alterations and extensions are being made to a number of the 92 existing colleges providing day-time further education. The Ministry of Labour have expanded their training facilities at Hillington, and are in the course of opening six new centres at strategic points throughout Scotland.
Industry, already heavily engaged in training in some sectors, will play an even greater part, as it must. The Industrial Training Bill sets out the Government's intention to establish training boards for the major industries, in order to improve and extend training practices within industry. I have dealt with this at some length, and even then have not exhausted the list of problems. I have not mentioned re-equipment, labour relations or restrictive practices. But all these problems are the urgent ones which, following on the White Paper, can no longer he overlooked or paid no more than lip service. Let none doubt that the houses and factories can be built, and that the Scottish people can acquire new skills. They have a long tradition of adaptability, and are able quickly to absorb not only new skills but new ideas.
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Writing in the Financial Times (Scottish Supplement) of November 18, Mr. Geoffrey Rootes said—and I think every industrialist who is thinking of coming to Scotland could well read this:
"As well as injecting spending power into the neighbourhood concerned, the projects"—
he was talking about Rootes, Pressed Steel and B.M.C.—
"are doing something equally important for their future by injecting extra skill and knowledge. At Linwood to date approximately 2,000 workers have been trained in the processes of this new factory—142 foremen have undergone special courses in management and employees have taken specialised courses in subjects such as computer work organisation and methods, industrial supervision work study, chemistry and applied technology in mechanical engineering, and this work is continuing. We have also instituted a programme of apprentice training at a technical college in Paisley."
My Lords, for permanent prosperity, expansion there must be. But growth must keep pace with the task to be accomplished, and growth must be phased in its two aspects: the intake of skilled workers whom we must train, and the steady increase in productivity through investment in new building, in new machinery and techniques, and the adoption of better methods of operation. Only by doing all these things properly, and not half doing some of them, can we reach that permanent prosperity that comes only from selling the right goods and services at the right price.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I, with your Lordships' permission, hark back to this question of railway closures? Your Lordships will recall that a year or so ago my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport, in (shall we say) an unfortunate Press interview, gave Scotland good cause, if not to distrust him at least to doubt his understanding of the position in Scotland. That being so, I think I asked the noble Lord in my speech—I rely upon my memory—this question: If the Secretary of State for Scotland is not committed to these railway closures, will he say so in no uncertain terms? The other day one of the right reverend Prelates used the words "Delphic" and "Sibylline". I regret to say that my noble friend's reply to-night was, to my mind, either Delphic or Sibylline, or both. May

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I ask again: is the Secretary of State for Scotland committed to the closure of these lines, or is he not?
LORD CRAIGTON: All that the Secretary of State has said, and I will not repeat all I have said, is that he is committed to being sensible about what Scotland's needs are, and taking the right action accordingly.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend one question? Is the existing output of the fine Scottish knitwear industry sufficient to provide its export and home markets as it stands?
LORD CRAIGTON: Subject to correction, from what I have been told by the knitwear people, the answer is, Yes. I have not heard that they are very worried about that. I regret I did not answer the noble Lord's question about herrings earlier to-day.
7.27 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Stonehaven, in the course of a very interesting speech during which he asked some very pertinent questions—to which he did not receive replies—said, "There are a few Englishmen taking part in the debate". As one of them, my Lords, I hope I may be forgiven for not taking part in the Scottish invasion. But I would say that, a little later on, I hope to deal, quite briefly, with something that the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, said about railways.
My Lords, I listened with great interest to the Scottish debate and with a great deal of appreciation, which has been sharpened by the fact that, the Ministers apart, every speech has, in its content, been in favour of the Amendment and against the Government's Motion.
LORD CRAIGTON: Really!
LORD STONHAM: Yes; some even violently so. It is true, of course, that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for example, in a speech which condemned the Government hook, line and sinker, then, in the last sentence, of course remembered that he had to say how much he supported the Government's proposals. But every single speech, and
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particularly that of the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, has condemned the Government's policy. The other thing which I am sure the noble Lord who has heard the whole debate will not deny is that every speaker stressed the urgency, the need to get on with the job. He said himself that the Government's White Paper was a message of hope. Obviously, his colleagues have made it clear how important it is to realise that
"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick".
I am very glad that the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, is now back in his place, because I listened with the greatest interest to his speech, delivered, I thought, with great force and speed. I was particularly struck by the fact that its principal feature was positive statements uttered with the utmost confidence, but not supported by the facts. They were uttered too quickly for one to interrupt and question them; but, after twenty minutes of that kind of thing, with that simplicity and charm which is the noble Viscount's principal characteristic, he said, "I do not think I have made any contentious statements". I think that was one of the most remarkable statements in the debate. As a sample of the noble Viscount's non-contentious statements, he referred, when speaking of the North-East, to "the excellent transport facilities", and then, in the next sentence, mentioned the town of Washington, where there is going to be a new town, or an expanded town, of 80,000 people. But he neglected to tell us that the railway line from Newcastle to Washington has been closed down. So transport facilities there are non-existent. Since there is going to be this large New Town, I hope that the noble Lord who is going to wind up can enlighten us on whether the railway line is to be torn up or whether the Minister, in his wisdom, will leave it down until the town grows.
I think the most remarkable statement of all—and one which will be reprinted and referred to again and again in the next six months—was that of the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, who, in the course of her speech, with which I agree, said:
"With this White Paper we have just about reached the beginning of the beginning."

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After twelve years of Conservative power in Scotland and the North-East the experienced noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh, a former Minister of Education, gives it as her considered opinion that the Government are just about to start to make a start. This White Paper is a deathbed repentance for the wasted years; and it is too late. The note of urgency which crept into every speech was the realisation that it was too late. In my view the Government's plans in these White Papers for the development areas are foredoomed to failure; first, because the Party oposite does not really believe in planning by the Government in a true national sense; and, secondly, because within the regions they refuse—and this has been confirmed again in this debate—to set up the necessary organisation for co-ordinating industrial effort and the ancillary services.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, asked who is going to do it; who is to provide the co-ordinating force and give the orders. The question was asked: "Why not have the organisation in Scotland and offices in. London?" The noble Earl, Lord Perth, was told: "You know what the answer will be now". Then we are led to believe that there is this driving force. I believe it is absolutely useless to expect these regions, which have been on the down grade for years, to pull themselves up by their boot straps. That is what they are being asked to do unless a national plan ensures and even directs the flow of industry to them. The noble Viscount, Lord Craigton, rejected this completely. He did not say anything even about negative direction. The Government are still relying on incentives in the development areas to persuade people to build or lease factories there instead of in the South. It just will not work.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: My Lords, is the noble Lord suggesting direction?
LORD STONHAM: Perhaps the noble Viscount will allow me to finish. I was commenting on what he himself had said. If the noble Lord asks, do I contemplate negative direction in the sense of further restriction on building in over-congested areas, then I say, Yes, I most certainly do. I say you will not get industrialists—or at any rate many of
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them—to go into or to employ people in those areas where we need them unless we strengthen the existing machinery of restraint and apply it with conviction and energy. As noble Lords will recall, when the Labour Party was in power 30 per cent. of all new factories built in the country went to the development areas. In the last three years it has been less than 20 per cent. Actually, a smaller share in new factory building is going to the development areas than to the London and South-East region alone. That is the measure of Government failure and of their lack of determination to do this job.
The 1945 Distribution of Industries Act empowers the Government to clear derelict sites and to give 100 per cent. Treasury payment against the cost. That power, the 100 per cent. grant, has not been used once since 1951. Now it is supposed to be a great concession that the local authorities are offered a grant of 85 per cent. of the cost. Unless, by the application of necessary restrictions elsewhere and the necessary expenditure in development areas, we show we mean business, we shall not stop the depopulation of or unemployment in Scotland or the North-East and we shall not stop the appalling and expensive congestion and traffic chaos in the South.
Two or three weeks ago we had the Buchanan Report. It suggested what should be done to deal with the chaos that has been created, and it is estimated that it will cost £9,000 million. It would have cost a great deal less if during the last twelve years the Government had shown determination with regard to the maintenance of industries in the areas which we are now regarding as development areas. I say, despite the hopeful and glib speeches made by the two noble Lords opposite, that during the past twelve years the Government have handled, and are even handling now, each successive problem with regard to the distribution of industry and the creation of jobs in those areas with about as much efficiency as you would expect a cow to handle a gun.
Let us consider the vital question of employment. I would remind the House that in November, 1959, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Maudling, speaking of the Local Employment Bill said:

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"The Bill provides the framework for dealing with the problem of local unemployment and will add success in this field to the many that the Government have had in other fields."
Success in that particular field, so far as the Local Employment Bill was concerned, meant that after three years unemployment on the North East coast had risen to 7 per cent., compared with 1·8 per cent. when the Labour Party was in power.
I do not think that some of the local implications of this continuing unemployment have been considered. As some of your Lordships know, I am chairman of five London hospitals. We decided some months ago to try to recruit student nurses from the North-East, after discussing the matter with our former colleague, Lord Hailsham. Last month two of my hospital matrons went to the North-East on a tour of some ten towns, spread over a period of ten days, arranged by the local youth employment officer and with the town councils after appropriate advertising; and I have in my hand a copy of the report that they gave when they came back. There are one or two things which are very interesting. They said that it—
"was surprising to learn that from a population of 150,000 in Middlesbrough, one fifth, i.e., 30,000 of these were still at school".
That gives us an idea of the measure and relationship of the problem we have to deal with there.
At Stockton, the youth employment officer said:
"…the unemployment figures which were shown in the Ministry of Labour Gazette did not accurately reflect a true picture of the situation in the area. In that particular area, due to the scarcity of jobs, people normally retired at age 57; they then joined the register of unemployed to draw unemployment money and have their card stamped until such time as they reached the age of 65 years and qualified for a retirement pension".
Just imagine living and working in an area where it is thought you have to retire virtually at the age of 57 because there are not enough jobs to go round and you make room for somebody else!
Again, as already pointed out in this debate, the unemployment figures of young people contain a much higher proportion of boys than of girls. In what I think we all agree was a most
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remarkable maiden speech, the most reverend Primate referred to this problem of the unemployment of young people and said that if over the next ten years 80,000 young people left the North-East, that would be an admission of defeat. I think we should all agree that that would be so. But the Report I have quoted says:
"Another difficulty in recruiting girls willing to move South is that the North East area of England is a strongly matriarchal society. Consequently few people want to leave the area; a considerable proportion would rather remain unemployed than leave the district…"
That first-hand knowledge of the situation, objectively obtained and with no kind of axe to grind, shows that it is particularly important to have the jobs there in the North-East and not to have paramount in our minds the idea of bringing people away from the area. It re-emphasises what I was saying: that it is imperative to have even a negative direction, if there is no positive one, so that we can get factories working in the area, so that we can have more advance factories built by the Government for letting, including a number of larger factories.
The noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, spoke about the growth areas, but, although he threatened to do so, he did not give any kind of explanation of the method of selecting growth areas. Is an area selected because of its potentialities or because there is a large number of unemployed there? Whichever way we look at the areas that have been chosen, it is extremely difficult to understand why they have been put into this category. Why have the Government rejected the idea of a real regional organisation, with regional controllers of each Department to consult and work together regularly and link up with the planning machinery for the area? Why cannot we have development areas and growth areas in one area, without any kind of arbitrary division, so that we can harness all the resources of national and local government in the development of these areas and do the job they need?
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said that he was glad to know that the existing groups of development officials are to continue in being. We are all

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glad of that, but we were expecting something extra. There is no increase or change in the administration at all. In the North-East, all that has happened is that officials have moved from one building in Newcastle to another, and things are exactly the same in all other respects.
Finally, I want to say a brief word about railways, a subject which was raised by three or four noble Lords opposite. The noble Lord, Lord Craigton, said that the procedure, with which we are all nauseatingly familiar, must be followed. Why must it be followed, when it is such abject nonsense, which is no longer accepted by any sensible person as a proper procedure to pursue? The Prime Minister gave an assurance in another place that there would be no closures unless there was adequate—I emphasise, adequate—alternative transport. In the area about which the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, spoke there are 135,000 people in 7,000 square miles—20 to the square mile. It is impossible to provide any kind of public transport on wheels which would be economic. As has been said, there is not a single mile of roadway in the county of Caithness which is as much as sixteen feet wide. Everybody knows that it would take tens, perhaps scores of millions of pounds to make the roads in that single county fit for the transport that would have to replace the railways. We all know these things, which could be repeated all over the country.
If the Beeching Plan goes through, the Government would denude the development area about which I have been speaking entirely of transport. The Government While Paper says:
"The railway facilities of the North-East are reasonably good."
But the Government are proposing to destroy the railway facilities of the North-East. There will not be a railway line west of the Newcastle/Darlington line in the whole of Durham. What is the use of talking about reasonable railway facilities, if they already have plans to do away with them altogether?
The White Paper on the North-East says:
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"At the same time the Minister of Transport has arranged to take account of the local travel implications of the region's development needs when any railway passenger service closure proposal comes before him for decision."
And the Scottish White Paper says:
"…the Minister of Transport…will, in consultation with the Secretary of State for Scotland, take account of its consequences in terms of the planned economic development of the area concerned."
What absolute rubbish! Already in Scotland 45 out of the 55 possible closures have been objected to—I have seen to that—and in England about 150. The only one I did not oppose was Washington. I wanted to see what the Government would do there. The Minister, as he assured us in another place, is supposed to be looking at them all, at every detail. He is supposed to be reading the whole 200 of them. That is absolutely impossible. But it still would be wrong, because half-a-dozen Government Departments, as well as many local authorities, have to go into all these matters.
I promised to sit down and I will do so in a moment, but I should like to quote just one passage from a letter. It says:
"The examination of one form of transport in isolation is an amusing exercise but a waste of time;…".
That was not written by a politician; it was written in a letter by Mr. Gilbert S. Szlumper, former General Manager of Southern Railways. These are the words of an expert and a sensible man. The noble Lord, Lord Craigton, knows his own country and loves it well. He will know that they have vigilantes and are in process of forming a National Transport Council in Scotland which will have the people aflame over the whole country. He was pleasantly surprised that the Government held the Dumfries seat a few days ago. He also knows that, with the possible exception of the seat held by the Prime Minister, unless they do something sensible about the Scottish Railways there will not be a Tory seat in Scotland after the General Election. These are bold words, but I am sure that they are true.
What is the sensible thing to do? It is to say publicly to the people, "We are not going to insult your intelligence

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by putting you to the great trouble of organising petitions and objections, gathering evidence of positive hardship about the closures, which, whatever the Transport Users' Consultative Committee say, we know within the general conditions cannot possibly be closed at present or for many years ahead." They should also do what we in the Labour Party said: consider one form of transport not in isolation from all other forms of transport and indeed of the whole economy of the country, and arrive at a sensible conclusion.
Let the Government admit that a foolish mistake was made. It has been stubbornly adhered to and, to some extent, dishonestly adhered to, because they continue to let figures go out which everybody knows are not the full and correct figures. This is not the proper thing for any Government to do. Still less is it proper for the Government to come to us and say: "Here are policies for the development of Scotland and the North-East region of England" which they say will cover all sorts of things, but at the same time they allow this transport "fiddle" to go on. I therefore urge the Government on this point to admit that they were wrong, and to say, if they mean business, that they are not going on any longer with a stupidity which is not supported by any sensible person of any political Party in this country.
7.51 p.m.
LORD LAWSON: My Lords, it was a delightful thing to hear my noble friend open this debate, and also to hear the new Minister, who really knew what he was talking about. I say that advisedly, because the last time I stood here talking about Durham and Scotland I talked about the Industrial Revolution, and the Minister did not know what I was talking about. I believe he thought I was talking about some fierce kind of revolution, because he never mentioned the matter. That would be of interest to the noble Lord who has just come among us. It has been a delight to hear this debate to-day. But there are more men idle in Durham to-day than there were at this time last year. There are more children receiving unemployment pay than there were at this time last
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year. So severe has the problem become that the Government have had to issue a statement that the children must attend school almost as a condition of receiving unemployment pay. That is a very serious matter. I think the case is very much the same in Scotland.
I know of no sadder time in my county than these last two or three years. It is a sad thing when a man is unemployed; but when little children come to you and stand in queues at the door for a reference to get a job (and all public men know what the request for a reference means) it is heartrending. This is a very big subject, and I think that the Government some day soon will have to face up to these varying stages of the industrial Revolution.
I went to see a film this week called Remote Control. I saw things performed in that film that when I was a man in the pit would have seemed miraculous. I think that very soon the Government must face this new situation. This film showed how somebody touched a button (he could be sitting in a drawing room, if he liked, so long as he was connected) and a great machine moved. It cut the coal, it put the props in place and did everything, without a single hand touching it. What are you going to do with a machine like that? It ought to make the world happier. I know that I did not get any fun mining when I did it with my hands. It was the hardest class of work that I remember, and very dangerous work. Perhaps the House will forgive me if I describe in a few words an incident that happened to me. I was working on a fork and using my pick upon it when suddenly a small piece of stone released the whole lot and it almost caught me on the head. When the dust had cleared there was a white wall eight yards long in the place where I was working. Those around me thought that I and the man working with me had been killed. But now you have a machine to do that work. This is the kind of thing that will be applied in other industries and to other things affecting our lives.
If I may make a suggestion to the noble Lord who is to reply, it is this. My noble friend will tell you that I

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would hardly come into the Chamber to-day; that is so, is it not?—
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Hear, hear!
LORD LAWSON: —because I was so disgusted on the last occasion at the lack of understanding on the Front Bench opposite in regard to the unemployed men and boys who are now suffering. But Mr. Quintin Hogg does not understand much more. Just see what he has done! He has used this lamentable situation as a possible vote-getter. I make that statement after considerable thought. All that concerned him about it (I wish he had been here, because I would have told him so if he had been) was how many votes were going to be got out of it. That is surely a lamentable position for any Government to arrive at.
This is a situation which I think demands no ordinary thought, and I put this suggestion to the noble Lord opposite. If we could have a sort of standing committee, composed of people with scientific knowledge and practical experience, it would be very useful. The problem will not touch only the miners in the future. The noble Viscount himself almost said teat it would so develop that it would touch most sides of our national working life. I think it would be a good thing if we had a standing committee of some kind, mixing practice with science, to explain to Governments how the present situation is likely to affect society. We have more children at school this year than last year, preparing themselves for some class of work which they will not be able to get. Children cannot be sent about the country. If they were trained and were of an age, it would be all right. But there will have to be some kind of organisation to send them to certain parts, although, so far as I am concerned, I prefer to see them staying at home and doing their work.
I do not want to speak too long, because this has been a very good and valuable debate. I think we should be wiser if we made arrangements for the increased numbers of unemployed in Durham and the Scottish coalfields, because, owing to remote control and the doing of work automatically, there will
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arise a lack of the need for men who work in stone, as well as for those in coal. If we take note of these things, then I say that we must have standing committees to give us their experience, and to deal with the situation which is likely to arise. That is all I am going to say. I could say a good deal more upon this matter and I am glad, indeed, that my noble friend persuaded me to come in to-day and saw to it that my name was put on the list. I can assure the noble Viscount that I was angry with the last Minister who heard me speak about the Industrial Revolution and who thought I was talking about some revolutionary power. He did not really know what I was talking about, because he never mentioned it. It never struck him, and he did not give two minutes' consideration to that matter. But we have one Minister, at any rate, who knows something about the Industrial Revolution, and who can talk about it without giving the impression that anyone who mentions it carries a gun.
8.5 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before turning to the bones and meat of the debate, I should like to refer to two speeches which have been made this afternoon, the first the notable maiden speech of the most reverend Primate, the Lord Archbishop of York, which was beautifully delivered. I think his words, and what was behind them, must have struck at any heart in this House. particularly when he spoke of those school-leavers who left their homes and came to London, this great City, to look for work. I admire initiative, but I cannot help feeling that this was, as the most reverend Primate said, a sign of defeat. The other speech to which I should like to refer is that of my old friend Lord Lawson. Men come from Durham, and in Lord Lawson we see a very good example. If the noble and gallant Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, had been here, I should have sought his support; because in my estimation the best Division he commanded (and I was never in it) was the 50th Northumbrian Division, the "Double T's"—and thank Goodness! most of the Scots have disappeared from the House. But I think we are agreed on that; and

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certainly the Minister himself spoke of the quality of these men. I think it should also be placed on record that this same opinion is widely held by industrialists who have gone to this area. They speak extremely highly of their work.
I cannot help feeling that in a few days' time we shall be looking to the New Year. Most of us, in our homes, clubs and hotels, will look to our families and our friends, and we shall wish each other a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year. I think most of us who have listened to this debate will be conscious of the 462,000 men who are unemployed and their families, perhaps 900,000 or 1 million men, women and children, who will watch into 1964 with not the same hope that we have. Apart from that number, let us not forget the men to-day who are in these declining industries about which the noble Viscount spoke, and who will look to 1964, not with hope but with fear. If I wanted to level an indictment at the Government, it would not be on these proposals: it would be that the position of these declining industries should have been foreseen by any economist, any industrialist, and any Government worth its salt. The Government give the impression that the situation in North-East England has suddenly appeared with the cold weather at the beginning of the year. Through history this area has always had a high rate of unemployment. The factors were the same—declining coal, declining shipbuilding. The indictment that I would lay upon the Government is that they wait until their last moment of breath as a Government to produce a programme.
I want to examine in a little detail the Scottish White Paper. I noticed that the Scottish Peers, as my noble friend Lord Stonham said, spoke in support, but in every case they raised certain doubts. The noble Lord, Lord Craigton, spoke of what we might call the infrastructure of this central area. He drew our attention, and quite rightly, to the need for roads, housing, schools and many other services. One would imagine, from the global figure, that we are going to see a dynamic improvement in these particular spheres. I wonder
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how many noble Lords have looked at this particular document, Public Investment in Great Britain, October, 1963. I should like to refer to this document first so that we can be quite clear that I am not exaggerating the position. In paragraph 14 it says:
"The implications for public service investment of the Government's proposals for developing North-East England and Central Scotland will be set out in the forthcoming White Papers on these areas. The figures for 1963-64 and 1964-65 shown in this White Paper include the extra investment which has been approved as part of the policies for these two areas."
Perhaps we can look at the figures in this White Paper dealing with roads. The House will remember the words of my noble friend Lord Stonham and of the noble Lord opposite on what the consequences of the rail closures will be. The Government recognise that there will be difficulties, but say they will overcome them by road building. All right, let us look. The total figure for roads in Scotland, 1963–64, is £17·5 million.
LORD STONHAM: Including maintenance.
LORD SHEPHERD: Yes. For the year 1964–65 it will rise to £18·1 million. During the time the Government are going to cut the railways on a massive scale, the increase in road building is to the tune of £600,000. Where is this dynamic policy with which the noble Lords opposite have come to the aid of the Government? Can we recognise this: that in the case of trunk roads the amount has been increased, but in regard to classified roads the amount is falling from £8·3 million to £6·2 million? These are figures taken out of the White Paper issued in October, 1963.
Let us consider housing, because this, again, is a key part in the Government's White Paper for Scotland. I understand that in this area they are going to increase output by 7,000 houses a year. I want to look at the total cost—and it must be the total cost—for Scotland. In 1963-64 the total cost is £70·1 million. In fact, for 1964-65 the same figure is given. If we are going to see an increase in house building within the central area and there is no increase in the amount to be spent on housing, one thing must

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happen: the outside areas, particularly Glasgow with all its slums, must take a second position. In fact, it may well be that the sums now available to Glasgow will not be available next year. That is my only reading of these figures.
My last point is to look at education. In 1963–64 we shall be spending £21·5 million on all forms of education in Scotland. In 1964–65—and I would ask noble Lords to bear this in mind—the figure will drop to £21·3 million. There will be a marginal drop. But in schools between those two years—schools, mark you!—there will be a drop of £1·6 million. So what chance has my noble friend behind me, in regard to the County of Fife, of getting extra money? He'll be lucky!
This is the position as I see it in Scotland. I have taken these figures and have laid them side by side with the Government's plan and proposals that have no specific figures allocated to any of these particular items. I have taken them from this document. Therefore, on that basis it would appear that the policy which the Government is trying to persuade its supporters to follow as being dynamic means very little. I hope that the Scots, if they are not here to-night, will at least read these words and will ask the Minister when he returns to Edinburgh for an answer, because it would seem to me that they have been seriously misled.
My noble Leader put one issue to the Government. He said: "What are your targets? If these are plans and proposals, surely you must have some idea when you lay them out. what it is you seek to achieve and what is the end to which you work." I asked the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, because he is well up in Scottish affairs, what was the number of jobs that must be provided in Scotland to ensure that there is full employment and that this steady drift of population is prevented. But Lord Polwarth was unable to give it. I do not blame him; he is not in the Government. But your Lordships will note that when the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, was replying he again avoided, not only the question I put to the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, but the question that my noble Leader put to the Government: what is the figure to which you are working for Scotland?
In the case of North-East England, while the Government are quiet, the
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North-East Development Council under our very great friend Mr. George Chetwynd, to whom great tribute is regularly paid, has assessed that in this particular area at least 100,000 new jobs will have to be provided within the next ten years. We have to take into account not only the automation that is taking place and the declining industries, but many other factors. It may well be that this particular assessment is below what will be needed. But at least it is an assessment on which they are working.
Cannot we have from the Government the number of new jobs they believe need to be provided in Scotland and North-East England? Because, if we take North-East England as requiring 100,000 jobs over the next ten years—and I am not going to stand up to-night and say that the Local Employment Act is a failure; but let us keep these particular figures in mind—is it not a fact that during the last three years to April, 1963, eighteen companies have been persuaded to go to North-East England to provide jobs for 2,288 persons? If those are the figures, and I took them from the House of Commons Hansard, and they were not challenged, how short we must be in meeting this challenging figure of 100,000 new jobs! During this period 33 companies closed, with a loss of 3,600 jobs. So, in fact, with the use of this Act we did not make up for the loss of jobs that arose merely from closures. It took no account of increased birth rate, or of the results of automation and efficiency. It seems to me that if we take those figures we are a long way short of the target that will have to be met.
I wish to say only one last word—and this is perhaps the most important. The noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, said that the Government had used very severely curbs on development in South-East England. He may say that; but for the rest of us who live in South-East England, who have to put up with the intolerable travelling conditions, who have to struggle to town to work, when we see the result of this pressure in the rising cost of houses, the rising cost of schools and hospitals and the like, we wonder whether, in fact, the Government ever use their powers; particularly when we see not only this steady drift of individuals coming to the South-East

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looking for work, but the way in which administrative offices, and sometimes new companies, are being set up in South-East England.
The noble Viscount may be correct when he said that the use of these certificates has prevented certain companies from coming here. But in fact the Government will not use the industrial certificates in regard to office building. It is the office building that is the magnet for the young people who want to become clerks and typists and the like; and it is that which brings them to the South. Unless the Government are going to do something in regard to South-East England they will have to use the certificates in regard to office building. Why should office work be confined to London? The boys and girls in Newcastle and Durham, and other similar places, are as well educated as the youngsters who are being brought up in London. Why cannot we see a movement of these administrative offices to those areas? I think the Government themselves could play a big part in this respect if they would use their certificates in this matter.
My Lords the time is late. We wish to hear from the noble Lord, particularly on the points that I raised in regard to Scotland, and the others raised by my noble friends in their own brief speeches. A plan is a plan. A plan is useless unless there is a will. I be lieve that the Government have the will, but when we look at the twelve years of their record I do not think they have the capability.
8.24 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should like to start, as the noble Lord Lord Shepherd started, by paying our tribute from this side of the House to the very valuable and cogent speech made by the most reverend Primate, a speech to which we all listened with very great attention and which nobody who heard it could possibly fail to appreciate. I would also say right away (this is a point on which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, commented) that the most reverend Primate dealt most sensitively, if I may say so, with the question of unemployment among young people, and possibly, also, one could
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say with what he regarded as the misemployment of young people. I can tell noble Lords that my right honourable friend the Minister of Labour is planning to visit the North-East early in January and will be devoting special attention to the problem of youth unemployment and training. My right honourable friend the Secretary for Industry. Trade and Regional development also proposes to spend several days in the North-East early next year.
My Lords, this is the first opportunity that we have had to debate these two White Papers. My noble friend Lord Polwarth, in a notable speech, referred to them as bringing a brave new look to the scene in the two areas concerned. These White Papers involve an entirely new principle which has evolved from operating the Local Employment Act, a principle which is to be applied side by side with the giving of aid, under the Local Employment Act, to districts of high unemployment. The new principle is that of the growth area, and I might describe it in a few words as the reinforcement of success in areas which are already proving attractive to industry and which can generate growth not only within themselves but in the areas around. And it is that principle that your Lordships' House is invited to-day to approve.
If I may say so. I thought that the noble Earl who spoke first for the Opposition came very near to opposing it. He called it planning in isolation. But this is deliberate discrimination. You take the areas that you consider need attention first, and, of necessity, you come to deal with other areas later. The noble Earl complained that other areas were not being dealt with at the same time. He referred to the situation in Wales. Well, the unemployment figure for Wales is now 3 per cent.: there has been a steady improvement there. Nevertheless, there are, of course, areas of high unemployment there also—the heads of valleys, the places to which it is notoriously difficult to attract industry. A study is now in hand to cover the prospects over the next 20 years in Wales.
The noble Earl referred to Merseyside. A group is to be set up to study the economic problems there in the same

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way as the North-East was studied. He referred also to the North-West. In the North-West as a whole the unemployment figure is 2·5 per cent. Nevertheless, studies are already in progress there. And as to the South-West, my right honourable friend indicated in another place that a study has not yet been started, but he himself is going to pay a visit very early in the New Year to the South-West.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: The whole point I am trying to make is that there are very serious pockets of unemployment. Take Corn wall, where it is nearly 5 per cent. in places. It was 5 per cent. overall a few months ago—I am glad it is not now. Birmingham is the same; Cumberland is the same. There is no point is saying that as a whole the proportion is 2·5 per cent. That is no consolation to Bishop Auckland, which has gone up from 4·6 per cent. to 6·9 per cent. in the last few months. When you are having a scheme in one part of the country, that is no use to them: they want relief now.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I had hoped to deal with this problem in due course. We have so far been making use of the Local Employment Act, and I would say straight away that I think it is right to say that it has had a considerable effect since it came into operation on April 1, 1960. The number of undertakings which have received assistance under the Act in Central Scotland and in the North-East is 171 in Scotland and 134 in the North-East. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that, of the 17,000 or so jobs which have been provided in the North-East—or are in the pipe-line—11,000 are accounted for by firms coming in from outside the area. That is a considerable contribution to a solution of the problem.
If I might enlarge on this point, we have under the Local Employment Act been seeking to deal with the areas of highest unemployment. It is impossible at any one time to attract more industry than is on the move, and we do strictly operate the industrial development certificate policy in other parts of the country. It is no use pretending that it is possible never to give an industrial
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development certificate in the areas of high pressure on employment. It is quite unrealistic to suppose that all industrial development can be prevented in those areas. For one thing, certificates are granted for extensions to industries that are already established there and which cannot be separated from their existing factories. Then again, certificates are applied for in order to increase productivity and to improve efficiency. Those have to be granted. Then there are also certificates that are applied for by local service industries—industries to serve the locality, the people who are already living there. Wherever it is possible to steer industries away we do so.
As I myself was responsible for the development of industry policy for two years as Parliamentary Secretary at the Board of Trade, I can assure your Lordships that one comes very much under pressure from two sides here. Anyone who has sat in another place when these things were discussed will realise that one is attacked just as much for refusing certificates as because industry does not come to areas. This is the problem that one is up against. Early in the year 1960 there was a lot of industry on the move and, as my noble friend Lord Craigton said, we were able, for example, to bring the car industry to Scotland with the attendant ancillary industries which are now growing up around it. We were able to do that in other parts of the country, too. Unfortunately, we were just not so successful in the North-East as we were in other parts of the country. Then there was a slowing up in industrial activity and there was less industry available to go to places. If there is not a demand in the country it is no use creating and setting up new industries under the Government.
Under the Local Employment Act one of the essential elements, and a condition of assistance, is that it can be given only to firms that are likely to be economically viable. It would be absurd to set up other industries in competition with existing industries, with, say, Government subsidy, and running at a loss in these areas. I noted that even the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, did not suggest that. He suggested that we should operate more strictly the policy of industrial development certificates. What I am

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saying to the House is that we are operating it as strictly as we possibly can. I ask the House to believe that.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: All I can say on that is that I come to and from the suburbs, and when one sees blocks of offices such as were mentioned by my noble friend still standing idle, having been completed for two years, one asks why have all that kind of thing which will bring increased population to this area?
LORD DRUMALBYN: As the noble Earl knows, industrial development certificates were not covered by the Distribution of Industry Act or the Planning Acts. There are great difficulties about controlling office employment. The building of those office blocks is quite a different matter from the case where a firm comes along and wants to set up an industry and to obtain an industrial development certificate. Everybody knows, if you ask for permission for office accommodation, that you can dispose of that: it is much more flexible; you can get rid of it quite easily, and there is really no criterion for the issue of similar certificates for office accommodation.
Nevertheless, the Government has not been idle in this. It has been doing its best to encourage private firms to keep out of the London area. It has set up a Location of Offices Bureau to help in this matter, and to demonstrate to firms in London the advantages—and in many cases there are great advantages and great increases in efficiency—which result from moving out of the London area. The Government itself has set an example, as one noble Lord observed, in the moving of the Post Office Savings Certificate Division to Durham. And that will provide 2,000 jobs there. Three hundred have already been provided, 200 of them recruited locally.
In addition, in order to assist in the provision of employment in the North-East, the reconstruction of the National Insurance offices in Newcastle was brought forward. That is quite a long-term undertaking, because accommodation is required for the best part of 9,000 people there. This is only one of the examples, I would observe to your
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Lordships, in which an effort has been made to deal with the immediate problem of employment in the North-East. Others are the advance factories that have been set up. Twelve are being set up in the North-East and twelve in Central Scotland—ten due to be completed in the North-East by the end of February, and eleven in Scotland by the end of March. There are the industrial sites at the Team Valley and the Vale of Leven which have been prepared, at any rate in the case of the Team Valley. Other sites have been reconnoitred; and, in the case of Aycliffe, expenditure has been authorised. Extra construction of a short-term nature was authorised for the North-East. The road programme there was hastened on. An additional £1·4 million was authorised in November last year, and a further half a million pounds in February of this year.
Then there is something that has not been mentioned at all, and which the Government introduced—namely, the loans to underdeveloped countries from surplus capacity. The North-East has benefited from that. Two cargo vessels have been ordered from Ghana; a £3½ million loan to India for steel plate;£2 million for wagon ferries and diesel locomotives to East Africa and so on. These are all practical things. The electricity and the gas programme was brought on. There was a loan of up to £2 million to the Tees Conservancy Commission to speed the £4 million Lackenby Dock Scheme. Reference has already been made to the training centres that were set up, to their considerable expansion and to places being there available. And, of course, reference has also been made to the loan of £75 million for shipbuilding, the vast majority of which has gone to the North-East and to Scotland.
So, my Lords, it cannot be said that nothing has been done to deal with this problem. But surely the philosophy of the two White Papers is that while you can palliate the clear tendency for industries such as the coal mining industry to run down, in the long term nothing less than a cure is required. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, right away, that of course he is right in the figures that he quotes, but the fact of the matter is that any programme of

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this character takes time to develop. He knows as well as anybody does that if you are going to build a new road, it is at least three years after the road has been conceived before any work is done on it, if it has the character of a major road; and the same goes for other plans of this sort. The general purpose of these White Papers must be the welfare of the whole country, and regional plans must conform with that purpose. This is not planning in isolation: it is deliberate and co-ordinated planning weighted in certain areas.
There are some who persist in believing that since there is a marked tendency for expansion in some parts of the country at the expense of others, we should accept, and even encourage, that tendency, and certainly do nothing to correct it. I take it as one of the approvals shown by this House that not one person to-day has put forward that view. No Government since the war have endorsed those views. They have taken the view that it can-not be in the interest of the nation to encourage growth in areas which are short of labour, thereby adding to the pressures on the resources of housing and schools and on the economy as a whole, while other areas languish from lack of new industry and see too much of the best of their youth lured away by the prospects elsewhere, prospects often inflated in their imaginations.
The end of the war presented the Government of the day with a unique opportunity which they very properly seized. Industry was turning from the needs of war to the requirements of peace, and needed factory space. The Government provided factory space in the areas in which unemployment had been a veritable scourge in the inter-war years; but once the general shortage of factory space had been overcome, once we changed from a sellers' to a buyers' market, the situation entirely changed. It was undoubtedly right in those circumstances to concentrate Government assistance on the areas of highest unemployment, but once factories were established then they had to be allowed to expand.
The 1960 Act worked well in the expansionist atmosphere of 1960. It brought enough industry to South Wales
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to enable practically all that area, apart from the heads of the valleys, to be taken off the list of development districts. Together with the Government assistance for the steel strip mill at Ravenscraig it brought the motor industry to Central Scotland. This is proving a focus of growth. Ancillary industries are now growing up around them. Another focus of growth is the petroleum industry at Grangemouth. The new towns in Scotland are proving attractive to industry and to the workers in industry. They are also growth centres. The industrial estates are also centres of growth, but not all of them were in areas of high unemployment.
In the North-East we had the difficulty that many of the areas of high unemployment were associated with the coal industry and, to some extent, isolated one from another. They did not form a true industrial complex. On the other hand, the main city in the area did not suffer from high unemployment, but it was not growing, despite the presence of one of the best industrial estates in the country on its threshold. Experience tended to show that firms depending on national demand would come to the area, provided they were situated near to a main communicating road, such as the A1, but not if they were steered away to more remote places.
Everything pointed, therefore, to designating as the zone of growth the quadrilateral taking in the proposed new town of Cramlington, in the North, Tyneside, Tees-side, Darlington and Aycliffe. The noble Earl asked whether it took in Hartlepool. The answer is, Yes. If I may say so, had the noble Earl looked at the map at the back of the White Paper he would have seen that Hartlepool was taken in.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I have seen the map.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Earl complained that Saltburn was just outside, and complained also of the areas of West Durham which are left out. Most of them are development districts.

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Yesterday I was present when my right honourable friend received a deputation from the Urban Districts of Blaydon, Consett and Stanley and the Rural District of Lanchester. He explained to them that if, as we confidently expect, the special measures taken for stimulating growth in the growth zone succeed, the development districts on the fringes of it would be likely to benefit. Moreover (and I am not certain whether the noble Lord fully understood this), nothing is taken away from the development districts. Undoubtedly their prospects of getting industry are diluted to the extent that more development districts have been designated. They themselves have been designated on their own merits. These development districts remain eligible for all the benefits of the Local Employment Act. They are not deprived of any of the public investment previously planned for them. The only difference between them and the growth zone is that in the growth zone there is concentrated the additional special public expenditure over and above the level already planned—which itself, of course, was higher than ever before.
LORD STONHAM: The noble Lord mentioned the development areas and said that a deputation had visited his right honourable friend. Is he aware that the towns of Consett, Stanley and Wilmington, in the development area, are all subject to Dr. Beeching's plan and will lose their railway stations and their railway? That would take some employment from them—not only in regard to the railwaymen, but they will also lose the chance of other employment that might have been attracted there.
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Lord made the point earlier, and made it strongly, if I may say so; but I thought that my noble friend Lord Craigton covered it in his speech, and in view of the lateness of the hour I was not proposing to traverse it again. Of course, it is the case that proposals have been made by British Railways for the closure of a number of lines serving development districts. These will all be considered under the procedure which was described by my noble friend and which I think is now sufficiently well-known.
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We should consider what the growth areas really need. Obviously they need diversification; they need modernisation; they need co-operation between all concerned; and they need continuity. I would appeal to noble Lords on the other side in this matter. If we are to have continuity in this matter we should like to think that the policy which is now proposed will be continued in all possible circumstances over the years ahead. Governments may change, but this is not a policy which can easily be turned on and off. I would suggest to the noble Earl that it would be very unfortunate of any Amendment which would in any way derogate from the support and the sense of strong co-operation which there must be if we are going to have confidence in this drive, were put to the vote tonight. It would give the country the feeling that your Lordships' House is divided on this issue. I do not really believe it is. I believe Members feel that while there are undoubtedly points in the White Paper which need further clarification and which can be clarified only by time and study, nevertheless this is the right approach. I very much hope that the noble Earl, for that reason, will not press his Amendment.
My Lords, there is not much I need add at this very late stage. What the White Papers set out to do is to initiate a reversal of the secular tendency for population to flow towards the South-East and Midlands by creating conditions which will make people in the areas want to stay there and others from outside the areas want to come and work there. The complete reversal obviously cannot be achieved in a day or a year, or even in a decade. It would be unrealistic to plan on the basis that net migration will be entirely arrested within the period envisaged, even by 1981. It is surely enough, considering the natural rate of growth of population in the North-East, which is higher than the national average, to plan for a reduction in the percentage of unemployed to the national average together with the halving of the net rate of migration.
The noble Earl asked: what is the target? The targets are set out in Chapters 2 of the White Papers which state the scope of the problem. The scope

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of the problem, or the assumptions laid down, is that 150,000 or so jobs will be required in the North-East over the eighteen years in question, and 240,000 or so in Central Scotland. That, if you like, is the target, and that is the scope of the problem. It may well be that, if the plan succeeds in its purpose, it will be possible even to arrest the amount of migration which is taken into account in the assumption. But, in any case, I would stress that the halving of the net migration figure is an assumption for the purpose of planning. If these two areas, as a result of the measures taken, become areas of prosperity higher than the national average, there will be no difficulty in finding jobs not only for the people who would tend to migrate, but for others from other parts of the Kingdom. In that case, the trend would in fact be reversed, and nobody would mind if the assumption proved incorrect. In such circumstances capital investment could readily be found to meet the demands for additional housing, schools, factories and the like.
Finally, there is the claim that the White Paper has failed to provide for regional development necessary to prevent long-term unemployment in the two areas. I say quite frankly that I find it difficult to understand this claim and, if I may say so, it certainly has not been substantiated. What more do noble Lords opposite want? Are they seriously going to suggest some alternative?—because no alternative has been suggested to-day. We have simply been told that we should apply the existing procedures more strictly. No alternative has been suggested, except perhaps some kind of certificate procedure for offices, the difficulty of which has been indicated time and time again. And here, again, we are doing our best to deal with this problem. But these proposals constitute a coherent whole and represent a deliberate discrimination, as I have said, in favour of these two areas. This discrimination is undeniably substantial. We believe it should in time achieve its objective of making them as attractive in every way for people to live and work in as any other part of these Islands.
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Besides this, of course, and behind all this, there is a driving spirit. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, whom we are so glad to see here to-day, I was sorry that he attributed to my ex-noble friend, Mr. Hogg, the idea that he was interested only in votes in this matter. I would say very frankly to the House that nobody who knows Mr. Hogg can possibly fail to recognise the tremendous enthusiasm and urgency with which he throws himself into any problem. That is the way in which this problem has been dealt with. I am quite certain that both Mr. Hogg and Mr. Heath will provide that driving spirit for which my noble friend Lady Horsbrugh called. With that driving spirit, and with the co-operation that we all hope for, we believe that these Papers provide the beginning of the beginning of the solution of something which has lasted for far too long in Scotland, under all Governments. The amount of unemployment in Scotland has been double the national average. This is what we want to attack. The decline in the coal mining industry has flung up a fresh problem in the North-East. That, also, we are determined to overcome. I ask the House to reject the Amendment.
8.54 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLS BOROUGH: My Lords, I am much obliged for the courteous nature of the reply of the noble Lord, but we do not think he has adequately replied to the case that has been put to him. Certainly, as regards the targets, for which I asked, I know full well the small figures which the noble Lord quoted from the two White Papers, and I am much obliged to him for quoting them, but they do not meet the whole point. We have had targets for practically nothing advanced to us. We have had no real explanation of how the Government are going to deal with all the construction work which must be the inevitable result of stepping up public service investment. We have had nothing on that at all to show how it is going to work. Therefore, I am hound to ask my noble friends to go into the Lobby with me in favour of the Amendment.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 20; Not-Contents, 48.

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Hughes, L.

Stonham, L.

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Lawson, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Attlee, E.

Lindgren, L.

Summerskill, B.

Burdon, L. [Teller.]

Lucan, E. [Teller.]

Taylor, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Peddie, L.

Walston, L.

Champion, L.

Shackleton, L.

Wilmot of Selmeston, L.

Crook, L.

Shepherd, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailwyn, L.

Denham, L.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Albemarle, E.

Derwent, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Alport, L.

Devonshire, D.

Lothian, M.

Balerno, L.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Blakenham, V.

Drumalbyn, L.

Mar and Kellie, E.

Bossom, L.

Dudley, E.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Boston, L.

Falkland, V.

Newton, L.

Brecon, L.

Ferrers, E.

Perth, E.

Buccleuch and Queensbury, D.

Ferrier, L.

Polwarth, L.

Carrington, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Chesham, L.

Gosford, E.

St. Oswald, L.

Chester, L. Bp.

Greenway, L.

Somers, L.

Conesford, L.

Hailes, L.

Stonehaven, V.

Craigton, L.

Hastings, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Crathorne, L.

Hawke, L.

Teynham, L.

Cromartie, E.

Horsbrugh, B.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.
On Question, Resolution agreed to.

ADJOURNMENT MOTION: CONTINENTAL SHELF BILL
9.5 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn.
Moved, That the House do now adjourn.—(Lord Carrington.)
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH: My Lords, on that Motion I want to raise a question. I had not observed it before, and it is partly my fault, but I see that we took the Committee stage of the Continental Shelf Bill yesterday, and it is down for Third Reading to-morrow. That really is preposterous. I do not understand how it happened, but somehow or other it escaped being brought to my notice. I am just making a protest now, and I shall have to consider between now and to-morrow what we shall do.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I thought, frankly, that it had been clear for some time that the Third Reading would be taken to-morrow.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No, No.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I understood that.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I had heard nothing about it, except that I hear now that it was put on the Paper last night.
EARL ST. ALDWYN: It was put on the Paper last night—that is quite correct—but for some little time information has been available that it was going, to be taken to-morrow.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Where?
EARL ST. ALDWYN: I can show the noble Earl the papers to which I am referring, but obviously this is not for discussion on the Floor of the House. But I thought certain discussions had taken place with noble Lords opposite, and I understood that they were in fact satisfied about it.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My advice is that they had heard nothing about it until it was seen on the Paper this morning.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I think that perhaps the best thing to do is this. There appears to have been a

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slip-up in the usual channels. Perhaps the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition would let me look into it, and if there is anything I can do, either to put it right or to make it more convenient to noble Lords opposite, of course I most certainly will do it. Perhaps he will allow me to look into this between now and tomorrow.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, may I just ask the noble Lord to bear in mind that the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, who has been very forthcoming, not in making concessions on Amendments but in being willing to consider points, several times yesterday invited those noble Lords who were debating to come forward with suggestions. I do not know how it could be expected that we could come forward
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with suggestions between nine o'clock last night and tomorrow, when we thought that the Third Reading was going to be taken after the Recess.
LORD CARRINGTON: I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will think that I have been fairly forthcoming. I have not had a chance to look at this, but I most certainly will do so. My noble friend was probably thinking that there would be an opportunity of amending the Bill in another place. But perhaps I might have a talk with him and the noble Earl, the Leader of the Opposition, and we will see what we can do.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at eight minutes past nine o'clock.