Lords Sitting of 4 February 1964

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

SEA DUMPING OF CONTAMINATED SOIL
2.35 p.m.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have been consulted about the dumping in the sea of soil contaminated with fluoracetamide; where this soil is to be dumped; and what steps will be taken to ensure that the poison is not disseminated by ocean currents or by fish and other marine animals.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (LORD ST. OSWALD): Yes, my Lords. It is in fact on the advice of Her Majesty's Government that the manufacturers are removing this material from their factory site. The manufacturers are arranging under Government guidance to dump it in the Atlantic
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in very deep water beyond the Continental Shelf where no possible harm could result to fish or other marine life.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this stuff is so poisonous that it is lethal in a dilution which can hardly be detected by chemical analysis? And, with regard to the method of disposal, is it proposed to put the contaminated soil in waterproof containers which will ensure that it is not disseminated in the sea?
LORD ST. OSWALD: No, my Lords. We have taken scientific advice on this, and we are told on the best authority that it is not necessary when dumped in that depth, nearly two and a half miles of water, to put it in containers.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, the noble Lord assumes that it will sink to the bottom. What evidence is there of that? Will the soil not become flocculent and rest quite near the surface for long periods of time?
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, again we have taken the best advice on this, and we are told not. In addition to the Ministry of Agriculture's scientists, advice has been sought from Sir Rudolf Peters, Emeritus Professor of Bio-Chemistry at Oxford and a noted authority on fluoracetamide and on the disposal of chemicals.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, it appears that there are now noted authorities on this material. Why have they not given advice to the

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Government before regarding the toxicity of this material? Why has this alarming ignorance prevailed and only now are the Government aware of the dangers? Because of this, how can we be assured that this new dumping will be quite innocent and will not give rise to more trouble?
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, there appears to be more than one question involved in the noble Baroness's supplementary. The innocence of the dumping is, I think, beyond question. We have, in fact, taken great care to assure ourselves that, dumped in that part of the ocean, it will do no harm. As regards the unsuspected nature of this chemical, it is true that as a result of this industrial accident—I would point out to the noble Baroness that this was not the result of agricultural, or horticultural use, but was the result of an industrial accident; I think that is an important point—we have learned, for the first time, I agree, of the effect that this can have on dogs, though on no other animals, so far as we are aware, as a secondary poison. This is what we have discovered about it as the result of this accident.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, could the noble Lord just answer this question? In view of the powerful nature of this material, how can we be certain that it will not affect sea food of any kind?
LORD ST. OSWALD: Well, we are dumping it so that it will descend to a depth of two and a half miles, 2,000 fathoms. At that depth no fish eaten by human beings can live or move or circulate in any way.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the soil will be bagged sc that it will sink, or that it will be dumped en mass so that it will float? One often sees in many places soil floating on the surface of the water for quite some distance.
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, I confess that I have never seen soil floating on the top of the water. But there is 2,000 tons of it which is being dumped, and this appears to be a safe and proper way to dispose of it.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, would the noble Lord reconsider his remarks on the secondary toxicity of fluoracetamide where dogs are concerned? Has he considered what the secondary toxicity is so far as human beings are concerned? Has he himself looked at any biochemical textbook on fluoracetamide which, as one well knows, is the most poisonous and least recognisable of poisons? If, as my noble friend suggested, it is now reckoned to be safe to dump it in the sea, how was it that it was not thought safe to be dumped in gardens? Is the noble Lord suggesting that such chemicals as these are still safe to use in gardens? If so, why is he asking for them to be withdrawn? And if he is asking for them to be withdrawn, will he publish the names of these particular chemicals, which people may have in their houses?
LORD ST. OSWALD: My Lords, that is being done. In fact, all existing stocks of this chemical used as a pesticide are being disposed of or returned to the manufacturers, and they will not be issued again as pesticides. What was the other question the noble Lord asked?
LORD SHACKLETON: There were several, I quite agree. What I was asking the noble Lord was why he is withdrawing them at all. He has referred to secondary toxicity in regard to dogs. How does he withdraw it from people who already have it in their houses?
LORD ST. OSWALD: They are being circularised and advised to dispose of it or to return it to the manufacturers. The question, which the noble Lord will be the first to appreciate, is that of concentration. The form in which it poisoned the cows in this instance was a very powerful concentration. The form in which it was issued as insecticide was very much weaker and could not be as dangerous as it was in the fields where it escaped by an error.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords—
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, would the noble Baroness allow me to interrupt? I do not very often intervene on these occasions and we do not have many Rules of Order in this House, but I think on this occasion we are in danger of having a small debate on this subject.

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I wonder whether your Lordships might think that, if there is such great interest in this subject, an unstarred Question should be put down, rather than that there should be a debate this afternoon.

BRITISH TROOPS IN UGANDA AND TANGANYIKA
2.43 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: 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 for how long and on what terms British troops will remain in Uganda and Tanganyika.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): My Lords, this is a matter we shall have to discuss with the Governments concerned. My right honourable friend has already said in another place that he proposes to have early consultations with the East African Governments.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I am delighted to hear that there will be early consultations with the Governments concerned. May I ask the noble Duke whether these discussions will include an offer on the part of Her Majesty's Government of assistance to these Governments in the training of their armed forces—for example, by providing British military missions, which have been acceptable in other independent African countries?
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: We are naturally most anxious to help our Commonwealth partners in any way we can, and any suggestions as to how we can help in the Service field will, of course, be sympathetically considered by Her Majesty's Government. How these talks will develop remains to be seen, but we will give urgent and sympathetic consideration to any suggestions put forward by the East African Governments.

PREROGATIVE OF MERCY IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the prerogative of mercy in Southern Rhodesia rests solely with the Governor acting on the advice of his Council: or if it may rest with the Governor alone or acting on the advice of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): My Lords, under the Southern Rhodesia (Constitution) Order in Council, 1961, the Governor may in Her Majesty's name and on Her Majesty's behalf exercise the prerogative of mercy. When deciding whether to do so he is bound, under the Constitution, to act in accordance with the advice of the Governor's Council, which consists of the Prime Minister and Ministers of Southern Rhodesia. The exercise of the prerogative, therefore, does not rest with the Governor alone, nor is he required to act on the advice of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his full Answer. May I further ask him if it is a fact that Section 49 of the Southern Rhodesia Constitution, which I believe deals with the prerogative of mercy, is one of those sections which can be amended by Parliament in this country without reference to the Government of Southern Rhodesia?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Article 111 of the Constitution reads as follows:
"Full power and authority is hereby reserved to Her Majesty by Order-in-Council to amend, add to or revoke the provisions of Sections"—
and one of the sections is Section 49—
"and any Order-in-Council made by virue of this section may vary or revoke any previous Order so made".
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor whether, apart from any particular provisions with regard to

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the Constitution in Southern Rhodesia, it has not been the consistent practice of all Secretaries of State for the Colonies to regard and hold the Governor of the Colony entirely and personally responsible, as the representative of the Sovereign, for exercising the prerogative of mercy, without reference either to the Secretary of State or to any Council?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I do not think I could give a very full answer to that question without a considerable amount of research. I am aware of one case, in 1947 I think it was, when, under the grant of power to a Governor to exercise the prerogative by Letters Patent, the view was expressed that there was a residual power left in this country. I know views upon that differ, and I myself cannot speak as to what has been the practice of successive Secretaries of State on this matter.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, in view of the considerable number of Amendments on the Hire-Purchase (No. 2) Bill which have to be considered by the House, dinners will be available this evening. It is proposed that there should be a dinner adjournment at some suitable moment to be decided through the usual channels.

COMMITTEE FOR PRIVILEGES
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That the Lord Shepherd be proposed to the House as a Member of the Committee for Privileges in the place of the late Earl of Lucan.—(Lord Merthyr.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SPECIAL ORDERS COMMITTEE
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name.
Moved, That the Lord Champion be proposed to the House as a member of
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the Special Orders Committee in the place of the Lord Shepherd.—(Lord Merthyr.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

CRIMINAL APPEAL BILL [H.L.]
2.50 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a third time. Having already made two speeches in relation to this short Bill, I hope your Lordships will not expect me to speak at any length in moving this Motion.
I can claim that none of your Lordships who have spoken in the debates on this Bill have expressed any opposition to the proposal that the Court of Criminal Appeal should be given power to order a new trial. The only controversy that has arisen has been as to the extent of the power the Court should have. My Lords, I do not intend to repeat the arguments I put forward in Committee where your Lordships came to what I regard as a very satisfactory conclusion, albeit by a narrow margin, but there are three things that I should like to say.
The first is that while it may be true that the power this Bill gives will not be frequently used, none the less it may well prove to be an important power to use in particular cases, to secure that justice is done. Secondly, while some comment has been made on the present practice of the Court of Criminal Appeal with regard to the hearing of fresh evidence, it may be that if this Bill is enacted the Court will consider it desirable to review that practice having regard to the provisions of the Bill.
Thirdly, my noble and learned friend Lord Reid was very pessimistic about the prospect of another Bill extending the present one. One of his arguments, if I remember aright, was that if this Bill was passed it would be years before we had another Bill. My Lords, if this Bill failed to pass, I think it would be years before either of the two main Parties tried to give the Court power to order a new trial for if this Bill fails to pass both Parties will have failed

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in their endeavours to do so. But if this Bill passes, and public opinion, in the light of experience, changes; if the difficulties to which I referred in Committee are overcome, then it may be that, either in a Government Bill or in a Private Member's Bill, your Lordships will be asked to consider the matter again. I commend this Bill to your Lordships, and I beg to move that it be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

DEFENCE (TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS) BILL
2.52 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, last July, in Command Paper No. 2097, the Government announced their plans for re-moulding the Central Defence Organisation of this country. These plans included the establishment of a unified Ministry of Defence under a Secretary of State for Defence. This Bill, whose beauties I am to unveil to your Lordships this afternoon, is necessary to give effect to these plans.
Your Lordships will see that this is a short Bill and, as Bills go (and this is not saying a great deal), a simple one. Nevertheless, it is a Bill of historic significance, marking as it does the demise of great offices and Departments of State and the birth of new ones. I do not intend to linger too long in the past, as I believe we cannot afford the luxury of undue nostalgia when we have to grapple with the problems of national defence in this contemporary world. But I am myself in some small measure caught up in this particular wind of change. Indeed, my office and I are under sentence of death, as it were, by it. However, before mounting the scaffold of this Bill, I should just like to make it clear that no First Lord—and there are a number of former Naval persons in your Lordships' House this afternoon—has been prouder than I to hold this ancient office, possibly (we can never be
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too sure about these matters) as its last incumbent.
As my distinguished predecessor said in our debate last summer, the Admiralty and the Royal Navy have served this country over the centuries pretty well. One cannot but feel sad at the passing of such honourable offices whose roots lie deep in our history and, indeed, in our emotions. But, like my predecessor, I should not be supporting their abolition if I did not myself feel quite convinced that the time has come for a further step forward in our national central defence organisation.
We had a very constructive debate on the White Paper before the Summer Recess and your Lordships will not wish me to traverse all the same ground once again. Nevertheless, you may wish me, by way of background to this Bill, once more, quite briefly to summarise the main principles underlying the reorganisation and to mention the progress we are making in carrying out that reorganisation. The reasons why the Government had concluded that some further centralisation of control over defence policy and administration was necessary were explained in the debate last July. In essence, they are twofold. First, to facilitate the formulation of a truly integrated defence policy at the centre. Second, to improve our control of defence spending, particularly in the not inexpensive field of defence research and development.
The proposals embodied in this Bill rest, as I see it, on five main principles. This interesting animal, this Bill, therefore has five legs; it is a quinqueped or, for those of your Lordships who prefer Greek, a pentepod. The first leg, the first principle, is unification: a unified Ministry of Defence. The second principle is decentralisation. The new Ministry is so designed, or is intended to be so designed, as to promote decentralisation where decentralisation is both possible and needed, particularly in matters of day-to-day administration. The third principle is flexibility. The organisation must be flexible and capable of change, particularly where experience will enable us to pick out select areas in which the rationalisation of Service administration can, in our view, with advantage be carried further. Fourth, balance. We must keep a proper balance

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between the military, the administrative and the scientific components of the new organisation. Fifth—last but by no means least—Service loyalty. Despite this further integration in Whitehall, we are to retain three separate Services. We must therefore preserve the individual loyalties and traditions of the three Services themselves.
Finally, may I remind your Lordships that, for reasons which were explained more fully in the debate in July, the Ministry of Aviation is not to form part of the new unified Department, the Ministry of Defence. The Government consider that it should retain its separate identity; however—and the "however" is important—with much closer links with the central defence organisation than have existed in the past.
Based on these principles, the internal structure of the new Department will be as follows. The Secretary of State for Defence will have full control over and responsibility for the whole Department, a principle which your Lordships were not inclined to query last summer. The Secretary of State will be assisted by Ministers of Defence for the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force, and they, in turn, will be assisted by three Under-Secretaries of State. The Ministers of Defence will be responsible to the Secretary of State for the administration of their Services and will also carry out any functional tasks which the Secretary of State may delegate to them over the defence field as a whole—a potential across-the-board functional responsibility to which my right honourable friend attaches considerable importance. In the White Paper it was proposed that the present Service Ministers should be replaced by Ministers of State. Some of your Lordships criticised this proposal last July as an undesirable downgrading of the former Service Ministers. This criticism, which was voiced both here and in another place, has convinced the Government that it would be right to appoint full Ministers, with the titles I have mentioned, and with somewhat larger salaries than those on which Ministers of State grow fat—or at least some do. If I may say so, as a not entirely disinterested party, I feel that the Government's decision in this respect, as in all others, has been wise.
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A Defence Council will be established under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State to consider major problems of defence policy, and to exercise the powers of command and control at present exercised by the Board of Admiralty and by the Army and Air Councils. The actual management of the Services will be delegated to Navy, Army and Air Force Boards of the Defence Council, and these bodies will remain responsible for the judicial and quasi-judicial functions of the present Board and Councils. The appropriate Minister of Defence will normally deputise for the Secretary of State, who will, of course, as is made clear in the White Paper, be the Chairman of each of these three Boards.
Below ministerial level there is a three-pronged structure—military, administrative and scientific. The military side of the organisation will be headed by the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Chiefs of Staff, who remain collectively responsible for professional military advice to the Government. The Chiefs of Staff, for their part, will continue to be the professional heads of their respective Services. The Naval, General and Air Staffs, and the Joint Service Staffs of the present Ministry of Defence, will together form the integrated Defence Staff. Certain changes are being made within this framework, and, where the nature of the work is suitable, full integration is planned in the future.
On the second prong, the Civil Administrative Staffs are to be headed by a Permanent Under-Secretary of State who will be assisted by four Second Permanent Under-Secretaries—one for each Service and one for the Defence Secretariat. The Defence Secretariat is a new organisation. It will bring together the Civil Administrative Staffs of the present Ministry of Defence and those of the present Service Departments who deal with major defence policy. These central staffs will form a single team with a direct line of responsibility to the Permanent Under-Secretary. We shall thus create at the centre new and much stronger machinery for the long-term financial planning of the defence programme as a whole. The detailed management of the money voted by Parliament will, however, be delegated—and I am sure that this is right—to the

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Second Permanent Under-Secretaries, who will be the accounting officers for their respective Votes.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, before my noble friend passes from the financial side, may we get one point clear? As I understand it, on all military and other matters the three Service Ministers, who I am very glad have been upgraded, are going (if I may so put it) to run their individual Service Departments, subject to the broad control of the Minister of Defence. But when it comes to finance they are not, apparently, to have any real say in this: finance is to be the sole responsibility of the Minister of Defence and the civil servants working under him. Have I got it right?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think that my noble friend has forgotten one tier of this, and that is the Defence Council itself. Naturally, this scheme will have to be worked out in practice, but I was dealing here with the official structure. But, of course, major policy questions involving defence can be debated—and no doubt will be debated—by the Defence Boards of the respective Services and also by the Defence Council as a whole; so all four Ministers will have a full say—that is, the three ex-Service Ministers, if I may so term them, and the Secretary of State.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, I do not want to be too tiresome, but I think the financial side is enormously important; because, after all, it is on the financial side that the Secretary of State for Defence and the Ministers are responsible to Parliament, and particularly to another place. On this question of finance, who is going to answer, first of all, for the broad financial policy? I imagine that the Secretary of State for Defence will take the overall responsibility for questions of major policy—I mean, on such broad questions as whether we should build cruisers or something else—but when it comes to all the detail, which is really where the money goes, and where Parliament and Parliamentary Committees have to watch the Administration, to whom are questions to be addressed on what I may call the individual application within the Services of the financial policy which has been settled by the Secretary of State and the Defence Council? Have
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such questions to be put to the Secretary of State, answering through, I am not quite clear who; or are they to be put to these Ministers of State? It is desirable that we should know this, and I imagine that the First Lord can give an answer.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I hope that the First Lord can answer my noble friend's question. In the first place, I entirely agree with him that this is a matter of prime importance here. My answer is basically two-fold—and I think I have this right: that the responsibility to Parliament over the whole field is vested, and will be vested, in the Secretary of State for Defence—and that includes, of course, the financial responsibility. So far as particular questions impinging on the finances of particular Services are concerned, the correct procedure, as it were, will be for questions to be addressed to the Secretary of State for Defence. But (and I think he made this clear himself, in an answer during the Committee stage in another place) the practice will be followed here that, unless such questions involve major issues of policy, it will normally be the Minister of Defence associated with, and responsible for, the day-to-day management of a particular Service who will answer any question relating to that Service.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I take it that, under this machinery, the new Ministers of Defence for Service Departments will have under them a Permanent Secretary to the Department and an Under-Secretary to the Department who will in fact have to do all the groundwork and the preparation for discussions in the Defence Council which is to be set up, and will be responsible for all the details of their Service Departments. But then, apparently, they can be overruled, I suppose by a Treasury-nominated Under-Secretary to the Minister of Defence, without that man having been integrated into the day-to-day work of the Service Department.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think I can assure the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition that, as I have mentioned, in the case of each of the Services, there will not be a Service Department, but there will be a Permanent

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Under-Secretary who will be called the Second Permanent Under-Secretary. There will, in fact, be four Permanent Under-Secretaries—one attached to the Ministry of Defence, as I have mentioned, under the Permanent Under-Secretary, and one dealing with each of the three Services. As the, noble Earl will see from the White Paper, the whole idea is that at an early stage the long-term programming of these financial programmes should be brought together, but in that bringing together each of the Services will be represented in the formulation of policy at that stage.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: It seems quite clear to ordinary Ministers of experience that these staffing arrangements will bring about a duplication and an increase in administrative costs. Instead of this arrangement being likely to bring about a saving, it seems to me that it will cause an increase in expenditure.
EARL JELLICOE: With great deference to the noble Earl—and he speaks with very considerable experience in these matters—I should have thought (and it seems to me that experience in the past tends to support this) that there was a great deal to be said for bringing together the major programming of the defence policies of all three Services at as early a stage as possible. I should have thought that in that way lie saving and economy, rather than the reverse. Certainly, in that way lie true interdependence and a true meshing together of the requirements of the three Services.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but I have forgotten what he said before this exchange, and it would be rather helpful if he could repeat the two passages dealing with the position of the Second Permanent Under-Secretary, because I am trying to see how closely it follows the White Paper. It was that passage which gave rise to our concern, and it might be helpful if we could have the actual text again.
EARL JELLICOE: I am in rather the same state as the noble Lord. I also have tended to forget what I had said shortly before our interesting exchanges in these esoteric spheres of finance. But I have here what are called
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"comprehensive notes", and I think I can give the noble Lord the precise phraseology I used and I will repeat the passage. The civil defence staffs are headed by a Permanent Under-Secretary of State who will be assisted by four Second Permanent Under-Secretaries one for each Service, and for the Defence Secretariat. The Defence Secretariat is a new organisation. It will bring together the civil administrative staffs of the present Ministry of Defence and those of the present Service Departments who deal with major defence policy. These central staffs will form a single team with a direct line of responsibility to the Permanent Under-Secretary. We shall thus create at the centre new and much stronger machinery for the longterm financial planning of the defence programme. The detailed management of the money voted by Parliament will, however, be delegated—and I am sure this is right—to the Second Permanent Under-Secretaries who will be the accounting officers for their respective Votes. That was what I said. I am completely confident—and I know the precise wording of the White Paper will be familiar to the noble Lord—that this is not in any way a contradiction of the White Paper proposals. It is just a "fleshing-out" of those proposals.
My Lords, may I turn now to the scientific field. The Chief Scientific Adviser will be in charge of all scientific effort in the new Department and a number of changes are being made in the scientific Committee structure described in order to improve the control of defence research and weapon development. Those changes are outlined in Section X of the White Paper. To mark the increasing rôle which science plays in the Services, the chief scientists of the three Services are to become members of their respective Service Boards; and I am sure this is a good innovation.
So much for the broad outline of the new defence set-up. Provided that Parliament passes this Bill the Government intend to bring the new organisation into effect on April 1 this year. These changes may sound simple, but they have meant, and mean, much work. Let me give but one example: the physical co-ordination and bringing together of the Central Defence Staffs. It is clearly a good thing, in my belief,

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to bring together under one roof the staffs mainly concerned with Defence policy: that is, the Defence staff, the Defence Secretariat, the defence scientific staff, together with those elements of the managements staffs of the Services who are most closely associated with them.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask a question on the timing, about this date of April 1? Are we to understand that we shall be getting the usual Defence White Paper before that date for the coming armaments year, or shall we have to wait until after the new Department has been organised?
EARL JELLICOE: No, my Lords. I can assure the noble Earl straight away that the normal Defence White Paper will be appearing at about the normal time.
It has also been decided—and I am sure advantage will flow from this, too—to house under this same roof the Minister of Aviation and the principal officers of his Department concerned with research and development. This cohabitation will, I am sure, make for much better co-operation. I might perhaps mention that the building selected for the honour of housing this large but happy family is to be the one in Whitehall which the Board of Trade and the Air Ministry have hitherto shared. It will hold about 3,400 out of a total of about 25,000 staff which the new Department will possess on its formation. Very good progress has been made with all this and I am confident that occupation of what we intend to call the Whitehall main building of the new Ministry will begin by vesting day.
If the new Department is to function efficiently when it comes into being on April 1, it is essential that as many as possible of the features of the new organisation should be progressively introduced before that date. Good progress is being made in this respect, too. The defence operations executive has been formed and the Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operational Requirements) and his staff have begun work. We have appointed the Second Permanent Under-Secretary of State (Defence Secretariat)
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and the Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Programmes and Budget. On the scientific side, the Weapons Development Committee and the Defence Research Committee have been set up. Arrangements are also being made to appoint the additional scientific staffs required to service these Committees and carry out the other tasks mentioned in the White Paper. In short, anything that can be done before April 1 is being done. However, there are some things which cannot be done in advance and which will have to wait until the actual physical reorganisation takes place.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, if there is going to be a general staff plus these extra 25,000 in the Ministry of Defence, will all these changes be accounted for in the Estimates for the Financial Year beginning April 1? This seems to me an extraordinary thing. Can we have a complete comparison in the Estimates between the cost now and what it is going to be?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I cannot promise the noble Earl that we can meet the second requirement; but I can assure him that these matters will be costed in the Estimates. I think I should make it quite clear that, taking the present staffs as on April 1, 1963, of the Ministry of Defence, the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the War Office, the staffs of the new combined Ministry of Defence as on April 1, 1964, will be no more. The figure of 25,000 does not represent a net increase. Perhaps I was unwittingly misleading the noble Earl. There will be no increase. It is merely a bringing together of staffs.
Now, my Lords, for the Bill itself. It is important to appreciate what it does and what it does not do. What it does is to reallocate the statutory powers now reposing in the Service Ministries. It is not concerned with prerogative powers under which many of the activities of the Service Departments are carried out. Nor is it concerned with the details of the reorganisation, the transfers of staffs, the alterations in lines of responsibility, the provision of accommodation and all the thousand and one other matters of administration which do not require legislation. The Bill is thus only part of the process necessary to set up a unified Ministry of Defence.

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The other formal step is the appointment by Her Majesty of a Secretary of State for Defence and the establishment under the Royal Prerogative of a Defence Council and Navy, Army and Air Force Boards. Clause 1 of the Bill makes it clear that the proposed legislation is dependent on Her Majesty's being pleased to make such arrangements. The Bill does not therefore trench on the Prerogative; indeed, there is a specific saving to this effect in Clause 4(3). However, Her Majesty has been informed of the contents of the Bill and has been graciously pleased to indicate that she will in due course be prepared to make the necessary arrangements under Prerogative powers.
The offices of the First Lord of the Admiralty and of the Secretaries of State for War and Air, together with the Board of Admiralty and the Army and Air Councils, will disappear. It is therefore necessary to transfer the statutory powers vested in them to the new office of Secretary of State for Defence and to the Defence Council. This is done by Clause 1. The allocation of functions between the two new authorities is explained in paragraph 2 of the Memorandum attached to the Bill before your Lordships' House. It will be seen that this perpetuates the division of powers between Ministers and Councils which exists to-day. Thus, powers now exercised by the Secretaries of State for War and Air are transferred to the Secretary of State for Defence. Powers exercised by the Army and Air Councils are in their turn transferred to the Defence Council. The statutory powers of the Admiralty are allocated to make a broadly similar division.
Clause 1(5) deals with the relationship between the Defence Council and the three Service Boards. It provides that, subject to any directions of the Defence Council, the Navy, Army and Air Force Boards will be able to discharge finally—and that is the important word here—any statutory function of the Defence Council. As explained in the White Paper, the Defence Council will deal mainly with major defence policy and the Service Boards for the most part with matters of management. The composition of these bodies reflects this distinction. The Defence Council may be the appropriate body to discharge certain
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statutory functions or to discharge a function in relation to a particular class of cases. Again, in certain cases it may be appropriate for the Defence Council to direct that a particular Board should exercise a function only in relation to the members of the corresponding Service. This is the significance of the words, "subject to any directions of the Defence Council".
But many of the statutory functions are, of course, concerned purely with management, and it will be appropriate, and it is the Government's intention, that these should be discharged finally by the Service Boards. Anything done by the Boards in these cases will have the same legal effect as if done by the Defence Council and will not be subject to review by the Council. This is what "finally"—the word I have somewhat laboured—means in this context. This applies particularly to judicial and quasi-judicial powers for the review of disciplinary awards, the redress of grievances and the like. I am sure that the House will agree that it would be wrong to interfere in any way with the long-established practice whereby petitions against the findings and sentences of courts martial, for instance, are received and dealt with within the Service to which the accused person belongs. That said, I should like to make it clear—and this is the point I made in reply to the question of my noble friend Lord Swinton—that the Secretary of State for Defence, who will be Chairman of the Defence Council and of the Service Boards, will be responsible to Parliament for all the business transacted by the Council and the Boards.
I believe that these are sensible and practical arrangements, which permit the flexibility and the scope for organic growth and change which it is necessary to build into any radical reorganisation of a machine as complex as the one which we are reorganising under this Bill and White Paper.
The remaining clauses of the Bill I think I can deal with very briefly. Clause 2 transfers to the Secretary of State for Defence all Service property, rights and liabilities, and provides for the acquisition and use of land. Clause 3 contains consequential and transitional provisions, and Clause 4 explains itself. To sum up, this is a technical Bill, which

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is needed if we are to abolish, as the White Paper has proposed and as I think your Lordships' House broadly endorsed last July, the existing Service Ministers and Ministries and to create an integrated and unified Ministry of Defence. What it does, in a few words, is to transfer existing powers from the old order to the proposed new order.
I think it fair to say that, whilst the proposals for this new set-up were not received with rapture by your Lordships last July, they were, broadly speaking, endorsed as necessary, sound and sensible. This broad endorsement has been confirmed, by all Parties, during the passage of this Bill through another place. Because of this, and because I, too, believe these proposals to be right, can commend this Bill to your Lordships with confidence. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
3.25 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I cannot recall a more difficult subject or a more difficult speech to which to reply. The noble Earl said that this is a technical Bill which provides for flexibility and organic growth. I really do not know what any of those words mean in this context. This is a small enabling Bill. It is certainly difficult to understand, but it is nothing like so difficult to understand as the proposals (if they are proposals) that the Government are putting forward with regard to the reorganisation of defence.
I must say straight away that we shall have to read the noble Earl's speech very carefully and possibly return to the discussion of some of these matters, not perhaps by way of Amendment, but at least on "clause stand part" on Committee stage. I am not making a Party point when I say that the whole House finds it extremely difficult to follow this set of propositions. The special difficulty rests in relation to the responsibilities involved. Here I would ask the Minister a number of questions. Frankly, I do not think he told us anything that was not said by the Minister in our last debate six months ago or was not proposed in the White Paper, with one exception—his reference to the new Ministers of Defence.
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I think we ought not to pass this Bill without asking why the Government have introduced it. We know that it is due to admitted failure. This is apparent in the White Paper and has been apparent in the speeches on the previous system. But what we are not clear about is whether it is the system that has failed, or the men. I am sure that the Government are tired of references made to the number of Defence Ministers, but there really has been a frivolity on this subject, and there is no question that whatever is proposed now will work no better unless there is some continuity and the right occupant of the post of Secretary of State for Defence. I think that that is obvious.
It is also clear that these changes have had bad effects, and among these bad effects has been that it exacerbates the Party political side of the defence issue, which I hope may be reduced. I am a little bothered now by the smugness of the Government in regard to their proposals. They have created a framework, one that is difficult for us to follow, and apparently they are reasonably certain that their proposals are going to work. Again, this is exceedingly difficult for us to discuss without a great deal more information. Indeed, I am wondering whether this is not an example of those highly technical problems that are very difficult to debate across the Floor of the House—whether this is not the sort of thing that needs to be examined much more thoroughly by a smaller number of people, so that in the process they can clear their minds and understand exactly what it is that the Government have in mind.
The first big question, on which I do not believe that noble Lords on either side of the House are clear in their minds, is the position of the Ministers of Defence for the Navy, Army and Air Force. It is rather difficult to remember their proper titles, but I think these are correct. I am sure we all welcome the fact that they are to be full Ministers, but I am astounded at the rather curious idea that in order to preserve the right relationship between them and the Secretary of State for Defence they have to be paid less. This seems to me the most extraordinary thing. Have the Government really thought what they are saying in this? We have sometimes had other Departments which have had

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more than one Cabinet Minister in the same Department, and there has been no question about who was "the boss". But this sudden introduction of a status determined by pay in relation to Ministers, all of whom we know are grossly underpaid, is really too ridiculous. I would urge the First Lord to talk to his right honourable friend and to get him to reconsider this curious emphasis, that of course they must be paid less. Is he afraid that if they are all paid equally they will be "uppish"? I find it extremely difficult to take the Government seriously when they make this sort of proposal.
This, however, is a small point. The real point in regard to the power of Ministers is how far they are to be responsible to Parliament. The noble Earl made it quite clear that, in the last resort, it will be the Secretary of State himself who will be responsible. But difficulty arises in regard to this question of discipline, because it has been made clear by the noble Earl that discipline is the responsibility of the respective Boards. This is one of the matters which it is intended should be decentralised to them—and by "decentralised" is meant, I suppose, that there will be a moment when responsibility is taken away and hastily thrust back to them. But there will still be the ultimate issue when a Minister comes to Parliament. At this point, will the Minister of Defence, if he is in this House, always have to refer to "My right honourable friend"?—it may be that the Secretary of State for Defence is not likely to be often in this House. Will the Minister of Defence for the Navy ever answer for himself, or will it always be on behalf of the Secretary of State? This matter is important in regard to the public responsibility.
I am not saying that what the Government are doing in this matter is wrong; I am merely pointing to the difficulties. The strength of the present position is that when the First Lord gets up to speak we know that, unless the matter under discussion is to go to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, so far as his particular field, his Department, is concerned, the final word has been spoken and he speaks with that authority. This will not be so in the future.
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The matter is further confused, because we have been told that the Ministers of Defence will have certain functional responsibilities across the whole field of defence. If that is the Government's intention, they presumably must have some idea of the sort of functional responsibilities which these Ministers will have; because otherwise they would not have mentioned them. But they have not yet told us what they might do. Perhaps, when the noble Earl comes to reply, he will tell us what particular other functions they will have.
We should also like to know how far these functions will be satisfactorily separated from the Minister's major responsibility in regard to a particular Service. We are quite accustomed to a Minister going off and doing an odd job somewhere. We sent the Minister of Science to Moscow; and I remember that after the war the Secretary of State for Air was frequently involved in negotiations abroad for the Government. All that is understandable. But these seem to be definite responsibilities and functions. It is important, if we are to judge this, that we should be told just the sort of thing these Ministers will do.
There was, too, the particular point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Swinton. Here I think we are in some difficulty in understanding what the Government have in mind. I think the view held by those who support a greater measure of integration in defence of this kind has generally been that there should be central control over estimating and budgeting—and, indeed, over expenditure. But if what the noble Earl said is correct, it would seem that this process will be conducted within the Secretariat, without reference to the political Ministers, until it emerges at the top—until, in fact, it comes out to the Defence Council. What is to be the precise relationship between the three Boards and the officials who are responsible for this budgeting and estimating?
It may be that this is too detailed a matter for us to discuss effectively in this House; but the noble Earl sought to explain it. It is quite fundamental, because if the Minister of Defence for the Navy has no direct influence in this matter (it may be that this is one of the functions that will be devolved to him; I do not know) and the channel is through the various Permanent Under-

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Secretaries, one can see that a degree of frustration may build up which will make this pentepod, as the noble Earl calls it (it sounds much worse than the Pentagon: this will indicate to the noble Earl that his joke did not go unnoticed) a much more frustrated place.
This may also affect the question of debates in the House. I think I am reasonably clear that any Minister is liable to answer a particular question; and that does not worry us quite so much in this House, where Ministers are thinner on the ground and we know they may have to speak for Departments other than their own. But when the Estimates are produced, will there be a combined statement? Certainly previously we were told that there would be separate Votes for each Service. I hope that the Government will produce something rather better in the way of a Defence White Paper than they did last year, and something which will enable us to understand more how this is going to work. I personally have no objection to our having debates on subjects other than on the individual Services: indeed, last year, if there had been time, it was quite likely that we should have anticipated what has been suggested in another place—namely, that debates might take place other than on a single Service. There is still the responsibility of Parliament for this type of Supply, and it is desirable and necessary to know how it is to be presented.
One thing is quite certain, and that is that the Secretary of State for Defence is going to be an extremely overworked man; he will be as hard-worked as the Foreign Secretary or the present Commonwealth Relations Secretary. Although this federal type of Ministry may be the right solution, it carries enormous dangers, because it puts the man at the top and responsible to Parliament even further away from the field in which he is exercising responsibility. It will be impossible for him to do what the First Lord is able to do to-day, and on his own authority. That creates serious problems.
Clearly we are not going to oppose this measure to-day, but this is something very much in the nature of an experiment, and it is one that I do not think is likely to remain unchanged in the future. There has been some argu-
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ment in favour of strengthening the position of the Secretary of State. There was an interesting suggestion from the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, that there might be a sort of Chief Secretary. This was turned down when it was put forward in another place, again on the grounds that we cannot have two Cabinet Ministers. This is nonsense comparable to the argument on pay relativities.
I am not saying that this suggestion is right, but I do not know whether it has ever been seriously considered. Certainly considered arguments have not been put forward against it, and I think it is a matter which ought to be at least considered. We have had very little discussion on the position of the Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of the Defence Staff. There has been quite serious criticism from all sides in regard to the position of the Chief of the Defence Staff. I should again like to ask what I asked on the last occasion, a question to which I did not get an answer: How far will the Secretary of State for Defence himself deal directly with, and, if necessary, take the chair at meetings of, the Chiefs of Staff? Or will disagreement at the Chiefs of Staff Committee always come to the Secretary of State for Defence? When I say "always", obviously there will be direct contacts. Will the channel normally be, as is suggested, through the Chief of the Defence Staff? This seems to me to be a bad and retrograde step, and I think it is important to know how this is going to work.
At this point, I realise that I am getting into such a rarified atmosphere that I ought to sit down and leave this to my noble friends Lord Attlee and Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, who have such wide experience of the operation of the higher organisation of Defence, both in war and in peace time. I would suggest that to some extent this is a problem of power, and those of your Lordships who have served in the headquarters of powerful commands will know that there is a danger that this particular command will develop a power and an identity which may greatly influence defence planning and defence organisation. Getting rid of the heads of the three Services does not mean that powerful interests of a kind which already exist may not still continue. But

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they will be under less control than they have been in the past. I would suggest that, in this relationship and in this conflict of power, the Government have not necessarily solved their problem, and may well have created new problems for themselves.
Finally, I should like to refer lightly to the relationship of the Defence Council to the Cabinet, and to the Committee on Overseas Policy and Defence. It has been a criticism—and it is a criticism I should like to repeat to-day, and one which has come from many people, including certain people with wide experience in the Services—that there is apparently to be no permanent secretariat to the Committee on Overseas Policy and Defence. We know that a suggestion was made that there should be a secretariat, and that it will be served by a committee of senior officials. But it is clearly in this field that the greatest weakness has been shown in recent years. It is in the relation of defence expenditure, foreign policy and economics that we have fallen down and overstrained ourselves. There can be no argument to-day that we are seeking to achieve more economically than we can achieve; and the co-ordination between defence, foreign policy and economic considerations is, I should have thought, unquestionably not as satisfactory as it should be. This is the most vital point of all, and the danger that some of us feel in regard to these proposals is that in the process of abolishing the three fortresses of the Air Ministry, Admiralty and the War Office, the Government have created an even stronger bastion which will pursue a policy of independence with its own cabinet, the Defence Council, and which may to that extent produce less co-ordination rather than more.
There are obviously many details one could discuss in regard to this Bill. There are certain aspects that are wholly welcome. I think the development in regard to the scientific advisers and that particular structure is certainly, on the face of it, to be strongly commended. But whether, even then, we shall succeed in getting an adequate degree of co-ordination in budgetary and other matters with regard to new projects is difficult to tell. It is here that time and again our defence policy breaks down. There is a potent phrase in the White
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Paper in regard to research, where it says:
"The problems of Defence research are seldom amenable to straightforward analysis and accounting."
This is no doubt one of the truest statements that has ever been made. Although there is another Committee, the Weapons Development Committee, which is intended to exercise this control, from what we have heard there are no indications that we are likely to do any better than we have done in the past. It is clear that to do so is the intention, and will be one of the main justifications for this measure. Until we bring these enormously expensive items under control we shall continue to waste money. I am not seeking to make a Party political point when I say that it is clearly a disaster that we have had to cancel Blue Water, or when the cost of Seaslug or TSR 2 goes ten or even twenty times above the original estimate. Somehow this new machine must bring this under control, because whatever Government are in power, they will be in continuous difficulty because their estimating will be without any reality at all. I hesitate to say that a Dr. Beeching might do better in this matter, but clearly something must be done, and I wish I had more confidence that this proposal would solve these problems.
I think the main difficulty we have in considering this matter is the extent to which we still suffer from the domination of certain words. I should like to make a plea that, in regard to purely honorific titles with an historic meaning, we should stop worrying as much as we have done. Would it really matter if the Navy Board of the Ministry of Defence, which is the N.B.D.C.—a really absurd title—were still called the Board of Admiralty? I think this would be very welcome. We realise that certain of these terms must continue, and I know it is arguable that there was as much feeling when the title "Navy Board" was abolished a long time ago, but surely we could get over that. I should have thought we need not worry about that type of name. What is more serious is the fact that, in this plan and in this thinking, none of us seems able to free himself from misconceptions.
I should just like to refer to one particular phrase which was used by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, when he

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spoke in the debate on the White Paper. He said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 252 (No. 126), col. 1161]:
"Sailors are sailors; soldiers are soldiers, and airmen are airmen: they choose their ship; they choose their regiment, and they choose their squadron."
I think it would be difficult to find a single sentence which contained more misconceptions than that. I suggest that possibly the reason he thought like that is that he was a soldier—perhaps a more orthodox soldier than the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe. Sailors are frequently airmen; airmen do not choose their squadron.
If this is the level of thinking—and I do not believe it is—we are not going to get very far. It will be the men who will make this particular proposition work. I have a good deal of faith in the noble Earl himself and, indeed, in his predecessor, but I have very little faith in the Government; and if, to use that very eloquent phrase that my noble friend Lord Attlee used on a previous occasion, the Ministry of Defence is to be a siding into which politicians on their way up or down will be shunted, this Bill will do little to improve our situation.
3.52 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I welcome this Bill in principle, and, for my part, I wonder why it was not introduced long ago. So far from being a revolutionary measure, it is, in my view, a highly belated one. I was reading only the other day that even the old Duke of Cambridge, who ceased to be Commander-in-Chief some eighty years ago, felt that there was need for a Ministry of Defence. He was no radical reformer, and I never thought I should be quoting the Duke of Cambridge in support of any of his military ideas; but if he thought it was a good idea, one can see that Her Majesty's Government, bringing along a measure like this in the year 1964, are not doing anything which is highly revolutionary.
In view of the fact that Britain is an island and that every operation of war, and most operations of peace, have to be combined operations, it is odd that for so long we have managed to struggle along with three distinct Services, very little co-ordination and hardly any integration. I am not at all sure that we
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do not need to have a good deal more than is proposed in this measure and in the White Paper which lies behind it. I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, when he says that to discuss a question like this in a debate in a House of Parliament is almost impossible. The Bill itself is very short; it is an enabling measure; it gives very little detail—and it is the detail which matters. I feel that this is another reason why we shall have to develop Parliamentary machinery and proceedings of Parliament to deal with modern conditions. I think the time has come for a Defence Committee of the House which can go into these questions.
It so happens that I know far more about details of NATO forces than I do about those of my own country. The noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, knows that this is so, because he was at the NATO Parliamentarians' Conference before he ascended, or descended, to the Front Bench. There we have talks by the Supreme Commander and by various other naval, air or military commanders in NATO. One asks them questions in the Committee or in the plenary and one can thereby find out a great deal of the detail of what one wants to know about these matters. Members of Parliament, however, have little opportunity of getting details. The whole subject is shrouded in secrecy, most of which is entirely unnecessary, for I am certain that the Russians know far more than any Member of Parliament does about what goes on in our Forces. We are not really able to do our duty in this respect. If we had a Committee in this House we should be able to have before us and discuss these matters with Ministers, Chiefs of Staff and other people as we do in NATO, and we should get a fairly accurate estimation of what the health of the Services is like and what the proposals are intended to mean.
I hope that with this new set-up, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said, we shall not have all this whirligig. "Stop-and-Go" defence policy that we have had over the last eight or ten years, when one Minister of Defence comes in and decides to do away with the Royal Air Force and a good deal of the Fleet and concentrate on rockets, and then another one comes in and decides to "pipe down" on rockets and try to

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build up an R.A.F. again, and so on. How on earth people in these Services have managed over the last ten years to carry on in staff colleges and other training establishments where they are supposed to teach what is Government policy on these matters and forecast what the future of the Services is going to be over the next few years I cannot understand. We ourselves here, having the advantage of speeches from Ministers responsible in the Defence Departments, have not known what the real intentions of the Government have been; they have changed so often.
I think the danger here is that a vast bureaucracy will be built up. I hope the Government will avoid that and avoid empire-building, and have as few people as possible. But let them be good people. Here I support the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. I think it is absolute nonsense to cut down the salaries of the various Defence Ministers. Ministers, in my view, are paid far too little as it is. The position is nonsensical when Cabinet Ministers are paid considerably less than their own permanent Departmental heads, particularly when these Departmental heads have pension rights as well. I think that to cut down salaries is very much a retrograde step. I suggest that what we should do is to maintain the salaries at the present level and put up the salary of the Secretary of State for Defence. I think the public would understand that.
One reason why I think this action is belated is because we are now entering, and have entered over the last two or three months, a completely new phase of defence in the Commonwealth. Few contemplated that this would be so, but I would remind your Lordships that when I was speaking in this House on the measures proposed in the White Paper I said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 252 (No. 126), col. 1156]:
"I think that in future we shall have to give much closer attention to Commonwealth defence than in the past. It is going to be a rather different type of defence."
I then went on to say:
"I refer to a case such as that in Borneo, the new Malaysia. It will be quite impossible for the new Malaysia to defend its frontiers, those enormously long frontiers running through bush and across the tops of mountains … without aid from the rest of the Commonwealth."
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I never thought my forecast would come so quickly into being. It was not long before there was the attack from Indonesia in the very region I specified to your Lordships last July.
I feel that the situation that has arisen, not only in Malaysia but also in East Africa, means that we have to look at defence from a completely new point of view. We have to be ready at very short notice to go to various countries scattered all over the world in order to handle a situation that may arise. I should like to ask the noble Earl these questions. Will it be possible to adapt the proposed set-up in the Ministry of Defence to meet these new situations? Can the Government provide quickly enough the necessary forces at a few hours' notice to take off and go to various parts of the world? I myself believe that if this tendency continues—and I think it will continue; I think we shall have to go into a lot more countries to assist them with internal defence either because of Communist infiltration or for some other reason—it is going to be pretty well impossible for Britain to carry this load herself. I think we shall be highly overstrained, when one regards the fact that we have to provide forces for NATO and we have other commitments in various parts of the world of a more or less static nature. To underwrite these various other commitments which may arise from time to time will overstrain us.
I suggest that the Government try to get a Commonwealth defence force; that is, not one on a permanent basis but a Commonwealth defence pool to which the various Commonwealth countries, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the rest, would earmark contributions, and when some of these difficulties arise we could draw on that pool and get some assistance. I do not think anyone can say Canada has done very much; they have not provided very many forces outside Canada, except to NATO, since the last war. There is one precedent we have got and that is in the case of Korea; for the first time in history a Commonwealth Division was quickly gathered together and went to Korea. I have been disappointed that that sort of precedent has not been followed, but I think to-day that this is in all probability going to be, so to speak,

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the pattern of the future. Quite likely we shall never see great land wars in the future such as we have seen in the past, but this sort of commitment will be a very common one, and I feel that the Commonwealth, rather than NATO, is the type of organisation which should be dealing with the Commonwealth commitments which I have described.
I also think that in the present circumstances it is quite impossible to get the United Nations into these areas. In times to come they may have a permanent force, but they have not got a permanent force at the moment. I think it is far better for the Commonwealth itself to handle the situation for Commonwealth countries. That is all I have to say on this particular Bill. As I have said, I welcome it. I think it is a highly inadequate discussion we are having to-day, but that is not the fault of the Minister or the fault of those taking part, but is due to the fact that the procedure of Parliament is just as much behind the times as the structure of the Forces has been until quite recently.
4.4 p.m.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, I entirely agree with the views of the noble Lord who has just spoken that one must have some continuity in defence, but I suggest to the noble Lord he must not forget there have been great changes in weapons owing to the rapid advances in science over the last few years which make changes in defence policy very necessary. This Bill is, of course, a radical departure from our present organisation, and it places political control in one hand instead of four hands. What we are really doing is to create a post of a superman with immense powers. Although I am in favour of some form of centralised control, I do hope that this centralisation will not be carried too far, which may very well in the end slow up decisions. We have seen that happen with the German High Command in the last war, which I think was known as OKW; it undoubtedly had a very serious effect on the naval warfare of the German navy and they would have done far better without OKW control.
I also think that many difficulties may arise with weak Ministers of Defence.
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They are not all going to be supermen. The superman, I understand, is to be known as Secretary of State for Defence, but what of the other Ministers of Defence? In another place a good deal of debate went on as to what these Ministers are to be called and what should be their precise rôles. I understand the Minister of Defence decided he would look at the whole matter again as regards the title of these Ministers, and I think the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, has said they are to be called Ministers of Defence. I also understand that it has been agreed that Ministers of State would be upgraded to full Ministers of Cabinet rank. I certainly agree with this proposal. Otherwise the burden on the Secretary of State would be far too heavy to bear.
These Ministers of State, I believe, are not to be in charge of Departments, because I think the intention is to have one Department of Defence. This sounds very nice and tidy on paper, but perhaps the Minister in charge of the Bill could explain more fully how this is to be put into practice. Are they to jump from one Department to another? I really cannot see the use of these Ministers if they are to have no authority at all in their own Departments. What about conflicting claims in one Service? Is the Minister of State to have no power to decide between rival claims in the same Service? I simply do not understand this. What would be the position of the Minister in discussions with our Allies on the navy's rôle in certain areas? Would he have to say that he could not deal with it and must get a decision from the Secretary of State for Defence? We really must have something more definite about these very important matters which are bound to arise. It seems to me this debate is being held in a vacuum, because we know very little.
I am also very concerned about the term "Navy Board" which is to supersede the term, "Admiralty." It is so easy to discard the old name, to throw it away; but how many years will it take to build up a new one? It is true that the term "Navy Board" has been used before, but not, I venture to say, with any great success. The Navy Board system broke down when put to the test during the Crimean War. Why revive it? I maintain that we should not interfere more than is absolutely necessary

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with the traditions of the Naval service, which go far back into the mists of time, long before the Navy Board was set up.
I wonder how many of your Lordships are aware that the word "Admiralty" was used in a collective term for the office of Lord High Admiral, I think very early in the 15th century. In fact the word "Admiralty" goes back many centuries before that date and is derived from the Arabic word "Amir-al-mar". Surely it is not proposed that Admiralty Charts—a hallmark of quality—will in the future be known as "Navy Board Charts." Then we have the Admiralty Manual of Navigation, Admiralty House and Admiralty Arch. Is it seriously proposed that all these time-honoured names should be done away with? Before long we shall have someone re-writing the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. I cannot imagine a seaman referring to an Admiralty anchor as a Navy Board anchor. To me it sounds complete rubbish. And what about the Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice. Is this to be changed, too?
There is, of course, a very much more serious vein underlying these proposed changes. I suggest that we must guard against the tendency of organisers to forget the greatly different roots and deep traditions of the Armed Services; and I would say that this applies particularly to the Royal Navy. The term "Admiralty" has for many centuries been a collective term for royal authority vested in the office of Lord High Admiral. This was the case whether the Lord High Admiral was an individual—as of course he was for very many years—or whether the office went into Commission as Lords of Admiralty. Throughout, the Royal authority has been maintained; and with Her Majesty resuming the office of Lord High Admiral there will be a continuity of the Royal authority exercised through the collective term "Admiralty," now to be changed, for no apparent reason, to "Navy Board."
I would point out that there is a fundamental difference between the Navy and the other Armed Forces. The fact is that, unless the Army and Air Force Acts were passed each year, the Army and the Air Force would become illegal bodies of armed men. That does not apply to the Royal Navy. A soldier
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has his loyalty to his regiment, although I believe there are those in certain quarters who would like the regimental system to disappear and be replaced by a corps of infantry. In the Navy, the advent of short-service commissions, nowadays of only some 18 months, means that it is becoming more difficult to build up a similar loyalty to a unit, such as one of Her Majesty's ships. I maintain that something higher is required which the sailor can always look up to as a focus for his loyalty, and this must be the Admiralty. Those of your Lordships who have served in the Navy would, I am sure, be interested to hear from Her Majesty's Government what in the future will be the disciplinary term for the time-honoured phrase "incurring their Lordships' displeasure."
I can see no reason why the Services should not be allowed to retain their present names if desired, especially in the case of the Royal Navy, on account of the arguments that I have done my best to put forward this afternoon. I cannot possibly think that it would interfere with Her Majesty's Government's idea of integration. I am glad I have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, on this point. These matters are part of the traditions of the Services which it is perhaps difficult to explain. None the less, they exist, with an enormously strong influence. I do not see why we should follow the United States organisations in everything we do. For heaven's sake! let us have some originality. I trust that Her Majesty's Government will think again about the matters that I have raised, and will consider the request about which the Navy feels so strongly.
4.12 p.m.
EARL ATTLEE: My Lords, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teynham. I cannot see why you should scrap whole phrases like "the Admiralty" for something new-fangled, especially if it comes from the Pentagon. I do not know whether the new organisation to which the noble Earl gave a Greek name was sired or dammed by the Pentagon, but the last thing in the world which I should like to follow is co-ordination or, for that matter, for control by Ministers. I have risen because I have taken some interest in this matter for a number of years—in fact

37
ever since my noble friend Lord Lawson and I entered the War Office just forty years ago; and while I am entirely in favour of co-ordination between the Services I am not at all sure that this is the right way. Fundamentally, what is required for co-ordination is the training of officers who think in terms of all three Services. That is much more important than any machinery.
The machinery we evolved during the War worked well. I would call it "trinitarian" rather than "unitarian". We had three Chiefs of Staff, and we had a Minister of Defence and a Defence Committee, and it worked well. We continued with that system during the time of the Government of which I was Prime Minister, and it worked quite well. In fact, the proof of the pudding was in the eating, because although our resources were greatly strained we were at short notice able to produce the Commonwealth Division for Service in Korea. That involved the co-operation of all three Services, and it was effective. Since then it has perhaps not been effective. That may be due to the fact that there have been so many passengers passing through the Ministry; none of them had time to make much of a mark. The last one to do so was Lord Head—I forget how many Ministers ago. The others were just birds of passage. I think that had a bad effect on the Defence Ministry.
I never agreed on the wisdom of creating a fourth Chief of Staff. Inevitably, that meant that in one of the three Services you had two heads, one a Chief of Staff in the Defence Ministry and the other the Chief of Staff of the particular Service. I do not think that was necessary. With competent members of the General Staff in your C.I.G.S. or your C.A.S. or your First Lord, you could get the co-ordination you wanted and the chairmanship you wanted. Of course, the outstanding example of that was when Lord Alanbrooke was chairman. Lord Alanhrookes do not grow on every tree; but then nor do Lord Mountbattens. He has an unrivalled experience in co-ordinating the three Services. You have to make provision for the ordinary man.
In the days before the Second World War, I frequently made speeches in the House in favour of a Ministry of
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Defence. I was always met by the words, "If you try to do that, you will produce a Minister who is much too strong for the rest of the Ministry; and a competent Minister with a great Defence Ministry behind him will be much too big for the rest of the Cabinet." That was the complaint on all sides, taken up in the Conservative Party. It is surprising to me that they have now gone the whole hog and have reduced the civilian heads of the Fighting Services to little more than Under-Secretaries. I think they are destroying the traditions of the three Services and I look with great doubt at this new set-up. It seems to me too complicated.
First of all, you have the Secretary of State for Defence. I thought it was a good principle that major planning should be separated from detailed administration. That, I think, is the rule in the Fighting Services. Here you are going to put all the detailed planning and all the detailed administration into the hands of the Minister of Defence. The Service Ministers are mere Under-Secretaries. All the decisions are to be taken by the Secretary of State. I think that is wrong. When we devised the Ministry of Defence, the idea was that it should be kept small. Now it is being expanded to 25,000 staff—a great deal of harness for quite a small horse. I would rather see a little stronger horse than all this stuff, and I am most doubtful whether you are going to get any economies. I think you will find that the Service heads of the Navy, the Army and the Air Force who are going to be located in this Whitehall Pentagon, will not do without a pretty full staff. The First Lords of the Admiralty always need a flotilla, and they will also have one when they get back to the other offices. They are much more likely to duplicate than economise in staff.
Then, I think, there is a general depression of civilian control. Our system throughout the ages has been one in which civilian control is at the head of the Fighting Services. If the civilian is wise he does not try to do major strategy. If the Fighting Service chiefs are wise they do not interfere in politics. They have their sphere. Here I think responsibility is blurred. I find it very difficult under this scheme to make out who is really responsible for the Fighting Services. It seems to me

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that it all comes back to the Secretary of State and is taken away from the other three Service Ministers. I think you will tend to exalt the Secretary of State, and if he is not a strong man you will exalt the chief military officer. That is a mistake. History has shown, if you look at the state of affairs in Germany in the past, or in America, that it is a mistake not to have adequate civilian control over your technical, military men. I am very much afraid that this will lead either to overwhelming the Secretary of State with too much work or too much power, or to handing over effective control to a military chief. I think that with a few improvements our present system could have worked perfectly well.
Then, again, there seems to me to be an immense complication. You can bring in your scientists—and you should bring them in; they fit quite well into the ordinary organisation, either the three Fighting Services or the Ministry of Defence. But it seems to me rather a matter of window dressing to say, "Look how scientific and up to date we are—we have got Mr. So-and-So, F.R.S., right up to the top". It does not really make a substitute for the proper training of your officers. And I say that, being familiar with all three Services and being familiar with scientific advance.
Then one should have a proper Defence Ministry or a Defence Committee of the Cabinet. I do not know whether that disappears or quite what happens to it. That brings in the Foreign Office, the overseas Ministers, and possibly the economic Ministers. It worked all right during the war and afterwards. Now I think that it will be overwhelmed by this Colossus if one has just one person on the Defence side. I would much rather have the views of the three Services freely expressed in a Committee of Defence, with other Ministers present so that such views can be examined and due weight given to them.
I confess that I do not like this system. It may just be because I am too old. I do not believe it is really up to date. I think it is an attempt to do something which is rather alien to our traditions. I think the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, was quite right in wanting to retain the name of the Admiralty. After all, it was a very clever device to have the Lords
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of the Admiralty and the Lord High Admiral in commission. You had others, historic or otherwise; and you upset things when you destroy these old landmarks. You do something to destroy the spirit of the Services. I do not think it is a good thing to degrade Ministers. The Services ought to have, as they had in the past, a Secretary of State to whom they owe allegiance, and to whom in case of need they can appeal. Now what have you got? A mere sort of Minister of State; a kind of glorified office boy to the Secretary of State for Defence. I hope this idea will be taken back and reformed. I am quite sure that when another Government come in they will find they will have to reform it. If I am not greatly mistaken, they will find it has grown into a Frankenstein which they will have to destroy in due course.
4.25 p.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, through the courtesy of my noble friend Lord Ampthill, who wants to speak on one particular aspect of these proposals, I intervene for a few moments only. It is quite clear from what has been said in the debate to-day that this is a major surgical operation on Government machinery. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, have deployed the many questions, both of policy and of administration, which in this new structure remain unanswered. All will not work smoothly in the future. There will be personal and administrative difficulties old Service pride will continue and rivalries will not melt overnight.
My purpose in contributing to this debate is to ask whether the Government would consider giving an undertaking that an objective disinterested review, conducted by authoritative persons, will be held within, say, two to three years' time from now. I believe some such assurance would be healthy for all those who are affected by this great surgical administrative operation. It will be within your Lordships' recollection that some time ago the Government called in wise and experienced men, who commanded the confidence of the serving personnel, to examine the question of inter-Service co-ordination. It would not be good enough to let the interested executive Departments conduct a review of matters which may need remedying

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in the light of experience. It seems to me that there will be a requirement for a review in two different directions. The first direction will be as to whether the position of the Secretary of State for Defence is in all respects a satisfactory one; whether in future it will be shown that he is too powerful a single Minister in a Cabinet of collective responsibility; and whether his financial and other powers are not too great. I do not know—and I do not believe any of your Lordships know—what will be the result of such questioning in two or three years' time. The Prime Minister of the day, whoever he may be, is the only man who will be able to carry out such a review.
The second type of review is as to whether the executive machinery of government is working satisfactorily. I submit to your Lordships that this matter should be put under the microscope, as it were, not by those interested—and all those in the Government Departments must be interested parties—but by those of experience who are completely detached from any personal consideration of the problem, so that they may reach an objective, disinterested view. I believe such an assurance would be healthy for all those who will have to carry forward the new structure envisaged in this Bill. That is the only purpose for which I have intervened, for I believe it is the desire of your Lordships to see that this machinery works effectively in the future. If the Government will give an assurance in regard to such a detached review, I believe it would increase the confidence of those affected by these proposals.
4.30 p.m.
LORD AMPTHILL: My Lords, I do not wish to repeat anything that was said, either by myself or by other noble Lords, in the debate on July 31 last, when we were debating Command Paper 2097. Nor do I wish to withdraw my general agreement with the proposed organisation, though I must qualify that remark by saying that I agree with all that my noble friend Lord Teynham has said. I also agree with some of the very pertinent criticisms made by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. I personally believe that the White Paper proposals go too
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far in the matter of throwing overboard some of the traditional names, for which we have substituted three Defence Ministers and cohorts of Second Permanent Under-Secretaries of State. I will leave the Second Permanent Under-Secretaries of State, but I must just refer to the three Defence Ministers.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, I cannot see how these very senior Ministers are going to operate unless they have clearly defined responsibilities, and there is nothing in the White Paper, where they are described as Ministers of State for Defence, that properly defines their responsibilities. It is said that one of them will be responsible for the Navy, one for the Army and one for the Air Force, but that they will have a general field over the whole Ministry. I cannot see myself, a business executive, or the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, also a business executive, putting senior managers into that sort of position. I think that these Defence Ministers (and I am very glad that they have been upgraded to Defence Ministers) should have clearly defined responsibilities, one for each Service. As I have already said, I fully support my noble friend Lord Teynham in all that he has said about dropping the name "Admiralty", and other well-known traditional titles. My own bet is that for many years to come, whatever the Government may decide, sailors will still refer to the Admiralty, soldiers to the War Office and airmen to the Air Ministry.
Noble Lords who have spoken, particularly from the opposite Benches, have made some reference to Parliamentary control. I know that that was meant strictly in the financial sense, but perhaps your Lordships will here forgive a slight digression. I have recently been reading some papers dealing with the Civil War, from 1642 to 1648, when the Navy was loyal to "King and Parliament", as it was then described. There was a Joint Committee of both Houses, but it was from this House that the Orders to the Fleet were issued. The Chief of the Naval Staff of the day—as I suppose one could call him—Robert Rich, then Earl of Warwick, issued the Orders on behalf of your Lordships; and the records show that those operations, which were nearly all combined operations for maintaining

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Hull, Plymouth and North Wales, as well as other ports, for Parliament, were conducted from this House. The soldiers were very few on the side of King and Parliament; so the sailors were landed and, with the infantry and gunners, with their guns, their pikes, and their muskets, stormed these places. I thought it might interest your Lordships to know that in those days operations were run from this House.
My Lords, once this Bill becomes an Act, enormous powers will be placed in the hands of the Secretary of State for Defence. He will control the largest single organisation in this country, and also the most complex. We all know that Secretaries of State for Defence come and go. They will continue to come and go as Governments change and Prime Ministers change their minds—though one hopes that one will not have quite the same frequency of change as we have had during the last decade, with nine or ten. At any rate, my Lords, this constant changing means that the continuity will be in the hands of the Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State for Defence, the Principal Under-Secretary and the Chief Scientist. They are the key men. The Navy, Army and Air Force element: in the Ministry, at whatever level, will be continually changing. They seldom remain for more than two or three years in one of the Ministries—most of them do not want to.
All this means that very great power and responsibility will be with the civil servants who are to staff this powerful Ministry. There is a fear, which I have heard expressed in more than one quarter, that in consequence this huge machine, this vast organisation, will come too much under the domination of the civil element. I do not entirely share this view; none the less, I think that watchfulness and care will be necessary to avoid any danger of this. There is a story, probably apocryphal, of a one-time Secretary of the Admiralty who in an unguarded moment referred to "my uniformed branch". We do not want the Principal Under-Secretary of State set up by this Bill referring to "my uniformed branches". I hope and believe that this is unlikely to happen, but this machine is so vast that continuity will largely lie in the hands of
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the civil servants, for the reasons I have given.
My Lords, as I have said more than once, enormous powers will be concentrated in the hands of the Secretary of State for Defence as soon as this Bill becomes an Act. Much has been written, much ink spilt and many words spoken, about the effect of this Bill, when it becomes an Act, on the Fighting Services. But very little has been said about the effect on private citizens. I do not mean in the matter of protecting them from the blast of the enemy, but in their rights. Among the powers that will be transferred to the Secretary of State for Defence are those in Clause 2 of the Bill. This transfers to the new Secretary of State all the powers at present held by the Service Ministries, to hold and acquire buildings and land, including the compulsory acquisition of land for the purposes of defence.
Clause 2 cites a whole series of Acts, commencing with our old friend the Defence Act, 1842, and going right down to 1935. For some reason (though I am sure there is a perfectly good one), I can find no reference in the Bill before us to the Land Powers (Defence) Act, 1958. I mention this because, shortly after this Act I have just named became law, a Written Answer was given to a Question in another place. This Written Answer by the then Secretary of State for War will be found in Commons Hansard, March 6, 1959. In his written reply, the then Secretary of State for War stated that it was the Government's intention to apply safeguards as set out in the Land Powers (Defence) Act, so as to give the same protection to citizens whose land it was proposed to acquire compulsorily for defence purposes as they had under the Act. This, he said, would be done by administrative action; and the administrative action was set out at length in the Written Answer.
As one of the trustees for a small dairy farm in Dorset, I am unfortunate enough to be subject to this administrative procedure, because the trustees objected to the acquisition of our land on which the Air Ministry wanted to build a wireless station for the United States Air Force. I described our experiences to this House on July 12, 1961, and I referred to them again on December 7, 1961, on both of which

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occasions (and this is the point of my mentioning the matter again) we were debating Motions by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, on the Council on Tribunals and relevant matters. During the course of these debates in your Lordships' House, I asked certain questions, and I have given notice to the noble and gallant Earl who is to reply for the Government that I should ask them again to-day, because I think it is very important to the private citizen. It can have no effect on myself or my co-trustees: our business is finished.
My first question concerns procedure set out in the Written Answer by the Secretary of State for War in another place on March 6, 1955. Explaining this procedure to your Lordships on July 12, 1961, when we were debating, my noble and learned friend Lord Kilmuir, who then sat on the Woolsack, described this procedure as being [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 233, col. 212]:
"invented to deal with the difficulties of the Service Departments".
After briefly describing those difficulties, mostly questions of secrecy and security, he added:
"… Even the Ministry of Defence is in a different position".
Your Lordships will find the noble Earl's complete answer in the Hansard for that date, in column 212.
So my first question is: Will this new Ministry of Defence be bound by the procedure of March 6, 1959? Before our second debate on this subject of the Council on Tribunals and relevant matters, I had discovered the hard way, simply by attempting to refer the question of my costs to the Council on Tribunals, that the Council on Tribunals had no power to act because they considered that inquiries held under this "invented" procedure of March 6, 1959, were not statutory inquiries within the meaning of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1958. Thus the trustees were shut out from taking the question of their costs before the Council on Tribunals.
During our debate on December 7, 1961, I asked two questions, which I repeat to-day. First, when will the new defence legislation, replacing the Defence Act, 1842, and all the other Acts, not to mention the "invented" procedure of March 6, 1959, be brought be-
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fore Parliament? The next question is: Will the special tribunals which will undoubtedly be set up under this new legislation be brought within the scope of the Council on Tribunals? In his reply on December 7, 1961, at column 215, my noble and learned friend Lord Kilmuir undertook to bring these matters to the attention of his right honourable friends in the Service Departments—and, knowing the noble and learned Earl, I am sure he has done that; but I have heard no more.
Even if the noble and gallant Earl cannot give a complete answer to my questions to-day—and I apologise for giving him rather short notice, but it was unavoidable—I think we should have the answers before we part with this Bill. It is not very easy for the ordinary citizen to deal with individual Service Departments even as they exist to-day. It seems to me it will be infinitely more difficult for him to deal with the vast and comparatively impersonal machine which we shall set up by this Bill. I think it is essential that, when the Bill becomes an Act, it should include all reasonable safeguards for the ordinary citizen. It is patently easy for the Defence Department, and I think it will be even easier for this vast machine we are creating, to hide themselves under the dual umbrella of security and secrecy. Even if it is impossible within the near future to draft new legislation to replace the present series, which commences with this ancient Act of 1842, I believe that the "invented" administrative procedure of March 6, 1959, should be amended by further administrative action to bring any tribunals set up thereunder within the scope of the Council on Tribunals.
4.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, may I say, before the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, winds up, that I should not have intervened but for the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, because I really said all I had to say about the contents of this Bill in the debate on the White Paper; but the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, does move me to make this one observation on his speech. He, laudator temporis acti, wants to go back to the old procedure under which the Secretary of State for Defence would act as successive

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Ministers of Defence have acted. My whole objection is that, as it worked in the past, the Minister of Defence really was an arbiter over the three Services, which very often presented conflicting claims; and, while we want to preserve the identity of the Services, I think that nearly all of us want to come closer to an integrated staff, an integrated conception of planning, so that we shall have the three Services working under a single direction, with the Minister, the Service Chiefs and the scientists—very important—interested from the very start in the formation of policy and creating that policy, rather than the Secretary of State coming in as the arbiter. I think that is the whole difference, and unless we have a Ministry of Defence on this scale and with these powers I do not believe we shall get that reform which we all desire.
The other thing is this. There has been a great deal said about changing the name of the Admiralty and other names. I must say that I have a good deal of sympathy with much that has been said about that. I know that baptismal regeneration is supposed to get rid of, and no doubt does get rid of for the time being, original sin, but I am a good deal more doubtful as to whether a baptismal regeneration by which you bring about changes in nomenclature, by which you call the Board of Admiralty the something-or-other and the First Lord of the Admiralty the Minister with or without Portfolio, is going to have much effect upon the spiritual approach which Ministers and Service Chiefs will have. As a matter of fact, I should have thought that it would have had rather the opposite effect, and I should have thought it might act rather as an irritant. On the whole, I think it would be a good thing to keep as many of the old names a; we can while imbuing them with the new spirit.
The only other thing I would say is this. An appeal was made by my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye, who said he hoped the Government would give an undertaking now, before they set up this new machine, before it was working, that in a year or two there would be an impartial inquiry to see how it had worked. I very much hope the Government will not give any such undertaking or do anything of the sort. If we are setting up a new machine and want
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it to work—and there are going to be difficulties—and if we want to get the Service Chiefs to work together, would it really be a very sensible thing to say to them, "Of course, if you do not like the machine, if it does not work, if you do not make it work, then it is all right—we are going to get some people in from outside to examine it in a couple of years' time"? I cannot think that that would really be a very good idea. What I think all of us in Parliament ought to do after this Bill has gone through—and, whichever Government is in power, I am sure this will be carried out—is to watch how the machine works and to watch it most carefully, but to watch it with a constructive eye; trying to make it work and criticising where we find any defects, but at the same time giving that constructive help which Parliament can give better than anybody else to the Secretary of State and the other Service Ministers and the Service Chiefs in order to make the new machine work to the best advantage.
4.50 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, first of all I should like to thank the noble Earl who introduced the debate to-day for his comments on the Bill which, as has been pointed out more than once during the debate, is a very short and enabling Bill. We shall have to be certain and see what proof there is in the pudding that the Administration finally produce for the observation and criticism of Parliament. It is a very difficult situation indeed. I am glad that the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, joined in the debate—I was not complaining of his intervention; I was, in fact, wondering when he would come in, because I thought he put one or two exceedingly pertinent questions in the course of the Minister's speech this afternoon. In spite of some aspects of the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, I think there is a great deal in what he said. There was also much in what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, my friend, Lord Attlee, and, especially, in the analytical survey made by my noble friend Lord Shackleton.
Nobody wants to go backward in the organisation of the defence of this nation; nobody wants to dispute the suggestion made by the Prime Minister

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from time to time that only strength can really command respect for our country in the world—although I am sure that in assessing the term "strength" we must not always think of armament. It must be strength in progress, in expansion of production, in new ideals, and in many other things. But when it comes to the actual defence of our country, we must be exceedingly careful how we go and in deciding what should be the actual result of that buildup in general of national strength so as to be a power in the world and in the progressive discussions of the Powers in the world.
I want, therefore, to look now at the suggestions made from that general point of view. We on this side of the House have had experience; though sometimes it is hardly recognised. And we have had experience in varying circumstances. We had experience in what would be the future of the national organisation of our defences when we had that tremendously important Naval Conference of 1930, in which we obtained a provisional agreement with Mussolini for a declaration in all the Chambers and which, if the French had not run away on that occasion three weeks later when they were asked to sign the Protocol, would have changed the whole basis of armament in Europe and the strength which was to be deployed in the Second World War that we unfortunately had to go through. We have had experience of that.
Many of us—not all; I do not want to put too high a price on it—in my Party have always taken the line that the question of defence should, as much as possible, be on a non-Party basis. We have never admitted the sort of claims made politically that members of my Party are not prepared to defend to the end the honour and liberties of the citizens of this country. I think we proved that by our actions in the war. We have had experience of serving with Ministers of other Parties, including the Conservatives and Liberals, in this last great war; and we have seen, existing for the first time in the tried operations of warfare, what a collective system of the control of defence must mean. If the organisation of the 1939–1945 war is compared with the organisation of the
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First World War, what a vast change can be seen to have taken place in ideas and in machinery! From the moment of the breaking-out of the 1914 war there were constant quarrels between the different Parties in Parliament, whatever happened inside the Cabinet. Steps taken to achieve proper defence of the country seemed never to be at the right time or at the right strength. It took two years, from 1914 to 1916, to get from the new form of Coalition—under that kind of management—National Service brought in. This was after two years of slaughter of hundreds of thousands. Nor were there, I would say, anything like the preparations beforehand or the proper co-ordinating of the roles, the efficiency and readiness at the time, of the three Services.
In this last war there were all the difficulties of starting with quite insufficient preparation for the type of warfare that was going on. The idea of a Ministry of Defence started very tenderly; first of all through a Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, with hardly any staff. But gradually, by making people think and progressing in their thinking, we had by 1939–40 a machine which, especially on the military side, was working with co-ordinated efficiency in such a way as had never happened before.
I remember meeting one day, at the end of October, 1939, just outside the Army and Navy Stores, the late Field Marshal Sir George Milne, whom I had known for years before when he was serving with us in the Labour Government on the Committee of Imperial Defence. He stood at the corner of the street and said to me, "Well, Alexander, what do you think is going to happen in France? They are calling it 'the phony war'. How are you calling it?" I said, "I think it is going to be very much steamed up before long." He said, "Have you considered the proper connection between our problems now with political actions before? The strategy that ought now to be adopted is to examine what is likely to be the first political action now in Europe. Holland and Belgium are neutral; but before long they will be bound to decide whether they can remain neutral and, if they are invaded,

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whether to show a front and the spirit of their countries. When you look at that, you look in a certain direction: just about from the end of the Maginot Line; and when you get the call to come in and help those in Holland, you must accede to it. Then the Germans will strike there and they will be through." And that is exactly what happened. We must have all that kind of thing worked out now between the Government, Ministers, and the Department of Defence.
I quite agree with what was said this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore. If we are not ready with the right kind of organisation, how on earth is all the great stretch of Staff and the regimental, Navy and Air Force officers to be instructed in Staff Colleges, if the Government do not know what policy they have to pursue? Therefore I applaud the Ministry of Defence as set up in the last war and as it worked then. But I am bound to say that it would have been quite impossible for that to be so successful if there had not been at the head of each Fighting Service a Minister who was responsible to the Minister of Defence and to Parliament for the discipline, the training and the equipment of the forces of the Department he had to control.
The one thing that I wanted to see after the war—and I talked it over often with my noble friend Lord Attlee—was that this kind of overall top organisation should not be abandoned. And the cost of the Ministry of Defence which was set up by my noble friend was so much less than the amount now proposed to be spent on this new Ministry as to be absolutely astounding. Even though the development that took place with National Service and the struggle in Korea meant that the budget for defence could not be kept down to the early low level, the cost, in relation to the good that was achieved, was infinitesimal in the years until 1951.
What sort of remedy are the Government bringing to Parliament to deal with what has happened since 1951? It has been stated in more than one of the speeches this afternoon that perhaps one of the reasons for our bad position now is that we have had so many Ministers of Defence that we have had
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no continuity of effective control or effective suggestion or general planning. I think that that is probably quite true. But if we look at the possible expenditure on this new scheme in the light of the fact that at the present time we are spending £1,838 million upon national defence, when we have just a little more than one-third of the personnel in the Defence Forces that we had in 1951, it is an amazing situation.
When the Ministry of Defence was set up in 1950, we had for the first time the development of research and scientific organisation within a unified control and great results came from it. But now we are to have the Minister of Defence put in a position in which he is Secretary of State for Defence as a whole and nobody but he is responsible to Parliament. I do not know what the Minister is going to say in reply to-night, but I want to concentrate on discipline. Who is going to answer for the discipline of the Fleet? Who answers for the discipline of the Army and who answers for the discipline of the Air Force? The Services have totally different arrangements for discipline, because they have completely different Service conditions and training. They have always been managed by their own Service Chiefs and the Minister at the head of each department has been responsible directly to Parliament for discipline.
I was responsible to Parliament for the discipline of the Navy in the course of the Cabinet break-up in 1931 and, as I have said before in this House, if they had acted within the Cabinet on my advice, we should not have had the mutiny at Invergordon. I told the Cabinet then that, if they broke their pledge on the pre-1925 enlistment in the Royal Navy, I could not be responsible for the discipline of the Fleet. May we have an answer to-night on this point of discipline? I know that this is only an enabling Bill, but I think it is at this point that we want to settle the principle. I want to know from the Minister now whether the Ministers of Defence of the Navy, Army and Air Force are going to be responsible to Parliament. I know that the quality of discipline obtained will depend on the efficiency of the organisation of the military side of each department, but the

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political Minister must be directly responsible to Parliament for that.
I am also a little anxious about the question of security. The amount of security which is required in the normal operation of a Service department is not small. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, who I am glad to see has come into the Chamber, would agree, after his experience in the last two and a half years, that a Service department still has a very important part to play in security. It is true that politicians sometimes get awkward and say that the Prime Minister is the head of the security service. So he must be. But who will be responsible now for the defence services—just the Secretary of State for Defence or are there going to be responsibilities passed on? Where security matters arise, will the Ministers for the Service departments be able to get up in Parliament and speak in support of whatever action has been taken or explain why no action has been taken?
When it comes to the co-ordination of supplies, I still think that this is best obtained by a Ministry of Supply such as the Ministry which the Labour Government began during the war and later had to carve down to proper peace-time size, keeping a real co-ordination between departments with regard to general supplies and costs. If we considered it from that point of view, I think that we should do far better if we continued the Ministry of Defence in the form of the Ministry set up by my noble friend Lord Attlee. We should not give such great power to one Minister, and on no account should we drop that form of Cabinet organisation in which defence matters are considered, before going to the Cabinet itself for final settlement, in a defence committee in which the Defence Ministers and their Chiefs-of-Staff attend as of right to state their points of view, with other Ministers of the Cabinet there and able to judge a case from the firsthand knowledge and direct opinions of the Service Chiefs.
I am not going to add to all the points made by my noble friends Lord Shackleton and Lord Attlee, but perhaps I may be excused for saying a word on the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teynham, which was also discussed by my noble friend Lord Attlee, concern-
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ing the names in the Service departments that are going to be continued or destroyed. I do not know why it is especially necessary—was it due perhaps to wanting to change the position in the Admiralty?—that the Air Council and Army Council are to be abolished and that within these departments we are to have something called a Board in their place. The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and the Board of Admiralty are terms understood throughout the nation and throughout the world, and I should have thought that in any co-ordination and development of the defence services we should retain such traditions as are really helpful. Therefore I hope that further attention will be given to retaining the term "Admiralty." I think that it is an extraordinarily effective name. When we think of all the questions that go through the Court of Admiralty as well as the actual Board Room at the Admiralty, we can understand why the highest court in the land for trying nautical cases is still called the Admiralty Court. It is of great effect to retain that title.
The Air Force, of course, is much more modern, but it has grown up as an Air Force under the terms of the Council of the Royal Air Force to have enormous respect among its personnel for the operation and action of the Council. You have put the word "Council" again now in the rest of the White Paper—setting up a special Defence Council within the Ministry of Defence itself. I had no difficulty about that. I do not see that you need such a Council unless you are going to put a special value on having between the Minister of Defence and the Council some superior Staff Officer. I am not going to criticise anybody who has held that post, because I have not been there to observe what has happened, and I would not know. But there was no need for a special chief staff officer, first to analyse what the Chiefs of Staff had decided, or perhaps disagreed about, and then for that to be presented to the civilian Minister of Defence, on the understanding that he was hoping to keep his job as the chief adviser, and therefore would like to see his opinion accepted. I do not think that is a good position at all. It was always possible for each of the Services to take it in

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turn to provide the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and for the Minister of Defence himself, whenever necessary, to take the chair at the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which I had to do, so that he could hear any discussion that went on as to points upon which they were not fully agreed. There is no need for this extra intervening post whatsoever.
When we come to the administration which is to go on underneath that, we are going to have four civil servants of the rank of Permanent Under-Secretary under the Permanent Secretary, who will be Secretary to the Minister of Defence. You will have to have both Permanent Secretaries and Under-Secretaries in every single Service Department and the Science Department. This is just sheer duplication and a waste of money. I hope that before this Bill is implemented the Government will have another think about the whole thing, and may feel, with all the traditions we have in the Services, that they should not be kept if they are not right, but that they should not be cast aside until they have been properly examined and consideration given to the real effects upon us as a nation of their being unduly interfered with.
I should like to say that I hope when the Defence White Paper comes out—we have been discussing to-day through the usual channels what the date will be, and it will not be too late in March—the Government will be able to say to us something in addition to what the Minister will be able to say to-day. But, in the meantime, I think I carry my noble friends with me when I say that, much as we should like to be able to say we accept this enabling Bill as it stands without the alteration of a word, a comma or a full stop, we shall have to think again and may possibly have Amendments to put down at a later stage.
5.13 p.m.
EARL BATHURST: My Lords, could I ask my noble friend, when he is replying, whether he will add one more assurance to what the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition has asked for? The noble Earl opposite has asked for assurances on discipline, co-ordination, supply, organisation and so forth, and I should like to put in a special plea on
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the welfare side of the Services. So often your Lordships get letters—they may come from men in all arms of the Services or maybe from parents; perhaps an injustice has been done and it may be to do with a court-martial or a compassionate posting—and your Lordships (and it goes for Members of another place, as well) are able to pass these letters on to the Minister concerned. Will these Under-Secretaries to whom the noble Earl opposite has referred have enough authority to be able to deal with and make the correct decisions upon these things, trifling in themselves but vital to Servicemen and their families? I find it hard to believe that the Supremo, the Minister of Defence himself, will be able to make such decisions. Will these Under-Secretaries really he able to make the same effective decisions which the present Ministers in their respective Services are able to make? I shall be glad if my noble friend can give us an assurance on that as well.
5.15 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have joined in our debate this afternoon for the constructive, if somewhat varied, welcome which they have given to this Bill. I was particularly glad to note the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore (he has apologised to me for his absence) and to learn that, at least in principle, the Liberal Party stand foursquare behind the objects of this Bill. I derive some encouragement from this. I am sure, too, that your Lordships were especially glad that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has spoken in this Second Reading debate, because he brings to the debate, along with a sharp and powerful sting, an almost unrivalled knowledge of these matters, as indeed do the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition and my noble friend Lord Swinton, who I think made a useful intervention on my side of the House.
That said, by way of sweetening the pill, I should like also to thank my noble friends who have joined in this discussion. A good many of the points raised go a little beyond the actual framework of the Bill, and even of the White Paper which we have been, by implication, discussing—for example, Lord Ogmore's plea for a Commonwealth Defence Force. However, that, and other observations of this sort, I

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will certainly study; and I will see that they are drawn to the attention of my right honourable friend.
My Lords, having recovered, at long last, after some months of convalescence, from our labours over the London Government Bill, I am feeling in a particularly conscientious mood.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: It was a pity you were not then.
EARL JELLICOE: I have noticed of late a slight change in the attitude of the Party opposite towards the London Government Act.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: Not in me.
EARL JELLICOE: Despite my conscientiousness, which has now been—
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: Challenged.
EARL JELLICOE: Yes, challenged—I am sure noble Lords will neither expect nor wish me to pursue all the many points which have been made in our discussion this afternoon, more especially as we have a good deal of further business following on our heels. I shall, however, attempt to answer at least some of the points raised (and some of them were pretty cogent), and if there is any matter on which noble Lords who have spoken particularly wish for the Government's views, and feel that I have omitted to comment on them, I will certainly endeavour, if they do not pull me up in the course of my reply, to follow these up later.
I think the first group of criticisms, or comments, on this Bill was concerned with the political structure of defence and the central organisation, the top layer. I should like to turn for a moment to those criticisms. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, voiced a criticism which was echoed by more than one speaker: that was a fear that this all-powerful leviathan, the new Ministry of Defence, with its powerful Secretary of State for Defence at the top of this organisation, would be too powerful and would in some way escape from the political control of the rest of the Government machine. This was a broad fear which found some expression in your Lordships' House this afternoon. But any such fear is, I think, based on a
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misapprehension; and I should like for a moment to refer your Lordships to the second sentence of paragraph 16 of the White Paper, where we read of the supreme authority of the Prime Minister and of the Cabinet over these broad issues of defence policy. That supreme authority is in no wise impaired by this new structure which we are proposing. The Prime Minister, for example, is going to be firmly in the saddle as the Chairman of the new Defence and Over-sea Policy Committee. As I see it, that Committee is the point where the main strands of our external policies in defence, foreign affairs, economic affairs, and, not least, in disarmament, will be brought together; and that seems to me perfectly right.
May I answer the question which the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, put to me?—and I apologise for not being here at that moment. He was inquiring about the Defence Committee. That has been absorbed in the Defence and Oversea Policy Committee: the two Committees have become one. I should have thought that in some measure this means that there will be that better co-ordination of these various strands of which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, was urging the importance. The noble Lord was worried that the Defence and Oversea Policy Committee had no strong permanent Secretariat of its own. Some noble Lords, if not now, at least in the debate last July, harked back with some nostalgia to the old Committee of Imperial Defence, which had its own Secretariat. In those days, of course, the three Service Ministries were stubborn fortresses, and there was no Ministry of Defence. Now the Ministry, and the Oversea Policy Committee, are underpinned, not only by a strong official Committee, under the Secretary of the Cabinet, but also by the Defence and Cabinet Secretariats themselves. I am sure that this will provide this new Committee with all the Secretariat backing which it undoubtedly needs—for I will certainly grant that there is need of backing.
In this general context of the top defence structure, the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, also asked me if the Government had considered whether this overburdened Secretary of State for Defence, with his very large Department, would not be too grossly overburdened, and

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whether he would not require the assistance of some other Minister. I think what the noble Lord visualised was that the Secretary of State for Defence would be flanked by, say, a Chief Secretary, as happens with the Treasury at present. That is an interesting proposal, and I certainly should not wish to be dogmatic about it. After all, we have had excellent Parliamentary Secretaries at the Ministry of Defence before now. I hope that noble Lords will not press this suggestion too hard at this stage, and I would back that expression of hope with the reasons which my right honourable friend gave in another place.
My reason is this. If this second Minister at the centre were to be really effective—and there would be no point in having him there unless he were going to be effective and able to exercise considerable control—he would need to be superior in the defence hierarchy to the three Ministers of Defence. I think the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, implicitly recognised this by suggesting the status of Chief Secretary. I should have thought that he would need to have that status, and to be in the Cabinet. But if so, then, of course, he would be over and above the Ministers of Defence, whose status would be correspondingly downgraded. This is, as I understand it, what most noble Lords who have spoken in this debate have been afraid of. We should, in fact, be setting up a four-tier ministerial structure: Secretary of State, Chief Secretary, Minister of Defence and Under-Secretary. I should have thought that, apart from other objections, that would have been extremely cumbersome and ponderous machinery. Indeed, it would run counter to the principle which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has queried; that is, the principle that the Secretary of State for Defence entrusts the Ministers of Defence, or specific Ministers of Defence, with some across-the-board general defence responsibilities.
I was asked whether I could define that more precisely. Quite frankly, my Lords, I cannot at this stage. All I can suggest is the sort of areas where this might apply. I am taking the examples, as it were, out of my head, and I hope they will not be held against me. The sort of field where this might apply would be in matters like housing, pay, welfare (in the widest sense: that might
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be one), or certain functional and semi-operational fields, like higher communications or intelligence, which are susceptible to inter-Service treatment. But at this early stage of the game I should not wish to be drawn further than that on this point.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I certainly do not want to draw the noble Earl, but do I conclude that the Government have no particular functions in mind? If so, why have they made such a tremendous thing out of these functional responsibilities? Surely they must now back up what they have said.
EARL JELLICOE: As I have said, we are at a fairly early stage of the game. I think this is an important principle and, so far as I know, it has not been challenged. As to how precisely it is to be given effect to, I should have thought the noble Lord could perhaps contain his impatience for a month or two longer.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, at the same time, as one is dealing with this kind of thing, I want the noble Earl to give us a direct answer, because he has reported to the House that the status of the Service Ministers has been retrieved from going down to Minister of State, and that it is to be on a high level. I want to see the Defence Committee—you call it also the Oversea Committee of the Cabinet—having those Service Ministers as members of that Committee, stating their case direct if they like. They can agree with the Minister of Defence beforehand if they like, so that they will not be disagreeing with him in the Committee; but they ought to be there capable of being questioned.
EARL JELLICOE: I certainly do not wish to dodge—and it was not my intention to do so—this particular issue, the importance of which I fully recognise. With that in mind, I should like to turn now to the position and responsibilities of the Ministers of Defence as they are visualised at the present time. Let me remind your Lordships of the position.
They will be de jure members of the Defence Council. They will be Vice-Chairmen, and they will be, in most cases, de facto Chairmen of the particular Boards, Navy, Army or Air Force, as the case may be. As such, they will be responsible

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for the day-to-day management of the Services with which they are particularly dealing. In saying that, might I parenthetically answer my noble friend Lord Bathurst and say that, because they will be responsible for day-to-day management, they will be responsible for such matters as welfare so far as their particular Service is affected. They will also be responsible (and this, I think, is one of the points about which the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, is understandably exercised) for the day-to-day administration of discipline in the Service with which they are associated.
My Lords, there are two residual points here which I have not answered: one is Parliamentary responsibility and the other is the point which the noble Earl has just put to me. I doubt whether I shall be able to give satisfaction to the noble Earl on these two points. The present plan is that, so far as the Defence and Oversea Policy Committee is concerned, the Defence Ministers will not be automatically members of the Committee. They will, however, be invited to attend where matters directly affecting their own Service are in question. I would just add that that has been at least the formal position with the Defence Committee since the reorganisation of 1957–58. There is no formal change there from the existing position, as I understand it—I speak with considerable reserve on the semi-constitutional points; but I think that is the position.
On the question of Parliamentary responsibility, on which both the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, more than touched, I would just say this. It is clearly laid down—and I made this, I hope, crystal clear in my speech introducing the Second Reading of the Bill—that Parliamentary responsibility for the whole Ministry of Defence and, therefore, for its constituent parts, the Navy Board, Air and Army, is vested in the Secretary of State for Defence. He has power (and this is clearly laid down in Section 1(5) of this Bill) to delegate, and to delegate finally in specific areas. That would include most matters of day-to-day management which we have also dealt with. But in the final resort—and this would affect matters of discipline and matters of budgetary control—the
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Minister responsible and answerable to Parliament would remain the Secretary of State for Defence. Quite frankly, my Lords, if you are setting up a unified, integrated structure with one Ministry, as is proposed in this Bill, with one Secretary of State responsible—and there can be only one Secretary of State responsible—I cannot see how one could arrive at any other conclusion. I do not think that the sort of suggestion which I understood was made by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, would be possible. It seems to me to be trying to have it both ways: having a unified Ministry and, at the same time, having subordinate Ministers answerable to Parliament. This does not seem to square with our constitutional practice, at least as I understand it.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl? I think the noble Earl has made clear that these three Ministers of State will be responsible for day-to-day business in their various Departments. I also understand that they are to operate across the board—in other words, to be responsible in other Ministries, too.
EARL JELLICOE: My noble friend has completely understood me on the first point. On the question of the across-the-board responsibility, it is the intention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State, as and when he becomes the Secretary of State to confer on particular Ministers of Defence certain across-the-board responsibilities for the type of matter to which I referred in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. Those would cover the other two Services, but only in specific areas. The discipline of a particular Service would not be covered in this was at all.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, would not the constitutional position really be this? Of course, the supreme Minister must be responsible, and either House of Parliament could "shoot" at him if necessary. But to make this plan work, has it not to work like this?—that both Houses of Parliament have to exercise a self-denying ordinance so as to put, and be entitled to put, their questions about day-to-day administration and all the minor matters to the three Service Ministers. Without that it would not work.
EARL JELLICOE: I am grateful to my noble friend: that is precisely my understanding of the position. It is what I tried to make clear to him in my reply during my original speech.
One minor matter—though it became not quite so minor during our discussions and is not minor to me, of course—is the question of Ministers' salaries. I will take note, with interest, of the suggestions made in your Lordships' House this afternoon, and I will take care to see that your observations are passed on to my right honourable friend.
Before leaving the overall structure, there is just one area on which I should like briefly to comment. I do so diffidently because it is a field to which I am rather new, but also because I was a little surprised by some of the comments made from the Benches opposite on the question of the position of the Chiefs of Staff and of the Chief of the Defence Staff. There was a fear, as I understood it, of advice coming through the Chief of Defence Staff. So far as the formal machinery is concerned, I should have thought that as long as we have a Chief of Defence Staff, this is surely right. You must have one man running the show and being responsible for putting the advice, but, of course, stating quite clearly where there are differences and where the differences lie. But I should like to put this further consideration to your Lordships: that I think here we may be making rather heavy weather. This is the formal machinery, but beneath and alongside that formal machinery there will be, as there are already, numerous informal discussions of the Chiefs of Staff, which are, of course, attended by the Secretary of State, the Minister of Defence, as well as other Ministers. This is a process which happens all the time, and it would certainly be my guess that this type of informal day-to-day contact and consultation will increase, given (to use a rather horrible word) the co-location in one building, rather than diminish. I think this should to some extent allay the anxiety of the noble Lord in this respect.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I take it from what the noble Earl says that the intention would be, whether there was a Chief of Defence Staff officer or not, that the
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Secretary of State for Defence himself could go and take the Chair any time he likes of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. Let us look at what I reminded the House. We had no difficulty about having a Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. As they became chief of their own Service staff they followed to the Chair of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. I had a staff officer of my own who acted as the actual secretary. The first was General Hollis and then there was an Air Vice Marshal. I used to hear all about what was going on. I used to get the minutes in full, and I could go and take the Chair at the Chiefs of Staff Committee any time I liked when there was any disagreement.
EARL JELLICOE: I think I should like notice of this particular question, because the formal position is quite clear—it is as set out in the White Paper in paragraph 29—that the Chief of the Defence Staff is Chairman of this Committee. I would not wish to mislead the House and I would, if I may, at this particular point, get in contact with the noble Earl. Apart from that, there are these informal and very frequent day-to-day consultations, with the Minister of Defence, as it were, de facto in the Chair. This is going on all the time.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, the noble Earl asks for notice. We have given him six months' notice. This question was asked last summer. I asked it again in my opening speech. It may be that he did not notice it at the time. I am not even asking him what will happen in the future, but perhaps he will tell us what is happening now. It is a very simple question and perhaps before the end of the debate we can get an answer. If not, at least we may have an opportunity to do so at Committee stage.
EARL JELLICOE: I should much prefer not to be drawn further on this matter at this stage, and if the noble Lord wishes to ask me this question at the Committee stage or at any intervening period I shall be only too glad to respond.
I do not want to weary your Lordships at this stage in winding up. May I turn to two areas in which specific questions were addressed to me? The first was the question of lands which the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, put to me, and I

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am grateful to him for giving me notice of the points he was going to put. I think there were three questions he put to me. The first was why the Land Powers (Defence) Act, 1958, was not mentioned in the Bill along with the other series of Acts from 1842 to 1935. There is a simple reason for the omission, and I think it is quite unsinister. The Defence Acts which are mentioned are mentioned only because they have to be modified. At present one land code applies to the War Office and Air Ministry and a slightly different and less restricted one to the Admiralty. We want only one code for the new Department, and this will be provided. But the Land Powers (Defence) Act, 1958, has already one code for all the three existing Departments and no modification is needed to it.
The noble Lord's second question was whether we had made any progress in consolidating the various Defence Acts relating to land value for the Forces. This is in fact a pretty onerous task, as the Acts concerned are both numerous and complicated. But a good deal of progress in this direction has been made, and the Government have certainly not lost sight of the need to introduce new legislation in this sphere as soon as the work is completed and Parliamentary time can be found. I am afraid that, given our rather crowded programme this Session, I can offer but little hope to my noble friend that Parliamentary time will be found during the present Session.
My noble friend's third question was whether the Government would bear in mind the desirability of bringing inquiries under the administrative procedure introduced in 1959, the "invented" or "Soames" procedure as it is called, within the scope of the Council on Tribunals. I can certainly give my noble friend that undertaking. This is a question which will be very much borne in mind in the preparation of the legislation to replace the Defence Acts. I should like, having said that, to have a chance of reading the points put by my noble friend on this not uncomplicated area, and if there are matters I have not covered in the reply I will certainly expand in writing to him.
LORD AMPTHILL: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl. He has covered all except one: whether the "invented" or "Soames" procedure will apply to the new Ministry of Defence.
EARL JELLICOE: I will put the "invented" or "Soames" procedure in the same package, as it were, shared with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and the Chiefs of Staff, and follow that up later.
Now there is the question of names, and this is an area where I find myself in some difficulty, as I am only too conscious personally of being very sympathetic to a great many of the arguments which I have heard advanced this afternoon. I hope it will not sound parochial to say that I find myself in particular sympathy with the regret expressed at the demise of the word "Admiralty". I would remind your Lordships of a distinction which has been drawn in this field—and I think it is a useful distinction—by my right honourable friend. He has consistently drawn a distinction between, on the one hand, the abolition of the existing Service Departments, including the Admiralty, and consequently their titles, which derive from their functions, and, on the other hand, the retention in appropriate cases of terms like "Admiralty" where they have a wider connotation. I think there is a valid distinction here between the functional and (I do not use the word in a pejorative sense) the more decorative uses of these titles. I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, given this proposed set-up, to retain "Admiralty" in the functional sense, because the definition of "Admiralty" as it is found in Statutes is "the Lords Commissioners for executing the office of the Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom". That is the formal position.
LORD TEYNHAM: My Lords, the term "Admiralty" goes back far further than the Lords Commissioners. I am really most dissatisfied with the answer.
EARL JELLICOE: I am sorry my noble friend is dissatisfied with the answer. I have given only half the answer, and I hope he will not be even more dissatisfied when I have given the whole answer. I was saying that in this

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functional sense, because the Admiralty in the functional sense is to be abolished, it would make, I think, a nonsense to retain the title where it covers this area. But in the other sphere I think my right honourable friend has already shown that he is anxious to meet as far as possible the fears and objections that have been expressed. We will certainly continue, therefore, to refer to Admiralty Arch, Admiralty House, Admiralty charts—which is I think one specific point which my noble friend Lord Teynham raised—Admiralty notices to mariners, and so on. This matter is being looked into very keenly at the present time, and although I am sure I have not pleased my noble friend I hope I have shown that I am not entirely unsympathetic in this particular field.
I would only say two further things in conclusion. The first is that I share the extreme reserve expressed by my noble friend Lord Swinton about the proposal of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inch rye, for a review. I share it on the same grounds: that these proposals are themselves the fruit of a most careful and impartial review. Of course, in the normal course of administration all this will be reviewed as it works out. But I should have thought there is the greatest possible objection at this particular stage to building an obligatory review procedure into the new machinery we are setting up. That said, and having expressed that extreme reserve, I will certainly see, without any commitment, that this suggestion is brought to the attention of my right honourable friend.
In conclusion I would say that one criticism which has been made this afternoon was almost, if not entirely, unexpected to me, and that was the criticism, voiced by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, among others, that we should have done many years ago what we are now proposing to do. That is a criticism which the Opposition, any Opposition, when they are rather short of substantive objections, make of the Government, any Government. More seriously, this criticism overlooks, I would suggest, the very considerable measure of interdependence between the Services which we have already achieved. We have already moved a very considerable way along the path to a fully
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integrated policy. Could I take one example?
The integration of the three Service Departments in the Bill has, of course, been preceded by the institution of unified commands in all the important theatres overseas. Despite some of the strictures which we have heard passed this afternoon, I think it fair to claim that that integration has at least worked pretty well. Indeed, it is clear that without it we could never have achieved such marked success as has been achieved in handling successive crises in recent months. I do not wish to make a Party point here; I should prefer to make an inter-Service point. The point is this. Surely, our recent operations in defence of Malaysia, our efforts to keep the peace in that beautiful but troubled island of Cyprus, and our support for the East African Governments, could not have been mounted and executed so rapidly and so successfully but for the closest co-operation and understanding between the Services.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I say that I welcome tremendously that spirit. But that was always available in circumstances prior to those which are operating now. Indeed, arising out of my dear love of the Admiralty, I would say that the other Services have been exceedingly fortunate in these two outbreaks in outposts to have the services of five separate units of Royal Marine Commandos.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I should like warmly to endorse what the noble Earl has just said. All I would do in this field is to remind your Lordships that the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, asked whether we should be able to respond effectively and quickly to the sort of military requirements which he foresaw that we should need increasingly to respond to in the future. I would say that we are in that position now, and that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
EARL ATTLEE: Surely the point is that you have done it with the old pudding, and not this new hotch-potch.
EARL JELLICOE: I think it was only partly the old pudding. If the noble Earl

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had been following me closely he would appreciate that I was saying that, with the institution of integrated and unified commands abroad, we have advanced matters somewhat beyond the stage which they had reached a decade or so ago. In claiming that this Bill represents an advance towards greater Service interdependence and towards greater integration of defence policy at the top, I am equally claiming that it represents an advance from a firm base.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL
5.53 p.m.
Brought from the Commons, and read 1a.

FAMILY ALLOWANCES AND NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.

HIRE-PURCHASE (No. 2) BILL [H.L.]
5.54 p.m.
Further considered on Report (according to Order).
Clause 3 [Right of cancellation of certain hire-purchase and credit-sale transactions]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved in subsection (5), after the first "which" to insert:
"either the owner or seller normally carries on a business or".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment affects the definition of "appropriate trade premises", which now will read
"premises at which either the owner or seller normally carries on a business or goods of the description … are normally offered or exposed for sale".
This is a point which was raised on the Committee stage and which I undertook to consider. At that time noble Lords drew attention to the fact that the cooling-off provisions referred to a wider range of agreements than the doorstep transactions at which they are aimed. For my part, I explained that I was
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well aware of this, but considered that the safeguard would work only if we kept it simple. I accepted the exclusion from the cooling-off provisions of agreements where a hirer or a buyer is a body corporate. Since the Committee stage I have considered whether there are other cases where the application of the cooling-off provisions would cause practical difficulty, and if so whether we can meet them. My conclusion is that there is a good case for treating agreements signed at the business premises of the finance house, as suggested, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, in the same way as agreements signed in the shop—that some practical difficulty might be caused if this were not done, and that it could be done without endangering at all the working of the safeguard.
What this Amendment does is simply to include the business premises of the owner or seller of the goods in the definition of "appropriate trade premises". On the Committee stage, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, suggested that we should exclude agreements signed at such places as the offices of a solicitor. I doubt whether such a provision would be of practical significance for ordinary consumers. Moreover, if it were so considered, there would be a case for doing the same for agreements signed at many other types of premises—banks, accountants' and architects' premises, and so forth. The definition would then become unduly complicated. We are told, particularly now that agreements made by bodies corporate are excluded, that the present Amendment does all that is necessary. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 15, after ("which") insert the said words.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for responding to the points that we raised in Committee. But I wonder whether he will consider the drafting of his Amendment, and whether that drafting in fact meets the case that he has deployed this evening. The noble Lord has said that the purpose of his Amendment is to exclude from the cooling-off period those agreements that may be signed in a hire-purchase company's premises. My understanding is that at the stage when most of the hire-purchase agreements would be signed by a prospective hirer,

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the hire-purchase company will not have placed its contract with the dealer. Therefore, it cannot be said then that the hire-purchase company are the owner or seller: they have no rights; they have not purchased anything. Therefore, I would suggest that if the noble Lord would consider inserting the word "prospective" in front of "owner or seller" at least we should make clear in our minds, and perhaps in that of the courts later, what we intend, because unless the word is inserted I do not think we are anywhere further on in the Bill.
Here it describes "appropriate trade premises as those places in which goods are exposed for sale. This would be the owner or seller to whom the Government refer in their Amendment. It seems to me that the owner or seller in this Amendment could well not be the hire-purchase company. I hope that the noble Lord takes that point. It seems to me that this drafting needs to be looked at and revised. I am sorry that the Government have not seen fit to widen this area of business. We want to give the maximum protection that we can to prospective hirers, but at the same time we do not want to make business dealings too difficult. The noble Lord did not think that many ire-purchase agreements would be signed in a solicitor's office. It is true that we have removed from the Bill corporate bodies, but there are a sizable number of businesses carried on either by sole ownership or in partnership. I am thinking particularly of businesses which run hire-car services and which have obtained the cars under hire-purchase. Here they will enjoy the cooling-off period, if the Government cannot see their way to widen the scope of "appropriate trade premises." I will not press this particular point, because the Government have gone some way. I am sorry that they have not gone the full way, and I question whether the Amendment now set down meets the point which the noble Lord deployed. Perhaps he would look at it between now and the next stage.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, naturally I shall be willing to look at this, but I think that I shall be able to convince the noble Lord that it is all
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right. At the moment the definition covers
"goods of the description to which the document relates, or goods of a similar description … normally offered or exposed for sale in the course of a business carried on at those premises …"
That obviously will be the dealer, who may also be the owner. If the dealer and owner are separate, then if we want to cover the owner or seller we must have a separate definition for owner or seller". That is what is done, and "owner or seller" becomes a term of art by reason of the definition given in subsection (6), which shows that, as soon as the individual who is going to be the hirer appends his signature, the
"'owner or seller', in relation to the relevant document, means the person who, at the time when the document is signed by the prospective hirer or buyer, is specified in the document as the person who is to let the goods on hire to him or to sell the goods to him …"
I think the point is all right from the point of view of definition. I shall certainly take note of what the noble Lord said about the wider and separate point about partnerships; we shall look at that. One wants a definition which is clear-cut and easy to understand.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I welcome this Amendment in principle, but I seek explanation on one aspect. There are many cases where an owner or seller or agent has premises in which goods are exposed for sale. He may also have an office which is quite detached from the store or shop in which goods are exposed for sale. Do I take it that such premises, even though they may be devoted exclusively to office purposes, would be considered as coming within the range of this Amendment?
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, if this were a question of an office at which the business of the owner or seller was normally carried on.
LORD PEDDIE: Even where nothing was exposed for sale?
LORD DRUMALBYN: The point about goods being exposed for sale is the second alternative. Where the document is signed in the premises of the dealer, then it is all right. Secondly, where it is signed in the premises of the finance house it is also all right, although there are no goods exposed for sale. So if the dealer also had a little office

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which he used solely for his financing purposes, that would also be all right.
LORD PEDDIE: Thank you.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD AIREDALE LORD AIREDALE moved, in subsection (5), to leave out "normally" and insert "regularly". The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment is a further attempt to bring the established trade shows and exhibitions, agricultural shows, and so on, within the definition of "appropriate trade premises", so that the cooling-off period will not apply in that case just as it does not apply to transactions which originate in the dealer's showroom. I think it is ironical that the cooling-off period, which was originally aimed at the high-pressure, door-to-door salesman should have hit, for instance, the Motor Show. I know that it has been said that on occasions visitors to these trade shows run away with themselves in their enthusiasm; on the other hand, such shows enable visitors to see the full range which an industry has to offer. They can choose the goods best suited to the purposes; from a wider range than is likely to be found in most dealers' showrooms. So that, on balance, I should have thought that the great exhibitions were to be likened much more to a dealer's showrooms than to the activities of the door-to-door salesman.
The Amendment on these lines which I moved in Committee had the support, to a large extent, of the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, who expressed approval of these established exhibitions though he pointed out that my Amendment was too widely drawn and would have given shelter to what the noble Lord referred to as "fly by night" traders. The Minister also took this view, and on reflection I appreciate that both noble Lords were quite right. I hope that the present Amendment, which is more narrowly drawn, will be satisfactory. It will have the effect of amending the definition of "appropriate trade premises" in this way. At present the definition uses the words:
"premises at which goods are normally offered for sale".
With this Amendment the definition would be:
"premises at which goods are regularly offered for sale".
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I am hopeful that the word "regularly" will enable the courts to hold that exhibitions held regularly in one particular premises will come within the definition of "appropriate trade premises", notwithstanding that the exhibition may last for only a few days in the whole year. This definition would not be perfect. For instance, there are many well-established travelling shows and exhibitions—I think of the Game Fair—which would not be covered. On the other hand, I am no longer giving shelter to "fly by night" traders, because regularity is the very last quality which such people cultivate. I hope that the Minister will find the Amendment acceptable. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 17, leave out ("normally") and insert ("regularly").—(Lord Airedale.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his pertinacity and the ingenious nature of his Amendment. Just as I was advised originally, as a matter of drafting, that the word "normally" would not cover trade fairs and exhibitions, I am advised that, as a matter of construction, there is at least doubt whether the word "regularly" has any definite meaning. Its introduction would therefore give rise to doubt whether particular agreements were or were not within the scope of the cooling-off provisions. We are anxious that there should not be that sort of doubt; we believe that that would be unsatisfactory. It is, in any case, a matter for argument whether the cooling-off provisions should or should not apply to agreements concluded at the trade fairs. Your Lordships will remember that my noble friend Lord Stonehaven raised this point on the Second Reading. I was not certain at that time whether or not he thought that such agreements should apply to trade fairs, and I discovered that he was strongly opposed to their applying. So there is, at any rate, a difference of opinion on this.
It is very difficult not to open the door much more widely than one intends to. The noble Lord quite agrees that we ought not to exclude from the cooling-off provisions "fly by night" activities. But I am not at all certain that it is not possible to "fly by night" regularly. I am not at all certain that it would not be possible to have a shop

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regularly open one day in a year, or in a month, or something of that kind. This just illustrates the difficulty that we are up against. In a case like this we should always have to ask: is anybody really going to be prejudiced by including exhibitions and trade fairs? The noble Lord talked about the Motor Show being hit by this, but is it really going to be hit? As a result of these provisions, how long a delay will there be in the delivery of a motor car to a person who orders? As I said, it is a matter for argument whether or not in this particular kind of case there should be a cooling-off period. Some people have held the view that the cooling-off provisions should extend much more widely than we have made them extend, but in this kind of case it is at least a matter for argument whether they should or should not extend to this.
What I do say is that this will give rise to uncertainty. The word "regularly" is itself not a precise word, and one cannot be certain that, as a matter of interpretation, it would include persons exhibiting at exhibitions, even though they did so regularly; and, certainly, might very well not do so if they were not doing so regularly. So for these reasons I think it would be wise for the House to maintain the provision as it is at present in the Bill.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the Minister for his careful and considered reply. He reminded me of a former Lord Chancellor who said on one occasion of counsel who was appearing before him, that unfortunately counsel did not have a very strong case to argue and he was driven back to the ultimate virtue of persistence. I think that is what I was accused of just now. This is not a matter for which I am prepared to go to the stake, and I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
6.13 p.m.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH VISCOUNT HANWORTH moved, after subsection (6), to insert:
"(7) This section shall not apply to any transaction in respect of which the antecedent negotiations are conducted wholly by post."
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this is a straightforward Amendment which was moved in Committee. The
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effect is that the hirer or buyer will not have a cooling-off period in which he can cancel an agreement, if the antecedent negotiations are conducted by post. Clause 19 of the Bill, at the top of page 20, defines antecedent negotiations as meaning
"any negotiations or arrangements with the hirer or buyer whereby he was induced to make the agreement or which otherwise promoted the transaction to which the agreement relates".
This definition is stringent, and there is therefore no reasonable possibility of the Amendment producing any weakness in the legal protection afforded by the Bill.
On principle, it seems quite unreasonable that a buyer or hirer should be allowed to change his mind when he has had as much time as he wants to consider whether or not to sign a document, and has been under no outside pressure. It would be far more logical for a protection to apply to a signature on trade premises, but for good reasons this has been specifically excluded from the Bill. From a practical point of view, there are grave objections to allowing a cancellation of postal transactions. In the first place, it will cause considerable delay. The cooling-off period of four days runs from the time the buyer receives a copy of the agreement signed by the seller. The seller must then wait for the four days cooling-off period to elapse, and allow time for possible cancellation to reach him through the post before he can safely despatch the goods. The delay which the four-day pause period imposes on any transaction can hardly be less than eight days, and may well be more. Although the pause period is a very necessary safeguard, in certain circumstances it makes it more difficult to be certain that a valid contract exists. For example, a letter of cancellation or the copy agreement may be lost in the post, or the customer may claim that the letter has been mislaid in the seller's office. For this reason it is a safeguard which should be applied only where it is absolutely necessary.
I would strongly rebut the Government's argument that this Amendment complicates the Bill. In fact, I think the reverse is true. It has been suggested that the majority of mail order transactions do not exceed £20. While

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this is true so far as numbers of orders are concerned, the annual turnover of items which are over £20 runs into millions of pounds and is very far from negligible. At the Committee stage the Minister objected to the Amendment on the ground of additional complication, and said that the Bill as it stood would not cause any serious inconvenience to the mail order trade. I think I have covered these points. A further objection may be the fear that some firms will ignore Clause 19 of the Bill, and will exert pressure on the customer through sales agents. It is always possible to take a risk and allow a customer to believe that a contract is irrevocable, but I do not believe that this Amendment will make this sort of thing any more likely. It has been pointed out that the onus of proof of illegal behaviour would lie with the customer, that he is the weaker party, and that this is undesirable. But I do not think this argument is a very strong one, because it probably applies to a large number of clauses in the Bill in any event. I hope that, unless the Minister can give some more conclusive reasons against this Amendment, he will have considered it very carefully. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 4, line 40, at end insert the said subsection.—(Viscount Hanworth.)
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I hope that the Government will not accept this Amendment. I have at various stages of this Bill tried to widen the area in which business could be conducted without the cooling-off period, but I have always been very careful not in any way to infringe the principle enshrined in the Bill, that any agreement that is signed in the home should be subject to the cooling-off period. The noble Lord obviously has in mind mail order houses. Those of which we know, and I will not mention them by name, have a considerable reputation which they deserve for the way in which they conduct their business. But the noble Lord will recognise that in the morning newspapers on Fridays and Saturdays there is a mass of advertising material for these small groups of peculiar companies, with names completely unknown to the general public.
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As I see it, if the noble Viscount's Amendment were to be accepted, a person replying to such an advertisement and then entering into an agreement would not be subject to the cooling-off period. If all the negotiations were conducted by correspondence, the noble Viscount might have a case. But we well know that replies to that type of advertisement bring the high-pressure salesman. By and large, the high-pressure salesman does not move down the street going from house to house; he answers the replies to advertisements in the papers. I believe that, if the noble Viscount's Amendment were accepted, instead of it being clear to everyone, particularly to the householder, that under the Bill an agreement signed in his home enjoys the cooling-off period, the onus of proof would lie upon the housewife to prove that a salesman had intervened at one stage or another. It would be subject to dispute, but the onus of proof would lie clearly upon the housewife. I think this would move this particular clause, which we have all welcomed, away from giving the advantage to the housewife, and on that ground I would beg the Government not to accept this Amendment.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, I should just like to make one point. I did mention that I was aware that the burden of proof would lie on the housewife, but I also said that this applied to a very large number of clauses in the Bill. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, met that point.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, that this would represent a breach of the principle that where a document is signed in the home then the cooling-off provisions should apply. Of course, if there could be any strong reason shown that prejudice would be caused to either party, one would be very willing to consider the case. I said this on the Committee stage, and I have received correspondence concerning this matter, but it has not been represented to us that there would be any prejudice arising. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, speaks about delay, and considerable delay. I do not want to go over again what I said on the Committee stage, but I think it is worth saying that I would have expected a very large

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amount of mail order business to be covered by three categories: first, cash transactions; second, credit sales for less than £20, which are outside this; and, third, hire-purchase and credit-sale transactions where, in the nature of the goods, delivery is in any case not likely to be immediate. I should have thought that these categories covered most of the mail order business. So I must say that there has been no strong case of prejudice made out either to the hirer or to the mail order business in this regard.
However, I should like to add that it is true, I am told, that in certain cases agents or salesmen assist in the pushing of mail order business. The difficulty is that if one were to exclude all transactions in respect of which the antecedent negotiations are conducted wholly by post, then in that case the hirer would have no means of knowing at all that he or she had cancellation rights if a salesman or an agent intervened in transactions. The whole of this protection depends upon the information given of the cancellation rights; but in this case, if it were done in this way, there would be no means of knowing. I think this is important. Personally, I do not know the extent to which salesmen and agents, other housewives and so on, working on commission, intervene in these cases, but I must say that I do not think that any strong prejudice can arise from this. Therefore, with regret, I feel that we must adhere to our rejection of this Amendment.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, as the Minister has considered this matter very carefully, I would not want to press it further. I beg leave to withdraw.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 [Information as to right of cancellation]:
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN had given Notice of an Amendment to add to subsection (2):
"find as if, in paragraph (dd) of the said section 2(2) and in paragraph (cc) of the said section 3(2). sub-paragraph (i), and in subparagraph (ii) the words 'in a case not falling within the foregoing sub-paragraph', were omitted."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 15A. May I start by drawing attention to a typographical error? The first word to be
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inserted is not "find" but "and". That will probably make more sense of the Amendment. In formally moving this Amendment I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 33A. These two go together—indeed, No. 33A contains the substantial provisions.
When your Lordships were considering the Bill on Report on January 30 an Amendment was carried to Clause 3, page 3, line 29. Looking back over the discussion, I think it is fair to say that the main concern expressed by noble Lords was that a person who signed a document which was, or might become, a hire-purchase or credit-sale agreement should immediately have a copy of it to retain, regardless of his entitlement to receive a further copy at a later stage. The noble Lord, Lord Peddie, challenged me to say whether or not I accepted this principle, and when I said that I reserved my position he pressed his Amendment to a Division. But I think that was the main point; I do not think there is any dispute about that.
Although the Amendment under discussion referred to cases where the cooling-off provisions apply, a good deal of what was said would be equally valid in the ordinary case—where, for example, the hirer signs the document at a shop. Indeed, when the same Amendment was discussed during the Committee stage such cases were specifically mentioned—in particular, I think, by the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, who has been good enough to apologise to me for not being present this evening. If noble Lords will forgive me for saying so, the Amendment as carried would be ineffective, since it provides that the hirer shall "retain" a copy of the document. The intention, of course, is that a copy should be given to him. This is a matter of drafting. It is therefore, in any case, necessary for there to be some redrafting. In accepting the principle, we have felt that it should be applied to all cases. We have therefore produced Amendments to do that. The intention, as your Lordships are aware, is to complete the Report stage to-day and to take Third Reading on Thursday; and, if we had tabled these Amendments for Third Reading, the result would have been that they would have appeared on the

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Order Paper for the first time on the day on which they were taken. I do not think the House would have considered that satisfactory, and I have therefore put them down for to-day, although in consequence Amendment No. 33A appears later in the Bill than it will when it is in its proper place. But my intention is not to ask your Lordships to decide on these Amendments to-day. If your Lordships please, I will explain briefly what they do and will then seek permission to withdraw them. I will then put the Amendments on the Paper again for the Third Reading.
Amendment No. 33A contains two subsections which deal in the same terms with hire-purchase agreements and with credit-sale agreements. It seems to us that there are three circumstances to be provided for. The first is, in effect, the case where the document is signed at a shop by all parties and the statutory copy is handed over there and then. In these cases no additional copies are necessary. Secondly, there are cases where what is handed to the hirer to sign is an offer which will become an agreement if accepted by the other party. In these cases we provide for him to be given a copy of what he has just signed, which I think is the intention the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, had in the case of cooling-off agreements. Thirdly, there is the possibility that the document may be sent through the post to the hirer. In these cases we provide that a copy must be enclosed. These three cases, then, are covered in sub-paragraphs (i), (ii) and (iii) of each subsection of the new clause. As in the case of other similar requirements in the 1938 Act, failure to comply with these provisions renders the agreement unenforceable, but the court has a power of dispensation to exercise where it considers that the hirer has not been prejudiced.
Amendment No. 15A, which we are now considering, makes clear that the first category of which I spoke—the case where the statutory copy is handed over at the time of signature—cannot arise where the right to a cooling-off period is applicable. Your Lordships will remember that in those cases a statutory copy must be sent through the post; so in a cooling-off case, even if the salesman
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is empowered to sign for the owner or seller, and the agreement is completed on the doorstep, one copy will be left with the hirer but the statutory copy will still have to go through the post drawing the hirer's attention to the cooling-off right and starting the time running within which he can still exercise it.
I said earlier that I thought the discussion on the Amendments carried on January 30 centred on the question of giving the hirer a copy of what he signs. The Amendment, in fact, went further, and required that that copy should contain the name and address of the person to whom cancellation may be delivered and to whom the goods may be returned. I suggest that this is a separate matter and should be looked at on its own merits. There are a number of Amendments down to the various provisions governing cooling-off right, and there are some respects in which these provisions might be improved, although we have not been able in the short interval since Committee stage to work out Amendments to meet them. I feel, however, that we must not lose sight of the main purpose of these provisions, which is to provide a simple way in which a person who has been browbeaten by a visiting salesman can later withdraw.
We were at pains, in drafting the Bill, to ensure that this right would be simple to exercise and easy to understand; that it should offer salesmen as few chances as possible of circumventing, and, in particular, that it should come to the hirer's notice, in terms that we shall prescribe at a time when the salesman is not there. I suggest that there is no difference of intention between us. It would be prejudicial to the hirer if part of the information, and the most vital part, were contained in the document handed to him by the salesman. The vital part is, first, whether he has the right, and secondly, the effect of his exercising that right.
I have not covered those aspects in the Amendments I have placed on the Order Paper which, if carried, would also involve the reversal of the Amendment carried on January 30. We are prepared to try to improve the cooling-off provisions, if we can; but I hope that when I offer to deal effectively with the point which I believe led the majority of your Lordships to vote as you did, it will be accepted that the question of notifying

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a hirer of how he can make a cancellation, and what to do if he does, will be dealt with in the context of the mechanism of the safeguards as a whole. I do not know whether your Lordships wish to discuss now the Amendments on the Order Paper or whether you would prefer to consider them between now and the next stage. I am in your Lordships' hands; but I will either withdraw now or, if your Lordships wish to comment on them, later. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 15, at end insert ("and as if, in paragraph (dd) of the said section 2(2) and in paragraph (cc) of the said section 3(2), subparagraph (i), and in sub-paragraph (ii) the words in a case not falling within the foregoing sub-paragraph,' were omitted.").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I appreciate the noble Lord's attempt to explain to the House the circumstances concerning the two Amendments appearing in his name, and particularly No. 33A. I appreciate, as I am sure the House will, the opportunity to defer the detailed discussion on these two Amendments until later when we have had full time to consider all the implications. I would at this stage make it quite clear that this House had no doubt at all about what it was voting on earlier when it voted on Amendment No. 12. While it is true that emphasis was given to the point regarding the leaving of a copy of the agreement, at the same time noble Lords clearly understood the other part of that Amendment, which related to the duty to give the particulars of the name and address of the person to whom cancellation might be delivered and to whom the goods might be returned. That is what we voted on. My first rapid glance at Amendment 33A does not seem to show there is any reference at all to the name and address of the person to whom the goods should be returned. However, I appreciate the offer to the House to discuss this question in more detail at a later date.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that we should consider this point on Third Reading; but I am sure the House will recognise our difficulty. When we reach the Third Reading then, so far as we are concerned, we have come to the end of the road and there is nothing further
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we can do about it. The noble Lord said that we should make it clear to the prospective hirer what are his rights. We are all agreed on that. But I am sure the House will recognise that, having given the rights, we must find some way in which the prospective hirer can carry out and have the full effect of those rights. It seems to me that these words which we have drafted into the Bill, by the vote on Amendment No. 12, must be somewhere included in the agreement.
What I have in mind is this: that there may be hire purchase companies that take fourteen to twenty-one days before they return the requisite copy. Presumably, that copy would have details, in the case of the cooling-off period, of the person to whom cancellation can be made or the goods returned. But I should have thought that the prospective hirer would be in a very difficult position. He has been forced to retain the goods against his will, perhaps, for quite a long time; he may have been using them. He would be under considerable moral pressure to retain the goods and let the hire-purchase agreement go through merely because those goods have been left in his premises. I think we must make the position quite clear in the agreement that if the man wishes to effect cancellation he shall have the information to carry out that intention and to return the goods to the dealer or the owner. I beg the Government to consider this point favourably between now and the next stage.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, may I put forward a suggestion for a small drafting Amendment of Amendment No. 33A? Paragraph (i) which it is proposed to insert in Section 2(2) uses the expression "there and then". I doubt whether this is an expression known to the Statute Book so far. It seems to me to be a colloquial expression. Surely, the equivalent expression in Statute Law is "thereupon". I feel we should not unnecessarily extend the vocabulary of the Statute Book, and that we should stick to time-honoured expressions whose meaning is known to everybody.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for having put down these two Amendments in order to meet the wishes

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of the House. Like noble Lords opposite, I have not had very long to look at them; they are complicated, but they seem to a considerable extent to fulfil the wishes of noble Lords when they voted last week. I hope it may be possible to do what the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, mentioned in his Amendment—namely, to provide that particulars of the name and address of the person to whom cancellation may be delivered and to whom the goods may be returned shall be included in some part of the arrangements. I think it is a necessary thing. Whether it should come into the actual Amendment or not is a matter of drafting, so long as the purpose is in the Bill. I would thank the Minister for acting so speedily in this matter.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I am not quite sure whether there is a time limit for the return of goods; but we must remember that the return of goods too large to go by post can now be an extremely difficult operation in some parts of the country, because there will no longer be a railway station to which one can go and send them by passenger or goods train. Sometimes it will mean a lengthy journey to the nearest centre and, owing to this, it is not always possible to return them in a short time.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should like to deal with the last point first. It gives me the opportunity to clear up a misunderstanding now. It cannot be said too often that there is no responsibility, no duty, on the hirer to return the goods. The normal course will be for the dealer to come and collect the goods. So, while my noble friend Lord Hawke may be on a good point about a time limit, it would not be a time limit for the hirer to return the goods, though there may be something to be said for a time limit within which the dealer should take the goods back.
I think it would be desirable that, when we part from this Bill in your Lordships' House, it should be in a respectable form; that is to say, it should not have any obvious flaws in it. One of the difficulties which, I am afraid, I could not get over is that, even if we thought it desirable to implement the second part of the Amendment that was carried into the Bill last Thursday—
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that is, that the copy agreement should contain particulars of the name and address of the people to whom goods may be returned—we are not in a position to prepare an Amendment in time; so that, if your Lordships agree, it is something we shall have to allow the other place to consider. There is no means of accepting the principle of this.
In Clause 6 we are going on to consider this very point, admittedly not with regard to the inclusion in the copy, but with regard to the whole complex of what happens if a contract is frustrated and things have to be put back as they were, and I do not think that we need spend more time on this now. With that short explanation, I hope that it will be your Lordships' pleasure that this Amendment should be withdrawn.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, during the Committee stage of the Bill, I promised the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, that we would look again at the powers to make regulations given to the Board of Trade under Clause 4 of the Bill, with the object of making sure that the powers were wide enough to enable the Board to prescribe that the copy of the agreement, which must be sent to the hirer or buyer, must draw attention to his rights and liabilities under Clause 6. This Amendment, and that to line 37, make sure that our powers will enable us to do this, if we think it desirable. I hope that this will satisfy the noble Lord and that, in the light of these Amendments, he will not feel it necessary to move his Amendment No. 32A.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 23, after ("to") insert ("or consequential upon").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister and I will give practical expression to my gratitude when we come to Amendment No. 32A by not moving it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
6.45 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, in subsection (3,e), after "sent" where that word occurs the second time, to insert:
"and the name of the person to whom, and an address to which, the prospective hirer

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may deliver the goods under section 6 of the Hire Purchase Act 1963,".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I may be in some difficulty in moving Amendments Nos. 17 and 19 together, because I am not certain whether the Minister has accepted the principle involved in these Amendments. I was hoping that I might be in a position to withdraw these two Amendments. Judging from what was said a few moments ago, it would appear that I cannot. If your Lordships will refer to Clause 4, you will see that it deals with information about the right of cancellation. As we have said repeatedly from this side of the House, in the fulfilment of cancellation, there is need for the hirer to receive the fullest possible information and the inclusion of the words in my Amendment makes it easier for the hirer, after he has exercised the right of cancellation, to know the name and address of the person to whom the goods should be returned. This is important, because the person to whom the goods may be sent is not necessarily the same person as the one from whom the hirer had acquired the goods.
When this was discussed at Committee stage, the Minister, in objecting to the Amendment, said that there may not be a copy of the agreement in existence before the right is exercised. Now, of course, that argument no longer stands, because the House agreed to an Amendment whereby a copy of the agreement would be left with the hirer at the time of signing and this copy would include the name and address of the person to whom goods would be returned. Therefore, the House has already accepted the principle which is involved in this Amendment and in No. 19.
The second point which was made at Committee stage was that there was no obligation on the hirer to return goods to any particular place. Indeed, the noble Lord repeated that statement a few moments ago. I agree with that statement, but I would point out that in Clause 6(1) it is stated that the hirer may at his own expense redeliver the goods. Therefore, if the conditions are such as to justify the return of the goods, why in heaven's name refuse to allow the name and address of the person to whom the goods should be
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returned to be inserted so that the hirer may exercise the right given him in Clause 6(1)? There is a further Amendment dealing with this point. I hope that the Minister will accept these two Amendments, an act which I am sure will be welcomed by this House, because the principle involved here has already been decided by the House when it agreed to accept Clause 12. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 27, after "sent" insert the said words.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, first of all, may I say again, because I think it is particularly relevant to this Amendment, that when a hirer serves notice of cancellation under the cooling-off provisions he is thereby under no obligation to take action himself to return the goods. For this reason, there is no need, from his point of view, for a person to be nominated in the copy agreement. As I have said before, what we would normally expect is that the dealer who supplied the goods would collect them again from the house of the prospective hirer. This is provided for in Clause 6(1)(b). But we also felt that it was necessary to provide for the case where goods were left by the salesman and where the hirer's immediate and natural reaction was to take the goods straight back to the dealer.
The noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, pointed out that in some cases there would be no local dealer, but surely, in such cases, the hirer will simply keep the goods until they are collected, particularly in cases where it is too much trouble to pack up goods and return them. So to insert in the statutory copy of the agreement the name and address of the person to whom the goods may be returned could easily confuse the hirer. I would ask your Lordships to appreciate this.
There are two quite distinct cases to be considered. One is where the goods have been left by the salesman, and the other is where the salesman has simply taken an offer to acquire the goods on hire-purchase and the goods are to be delivered later. There is no point, surely, in specifying in the agreement the name of the person to whom the goods can be returned if the goods have not been delivered before the cooling-off period I elapses. In many cases the goods will

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not have been delivered before the copy of the agreement arrives, and to insert the name and address of the person to whom the goods can be returned could confuse him in one of two ways: either he might think that, even although he had not exercised his rights under the cooling-off provisions, he had the right to return the goods when they were delivered later on—and he would be wrong about that—or, if the goods had been delivered before he received a copy of the agreement and when he received the copy of the agreement he exercised his right to cancel within four days, he might feel obliged to return the goods at his own expense. By putting this in, it puts excessive emphasis on that point.
I would ask noble Lords to appreciate that this particular subsection is an important one, because it adds an additional paragraph to subsection (2) of Section 2 of the principal Act, which gives the circumstances in which the owner cannot enforce the agreement against the hirer. So it is a matter of great importance. It is going to make the thing unenforceable if he does not do it. Is it right to make it unenforceable in circumstances where it is not even applicable? As I pointed out, in many cases it would not be applicable. Therefore, I do not feel that this would be the right way to deal with it.
The noble Lord says that we have already carried into the Bill a provision dealing with this matter; but, as I pointed out when we were discussing that provision, there is no way of enforcing it at all. Here he is putting this into a slightly different provision—a provision that into the copy of the agreement when it is sent there should be this information—and he is making the whole agreement unenforceable if that is not done. That seems to me to be an extraordinarily extreme thing to do. After all, even if in inserting this information in the copy which is left, if it were desirable to enforce that, it would not by any means be necessary to enforce it by making the agreement itself unenforceable if that were not done. These things are not on a par at all, and I think it would be unwise for the Opposition to press this point, bearing in mind that they are pressing something which in many cases is not applicable.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lord has referred to "the Opposition": I hope he will think again on that word. This is not the Opposition speaking. This is not a Party matter. We are looking at this Bill united on all fronts in the interests of those who take part in hire-purchase transactions.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Would the noble Lord accept an amendment to that expression? I was thinking of noble Lords opposite rather than the Opposition.
LORD SHEPHERD: Quite. I hope my noble friend will press this Amendment, because I think it is of considerable importance. In Clause 6 it says:
"The prospective hirer may at his own expense deliver the goods to the dealer at any relevant premises."
The reason why we feel that the prospective hirer, when he has cancelled his hire-purchase agreement, should be able to return the goods is, as I said on an earlier stage, the sort of advantage the hire-purchase company might have over him because the goods had been retained in his premises for some time. There is the other point: that the longer the goods remain in the hirer's home, the greater are the opportunities of damage to them. As we lay upon him in Clause 6(2) a responsibility to pay damages that may arise, it may well be that the hirer, in his own interests and also those of the owner, having decided that he is not going to proceed with the agreement, will say: "Please take the goods away"; and if they will not take the goods away, at least he can deliver them himself. If the Government do not accept this Amendment and the hirer has no knowledge as to whom he can return the goods, we shall be limiting the cooling-off period of four days. The noble Lord shakes his head, but that is the period.
LORD DRUMALBYN: We are now considering a different point. We are considering the copy of the agreement that is sent through the post, not the copy of the offer which is left in the first place with the hirer.
LORD SHEPHERD: But is it not a fact that the cooling-off period starts from the day on which the requisite copy is received by the hirer? That is my

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understanding of the cooling-off period. It may well be, as it now is, that the hirer may have 7, 10, 14 or 21 days before he receives the requisite copy, according to the time which the hire-purchase company may take in delivering the requisite copy. I should have thought we ought to make it possible for the hirer who decides to cancel the agreement to be able to operate and return the goods during that period, and he should not have to wait until he receives the copy with the information before he returns the goods. I feel that there is a strong case here. It is not, as I say, a Party matter. We are all acting, I am sure, in the interests of the hirer and the hire-purchase company. I believe that if this information is available to the hirer it will be for the benefit of the hirer and also of the hire-purchase company.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I think the principle of this Amendment is well worth fighting for. There must be many classes of people who would much rather return the goods to the dealer if only they knew clearly where they should take the goods. There are people on night duty who do not want to be knocked up during the day by a dealer coming in to collect the goods. There are students and unmarried people who go out to work, from whose homes no dealer would be able to recover anything, because they are never at home during business hours. These people ought to have every opportunity to return the goods to the dealer, and should be clearly told where the dealer lives so that they may do so.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, while agreeing with my noble friends and with the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, on this matter, the last thing I want to see happen is the onus being placed on the hirer to return the goods, because that might raise a number of difficulties, such as that of packing, which was mentioned by the noble Lord. I think there is something in what my noble friends have said; but if we accept an Amendment of any sort, I hope we shall not place the onus on the hirer to return the goods.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I think it would be clear—admittedly I have had to read this clause once or twice—if we
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inserted at some stage of the Bill that the prospective hirer or buyer may return the goods, if he wishes, at his own expense; and paragraph (b) goes on to say that if he does not choose to do so the dealer has to pick them up. Surely the principle in general is a sound one. If you entered into a transaction and have regretted it, and the law allows you four days to decide whether you regret it or not, surely the sooner you are quit of the goods the better. I heartily support the idea that a man should know where to send the goods back should he exercise his right to cancel the contract.
7.0 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, by leave of the House, may I say just a word about this, because I want to clear up what I think is still a misapprehension here? We were talking on Thursday about the copy of the offer which is left originally with the hirer, and it was suggested that the name and address of the person to whom the goods could be returned should be included. I think that was the intention. I am not certain that the Amendment does that. Now the noble Lord talks about the delay before the requisite document may arrive. That does not arise on this Amendment; it arises on the Amendment we were talking about which has already gone into the Bill. On this Amendment, there are the four days for cooling off, and then it is for consideration whether or not after that the words that should be added to this clause should be put in and the place specified to which the hirer can return the goods, whether it is in the copy of the Agreement or not. That is the point at issue.
Noble Lords may be on quite a good point here: that there should be some time limit within which the goods should be collected. That is arguable, and is one of the points we are looking at. But it is not what the Amendment says here. In the normal way, it will be for the dealer to collect his goods. We have given the hirer the facility of returning them in order that he may be absolutely in order in returning the goods to the dealer, otherwise it might be considered that he had returned the goods to the wrong place, or something of that sort. The main purpose is, first of all, to let him take the goods back to the dealer

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if they are portable and easy to get rid of, and he wants to get rid of them, but also to ensure that he is in order in taking the goods back to this particular person. It is quite a different thing to insert into the agreement the name and address of the person to whom he can return the goods, because we feel it would be very misleading to him. In so many cases he will not at that stage—the operative stage when he receives the copy of the agreement—have the goods at all.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I am quite sure that the majority of your Lordships will agree that the reply we have heard is quite unsatisfactory. The noble Lord opposite, in replying to the points which have been raised, has ranged well beyond Amendments Nos. 17 and 19, and much of what he had to say related to Amendment No. 21. The position is quite clear. The principle enunciated in these two Amendments has already been accepted by this House. In my opinion, it is wrong to argue that there would be extraordinary legal difficulties in implementing this Amendment. The noble Lord made reference to the fact that there is no obligation to return the goods. We know that, and that statement has no bearing at all on the arguments that are being advanced in support of these Amendments. The Amendment merely indicates that if the hirer wishes to return the goods he will have in his possession the name and address
of the person to whom they should be returned.
One can appreciate the importance of this Amendment, which I am quite sure the noble Lord opposite does not. There can be circumstances where the door-to-door salesman—against whom much of this Bill is directed—could be taking round with him equipment of some kind, maybe electrical equipment, which he leaves with the hirer. The noble Lord made a point about the hirer having a copy of the agreement, and later having a copy of the document which will date the time of the four-day cooling-off period, but it may be considered in the interests of the agent not to collect after cancellation, in order that he may be able to go back at some time and persuade or coerce that individual hirer into renewing the agreement. Therefore, the woman who is anxious to get rid of the goods needs the name of the person so that she can drop a short note and tell the person to collect them. The difficulties the noble Lord opposite mentioned are utterly beside the point. I would appeal to noble Lords to accept this Amendment, because they have already accepted it in principle in Amendment No. 12, which this House accepted. Therefore I have no alternative, in the interests of the Bill, but to press this Amendment.
7.8 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 17) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents 33; Not-Contents 34.

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Ogmore, L.

Albemarle, E.

Gaitskell, B.

Peddie, L.

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Gardiner, L.

Raglan, L.

Attlee, E.

Grenfell, L.

Shepherd, L. [Teller.]

Auckland, L.

Hanworth, V.

Somers, L.

Burden, L. [Teller.]

Hawke, L.

Stonham, L.

Champion, L.

Henderson, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Hobson, L.

Summerskill, B.

Crook, L.

Lawson, L.

Taylor, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

McNair, L.

Walston, L.

Ferrier, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Williamson, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailwyn, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Allerton, L.

Dundee, E.

Lansdowne, M.

Balerno, L.

Effingham, E.

Lothian, M.

Bessborough, E.

Falkland, V.

Mabane, L.

Blakenham, V.

Ferrers, E.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Bossom, L.

Fortescue, E.

Newton, L.

Conesford, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Coutanche, L.

Greenway, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Daventry, V.

Hastings, L.

Stonehaven, V.

Denham, L.

Horsbrugh, B.

Swinton, E.

Derwent, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Teynham, L.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the next Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 37, after ("to") insert ("or consequential upon").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 6 [Rights and obligations on service of notice of cancellation]:
7.16 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, after subsection (1)(a), to insert:
"(b) the prospective hirer or buyer may send a notice in writing to the owner or seller, or to the person specified in the requisite copy as being the person to whom the goods may be delivered, requesting such person to take delivery of the goods (subject to subsection (4) of this section and subsection (3) of the next following section) at the premises which, in the relevant document, are specified as the address of the prospective hirer or buyer;".
The noble Lord said: Paragraph (a) in this clause of the Bill refers to the fact that the hirer—we have already had some little discussion on this matter—may return the goods to the dealer at his own expense. Paragraph (b) says that if he does not deliver he shall be under an obligation, at the request of the dealer, to deliver the goods to him at premises specified as the address of the prospective buyer or hirer. In other words, the dealer can instruct the hirer from whom he intends to collect the goods. The new paragraph suggested in this Amendment deals with a circumstance that is not covered in the two paragraphs. There may be the circumstance—and, indeed, I have already referred to this when speaking on a previous Amendment—where the owner or the agent may not ask for the return of the goods and the hirer may not be able to deliver. This new paragraph asks for the right of the hirer to call upon the owner or seller to collect the goods. There are obvious benefits which could arise from this, benefits that we have already considered, to enable the hirer to indicate to an owner the need for those goods to be collected. I indicated at Committee stage the possibility of such a provision for a request being useful so far as possible litigation is concerned. The noble Lord opposite was not prepared to accept that suggestion, but now I am confident that I
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am right that in these circumstances there could be occasions when the possession of a copy of the letter requesting the collection of those goods that are deliberately left with the hirer could be an advantage to the hirer himself. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 37, at end insert the said paragraph.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the point that the noble Lord has made has some substance, in that it might be that for one reason or another the dealer left with the hirer for some considerable time the goods which he ought to have collected. It seems to me that that is very unlikely to happen. The dealer would, in those circumstances, almost be leaving the goods in order that they might be damaged before he collects them. As I said, it seems to me that it would be an extremely rare thing to happen. But the fact is that it may be required for the protection of the hirer that that should not be allowed to occur, because, obviously, the longer the goods stay there, the greater the likelihood is of damage. This factor is what we are looking at.
But I would submit, with great deference to the noble Lord, that the Amendment he has here would be totally inoperative. He says the prospective hirer may send a notice. Of course he may send a notice. That does not give him a right he has not got. He can send a notice at any time. If he does send a notice, what happens if the dealer does not comply with it? All these questions have to be considered, and they are not actually set forth in the Amendment. The Amendment does not even say that the owner or seller or person to whom the goods are delivered shall comply within a certain time. We are inclined to think that there is a problem here, but we are not certain that this is the right way to deal with it. We intend to deal with this in some way or another before the further stage.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, that would indicate that the noble Lord has accepted the principle and has paid us the compliment of agreeing that there is a valid point expressed in this Amendment. With that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.22 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, in subsection (1)(b), to leave out "request of the dealer" and insert:
"written request of the owner or seller or any person who is the agent of the owner or seller".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, if I may, I will deal with numbers 23, 24 and 25 together. These Amendments seek to delete reference to "dealer" and replace it with the term "owner or seller or any person who is the agent of the owner or seller", because we believe there is no precise definition of "dealer" in the Bill. It is true there is a definition in subsection (7) of Clause 6, but I am advised it is not precise enough. There is no doubt that under normal hire-purchase and credit sale conditions the dealer will not be the legal owner of the goods. Therefore, there is a possibility that Clause 6(2) may have the effect of the imposition of a dual obligation on the consumer for any damage to the goods, because it is true that according to Common Law principles only the owner or the person having a right of possession is treated as suffering loss by the fault or negligence of some other party. What is more, under this subsection the hirer could conceivably return the goods to the wrong person or even be misled by a person calling himself the dealer who has no legitimate claim. In those circumstances the hirer would be liable. Therefore in this Amendment we emphasise the importance of the written request. Amendment 25 merely states that this request should be in writing with an indication of the date and time. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 1, leave out ("request of the dealer") and insert the said new words.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: The noble Lord has raised doubt about the definition of "dealer". We will certainly look at that, in view of the advice he has received, to see whether it is satisfactory or not. I should like to make this first point. The object of this clause is, where there is cancellation, to put things back exactly as they were; that is, the goods that came from the dealer go back to the dealer, the money advanced by the hirer goes back to the hirer, and so forth. The whole object
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of the clause is to put things back where they were. The noble Lord says the dealer will not necessarily be the legal owner of the goods. As to what happens to those goods, this is a matter to be unscrambled between the dealer and the owner. In some cases it might be the same person; but at any rate it is a matter to be settled there. The right thing, obviously, is for the goods to go back to the dealer. The finance house will not want to have a grand piano, for example, dumped in the middle of its premises. That is the object to be achieved, and we think this is the best way to achieve it.
The noble Lord says that there should be a written request, because otherwise the hirer could be misled. But, of course, a written request in itself would not be foolproof, and we doubt whether there is much reason for this. The probability is that the same person who delivered the goods in the first place will come along and pick them up again. Certainly that is a possibility, and in any case it will be the same firm that will be doing it. One cannot avoid fraud altogether, and I do not think the noble Lord's provision would avoid fraud or avoid misleading the consumer in every possible case. We think the written notice in all cases is quite unnecessary. I do not know whether I have dealt with all the points the noble Lord has raised. We do not consider this is a matter of very great importance, but we do think it should be quite clear that the person to whom the goods are returned is the dealer, and not the owner or seller or a person nominated by the owner or seller. The goods should be returned to the dealer, so as to put the transaction back as it was in the first place.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the noble Lords says that what we want to do is to put things back as they were before the hirer received the goods. But we may not at this early stage of the cancellation be able to effect that, because there may have been a deposit paid or even goods taken in part exchange. Later on in the Bill it says that the hirer, if he has not received the return of goods given in part exchange, or the deposit, should retain the goods under the agreement as a lien on the deposit or on his goods. I am rather worried about the case which I

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quoted in Committee stage of the possible dealer or owner coming at short notice, walking into the house and taking delivery of the goods. I am glad to see the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is present. My understanding is that if the dealer were able to obtain entry into the house he could then seize and recover the goods, and although the hirer would be able to protest he would not be able to refuse the dealer the right to take the goods, because he had obtained entry. If that is the case, it would seem to me that we want to put the hirer into the position that he receives at least a written notice to the effect that the goods are going to be recovered because of cancellation. That would give him an opportunity, if he has a deposit outstanding or has not had the part-exchange goods returned, to decide whether he should hand over the goods to the dealer.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should like to add a word or two to what has been said about this Amendment. I must say I am attracted by the idea that one should retain the word "dealer", and I will give my reasons quite shortly. I know the word "dealer" is not defined, but the hirer will know perfectly well, I imagine, in the vast majority of cases, the person with whom he or she has been dealing. In relation to hire-purchase transactions a change of ownership may happen when possibly the hirer knows nothing about it at all, and if you take out the word "dealer" and put in the words proposed "owner or seller", then it seems to me you may be creating difficulty for the hirer because she may not know who under the hire-purchase transaction is the real seller or owner at any particular moment. Nor, indeed, is it the case that the dealer is necessarily an agent of the owner or seller. Therefore I should have thought that from a practical point of view there was considerable advantage in leaving the word "dealer" where it stands.
With regard to the point the noble Lord made about a case I have not heard raised before—of the dealer coming into the house, demanding the goods and taking them away with him—I should not have thought that that was a likely event. But if we insert the provision that a written request is
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required in all cases, then it means the dealer going round and calling at the house, possibly to inquire as to the attitude of the hirer, and finding from having a conversation with the hirer that the contract is not going to be carried on, and he will be prohibited then and there from saying, "Please can I collect the goods?" and taking them, because the hirer could say, "No, you cannot do that. You have come perhaps three or four miles, but you have not given me a written request to deliver up these goods to you. Therefore you had better go down the road and write it out on the back of an envelope, and you can come back and give it to me."
I am sure that my noble friend will again consider this point in regard to the written request; but so far as the word "dealer", as opposed to the words "owner or seller", is concerned, I should have thought there was real advantage in keeping the word "dealer" although I agree that perhaps it does not have the same precision as the words "owner or seller".
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, could the noble and learned Lord help me on this matter of law? Do you lose the lien on the goods if they leave your possession? If the goods get into the hands of the dealer, have you lost the lien? This is most important, because we are making provision here that the hirer shall have a lien on the goods until the deposit has been repaid or the goods which were put up in part exchange are returned.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think it is right to say that you must have the goods in your possession in order to be able to exercise a lien upon them. This particular Amendment is not really dealing with that point, but with the form of the request made for the return, and by whom that request should be made.
7.33 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, may I just say a word on one or two points? If the Minister had practised in the county courts, as I did for many years, I do not think he would have attached the little importance that he has done to having written evidence of these matters. It is astonishing how easy it is to have a complete conflict of opinion as to what

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happened orally, especially when the dispute concerns a contract between a housewife and a hire-purchase salesman. They may give diametrically opposed accounts of what has happened. If the thing is in writing, then it is not a question of having to judge who is telling the truth—not because people necessarily wish to commit perjury, but because their memories are so inaccurate. I should have thought that anybody who had had much practical experience of administering the law would have been all in favour of trying to get something in the nature of a written account rather than to rely on oral testimony. It seems to me that the noble Lord's answer smacks of the bureaucrat sitting in his office, without any knowledge of what actually goes on in courts.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, with Lord Peddie, made another good point when they said that it is easy in this sort of circumstance for the goods to be delivered to somebody who has no claim to them. The hire-pressure salesman is not necessarily the dealer, but he may well turn up and persuade the housewife, or a young daughter or son, or somebody who is there, to hand over possession of a dishwasher or sewing machine, or whatever it is. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack knows perfectly well that if you hand over personal property to somebody who has no right to it, that is the tort of conversion and you can be made to pay damages for it. It seems to me that this is a real danger here. The time of the courts is continually occupied with dealing with such problems in which people have, quite honestly and genuinely, handed over goods to somebody who was not entitled to them. This is an attempt to protect the hirer, and I am sorry indeed that the Government seem to be so "sticky" about acceding to it, because on both counts, the count of the written request and that of protecting against mistaken delivery, there is a strong point to be made.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I agree with every single word that the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has said. Surely the necessity for the dealer's request to be in writing is a most wise precaution, because otherwise the way is open for any fraudulent person, upon hearing
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that goods are due to be returned to a dealer, to ring up the hirer and say, "I am sending for the goods at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning". Thereby he may gain entry and get away with the goods. However, if the request from the dealer must be in writing, the fraudulent person has at least got to get hold of the dealer's headed notepaper, and that would probably be a sufficient obstacle to him.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor took the point that it might sometimes be inconvenient because the hirer might stand upon his rights and refuse to hand over the goods to a dealer whom he knew and trusted, simply upon the ground that the dealer had not by then furnished the request in writing. I can only say that I do not think that that would happen in practice. If the hirer knew and trusted and recognised the dealer, he would be most unlikely to take the point, "You have not given me notice in writing. You must go down the road and write it out and come back again." I just do not believe that would happen.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, I find it difficult to see why a dealer should not do what many people do—namely, walk about with a duplicate book in his pocket. I always find, when giving instructions, that writing them in a duplicate book is a good method, and I should have thought that that would be quite a practical solution to a dealer who wanted to take away somebody's washing machine. At least he would give what amounts to a receipt for it.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, if I may sneak again on this point, I have been impressed by the arguments that have been put forward. I think that perhaps I was rather misled by the fact that these three Amendments were being taken together. I do not think there is a great deal of merit in the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, No. 25, but I think that a firm sending out a porter or a lorry-driver to collect goods would probably give him written instructions anyhow, and he could hand over those written instructions as credentials. I do not see that there is any particular reason why this should not be accepted in principle, from the point of view of

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the written request. But on the question whether it should be "owner or seller" or "the agent of the owner or seller", I can only, with respect, agree with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that we should stick to the word "dealer" as it is, and we will make provision for written requests in the Bill. I do not know whether it would be possible to do this in two days' time, but at all events we will carry this into effect.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I appreciate the noble Lord's acceptance of our suggestion of a written request. I did not entirely agree with his argument with regard to "dealer", but, having heard the case he has advanced, and with his assurances, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.40 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I now move that the further consideration of the Bill on Report be adjourned during pleasure until 8.40 o'clock.
Moved, That the House do now adjourn during pleasure.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and House adjourned during pleasure accordingly.
8.40 p.m.
House resumed.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved, after subsection (1), to insert:
"(2) At the time when the goods are delivered in accordance with paragraph (a), (b), or (c) of the preceding subsection the owner or seller shall deliver, or cause to be delivered, to the prospective hirer or buyer a document acknowledging the receipt of the goods together with a statement of defects, if any, apparent upon visual examination of the goods."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the point of this Amendment is to enable the hirer to get a statement with regard to any defects there may be. Obviously, this may often happen, and it seems that in a Bill which is designed to protect the interests of the hirer there should be some provision of this kind giving him protection of this sort. The question whether there is something the matter with the goods is often a difficult problem for a judge in a county court—or nowadays a judge in the High Court—to deal
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with. It is a common provision in commercial transactions, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack will know, for example in connection with sea shipments where a bill of lading has to be delivered, for such statement to show whether or not the goods being loaded on to the ship are in good order and condition. This is of the greatest advantage to courts when faced with this problem, and it appears reasonable that there should be a similar sort of provision in order to protect the interests of hirer or purchaser under a credit sale agreement.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 4, at end insert the new subsection.—(Lord Chorley.)
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, common sense dictates that the owner or seller should give a receipt for goods, together with a statement of defects. I seem to remember the noble Lord opposite agreeing in Committee that the proposal itself was most sensible. He went on to say that it was entirely in accordance with good business practice, but presumably felt it undesirable to write such good business practice into the Bill. He also went on to suggest that, up to a point, people should be relied upon to protect themselves. If we accepted the logical outcome of that, there would be little need for a Hire-Purchase Bill.
I remember, too, that an objection was made that it would be ineffectual to put this requirement into the Bill unless in some way we made it a criminal offence not to give a receipt. But I suggest that there should be no legal difficulty in that respect. In fact, all this Amendment does is to establish a code of conduct, and, so far as I am aware, it is quite possible to establish such a code without necessarily introducing the idea of some penal offence. Here there are circumstances where a receipt and an indication of damage are important, because of the nature of the transaction. One can understand goods being returned under conditions where there is not likely to be a great degree of good will between the owner, on the one hand, and the hirer, on the other. In those circumstances it seems particularly obvious that a receipt should be given.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the two noble Lords who have moved this

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Amendment, and I note that what they really want here is a code of conduct rather than a statutory provision. But I doubt very much whether it is right to use the Statute Book for this kind of exhortation, as it were—because it would not amount to anything more than that—unless we make it a criminal offence, or attach some other sanction to the failure to give a receipt. I think a receipt is perfectly good business practice, but there are positive dangers in what is provided in this particular Amendment, because not only has a receipt to be given, but also a statement of the defects. Again, one may say that this is quite a reasonable provision, but a hirer pretending he had returned goods would say that the dealer refused to give him a receipt to start with; and, as I said before, a dealer pretending goods had not been returned would say that the hirer had been given a receipt and was concealing it.
But the real difficulty in this Amendment is in the statement of defects. There is a real possibility of a disagreement between the hirer and the person to whom the goods have been returned. They might disagree as to whether or not the defects were caused by the hirer, or as to whether or not they were the result of failure to take reasonable care; and they might also disagree on how much the actual damage amounted to. These, surely, are matters which must be decided by the courts and by the normal legal processes, if they arise. I should not have thought that simply to put down in an Act of Parliament that the normal business practice should be followed, without making it mandatory in any way to follow that business practice, was a particularly desirable procedure. I entirely agree that this is good practice, but there are plenty of things that are good in the world which are not made mandatory by law.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I am encouraged by the fact that the Minister has indicated that this is good practice, and I should think it was good practice on our part to seek, as far as possible, to incorporate in the Bill all things that are good practice. I am not quite clear whether or not the noble Lord opposite is accepting this Amendment in principle. Apparently he is not keen on accepting the provision regarding the
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statement of defects, because of the possibility of disagreement. Surely, if there is a possibility of disagreement—and I endorse that there is that possibility—it is in consequence of the condition of the goods. If the noble Lord opposite is using as an argument against this Amendment the fact that there will be considerable disagreement on the question of the estimate of damage, surely that, in itself, is a justification for acceptance of the Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I should just like to say a word upon this Amendment, although I cannot claim much longer acquaintance with it than the noble Lord, Lord Chorley. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, to consider again the position with regard to the requirement that there should be a statement of defects, because I must say that I can see that requirement operating to the disadvantage of the hirer. As I understand it, there is no criminal sanction or any other sanction to require the dealer to give this statement of defect, and if the hirer thinks it is in, it may well operate as something in the nature of a trap to him.
Take the case where the hirer has damaged goods—I am not concerned, and the Amendment is not concerned, with what has been the cause of the damage, but damage which is apparent upon a visual examination of the goods—and where the hirer says to the dealer who has come to collect the goods, "Please give me a statement admitting that there are these defects". No doubt a very honest businessman would do so; but there are other cases. What happens if the man refuses? He cannot be compelled to give a statement; and then, when the matter goes to court, he is able to say, "I saw the goods; I was asked for a statement; there were no defects and I therefore did not give it. The defects must have arisen thereafter; the goods were perfectly all right". The fact that a hirer had not obtained a statement of defects, although he might have asked for it, might well operate to his prejudice in subsequent court proceedings. I would therefore suggest to the noble Lord, in all seriousness, that if there is going to be a dispute on the question of whether or not the

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goods were returned in a damaged state (and, as the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has said, disputes on questions of fact do arise in a county court, and the judge has to make up his mind who is telling the truth), then the absence or presence of a statement of defect is a complicating factor and might, in a number of cases, operate to the disadvantage of the hirer.
May I give another instance? Suppose the hirer says that the goods have defects, but not knowing the Bill as well as the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, does omits to ask for a statement of defects. Eventually, she might be asked in court by counsel for the dealer, "You say these goods were damaged. Did you ask for a statement of defects?" If her answer is "No", it might well prejudice her. Therefore I would suggest to the noble Lord, in all seriousness, that, although I fully appreciate that his object is to try to avoid unnecessary disputes in the courts—an object with which I sympathise—it would be much better not to press this Amendment, so far as it relates to statements of defects, because I can see that in many cases it might operate to the disadvantage of the hirer.
LORD PEDDIE: I am glad the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack is in sympathy with the object that lies behind this Amendment, but in arguing the case against myself I think he poses a situation that is hardly likely to arise. He indicates a situation where the hirer is asking the owner who is collecting the goods to make a statement of defects. That is not likely to arise. It is more than likely that you could have, in normal circumstances, an owner collecting goods, taking them away and then, later on, declaring that there are defects in the goods that he has collected. I suggest that this Amendment would indicate that, if there are any defects which are observed by the owner when he collects the goods, it should then be his responsibility to indicate, at that point, what those defects are, rather than to leave it until a later date, when there will be disputation, when there will be court proceedings, probably over the declaration by the owner that there were defects in the commodities which were not declared at the time the goods were collected. Far
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be it from me to cross swords on matters of law with the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, but I would argue in terms of logic and in terms of common-sense. There would be considerable advantage in a person giving a receipt and, at the same time, an indication of defects, if defects there should be. However, I gather from the observations that have been made that the point which lies behind the Amendment has been taken, and I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD GREENWAY: My Lords, may I ask why the Opposition have all these Amendments down? They are not moving them—
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord to suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, be empowered to move his Amendment?
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I am trying to move the Amendment that stands in my name. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Greenway, observed that I was on my feet. This is an Amendment to Clause 9(5) which is concerned with the position of the parties at Common Law, not under the obligations imposed by this Bill. The Amendment is to add to subsection (5):
"It shall, however, be lawful for the Owner or the Seller to require the hirer or buyer to deliver or post any notice rescinding the agreement (not being a notice of cancellation) to the Owner or Seller at a specified address provided that—

(a) the Statutory copy of the agreement shall have already been sent to the hirer or buyer;

(b) both this requirement by the Owner or Seller and the address to which the notice rescinding the agreement must be delivered or posted shall be clearly stated on both the hire-purchase or credit-sale agreement and the statutory copy thereof;

(c) the Owner or Seller shall not have previously authorised any other person who conducted antecedent negotiations to collect and receive instalments on behalf of the Owner or Seller."

There may be in connection with the transaction accusations of misrepresentation and matters of that kind in connection with the goods which are the subject matter of the hire-purchase contract; and it is very important that the finance company, the owner of the goods, who is in law selling them, should know of these. As the Bill stands they

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merely have to be brought to the notice of the dealer, who no doubt is the person actually responsible for them. But there are two important considerations which unfortunately I was not able to bring to the notice of the Minister at the time this matter was before the House in Committee because I did not arrive here in time.
But in the first place it may well be, and I think it very likely, that a dealer who is being backed financially by a finance company will be very loth to bring the fact that accusations of misrepresentation and, quite possibly, fraud are being made against him to the notice of the finance company, which nevertheless in law will be responsible for him. Obviously it might very seriously upset the relationship between the two; and, not only from the point of view of the finance company but from the point of view of the hirer, it may be very important at an early stage that the person legally responsible, the finance company, and the hirer should be brought into contact with each other so they may reach some solution for the dispute and will know where they stand if the matter has to be brought before a court of law. Therefore it seems proper that the owner, the finance company, should have the right provided by this proposal to have the matter brought to its attention.
However, there is also the possibility, which I understand arises not infrequently in this sort of transaction, that the finance company and the dealer may part company after a short time. The finance company may find that the dealer is not behaving in the sort of way which appeals to them, or it may be that the dealer does not like the finance company and prefers to deal with some other company.
The type of complaint which is envisaged in this Amendment may occur months, or even years, after the actual transaction is entered into. I am told that a very common type of complaint is of the dish-washing machines, many of which are sold by hire-purchase, where the electric machine is thoroughly inferior but may work quite well for the first months. By the time the fraud which is involved in the installation of an unsatisfactory electrical machine of
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this kind has become evident to the hirer, the finance company and the dealer may have parted company. In these circumstances, it is essential that the complaint should be made to the finance company, not to the dealer, who at this point may not be competent to handle the complaint. Therefore it is important that the facilities provided for the hirer in this clause may be at his disposal. I hope that I have been able to bring to the Minister's attention arguments of which he has not been previously aware, and that he will agree that this is an important matter and a useful provision in the interests of the hirer. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 44, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Chorley.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this appears to me to be a provision which would allow the owner or seller to prevent the hirer or buyer from serving the notice of cancellation under Section 3 of the Act, as provided in Clause 9(5), on the dealer, and to insist that the notice rescinding the agreement should be supplied to the owner or seller. It is difficult to see the circumstances in which this might apply. I should have thought that if notice of rescission was going to be submitted to the dealer, it would be submitted before the owner or seller got to know that notice of rescission was going to be submitted. I do not see how the owner could anticipate this. The noble Lord talks about the right of rescission arising late in the contract. I am not learned in the law, but I have been given to understand that it would be only early in the life of the agreement that the right of rescission could be exercised at all. Therefore it seems to me unlikely that this particular difficulty will occur. I will certainly study what the noble Lord has said, but from what I have understood of his argument I am not inclined to advise the House to accept the Amendment.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.5 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, after Clause 11, to insert the following new Clause:
Notice of arrears or default
".—(1) Where goods have been let under a hire-purchase agreement to which the principal Act applies and the hirer has made

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default in the payment of any sum due there-under the owner shall not enforce any right to recover possession of the goods from the hirer unless he has served a notice (in this Act referred to as a 'notice of arrears') on the hirer by registered post at his last known address requiring payment of the sum so due and default has been made in payment of such sum or part thereof for at least 7 days after such service.
(2) Every notice of arrears shall contain or be accompanied by a document in the terms prescribed in Schedule (Notice to be included in or to accompany a notice of arrears) to this Act."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment deals with notice of arrears or default. Its purpose is quite simple: it is merely to ensure that a notice of arrears is sent to the hirer. I know it can be said—and I will accept it as an argument in favour of my case—that it is common practice that notices of arrears are, in fact, sent by reputable companies. Therefore, because it can be established and accepted that reputable companies do this, we feel that it would be an advantage that it should be incorporated in the Bill and that there should be no enforcement of possession unless that notice is given. On the Committee stage, many illustrations were given, which I need not repeat to-night, of cases where it is in the interests of the hirer (or, probably, of his next of kin) that a notice be given, because a situation may have arisen due to circumstances outside the control of the hirer, and particularly the dependant. Therefore, before the owner can move in and establish repossession of the goods we urge that a notice of arrears should be required to be sent.
We go on to make mention, in subsection (2) of the Amendment, that the owner's notice must be accompanied by a form, in the style shown in our new Schedule I(1)(a), by which, if the customer dies, a personal representative is given the right to purchase the goods or take over the agreement. This, as your Lordships will appreciate, deals with a situation where a failure to pay instalments by reason of death allows the owner to repossess, and it applies where less than one-third of the hire-purchase price has been paid. I would remind noble Lords that, under the Bill as it stands, in the event of death it is possible, if less than one-third of the price has been paid, for the goods to be repossessed by the owner. This, I
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may say, is not covered completely by the provision in Clause 12, which prevents the owner from ending the agreement because of death. We welcome that clause, but we feel that this Amendment gives added protection to dependants and is one which will strengthen the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 13, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I should like to support my noble friend, and I will do so as briefly as I can. I would ask the House to consider the position of what we call the prospective hirer. In the vast majority of cases he sets out with the object of buying the article, and he adopts a hire-purchase basis because this is the only way in which he can obtain the long-term credit. Hire-purchase has been adopted by companies so that they at least retain the title to the goods until the last instalment is paid.
As I said on Committee stage, in the event of the husband, say, meeting with an accident, or becoming sick and perhaps being in hospital under drugs, he may be the only person in the family who will have knowledge that the article is under hire-purchase; or the wife may know that the article is under hire-purchase, but may not be aware of the company to whom the sum is due. She may well be without, not only the knowledge of the company to whom the sum is due, but the date on which it is due. If this Amendment is accepted it will not involve in any way the more reputable firms who, as I said on Committee stage, issue a notice of default perhaps three or four times. This Amendment is aimed at those companies who may indulge in what we call a "snatch back"; those companies who, because of default for a matter of hours, may be able to recover the goods. As I said, the wife may have no knowledge of the sum that is due. If this Amendment is accepted, she would receive by registered post—and then, of course, there would be no argument as to whether a notice had been given or not—notice to the effect that a sum was due, and she would then be able to make the payment.
I should have thought that this would be a great advance in hire-purchase

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security to the hirer. I do not think it would involve the reputable companies, who comprise the vast majority in this business, in any difficulty, because they give this notice. They give it as a matter of right. This is aimed at one or two companies who have indulged in "snatch back". If this Amendment is accepted, it would deal with that problem, and I think it would be a considerable advance in hire-purchase legislation.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to say a word in support of this Amendment. One of the worst grievances of the large section of the community who obtain their goods on hire-purchase is the quite ruthless application of the "snatch back", as it is colloquially called, over a wide range of these transactions. I am told by friends and colleagues who work in poor men's lawyers institutions and places of that kind that they are continually confronted with this type of case. It is quite true, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, said, that the best hire-purchase finance companies give notice and give some latitude, but that is certainly not typical of them all. It was one of the results of Miss Wilkinson's Bill that the "snatch back" was to some extent curbed, but far from completely. I have myself a little later on an Amendment to restrain the snatch back as is done in Scotland, but I will not deal with that now.
This is a comparatively mild Amendment—indeed, very mild—and I should have thought that the Government could hardly resist it. What is there to be said against giving a small locus pœnitentiœ, to use a common legal phrase, of a short period of time in which the matter can be put right? We are dealing here in hundreds of pounds. After £600 is paid off a £2,000 motor car, there can be a snatch back without any notice or anything else if this Amendment is not accepted. It is a completely ruthless exercise of dominance in the commercial world. I think strong words are necessary on an occasion like this, and I hope the Minister will see his way to accept this Amendment.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, in this case I do not think we need argue about ends at all. I think we are in
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agreement on the objective, and I am prepared straight away to accept that there should be some statutory notice given for repossession. I must express my regret to the House that it has not been possible to work out an Amendment before this stage, but this is a complicated matter and we have had many other matters to deal with. I am quite certain that the effect of this Amendment would not be in accordance with the wishes of noble Lords who have moved it. For one thing, it would not prevent the owner from terminating the agreement before he gave the notice. The agreement might be terminated. I think that what noble Lords opposite want is the continuance of the agreement, and the present drafting of the Amendment would be a very grave defect to this end. For that reason we could not accept the Amendment because it would not do what we both want done.
Nor would subsection (2) give as good protection as there is already in the Bill, because the obligation is only to send along with notice of the arrears a document in terms prescribed in the Schedule, and all that that does is either to make an offer or to undertake to acquire the liabilities of the hirer under the hire-purchase agreement. If the agreement had already been terminated, of course the second item in that would be of no effect whatsoever. I hope, therefore, the mover of the Amendment will agree to withdraw it on an undertaking that we will try to put something which will give effect to what he has in mind into the Bill in another place.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for those remarks and I am indeed willing to withdraw the Amendment in the light of the assurances he has given that this matter will be dealt with and that there is an acceptance of the objectives that we seek. I agree that there are drafting difficulties, and with the assurance on the part of the noble Lord opposite that he will deal with them I have pleasure in withdrawing the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 17 [Conditional sale agreements]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this is a consequential Amendment which will enable provisions for conditional sales agreements which are brought within the ambit of the Act and made exactly equivalent to hire-purchase agreements to be put in the same conditions so far as the application of them to bodies corporate is concerned; that is to say, bodies corporate are excluded from the working of the Act in so far as conditional sales agreements are concerned. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 18, line 23, at end insert—
("Provided that any such reference shall not include a conditional sale agreement which is made by a body corporate (whether incorporated in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) as the buyer of the goods to which the agreement relates.")—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD CHORLEY LORD CHORLEY moved, after Clause 17, to insert the following new clause:
Amendment of section 11 of the principal Act
". Subsection (1) of section 11 of the principal Act shall be amended to read as follows:
Where goods have been let under a hire-purchase agreement the owner shall not enforce any right to recover possession of the goods from the hirer otherwise than by action.'"
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, this is the Amendment to which I referred a moment or two ago. The object is to prevent the finance company from recovering possession without first of all going to a court and obtaining an order; in other words, to prevent a straight "snatch-back", to control the "snatch-back" by means of court proceedings. From the beginning, as I understand it, this has in fact been the law in Scotland, and it has worked perfectly well. In Scotland a finance company cannot make a snatch-back without going to a court and satisfying the court that the hirer has failed to observe the agreement punctually, and if the court, in all the circumstances, feels that this is a proper case for allowing the resumption of the possession, then it makes the order.
This perhaps has not worked a great grievance in this country up to the present time, or not as much as one might have expected, because, of course, the value of the goods has been comparatively small; but now that the figure
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is up to £2,000 the "snatch-backs" are going to become very serious indeed, As I said a moment ago, when a matter of £500 or £600 has been paid on a motor car and then there is failure to pay and there is immediate "snatch-back", it is going to be the cause of a great deal of trouble and undoubtedly bitterness and great grievances, and in a short time Bills will be produced in Parliament and a lot of time wasted. We might as well do it now.
The only argument I can see against this is that it is suggested it would lead to flooding of the courts, and if Scottish experience showed that that were so it would be a strong argument against it. I have done my best to find out what has been the experience in Scotland, and so far as I can discover there has not been any flooding of the Scottish courts in this way. There is no reason to suppose in this country it would be different. Therefore, what on the face of it appears to be a strong, practical argument would not turn out in that way at all. I hope your Lordships will agree that in the new circumstances with the £2,000 figure it is right that there should be court control over resumption of possession in this way, and I hope the Minister will accept this Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 17, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Chorley.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I am not really clear what the noble Lord expects to happen as a result of his Amendment. I rather think that he imagines the effect of his Amendment would be that, if application had to be made to the court each time, then the powers of the court under subsection (4) of Section 12 of the Act would operate; that is, for example, the power to make an order and postpone the operation of the order even where one-third of the purchase price had not been paid. That, I am advised, is not the case. I think he is mainly concerned with cases where one-third of the purchase price has not been paid and therefore where in the normal way repossession can take place without application to the court. In such a case surely the court would have no option but to give possession.
So the only effect of this Amendment would be to force the owner to wait for the period before the case came to court

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before he could repossess; in other words, allow the hirer to continue to use and possess the goods for that amount of time after he would normally be allowed to. So far as I can see, that is the only purpose the Amendment could achieve. I think this is a pretty drastic change in the law and it is one that was certainly not contemplated by the Molony Committee. I know of no great demand for it, and I think it would be rather disproportionate, especially where the hirer had paid a very small amount of the total hire-purchase price. I really think the House would be ill-advised to accept this Amendment and I ask your Lordships to reject it.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, the noble Lord has not dealt with what happened in Scotland at all. I think the fact that Scotland will in fact be deprived of this quite useful protection is a matter which might be of interest to Scottish Peers. Quite apart from that, it is, of course, quite true that the effect would be to give the hirer a period in which he could turn round and perhaps make arrangements to resume payment of the instalments, and in that way he could possibly not lose the advantage of all the instalments which he had been paying earlier on. Anyone who has had the advantage of working in courts will know perfectly well that in a situation of this kind a wise judge can bring a good deal of pressure to bear upon the parties, and frequently with the assistance of the judge, who will call into his room counsel who are engaged in the case, a quite reasonable compromise solution can be worked out which will in fact have the result of protecting the hirer, who, under the new arrangements, will now pay £400 or £500 and get nothing for it.
The noble Lord does not really seem to have faced up to the grievous position which this Bill is going to initiate if there is not some sort of protection. If the noble Lord will not help me, I cannot carry this any further and must ask leave to withdraw it; but the matter will be obvious in the eyes of the public because it will deprive the man in the street of a good deal of protection.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.27 p.m.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH moved, after Clause 17 to insert the following new clause:
County Court jurisdiction.
. Section 39 of the County Courts Act 1959 (which prescribes the general jurisdiction of County Courts in actions of contract and tort) shall have effect in relation to hire-purchase agreements and credit-sale agreements to which the principal Act applies and conditional sale agreements to which section 17 of this Act applies as if for the reference to £400 there were substituted a reference to £2,000 or such larger sum as may from time to time be specified in any Order in Council made under section 1(3) of this Act."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that Amendment No. 41 be agreed to. I moved this Amendment upon the Committee stage of the Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn said that he would consider this matter. I have no indication of what the result of his consideration may be, so I think I had better state the case once more, unless I understand that he is going to accept it, in which case I will not weary the House with it.
As the Bill stands at the present moment, jurisdiction with regard to hire-purchase and credit-sale agreements is vested in the county court up to the sum of £400, which is the normal limit of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is also vested in the county court where proceedings are taken to recover a vehicle. Other cases where the amount involved is over £400 will be dealt with in the High Court. Therefore, there will be two separate jurisdictions dealing with matters relating to hire-purchase. I think this is intrinsically undesirable, and in any event there are good reasons why the county court should be the tribunal to deal with questions of this kind. It is already the tribunal because of the limitation as to the hire-purchase and credit-sale agreements which are subject to statutory control. County court judges already have experience of dealing with these cases, and I believe that they deal with them in an extremely satisfactory way.
It is a fundamental principle with regard to this Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, said in an earlier discussion upon some other Amendment, that the whole purpose of this legislation is to protect the hirer because of his comparative weakness and his lack of knowledge. That is a good reason

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why the county courts should deal with these matters: because the procedure there, unlike that in the High Court, is relatively simple and the general public have some idea of what it is.
I am sure that those of us who are accustomed to the practice of law have all had experience of writs being issued in the High Court and served upon people who are not very well off and are inexperienced in business transactions. They do not realise what has happened. They think that they will receive a summons to attend the court, and that nothing will be done until they receive an intimation as to the date of the hearing—which of course is the normal practice in the county courts. The practice in the High Court, of course, is entirely different, and although it is true that a writ of summons in the High Court has upon it information that if one wants to defend proceedings one can write to obtain a form, fill it up and send it in, many people who receive documents of that kind fail to understand them and thus do not get the protection to which they are entitled. I know there is a procedure whereby, when judgment has been signed in default, it is possible in certain cases to have a judgment set aside and the matter reopened. But the normal practice in such cases is that the applicant has to pay the costs of the application. The whole thing is far too complicated, far too strange and difficult for the great majority of people who enter into—and who will in the future enter into—hirepurchase transactions which are within the scope of the statutory protection.
The noble Lord in charge of the Bill, when I moved this Amendment on the last occasion, gave a perfectly clear statement of what the law is at the present moment, with which I do not disagree at all; but he put forward no argument against this Amendment, and he promised that he would give it consideration. Therefore, I hope that it will be accepted. My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 17, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Douglas of Barloch.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Douglas or Barloch, said that if I could accept the Amendment
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he would not continue with his speech. I would willingly have done so had we been able to complete our consideration. As I said before, we have considerable sympathy with this point, and I am confident that we shall be able to go some way, at any rate, to meet the purpose of his Amendment. But I am afraid that I am bound to say that we have not yet completed consideration of this matter and shall not be able to do so before this Bill passes through this House. I am very much obliged to him for the way in which he moved his Amendment to-day, and I hope that with the assurances I have given he will agree to withdraw his Amendment.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I was interested in this matter, as I think was the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, and we both raised it during the Second Reading debate. I have to confess that I stopped following this trail on the strength of what the Minister said in his reply to that debate —[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 253 (No. 15) col. 1193.] He said that if the noble Lord, Lord Peddie
"looks at Sections 11 and 12 of the principal Act he will find that these cases are cases which are to be taken in county courts; and that, I am informed, covers the cases that will emerge, despite the increase in the limit, just as much as the cases below the normal limit for county courts."
I have heard matters expressed more clearly, but I took that, and still read it, as indicating that the Minister was at any rate on that occasion entirely in sympathy with the principle of this Amendment. I certainly hope that this is so.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, perhaps I had better say a word on this because I am primarily responsible for county courts. I have listened to what my noble friend has said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch. I myself would say that I certainly think more consideration ought to be given to this question before any firm commitment about enlarging county court jurisdiction to this extent is entered upon. The whole question of raising the limits of county court jurisdiction is a matter which has to be under consideration, and this

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would be only one part of that particular problem. In relation to that problem, as indeed to this, one has to consider and bear in mind the heavy burden of work which now falls upon the county courts. One really does not want to overload the county courts with work. But I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch, for the tribute he paid to the way in which the work is done in the county courts, although I cannot join with him in his reflections upon High Court procedure.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor for some of what he has said. However, he is perhaps not so well acquainted with some sides of High Court procedure as I am, as he happens to be a barrister and not a solicitor. Therefore I am not going to withdraw what I said about it. I have the highest respect for procedure in the High Court of Justice, but I do not consider that it is appropriate to this particular kind of business. I want to submit, with all respect, that this is not a matter which should be deferred to some future consideration of what are generally the limits of jurisdiction in the county court. That would probably defeat the whole object and purpose of this Amendment, which is to help a class of litigant who is inexperienced and deserves to be protected by having both a tribunal which is accustomed to dealing with matters of this kind, and a tribunal in which, by and large, the costs are smaller and the expenses of litigation are less. These are all matters which deserve very serious consideration indeed.
I want to make just one further point. It is perfectly true that, if this Amendment were accepted, it would raise the jurisdiction of the county court in this particular class of case above its normal limit. But there is not necessarily anything anomalous or unusual in giving to the county court an exclusive jurisdiction in some particular kind of matter. Upon the Committee stage I referred by way of example to something which now, of course, is obsolete, and that is that under the Workmen's Compensation Acts the county court was the tribunal and it mattered not what was the amount involved; it was the sole and only tribunal.
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I submit that that ought to be so in the present case.
I want to point out that I am not averse to the Minister's having more time to consider this, but this matter was raised long before it was raised by means of an Amendment here. Representation was made by the Law Society for this Amendment to be made to the Bill, and a recent memorandum was presented in support of that. I feel strengthened in my conviction that this is a proper Amendment, in that it has been supported by the Law Society whose members have a great deal of experience in the practical operation of these matters. But I will, in view of what has been said—
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before the noble Lord withdraws his Amendment, I wonder whether the Government could give any indication of whether they can give us a reply on Thursday, because this is quite a change from the understanding of this House in regard to court procedure. The noble Lord the Minister—I think he was quoted by my noble friend Lord Airedale—made it quite clear that the county courts will have jurisdiction, and it was for that reason that we did not press the previous Amendment. I think the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would agree that there is not only the question of the hire-purchase companies themselves requiring to go to court, whether it be the county court or the High Court, but it may well be that it is a hirer who has to go to court for redress. In view of the uplifting of the amounts which are covered by the Bill, we may well find that a hirer, in order to take action, has to go to the High Court. If that is the case, taking into account the charges involved and the time, I think it would be very undesirable; and, before this Bill leaves us and goes to another place, I hope the Government will be in a position to make a statement on this very important matter.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, if I may speak again, may I say that what I was trying to talk about—and I agree that, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, I was not as clear as I should have been on the Second Reading of the Bill—was whether, because of the extension from £400 to £2,000 in cases of repossession under Section 12 (that is,

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those where one-third of the price has been paid, and this is what I was thinking about), those cases would come under the county court or not. The information I gave to the House, based on the advice I was given, was that they would automatically come under it, because as Section 12 of the Act is drafted these are matters for the county court. What the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch, was talking about first of all were cases where one-third had not been paid, and which are not subject to Section 12 of the Act. So that is one type of case. Then there are the cases of contract, tort, damages and the like, separate from them, which also arise. I am sorry I cannot go further than I have gone today, but the matter has not yet been fully cleared, and I should be grateful to your Lordships if you would leave it open for the time being. I will do my best to be able to say something about this on Third Reacting, but I should not like to make a promise.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, I do not want to detain the House. I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.42 p.m.
LORD MCNAIR LORD MCNAIR moved, after Clause 19, to insert the following new clause:
Size of type of prescribed document
". All agreements, statements, notices and other documents required or prescribed by this Act or the principal Act shall either be typewritten clearly and legibly or be printed in type of a size not less than the type known as ten point Times."
The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, I am moving this Amendment subject to the deletion of the last word, "Times". I have already spoken twice on the subject dealt with in this Amendment, and I do not propose, at this hour of the night, to repeat my arguments. But, for the sake of the record, and in order to convince your Lordships that this is not a capricious Amendment but is designed to remove a substantial defect, I wish to convey to the House an expression of judicial opinion upon the practice of printing so many hire-purchase agreements in a type that makes it practically impossible for the hirer to react them.
I refer to the case entitled Lowe v. Lombank, Limited, which was decided
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in the year 1961 by a strong Court of Appeal consisting of two present Members of your Lordships' House—the noble and learned Lords, Lord Goddard and Lord Upjohn—and Mr. Justice Diplock, now Lord Justice Diplock. It was the case of the purchase of a motor car by means of hire-purchase by a widow, aged 65. Lord Justice Diplock, in delivering the judgment of the Court, which was concurred in by his two colleagues, referred twice to the character of the print in the hire-purchase agreement. He said that:
"under modern conditions many transactions, particularly of hire-purchase, are entered into by ignorant persons whose only choice is either not to enter into the transaction at all or to enter into it on the terms of a standard agreement, drafted by the hire-purchase company, and containing numerous clauses printed in miniscule characters which the hirers do not in fact read, and if they did, would be incapable of understanding."
The Court of Appeal, in giving judgment in favour of the widow for damages for breach of statutory conditions stated in the Act of 1938, rejected the contentions of the motor dealer in these words. This was again said by Lord Justice Diplock:
"We reach this conclusion without reluctance, for Clause 9(ii)"—
of the agreement—
"is clearly an attempt, which only the size of the print in which it is set out prevents one calling it blatant, to evade the provisions of Section 8(2) and 8(3) of the Hire Purchase Act, 1938."
I think there is a good deal of sympathy in many quarters in this House for the view that something ought to be done to ensure that the hire purchaser should at any rate have a decent chance of being able to read an agreement before he enters into it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 19 insert the said new clause.—(Lord McNair.)
9.44 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, no one for one instant would ever accuse the noble Lord of moving a capricious Amendment; and I would immediately say that I think there is a very great deal of force in the purpose of this Amendment. At the same time I would just say that I am advised by the experts that the size of the print alone is not enough. Noble Lords themselves will quickly

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realise that if Hansard were printed right across the width of this Box in the same print as it now is, it would be completely illegible. The length of the line is important; the colour of the paper and the type used is important. The clarity of the type face is important; and I am actually told that there are some 9-point types bigger than 10-point Times. All these things are important. Having said all that, though I do not think the actual wording of this Amendment should be accepted, I would willingly accept the principle of the Amendment; although I am inclined to think that it would be better to do this by regulation rather than by inserting an actual provision in the Bill. But certainly we will do something about this and put it into the Bill at the next stage.
LORD MCNAIR: My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister. I should like to know whether I am right in thinking that on Thursday of this week we shall be able to put an Amendment in the Bill before we vote upon it at Third Reading.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I should not like to give an undertaking on that. In any case, it would mean it would have to be a starred Amendment that would appear on the Order Paper only that day. But if the noble Lord will agree to accept such an Amendment—if it is possible to put it down—I will certainly see whether it can be done.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, was not this Amendment put down at the Committee stage of the Bill? Surely the Government have had time already to put down their Amendment to cover it. I think the Minister said that something would be done by the time the Bill reached another place. Surely, when noble Lords have raised matters about which they are concerned, it is due to them that these matters should be dealt with before the Bill leaves this House.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, if I may speak again, we would willingly have done this, had it been possible, and had the number of Amendments of this type put down been smaller. The more Amendments put down, the more difficult it is to get the drafting done before Report stage; and, as the noble Lord is well aware, taking the Bill a little
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earlier on Report stage than we otherwise expected to do has made it more difficult for us.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I have some sympathy with the Government on this matter, strange as it may seem. The relation of type size to the width between lines and width of column, the quality of paper used, and so on, are difficult subjects, as those of us who have edited papers over many years, as I have done, know. I am sure that the Minister is right. We cannot put this in an Act. As the noble Lord has indicated, it is proposed to provide regulations to deal with type faces. I do not think it matters whether it is 10-point or 9-point on 10 body or 8-point on 10, so long as we get it clear.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I have indicated what we proposed to do. I expect we shall do this by regulation rather than by putting it into the Bill.
LORD MCNAIR: My Lords, I understand that the Minister accepts the principle underlying this, and, for my part, I do not mind whether it is done in the Act or by empowering the Board of Trade to make regulations. What I do ask for is an assurance that, if the Minister is not able on Thursday to put down the necessary Amendment, he will at any rate see to it that such an Amendment is introduced into the Bill by the Government in another place.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, my Lords, I certainly give that assurance. In this case, it would be difficult for noble Lords to see the Amendment be-for it comes back here again, but obviously, in due course, they will see the Amendment.
LORD MCNAIR: I am agreeable.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 21 [Extension to Scotland of provisions of Part 1]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, as your Lordships are aware, the purpose of Part II of the Bill is to bring the law of Scotland into line with that of England and Wales. This Amendment to the Scottish provisions of the Bill corresponds to the Amendment, which I moved during the Report stage last Thursday, to insert a new clause exempting from

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the Acts agreements under which the hirer or buyer is a corporate body. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 22, line 2, after ("sections") insert ("section (Exclusion of bodies corporate)").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, perhaps it may be convenient if I take Amendments Nos. 41C and 41D together. The purpose of these two Amendments is to bring Clause 21(g) more closely into line with Clause 16(1), as amended. The first Amendment limits the application of the clause, so far as credit-sale agreements are concerned, to those exceeding £20. The second Amendment corresponds to that which was moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, and which I accepted. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 23, line 11, leave out from first ("agreement") to ("and") in line 12 and insert ("to which the Act of 1938 applies or relating to a credit-sole agreement to which that Act applies under which the total purchase price exceeds £20").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 23, line 17, at end insert ("or the making of the hire-purchase agreement or credit-sale agreement whichever is the later").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD had given notice to move to leave out Clause 22. The noble Lord said: My Lords, on Committee stage I sought to delete Part III from the Bill and I think I mounted a fairly formidable case, or, at least, one sufficient for the Government to reconsider their case. I understand that the Government are not yet able to make a statement or to deal with some of the suggestions that are being made by those interested in car finance. In those circumstances, I do not propose to move this Amendment or Nos. 44 to 47 inclusive, but to leave it to the other place to deal with the matter.
Clause 23 [Protection for purchaser from apparent owner]:
9.57 p.m.
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved, in subsection (5), after "pledge" to insert:
"and any contract whereby the purchaser undertakes to execute repairs or improvements to the vehicle".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment would extend the protection of Clause 23 to motor-vehicle repairers who complete work in quite good faith but find themselves in circumstances where they cannot enforce the usual lien against the owner largely because the hire-purchase agreement has been determined other than automatically or by notice before the hirer delivers the vehicle for repair.
On Committee stage, the noble Lord in charge of the Bill said that the protection which I wished to confer upon repairers by this Amendment already exists in law, but I am advised that this is not so. I should like the noble Lord to elaborate on the point he made on Committee stage. As I understand it, if the hire-purchase agreement had been determined by the owner, the authority to have the repairs carried out would have been lost. But the repairer need not be aware of the determination of the agreement. This is a point that I felt was not adequately answered by the noble Lord on Committee stage, although he indicated that he would be prepared to reconsider the matter. In moving this Amendment I shall be appreciative of any information he can give the House as a result of his further examination. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 27, line 7, after ("pledge") insert the said words.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to support this Amendment. It may be that this is not a convenient place to fit this matter into the Bill and that it is not altogether reasonable to limit it to motor vehicles. But there is a substantial point here. I think the noble Lord who is in charge of the Bill said that if he could be persuaded that there was any real legal doubt on this point he would, in effect, agree that protection ought to be given to the repairer. I hope that his legal advisers have looked at this matter, because not only am I satisfied that there is a point here, but I have consulted both a barrister with much experience of this type of work

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and a solicitor who is possibly as conversant with it as anybody in London, and I have also consulted what I think most people regard as being the most up-to-date and authoritative textbook on the subject, namely, that of Mr. Goode on Hire-Purchase and Practice; and everybody agrees that there is a real question here.
If I may explain it shortly, the point is that against the owner of a car, a washing-up machine, or whatever it may be, who takes it into the repairer's to be repaired, the repairer has what lawyers call a lien that is, a right to hold on to the article in question until he gets paid for the work that he has done. But, of course, if the article does not belong to the man who lodged it there, but to somebody else—the man has perhaps stolen it, or something of that kind—then the repairer has no right to retain it against the true owner. In the ordinary hire-purchase cases—and the noble Lord is quite right on this from the legal point of view—the hirer has the implied authority, and sometimes the express authority, of the owner to carry out the necessary repairs; that is, to take it to a garage, or whatever it may be, to get the repairs done. In that case, the garage owner or the other repairer obviously has a lien. But the case which involves difficulty is the case where the garage proprietor has no reason at all to know that there is a hire-purchase agreement.
Cases like Albemarle Supply Co. v. Hind, which is the leading case (and no doubt one on which the noble Lord's advisers were relying) do not apply in a case where the repairer has no knowledge whatever that there is a hire-purchase agreement. In the case which the noble Lord, Lord Peddie, made, where there is no longer a hire-purchase agreement, because it has been cancelled but the man retains possession of the motor car or the washing-up machine, and takes it to be repaired, the repairer thinks, "Here is a man who owns a car" and takes it in and repairs it. In those circumstances, Mr. Goode says (and all the other lawyers think the same) that it is very doubtful whether the repairer has a lien. If the noble Lord agrees that this matter is even in real doubt, then I gather from what he said
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on the last occasion, that somewhere in this Bill a protection to the repairer ought to be inserted. If the noble Lord thinks that this is the wrong place, or even if they are the wrong words, I hope he will nevertheless agree with me that this is a matter which ought to be put right in this Bill, and that, if it is not done here, he will undertake to do so in another place.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, the two noble Lords who have spoken to this Amendment have said in the nicest possible way that they think I was wrong in what I said on the Committee stage. I think to some extent I did mislead the House, and for that I tender my apologies. I am glad to have this opportunity to make my position clear as regards this Amendment. But it does not follow that the Amendment itself should be accepted. I am told that in the ordinary case, when a vehicle subject to a hire-purchase agreement is taken in for repair, the repairer can exercise a lien as against the legal owner should the cost of the repairs not be met. So the law already protects the repairer in the great majority of cases.
The noble Lord, Lord Peddie, has made it clear that he is concerned with the position of the repairer who cannot exercise a lien because the hire-purchase agreement has been determined, for some reason or another (I think this is the point), before the hirer handed over the vehicle for repair. The protection afforded by Clause 2 operates only if, at the time when the vehicle is disposed of to the purchaser, the registration hook is improperly in the hands of the hirer. A purchaser for the purposes of the clause is a person to whom the vehicle is disposed of by way of sale or hire-purchase, or by way of bill of sale or pledge. All these are cases where the title to the goods passes, or may pass, immediately or at some future date, to the purchaser, and therefore the registration hook, though not a document of title, is very relevant to this type of transaction, since it, too, will or may pass to the purchaser. If the hirer is improperly in possession of it, a purchaser may well be misled into thinking that the vehicle is free from any hire-purchase commitment, and that the hirer is in a position to pass title to it.

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But I do not think that the disposal of possession of a vehicle to a garage owner for repair is in the same category at all. The garage owner, at most, will be able to retain possession of the vehicle pending the payment of his charges and, generally speaking, his lien does not carry with it any right to sell the vehicle. I doubt very much whether garage owners would, in, fact, ever demand production of the registration book before carrying out repairs to a vehicle. It is not normally the practice for registration books to be carried in vehicles in this country. In fact, the registration book itself carries a warning against carrying it in the vehicle. Therefore, even if a garage owner were prepared to ask for the registration book, a person who lived at some distance would have a perfectly good excuse for not producing it. I think the clause should be confined to those types of disposition where the purchaser might be expected to see or to obtain the registration book, and might, therefore, be misled into improper possession of it by the hirer. The noble Lord said that in that case somewhere or another there should be in the Bill protection for the garage owner, and he has invited me to look at this again.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, may I interrupt the Minister for a moment? I am suggesting that this Amendment goes really wider than motor vehicles. No doubt I am responsible for the Amendment as it stands, but there are all sorts of other things which have to go to repairers to be repaired, and the problem of the lien exists right through. What I was suggesting was that the Minister should give up an undertaking to look at the whole subject again, not just on the basis of motor vehicles.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I shall be very willing to look at it again. The noble Lord will not expect me to give any commitment before I have looked at it, but I shall be glad to look at it, and I hope with that assurance the noble Lord will withdraw the Amendment.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, I appreciate the frank way in which the noble Lord opposite has dealt with this matter, and I am sure that no Member of this House would believe that there was any
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intention to mislead the House at this stage. In view of his assurance that he is willing to look again at this question, I have pleasure in withdrawing the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD DRUMALBYN LORD DRUMALBYN moved, after Clause 26, to insert the following new clause:
Extension of advertisements to which Advertisements (Hire-Purchase) Act 1957 applies
". In section 1 of the Advertisements (Hire-Purchase) Act 1957 (which provides that that Act applies to any advertisement which includes one or more of the elements mentioned in subsection (2) of that section) at the end of subsection (2) there shall be inserted the following paragraphs:—

(d) a fraction represented as being the rate of interest or rate of charge to be borne by the hirer or buyer in hiring or purchasing goods in accordance with the advertisement;

(e) a sum stated as the hire-purchase price or total purchase price of the goods';

and at the end of that section there shall be added the following subsection:—
'(4) For the purposes of this Act—

(a) a fraction stated in an advertisement shall be taken to be represented therein as mentioned in subsection (2)(d) of this section if it is stated in the advertisement in such a way that it could reasonably be understood to be so represented;

(b) a sum indicated in an advertisement (whatever the words used) as being the total amount which, on a hire-purchase or credit sale of any goods, would be payable by the hirer or buyer shall be taken to be stated therein as the hire-purchase price or total purchase price of the goods.'"

The noble Lord said: My Lords, there are five Amendments in my name to Part IV of the Bill, Nos. 48, 49, 51 and 52, and it may be helpful if I take them together and explain what they are designed to do. As I explained on the Second Reading, Part IV of the Bill amends the Advertisements (Hire-Purchase) Act, 1957, to deal with two matters to which the Molony Committee have drawn attention. The first was that the 1957 Act requires that advertisements which contain details of payment shall give a variety of information but does not require the advertisements to do the arithmetic and state the hire-purchase price or total purchase price. The second point was that advertisements could quote hire-purchase charges as a rate of interest in ways which might

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lead the customer to think the rate was lower than it really was.
The provisions of Part IV of the Bill deal with both these points. So far, so good. But, since the Second Reading, we have been considering this part of the Bill to see whether it can be improved, particularly bearing in mind certain points which the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, then made. The Amendments which stand in my name are the result. They are, I think it is fair to say, the follow-up of the changes which Part IV is already introducing into the 1957 Act; and this is what they do.
First, there is the new clause after Clause 26. As the Act now stands, the inclusion in an advertisement of the hire-purchase price or of a rate of interest would not in itself bring the advertisement within the scope of the Act. We think that it should. May I suggest two examples? An advertisement which says that particular goods were available on hire-purchase at "only 5 per cent." could be quite as misleading as one which also included more detailed information about the hire-purchase terms, the deposit or the instalments. Again, an advertisement which said, "Cash price £60, hire-purchase price £65" could seem very attractive to anyone who assumed he would have a couple of years in which to pay, but would look very different if it also said that the duration of the agreement would be only a couple of months. Section 1(2) of the 1957 Act sets out the "elements" which, if included in an advertisement, bring it within the scope of the Act. The new clause adds two more elements, thus bringing within the Act any advertisement which indicates a rate of interest, or the hire-purchase price or total purchase price. The second change is introduced by the Amendment to Clause 27, page 28, line 38. This deals with the following point. Although as a result of Clause 27 of the Bill an advertisement which contains details of payment will now be required to state the hire-purchase price, an advertisement which stated only the hire-purchase price would not be required to give the other essential information. What this Amendment does is to bring any advertisement which contains hire-purchase
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price or total purchase price into the category of advertisements, which contain details of payments. Such advertisements are required by the Act to give full details of the terms. The Amendments to Clause 28 are consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 26, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, we have increased the financial level to which the Hire-Purchase Act applies from £5 to £20, but there is still the £5 limit applying to provisions of the Advertisement (Hire-Purchase) Act. This Amendment brings the latter into line, which on the face of it would seem a logical step. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 26, insert the following new clause:
Extension of advertisements to which the Advertisements (Hire-Purchase) Act 1757 does not apply
(". Section 1 of the Advertisement (Hire-Purchase) Act 1957 (which provides that that Act does not apply to an advertisement within the provisions of subsection (3) of that section) shall have effect as if in subsection (3)(b) thereof for the words ("five pounds") there were substituted the words ("twenty pounds.")".—(Viscount Hanworth.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, what this Amendment would do would be to exclude advertisements for such things as suits of clothes and transistor radio sets and the rest. It seems to me that, where these goods are being disposed of on hire-purchase, the reader of the advertisement is entitled to the kind of protection the Advertisement (Hire-Purchase) Act is designed to give, and I do not think it would be either right or logical to exclude these. There is no reason why there should not be parallelism here between the credit-sale arrangements and the Advertisement (Hire-Purchase) Act.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: My Lords, I am not wholly convinced by the Minister's argument, but I do not wish to press the Amendment and I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 27 [Information to be included in advertisements]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move the next Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 28, line 38, at end insert—
("(4) At the end of subsection (4) of that section (which defines an advertisement which contains details of payments) there shall be added the words 'or if it states a sum as the hire-purchase price or total purchase price of those goods'.").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH VISCOUNT HANWORTH moved to add to the clause:
"(4) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this section, where separate items of goods are offered for sale in one catalogue and such catalogue indicates the cash price of each item of goods thereby offered for sale, the fact that there is included in or appended to such catalogue a general statement to the effect that the goods thereby offered for sale may be purchased by hire-purchase or credit sale and giving information as to the terms on which the goods may be so purchased, shall not be construed as requiring the information specified in paragraph (g) of subsection (2) of the said section 2 as amended by this section to be given in respect of each item of goods in such catalogue."
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this is rather a peculiar Amendment since it is intended to assure the legality of a practice which has been in operation for many years. Under the terms of Section 2 of the Advertisement (Hire-Purchase) Act, 1937, advertisements of goods which can be bought by hire-purchase or credit-sale must give certain specified information about the terms. With the new addition included in Section 27 of the Bill which we are now discussing there are in all seven separate headings under which information is specified. These include, for example, the total number of instalments and the length of the period for which each instalment is payable.
Mail order catalogues contain a large number of items and show the cash price of each. Separately, however, from the advertisement for the specified goods there is often information on how they may be obtained on hire-purchase or credit-sale, and full particulars required by the Act are of course included. There appears to be some doubt as to whether from a strictly legal point of view each of the items in the catalogue should have the full price and hire-purchase and credit terms set out against each item. This of course is quite impracticable. I could paint a sorry picture
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of bodies corporate spending sleepless nights and rising in the morning with an anxiety to open their post, fearing that it contains a writ. But, in all seriousness, I would suggest that the Government could logically oppose this Amendment only on one or two grounds. They could say that they can clarify the legal position and consider the Amendment unnecessary, or they can propose to introduce a better Amendment at a later stage. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 28, line 38, at end insert the said subsection.—(Viscount Hanworth.)
10.15 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I can quite understand that those who produce catalogues which give the cash prices of a large number of articles do not want to find themselves having to give a lot of additional information in each case simply because, somewhere in the catalogue, there is a general statement of the hire-purchase or credit-sale terms that are available. But what is not clear is why this point arises particularly out of the new requirement, imposed by Clause 27, that an advertisement which, in the terms of the 1957 Act, contains details of payments must state the hire-purchase or total purchase price. This is not clear, and I think that the noble Viscount skirted around this a little in moving the Amendment.
It seems to me that the point must arise equally in relation to the other information which the Act already requires to be stated in these cases—that is, the amount of any deposit, the amount of the instalments and the total number of instalments and the period in respect of which each instalment is payable. This must arise equally on those. In this particular Amendment that has been moved the total purchase price—
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: Will the noble Lord excuse me for interrupting? I made this point quite specifically. I said that there were already six items which had to be included, and that this made only the seventh. I also pointed out that for a number of years the firms have possibly been breaking the law, and I raised this Amendment at this time only to try to regularise the position. I think that most of the argument of the Minister has been directed to

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trying to prove that I have suddenly brought this up because of this Bill. I have not done that at all. I thought I had explained why.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I see. What the noble Lord is anxious to do is to put a practice which was doubtfully in order completely in order.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: That is precisely so.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am advised that there should be no difficulty—on the contrary, in fact—about mail order companies complying with the law by adjusting the information they give. It may be rather more complicated. The table at the end of their book may be more complicated, but I am advised that it should be possible for them to bring their practice into line with the law, rather than the law into line with their practice.
VISCOUNT HANWORTH: I am sorry, but the thing is completely impracticable. If you look at a catalogue like this, containing some thousands of items, it simply is not practicable to put in the complete terms for which each item can be sold under hire-purchase or credit-sale terms. It would need about six or eight inches. If they are to carry on under this arrangement it is simply not practicable. I think the Minister should look at this most seriously.
LORD DRUMALBYN: If I may speak again, I am perfectly prepared to look at it again. I was not suggesting that alongside each single item this information should be set out separately. What I was suggesting was that it would possibly be within the law to make out a table at the end that would enable people to calculate this information in a way which would comply with the Act.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 28 [Information as to rate of interest or charge]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 29, line 4, leave out from ("contains") to ("shall") in line 8 and insert ("a fraction represented as mentioned in section 1(2)(d) of this Act").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 29, line 16, leave out ("stated") and insert ("represented").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 29, line 27, leave out subsection (3).—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 1 [Application of enactments to conditional sale agreements]:
LORD PEDDIE LORD PEDDIE moved to leave out paragraph 8. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is a probing Amendment. The 1938 Act deals with two types of agreement, namely hire-purchase and credit-sale agreements, and a third type is introduced in this Bill, namely a conditional sale agreement as defined in Clause 17. Parts I and II of Schedule 1 give further information about these agreements. Paragraph 8 of Part II of the First Schedule states that
"A conditional sale agreement shall be treated as not being a contract of sale for the purposes of sections 12 to 15 of the Sale of Goods Act 1893 (which imply certain conditions and warranties in contracts of sale)."
Section 8 of the principal Act sets out the implied conditions and warranties in hire-purchase agreements; and in regard to credit-sale agreements similar conditions and warranties are provided in Sections 12 to 15 of the 1893 Act. But it would appear that so far as conditional sale agreements are concerned no provision is made for implied conditions and warranties.
The purpose of this Amendment is to ask why this is so. It is quite certain that the general public will not appreciate the difference between a hire-purchase agreement and a conditional sale agreement, and on the face of it—I may be wrong—it looks as though they may be deprived of certain rights. Nothing appears to have been said about this important change in the law, and my purpose in moving the deletion of paragraph 8 of Part II is in order that an opportunity might be given to the Minister to clarify the position. My Lords, I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 14, leave out paragraph 8.—(Lord Peddie.)
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, as the law stands at present, a buyer under a conditional sale agreement will get the benefit under the Sale of Goods Act of certain implied conditions and warranties relating to the seller's title to the goods, to merchantable quality, to fitness of the goods for particular purposes, to the correspondence of the goods with any description or sample and to other matters; but these implied terms may be excluded if the agreement says so under the Sale of Goods Act. Since, by Clause 17 of the Bill, conditional sale agreements not exceeding £2,000 are henceforth to be treated in the same way as hire-purchase agreements, the buyer under such a conditional sale agreement will receive the same protection as though he were a hirer under a hire-purchase agreement, and so will get the benefit of the conditions and warranties to be implied in hi re-purchase agreements to which the 1938 Act applies.
Since these implied terms are generally more favourable to the buyer than those in the Sale of Goods Act, and since there are important limitations on the extent and manner in which they can be excluded in the agreement, the conditions and warranties implied by the Sale of Goods Act are no longer required for the protection of a buyer under a conditional sale agreement not exceeding £2,000. Paragraph 8 makes it clear that such a buyer is to have the greater protection of the Hire-Purchase Acts. If the Amendment were accepted, it would not be clear which of the statutory provisions relating to implied terms was to apply to conditional sale agreements within the scope of the Hire-Purchase Acts.
The noble Lord asks me why we have made these changes in regard to conditional sale agreements. The reason is quite simple: that it might have occurred to some owners or sellers that they could get round the hire-purchase provisions
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by having conditional sale agreements instead. For that reason, the conditional sale agreements are brought exactly into line with the hire-purchase agreements for the purposes of these Acts. I hope that this is a sufficient answer for the noble Lord. This is purely in order to prevent the evasion of the hire-purchase provisions.
LORD PEDDIE: My Lords, with that explanation, which at least to my mind clarifies the position, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 2 [Extension of Hire-Purchase Act, 1938, to Scotland]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential upon the Amendment to Clause 1(1) of the Bill, which is required in view of the new clause exempting from the Acts agreements under which the hirer or buyer is a corporate body. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 37, line 14, after ("shall") insert ("(except as provided by section (Exclusion of bodies corporate) of the Hire-Purchase Act, 1964").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Enactments amended]:
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this is consequential on Clause 1. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 51, line 4, column 2, at beginning insert—
("In section 1, after the word 'shall', in the first place where it occurs, there shall be inserted the words '(except as provided by section (Exclusion of bodies corporate) of the Hire-Purchase Act 1964)'").—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty-seven minutes past ten o'clock.