Lords Sitting of 10 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 Lincoln

SUNDAY ENTERTAINMENTS ACT, 1932
2.35 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD DERWENT): My Lords, this is one of the Orders, to which your Lordships are well accustomed, allowing cinema exhibitions on Sundays. I beg to move that this Order be approved. Moved, That the order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Rural District of Tiverton, be approved.—(Lord Derwent.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

EPISCOPAL CHURCH (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

NAVY, ARMY AND AIR FORCE RESERVES BILL
2.36 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, this is a short and relatively simple Bill. It is, nevertheless, an important one, since it will materially affect the ability of our Armed Forces to react in time and in the numbers required to future emergencies. Recent events have merely confirmed what all of us already knew: that in this world of change—and change which is all too often of a violent character—such emergencies could steal upon us very quickly; and we have to be ready, to the best of our ability, to meet these emergencies.
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This Bill is the product of a thorough review of our Reserve Forces requirements which has been undertaken in recent months by the three Services. As your Lordships are aware, we have now gone over to all-volunteer active forces. Nevertheless, a large part of the Reserves now available consist of National Servicemen who are either doing their part-time service or discharging their liability under the 1954 Reserves Act, which was extended until June, 1964. Hence we are now relying on, and will for some time continue to rely on, trained Servicemen now in civil life who are the products of National Service. That said, the primary aim of this recent inter-Service review was to prepare a plan which will reduce and eventually remove—when, is still open to question—our dependence on those Reserves which resulted from National Service.
As I have just mentioned, our Reserve requirements have been reviewed on an inter-Service basis. However, as one would expect with a Bill which is concerned with reserve manpower, the Army inevitably has the major stake here. I therefore feel that, before I turn to the three substantive clauses of this new Bill, it might be helpful if I were briefly to remind your Lordships of the structure and purposes of the Army's Reserve. I do so with some diffidence, as I realise that the further I come ashore, the more likely I am to find myself at sea.
It is obvious that if we are to place our reliance upon an all-Regular, all-volunteer, and relatively small Army, it is vital that that Army should be backed by adequate Reserves. There are at present three main tasks for the Reserves supporting the Regular Army. The first is to provide reinforcements for a limited war. For this, apart from the "Ever-readies," of whom a little more anon, Section "A" of the Regular Reserve and Category I of the Army Emergency Reserve are available. Both of these Reserves have what is called a pre-Proclamation liability: they can be called out without recourse to a Proclamation. There is no precise Navy equivalent here, but the Royal Air Force equivalent is part of Category I of Class "E" of the R.A.F. Reserve. The second main task of the Army Reserves

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is to bring B.A.O.R. up to war strength. The third is to provide for the home defence of the United Kingdom. These two latter requirements would clearly develop only in a very grave situation, and it is a reasonable assumption that a Proclamation would be required for them. This would make available for service at home and overseas all the other Reserves—Sections "B" and "D" of the Regular Reserve, the Territorial Army, the remainder of the Army Emergency Reserve and the Army General Reserve. This is the broad picture which I would now invite your Lordships to examine in a little more detail.
To take first the Regular Reserve, Section "A" consists in the main of men who have just left the Colours. At present they are required to do a year's compulsory service in Section "A", though quite a number volunteer to stay on for longer. They can be recalled without a Proclamation. The rôle of this Reserve is, broadly speaking, to bring the Strategic Reserve and theatre reserves up to war strength. They would go as individuals, and as they are fully trained they would quickly fit back into the sort of Regular units in which they have recently served. The other two elements of the Regular Reserve are Sections "B" and "D", which can be called out for service overseas only after a Proclamation. They are, in general, men who pass through Section "A" and are either completing the balance of their normal Reserve duty in Section "B" or, having done so, have volunteered to remain in the Regular Reserve. In that case, they pass on to Section D". In an emergency, these Reserves would be used extensively for the reinforcement of B.A.O.R.
Next there is the Territorial Army. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for War spoke recently in another place of the three basic rôles of the Territorial Army. These rôles, which relate to the threat of general war, are the reinforcement of the Regular Army overseas, and particularly Rhine Army; aid to the civil power and support of the Regular Army in the United Kingdom; and, finally, the provision of a framework on which general preparations for war can be built up. The Territorial Army is an absolutely indispensable element in the Army's Reserves.
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Our review of future Reserve requirements, to which I referred just now, has more than confirmed this, and two of the outcomes of this review were recently mentioned by my right honourable friend in answer to a Parliamentary Question in another place. From 1965 the Territorial Army will be required to provide larger numbers of reinforcements for B.A.O.R. than hitherto, and thus the Territorial Army will be even more widely involved than at present in the reinforcement and support of Rhine Army.
Further, studies of the conditions which would prevail in the early stages of a nuclear emergency have shown that the Territorial Army ought to be trained to deal with outbreaks of fire; and the civil defence training which infantry and gunner units now do every fourth year will in future include this. These measures will give the Territorial Army added relevance to the threat of general war. Within the T.A. there is also the Territorial Army Emergency Reserve—the "Ever-readies". This, as your Lordships know, is the most readily available of all our Army Reserves—more so than either section "A" of the Regular Reserve or Category I of the Army Emergency Reserve. The Secretary of State for War has power to call the "Ever-readies" for service anywhere without any limitations if he considers the circumstances warrant it. There is no doubt about the value of this Reserve. It is likely to increase, rather than diminish, in the future, in the international conditions with which we are likely to be faced.
I have already mentioned the Army Emergency Reserve. This is in two parts, and in the main consists of formed units of a specialist and administrative nature. Category I, which has the pre-Proclamation liability, is part of the limited war order of battle and Category II would become available after a Proclamation—but only after a Proclamation—to reinforce the Rhine Army. These specialist units will have a very important part to play in any emergency. Finally, until 1966, part-time National Servicemen are available, and since 1954 there has been the Army General Reserve. This Reserve is needed primarily for the reinforcement of the Territorial Army for home defence in a grave emergency though some men

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from this Reserve would be needed to reinforce the Rhine Army. At present there are over a million men in this Reserve—far more than we need.
My Lords, this brings me to Clause 1 of the new Bill. This extends the application of the 1954 Act for another five years—from June, 1964, until 1969. The application of the clause is, however, confined to those who completed their liability under the National Service Act, 1948, after December 31, 1962. The effect of this extension, in one degree, and restriction in another, will be to release about 1½ million men of all three Services from their liability, and to leave in, roughly speaking, trained men of about 25 years of age. The numbers of these will rise until 1966, as the balance of part-time National Servicemen complete their National Service liability and so come into this Reserve; thereafter the numbers will fall. The effect of this clause will be to provide until 1969 a Reserve for the Army of up to about 160,000, which we consider will be large enough to match the Army's foreseen requirements. It will ultimately also provide 25,000 Naval reservists, about whom I shall be saying a little more in a moment. Finally, it will make liable for service some 34,000 R.A.F. Class "C" reservists.
We have been able to provide in this way for the release of a very large number of men from their liability under the 1954 Act by deliberately matching the future size of the Reserve to the foreseen requirements of the Army; and we are keeping in the Reserve the latest of those National Servicemen who complete whole or part-time National Service. I am sure that this is the right approach. These men will be required in a grave emergency, one in which mobilisation will be general. It will be a situation in which the country will have to call on every trained man to give his services in some form. Hence the greater a man's experience with the Forces and, more particularly the more recent that experience is, the greater will be the need for him to rejoin. Therefore we are aiming to catch by this new liability precisely those men whose experience is the greatest and most recent.
We could, of course, have adopted a different solution; but I am quite sure
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the one we have selected makes the most sense given the sort of liability which this Reserve has. My right honourable friend the Member for Woodford, when speaking as Prime Minister about the original Act, gave the undertaking that men in the Army General Reserve would be called out only in what he called "the gravest war emergency". This is the sort of situation with which we are concerned; and I am sure that the right answer is to retain in the Reserve, as we hope we shall do under this Bill, the youngest and most recently trained National Servicemen. I am equally sure that it is right to reduce the present sprawling mass of this Reserve—which amounts over the three Services to something like 1½ million men—to more manageable, if still sizable, proportions.
As I have already said, Clause 1 will essentially apply to some 25,000 Naval reservists as well. These are men in the Royal Naval Special Reserve, which is, of course, the Navy's equivalent to the Army General Reserve. We feel that this number will meet the Navy's requirements; but those requirements are, in fact, under review at the present time. The men to be released from their Reserve obligations—this number of almost 1½ million—will be released from the day on which this Bill receives the Royal Assent.
So much for the shorter-term position, covering the period from 1964 until 1969. We must, of course, look further to the future than that. It would be open to the Government of the day, whatever its political complexion, to extend the Act again in 1969. I would not wish to pre-judge that decision as I would not wish to prejudge the political complexion of the Government of that day. I would merely point out that, even then, the average age of these ex-National Service Reservists would not be more than about thirty. However, be that as it may, we cannot possibly do it now. We clearly need to think in terms of a longer-term plan which is not dependent on National Service or its after effects. The answer, in the case of the Army, is to start building up as soon as possible a Reserve of ex-Regulars which will be ultimately large enough to provide all the reinforcements we foresee we require. This is the purpose of Clause 2 of the Bill, which applies only to the Army. This clause provides for the creation of a long-term

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Reserve of ex-Regular soldiers who have completed their Colour and Regular Reserve service.
I would emphasise that this clause applies only to men enlisting after the Bill comes into force. It would clearly be wrong for a soldier to be given a liability which he had not taken on himself voluntarily when he enlisted. Therefore, except in the case of volunteers under Clause 2, this new liability will apply only to those coming into the Army after the Act is passed. What is more, it will be made absolutely clear to the recruit, when he signs on, precisely what he is letting himself in for by way of Reserve liabilities. There are, in fact, existing statutory requirements which oblige us to make certain that this is done, and these will be carefully observed. Instructions will also be issued to recruiting officers that they must particularly ensure that recruits have the terms of their new Reserve liability carefully explained to them and that they are fully understood by the potential recruit. There is no question therefore of recruits who sign on after this Bill receives the Royal Assent being unaware of this additional liability which they are incurring. At the same time, my right honourable friend is confident that this new liability will not be of such a nature as to discourage men from joining the Army. Clearly this is a point of great concern to recruits and one to which the War Office have given careful attention.
We must remember that this long-term Reserve will in due course take the place of the Army General Reserve and will be liable for recall in much the same conditions as those which apply to that Reserve. If these conditions arise, the conditions of the threat of general war, I believe that every man will wish to serve the country in the most effective way he possibly can, and this new Reserve will make it possible to get the best use out of men who have been through a period of very thorough military training.
This brings me to Clause 3, a clause which affects both the Army and the Royal Air Force. To take the Army first, I spoke earlier of the important rôle of Section "A" of the Regular Reserve in the event of a limited war and in the pre-Proclamation phase. The legal basis of this Reserve is an existing
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provision in the Army and Air Force Reserves Act, 1950, under which a man can be designated for special Section "A" liability after he has finished the active part of his engagement during the first year of his Reserve service. This applies only to his first year of Reserve service. A man who assumes liability for twelve years active and Reserve service and comes out after six years, has one year of his remaining six in the Special Reserve. He undertakes to accept this liability as part of the conditions under which he enlists. Volunteers are also accepted for this Reserve from Regular reservists.
Clause 3 provides powers to treble this special liability period from one to three years. We need these powers because the single year's term, notwithstanding the volunteer element, does not provide a sufficiently large Reserve for the Army's pre-Proclamation needs. However, although the clause gives power to designate for up to three years, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for War intends, provided the volunteer element in this Reserve is kept up and provided there is no drastic change in international circumstances and in our operational commitments, to designate men for two years only. Although that is the case, I think that it is sensible to provide for the possibility of designating for three years without coming back to Parliament. So far as the R.A.F. is concerned, the position is similar to that of the Army, except that in certain trades it will probably be necessary to designate men for Section "A" for the full period of three years. As with Clause 2, Clause 3 will apply only to men enlisting after the Bill comes into effect, and again this new liability will be made crystal clear to new recruits before they commit themselves.
Although the structure of our Reserves is somewhat complex, the Bill itself is relatively simple. I hope—not, I must confess, with vast confidence—that I have made its provisions reasonably clear to your Lordships. As I explained in the beginning, it is the legislative outcome, but not the only outcome, of some very careful thinking on the part of the Service Departments concerned and of the Government about our future Reserve requirements. It not

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only provides for the continuance of an essential Reserve to support the Army, and to a more limited extent the Navy, in the event of a threat of general war, but it also lays the foundations of a longer-term plan, which will eventually enable the Army to become independent of National Service reservists; and as I think we would all agree, that is the right thing to aim at. It is in our view—and I do not think this view was questioned in another place—an essential measure from the military point of view. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl Jellicoe.)
2.59 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, first of all, I must apologise to the noble Earl and to the House for my somewhat tardy arrival. Questions were dealt with rather more quickly than they normally are in our House.
EARL JELLICOE: There were not any.
LORD SHACKLETON: In that case, I must have been misinformed when I telephoned to get an estimate of the time when the noble Earl would begin his speech, but I apologise for not being here. As the noble Earl indicated, this is a fairly difficult Bill to understand, and I had to face the problem without the advantage which the noble Earl has of being able to ask somebody what parts of it meant. While one necessarily has in mind a fair knowledge of the general Reserve position, I must say that that part of the noble Earl's speech which I heard undoubtedly dealt concisely and with clarity with something which is difficult but extremely important.
It is a fact that we do not get enough opportunity to consider the situation of our Reserve Forces. On those rare occasions, we have a general debate on Defence or some particular matter. There are usually one or two of your Lordships who come in with a particular angle, such as the Territorial Army or one of the cadet forces, but it tends to get lost in the general consideration of some wide defence issue. We have this opportunity to-day of looking at this a little more closely, and I am glad
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to see that a number of noble Lords who will have some direct knowledge of what is going on in our Reserve Forces will be taking part in the debate.
In doing this, I think it is worth looking at the whole situation. Clearly the type of Reserve Forces and the need for them depend on the general size of the Regular Forces which are serving. If we have to-day the Territorial Army Emergency Reserve, the "Ever-readies" this is undoubtedly a consequence of shortage of manpower in the Forces. I think we should ask the Government, in considering this matter, how recruiting is going. This does not arise directly on the Bill now before us, but the Bill, to a large extent, arises directly out of it, and there are certain clauses to which I shall refer which make this quite clear.
We know that at the moment we have not adequate Armed Forces in terms of manpower. As the noble Earl made clear, in this matter we are directly concerned with discussing the strength of the Reserve Forces and of the Army: not because one would suggest for a moment that the various Reserves of the other Forces are not of extreme importance, but the particular problem rests with the Army. Ever since we failed to reach the target of 200,000, or even the figure of 180,000, we have been in difficulty. We have told the Government, perhaps not helpfully, but truthfully, that the nation was failing to provide the necessary manpower; and certain actions followed. We decided, thank goodness! to continue the size of our Gurkha Forces at the figure at which they stood of just under 15,000. None the less, if recruiting continues to decline at the present rate, the need for these Reserve Forces, and particularly in the pre-Proclamation stage, which is when we especially need them, will be greater. I wonder whether the noble Earl, when he comes to reply, could tell us something about the state of recruiting, because the figures I have show a drop varying between 20 and 50 per cent. on the previous year. We are now into the least promising time, and with a pay rise imminent, there may be people who, perhaps for mistaken reasons, will decide to wait to join the Armed Forces until they can come in at the new rate. Of course, when that new rate comes into force, it may be that there will be a certain flush; but as we know from previous occasions, the optimism that this generates, and

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which was so notable in the speeches of the Government spokesmen, is apt to give way to a much more cautious approach. So the first question I would ask in relation to the need for Reserves is what the Government feel about the possibilities on the recruiting side. It is absolutely imperative that we seek to attain the target of 180,000. As I have already indicated, some of the increased obligations that are being laid on the Reserve—for instance, Section "A" of the Army Regular Reserve—arise out of this.
It is not, I think, of much value to go into the total size of the particular Reserves, and there are difficulties in doing so. The two that I think of the greatest importance at the moment are the Section "A" Reserve and the Territorial Emergency Reserve, the "Ever-readies". I should like to press the noble Earl a little more on the subject of Ever-readies". It is very comfortable to have ceilings, and the Government go in for ceilings. We know that they go in for moving targets in relation to their total aims in recruiting. The target moves in exact relationship to the present estimate of what they are likely to get. But their estimates have been somewhat unsuccessful, and the target has moved with some rapidity. The ceiling, however, is more comfortable; and we did have a ceiling for the "Ever-readies". We gather that there are now about 4,000, and that there is a small waiting list. Would it not be as well to recruit more of these "Ever-readies"—after all, in this respect they are volunteers—rather than to increase the compulsory reserve liability in Section "A" of the Regular Forces from one year to two years? It may be that we need both, but we should like to know a little more about the present prospects and intentions of the Government with regard to the "Ever-readies".
There is one particular question I would ask now which I do not think has ever been answered satisfactorily. In the event of the Territorial Army Emergency Reserve being called up in a pre-Proclamation phase, what will be the effect on the Territorial units from which they come? One can see a difficult situation confronting a Government at a certain time. They may well be faced with the possibility of a general emergency, leading to a Proclamation, and having to decide whether to call up, pre-Proclamation, the Territorial Emergency
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Army Reserve, knowing that in doing so, although they will strengthen certain other forces—those that are already embodied and in an operational position—they will at the same time be lowering the efficiency of the units from which they come. I may have misunderstood this situation; but, if I have done so, so have other commentators. It would be useful to know how this situation is to be dealt with. It may be that there are noble Lords who, because of their connection with the Territorial Associations, will be aware of how this is being dealt with; but it is certainly a factor that is material to the effectiveness of these reserve forces.
I think that in the circumstances the Government are right to increase the period of liability of recall in the pre-Proclamation phase of the Section "A" Reserve. The noble Earl told us that he hoped that the Government would be able to keep it at two years. It may be that at this moment the Government are not able to answer these particular questions. But, impressed, as everbody must have been, by the efficiency and rapidity with which recent operations have been carried out, especially those in Africa; being aware of the very crucial stage in regard to Cyprus, and knowing that the strategic reserve is also very largely committed there (and may be even more largely committed in other parts of the world), have the Government contemplated making use of certain of these pre-Proclamation Reserves? If the noble Earl says that he cannot answer that question, I certainly shall not press him.
What we are trying to judge is how vulnerable our position is, because it may at any moment get worse, and once we call into service the comparatively limited pre-Proclamation Reserves then we clearly shall be in a difficult position. We know that there have been times in recent years when consideration has been given to some form of general mobilisation. I say no more on this point now, but in judging the adequacy of these reserves I think one is bound to have a special regard to the pre-Proclamation Reserves. The need for increasing them in any way possible seems to me to be very strong at the moment, for this reason. Dubious though we have been about the "Ever-readies", and difficult though it may be to combine

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them with efficiency within the Territorial Army, I should be interested to know why the Government appear to have been content with the figure of 4,000. They have not suggested that it is lack of volunteers; indeed, it was stated in another place that there was even a small waiting list.
I have very little to say about the other Regular reserves. One of the most controversial or, perhaps I should say, one of the most difficult aspects of this Bill relates to the Army General Reserve, the long-term reserve. It has been strongly argued in another place—and I should still like to put this question to the Government—that those National Servicemen who have already served an extra six months, and those National Servicemen who might be called upon to do so, should be exempted from the obligation to be members of the Army General Reserve. The numbers involved would not be very great. The arguments against this are also quite strong. One is that in a really grave national emergency we should want to call everybody we could. But on this question of fairness I would point out that in a situation where with the abolition of National Service, there is not very much fairness—where there is at least selective service, so far as the reserves are concerned—this is something that is a little more unfair than the rest. I should be interested to hear the noble Earl's reply. I am not pressing this point very hard, because I thought the Secretary of State for War, in the remarks he made in another place, made a very good case for doing what he did. None the less, there are still complaints, and I think it is up to the Government to justify their policy in this matter.
The noble Earl maintains that there is little danger that the decision to require Regulars enlisting after this Bill to accept a liability up to the age of 45 to recall in the Army General Reserve will affect recruiting. I rather wonder whether 45 is a very significant age. I think it is a pretty non-significant age, so far as the former National Serviceman is concerned. I cannot really believe that calling up these men, or even having their addresses, is going to help very much fifteen years after they have left the Forces. It may well be a period of five, ten or fifteen years. Certainly so far
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as the National Servicemen are concerned, they are not necessarily men with a deep military tradition, like, I think they are called, the outside Chelsea Pensioners—in other words, Army pensioners who clearly are so imbued with Army life that they would come back automatically and fulfil some useful rôle. It is for consideration, therefore, whether this Reserve should carry a liability up to the age of 45. I do not necessarily suggest that we should seek to amend this Bill, because it will always be open to the Government to take action: indeed, in a few years it will be necessary to have another Bill, and it will then be possible to look at the situation. After 1970, one will be able to judge what the effectiveness will be.
Apart from a promise that the Government and the Ministry of Defence will contrive at least to get the addresses of these men, they will otherwise know nothing about it. Therefore, I am wondering whether, in the long run, it would not be better to produce for the National Servicemen (perhaps they can use it already, though I rather assume not) something equivalent to the Section "D" Reserve; something which gives a financial incentive and produces an identifiable obligation, an obligation of a kind that men are quite often happy to have. It gives them a feeling that they are there, and they are prepared to do their duty. It may well be that something of that nature, and an expression of it, would be more valuable than an amorphous Army General Reserve.
I am well aware that the Government have taken steps to reduce the size of the Army General Reserve by cutting out all the pre-1962 National Servicemen. They are, in fact, doing a cleaning-up operation which is quite realistic. The noble Earl said that it is not possible (and he emphasised this with an eye on this side of the House) to commit any future Government on these matters. If there is one thing which must be apparent to us all, it is that we shall continue to need an Army for a very long time to come. Whether or not we have any general measure of disarmament, whether or not we are successful in getting rid of nuclear weapons, it will be a long time before the pacification and acceptance of stability in some of

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the former colonial areas can be regarded as secure. Whether these forces operate under British, Commonwealth, NATO or even UNO control, there will clearly be a need for a long-term policy, with regard not only to the serving forces but also to the Reserves.
It has been suggested that the Government have carried out some sort of a review of the position of the Reserves. I should have thought that this Bill was little more than a tidying-up operation. We certainly should not oppose it; in fact we regard most of the provisions as right. But there is a feeling, which one hears voiced all too frequently, that the Reserves, and especially the Territorial Army, are not as well supplied with equipment and are not given quite the opportunities for training they would like. Obviously, the decision to take Territorials abroad for their training is a wholly good one. I do not know what the cost of this is, but I think we all have a strong suspicion that when the time comes for the Minister of Defence or the separate Service Ministers, as it has been, to argue with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it will be found that it is on the Reserve Forces and the Territorial Army that some of the cuts have fallen.
I would make a plea to the noble Earl that he will do his utmost, and that the Government will do their utmost, to elevate all these Reserve Forces to a greater measure of responsibility and importance in the eyes of the country. I think we take them all much too much for granted, and I think that some sort of publicity on this as well as on their general recruiting will be of value. With those words, I would say that we on this side of the House are not proposing to oppose the Bill.
3.20 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I welcome this Bill, so far as it goes. My own doubt about it is that it does not go nearly far enough. The Bill, in fact, deals with the application of Acts passed years ago: for example, the Navy, Army and Air Force Reserves Act 1954, and other Acts passed in days gone by, although not so very long gone by. Indeed, the speech of the noble Earl who moved the Second Reading dealt with the traditional forms of reserves which our Army requires, the reserves
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for bush-fire operations, for replenishment of B.A.O.R. in case of war and for home defence. It was the sort of speech that a Minister would have made, and indeed has made in my hearing for many years past, to this House. He did not tell us anything about the Strategic Reserve and how this fits into the scheme of things. My impression is that, with one thing and another, the Strategic Reserve has been much depleted and probably hardly exists at all in this country, at all events as a reserve; though it may be earmarked in various parts of the world as part of the Strategic Reserve. It does not, in fact, any longer exist as a Strategic Reserve in one area.
As to recruiting, which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, referred to, I can give him some information on that as I have just got it from the Printed Paper Office. Apparently, so far as the Army is concerned, the latest figures that we have, which are for November last year, show that recruiting went down. Whereas, in November, 1962, the Army recruited 2,049 other ranks, in November, 1963, the figure dropped to 1,423—a very big drop indeed. In general, the strength of the Forces at December 1 last were these: Royal Navy and Royal Marines, including boys, 82,854—a rise from a year ago when it was 80,369; the Army 162,775, from 160,828 the year before; and the Royal Air Force, men and boys—a big drop here-111,500 from 116,935. So we can see that, on the whole, the Armed Forces are slightly down from what they were a year ago. The need for Reserves of one kind or another becomes highly apparent. We do not know what the new terms which the Government are proposing for the Armed Forces will bring forth; but, on the other hand, against that, there is of course the added responsibility for reserve service which the noble Earl has mentioned to-day. He has admitted that, as yet, the War Office cannot give any real sound indication as to its effect. It cannot give it because it has not yet been long enough in operation.
In the new situation there is a fourth need—and this is really the point I want to make—of which the noble Earl did not speak, and one which has just arisen for the first time in the last two or three months, which is why I doubt whether this Bill is really sufficient. The

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type of force needed is this. At a few hours' notice we are expected to send off and have sent off, forces—and I fully support the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, in this direction—to independent members of the Commonwealth to preserve law and order; in many cases to preserve the Governments and to preserve the very identity of the State either from infiltration, maybe of a Communist kind, maybe not, but often from the insurrection of their own Forces. This has never been contemplated before in the whole history of the British people. This is why I doubt whether this particular Bill will do much to help. It may do so, but I doubt it. The need is an immediate need. You cannot wait for Reserves to come in a nineteenth-century, leisurely way and be kitted up and phased into units, and so on. If forces can go immediately to a seat of trouble then, in all probability, the trouble will stop as we have seen in so many cases recently, within a few hours. If they cannot, then an extremely serious situation arises and there may be a shooting war on the spot by the time they get there. We need not think that this is going to be a once-for-all operation—"We have seen all that's needed, and that's the end of it". In my view there may be a number of these cases in future.
In a very interesting book, entitled The Man on Horseback, written about a year ago Professor Finer, a Professor at the University of Keele, analyses the military dictatorships throughout the centuries, particularly, of course, in modern times. He says in that book that, so far from being an exceptional mode of government, as we in our democratic system have been led to believe, it is the usual form of government over the surface of the world; and so far from its being less likely to take place in the future, it is more likely to take place in the future as the power and strength of modern weapons comes into force. In our own country, I think, undoubtedly we were saved from this situation because the aristocracy and the gentry who ruled the country for so long did one good thing, at all events, in that during the time when it was difficult to control an Army they did not have an Army. At that time the
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Army (a very small one at that) existed only from year to year and did not exist at all unless Parliament renewed it from year to year. Unless you have some tremendous check like that, which I think no other country in the world has, it is very difficult to see in modern days in many of these new or unstable States how a civil Power can control an Army—and this is the position which we have all to face and which we have to face in many Commonwealth Countries, because they are new and unstable, and it is our responsibility to go to help them.
Over fifty countries have become independent since 1945. I have not added up how many of them have become military dictatorships, but a considerable number of them have, particularly of course in Latin America and the Middle East. This is another example of the sort of case which we shall be faced with. This means that the Government—to use the phrase of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, the Government of whatever complexion that may be in power—in a year or so will have to face this question: how are they going to deal with a problem of this kind, which may become quite extensive? And it is an immediate problem. I am sure that all Parties are against general conscription and that all the Parties, officially, are against selective conscription. Therefore, it either means that we must have some new method of reserve which we have not yet evolved or it means we must have a Commonwealth pool.
I myself am inclined to that last view. I think it is too much and quite improper to expect Britain, which after all, now has a population only about one-third larger than Nigeria's, to be able to handle on her own not only the three types of traditional Service which are required, which the noble Earl mentioned, but also the fourth service. I am quite certain that the Government ought to press for a Commonwealth pool. I do not mean to say, an existing Commonwealth force, but that all Commonwealth countries, particularly Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India, should earmark certain forces which can be ready at a few hours notice for Commonwealth duty. That I think would relieve the burden on us, which in my view we are unable to support in these times.

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I should like to say a word about the Territorial Army, because, frankly, I did not quite follow the noble Earl. I did not interrupt him, knowing he was to reply, but I am not sure what he means by this obligation on the Territorial Army to provide reserve forces for B.A.O.R. I presume the reason why the "Ever-readies" have not been a great success—or they may have been a success but at least they have not been extended; there are only 4,000—is the reason the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, gave: that is, that Territorial units are not at all happy about having technicians and specialists removed from them at the very moment when they will be required, which is the moment they may be mobilised themselves. In paragraph 42 of the Statement on Defence, 1963, it said this, about the Army generally:
"In officer recruiting, as indeed over the whole field of Army recruiting, the most acute problem is to secure the services of the many specialists that the modern Army requires."
The Territorial Army requires its specialists just as much as the Regular Army, and I imagine that is probably the reason why the "Ever-ready" development has not taken place in the way in which it was contemplated, as it would leave the Territorial Army much denuded in these clays of high specialisation if most specialists were taken away at the moment it needed them. I should have been very unhappy about this situation when I was a unit commander in the Territorial Army.
If the noble Earl meant that when there was no war, when there was no mobilisation, no Proclamation, the Territorial Army, or divisions of it, or even brigades, could go to B.A.O.R. to stiffen up B.A.O.R. in some way, I think that is an illusion. There have been two cases, and only two, so far as I am aware, in the history of this country, when that sort of thing took place. It so happened I was a humble cog in the machine on both occasions. The first was at the time of Munich, when part of the Territorial Army, including the company which I commanded of the Welch Regiment, as it was, was mobilised and sent to various parts of Great Britain without mobilisation of the Regular Army. This was the only time in history that that has happened, and the chaos was frightful. The Regular Army and all its ancillaries were on a
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peace-time basis—the band playing, the officers on leave and courses, and so on—and we in the Territorial Army were rushing around on a war-time basis. It was impossible. One rang up a store after 4 o'clock and found the man had gone home to tea or for the night. That kind of thing does not work. We had to bring men up from the mines and steelworks and quarries. It was a very difficult operation.
The second time the Territorial Army was called up my own unit, which was by that time a Regiment of Artillery, was called up just before the war in 1939. This was a sort of half-and-half mobilisation. We were called up for a month on August 12, 1939, and came back over six years later. That is not a very good precedent. There, again, there were considerable difficulties—not as bad in that case as in 1938; but there are difficulties if you get the Territorial Army mobilised prior to general mobilisation of the Army as a whole. I mention this only because I know that there are these difficulties—private business, civilian jobs and all the rest of it—if you try to mobilise the Territorial Army prior to declaration of war or general mobilisation.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, it might be helpful if I answered this point straight away so that there may be no misunderstanding. I think I am right in saying that the Territorial Army under the Auxiliary Forces Act, 1953, can be called out by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State without Proclamation, but only for home service against actual or apprehended attack on the United Kingdom. That is the phraseology. But so far as foreign service is concerned, the Territorial Army, under Statute—I think I am right in saying this—can be embodied only when the Army Reserve has been called out by Proclamation; it is a post-Proclamation force, so far as service abroad is concerned.
LORD OGMORE: I am aware of that. I was myself embodied on two occasions under the predecessor to the Act to which the noble Earl refers. What I do not understand is the allusion to the Territorial Army, or part of it, being called out to support B.A.O.R. That would mean even greater difficulties than the original obligation when one

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was embodied for home defence. The noble Earl did not explain it, or I did not understand it; undoubtedly it was my fault. But perhaps he could, at a later stage, give the House some indication, because this is a very important matter for the Territorial Army—for example, if a division or a brigade is expected in peace time to be embodied and sent out prior to any general mobilisation, in support of the Regular Army of the Rhine.
That is all I have to say. I think this is a much more satisfactory debate than the one last week on the Ministry of Defence, because this is the sort of subject which lends itself to Parliamentary debate, whereas the Ministry of Defence was not; it was a subject much more suitable for Committee. I am firmly convinced our Parliamentary proceedings are largely obsolete and out of date in these matters, and there should be some sort of procedure, some machinery, by which we could discuss matters of great detail in a more efficient way than we do.
3.38 p.m.
VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, this Bill has certainly lent itself so far to Parliamentary debate, as the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore said. But the reason why it has done so is not because of the Bill itself, but because my noble friend Lord Jellicoe and the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, thought fit, I am sure rightly, to deal with the Bill in its wider context. I should like for a few minutes, to do something of the same sort, and to start by taking up the reference which my noble friend made to the statement about the future rôle, the revised rôle, of the Territorial Army. I welcome that very much. I also welcome the way in which the War Office have handled the matter this time, because they consulted the Territorial Advisory Council before making up their minds, rather than afterwards; and that, though it sounds a simple thing to do, has not been the universal experience in the past.
There are two main references to the functions of the Territorial Army—civil defence and employment with the Rhine Army. The civil defence rôle, with its emphasis on fire-fighting, is a perfectly logical one; it is, in fact, an extension of
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the original home defence rôle devised for the Territorial Army by Lord Haldane in 1908. Any suggestions that the Territorial Army dislikes civil defence are, to my mind, complete nonsense. They come partly from the quarrels of old-timers, the old soldiers of the last war, some of whom joined the Home Guard in battledress and some of whom joined civil defence in blue. They do not date from the present Territorial Army. They also stem partly from the disinclination of the War Office and Home Office to get together. In fact, most of the handling of civil defence problems by the Home Office seems to me to have had the effect not only of reducing co-operation between the forces and civil defence, but of erecting a barrier between them. Operationally there is no room for such a barrier, because, although Government Departments may draw a distinction of that sort, no potential enemy would do so.
I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, still has his Motion on Civil Defence down on the Order Paper for "No Day Named", and I hope that he will be able before long to name the day when we can go into these matters further. Meanwhile, I hope that the local civil defence and fire brigade organisations will be told to get together with the Territorial Army on civil defence training for this season, and that it will be made possible for the Territorial Army to borrow the equipment for civil defence and fire-fighting, which they certainly will not have by this summer, if I know anything about it. The Territorial Army battalion which I know best took part in a civil defence camp last year and wrote a report to prove what I said just now, about their feeling that it was one of the most successful camps they had ever had. They were well looked after, the training was purposeful and interesting, and a good time was had by all.
The rôle of the Territorial Army in the British Army of the Rhine is a rather different matter, because it affects manpower a good deal more directly, and it also affects the equipment and state of readiness of the Territorial Army. Here I feel, if it is not out of order to say so, that in their handling of the Territial Army the War Office may be thought to resemble the nether regions, in that their road is paved with good intentions; and this has continued down the ages. I well remember how, during the annual

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dinner of the Artists' Rifles in about 1936 or 1937, the late Mr. Duff Cooper (as he then was) made a most stirring speech saying that the Territorial Army was going to be put on the map; yet little happened.
Your Lordships may also recall that when, in the years directly after the Second World War, the Territorial Army was given the rôle of providing two divisions for NATO, very little indeed was done to equip them for that task—in fact, they were not equipped at all. So I think it quite fair to remind my noble friend the First Lord of the Admiralty of what Sir Francis Drake said, if I remember rightly: that in matters of this sort the true glory is not to be had at the beginning, but only in the achievement of the object; and, as my noble friend Lord Hawke reminds me, in continuance of the same. What the implementation of this idea is likely to involve we should all like to know, but I am not going to ask my noble friend to tell us, because I know that he cannot, since it involves the whole question of the state of readiness. I think the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, touched on this point just now.
The original conception of the Territorial Army, when it took its present form in 1908, was that it should have a period of six months' training after embodiment before it was expected to be of any use in the field. That cannot be right now, and it must be made known to all concerned what state of readiness is required. The announcement, of course, does not go into a great deal of detail, and my own impression, as I think it was that of Lord Ogmore, is that a great deal more work must be done before this becomes a concrete project. After all the Territorial Army is at the present time on peace strength, and a unit would not be capable of performing operational duties as a unit until it had been brought up to war strength, and the difference between peace and war strength had been absorbed in the training.
Then, again, there is the war outfit. The equipment of a Territorial unit cannot be produced by a conjuring trick, and if it is not in the possession of the unit, apart from what is wanted for training, it must be held in a store so that it can be issued. I mention these points
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because, unless they are attended to, the continuance of this project will be in a good deal of doubt. Over the years the Treasury mind has always put the equipment of the reserve forces in low priority. Yet those people, of whom I am one, who have had experience of handling operations—for example in France in 1940—and the staff work involved when ill-equipped and ill-trained Territorial units went into battle do not wish to see that experience repeated by anybody else. That experience has bitten deep. So now the battle begins; and the first battle, I do not doubt, is between the Minister of Defence and the Treasury. I should like to wish the Service Departments the best of good fortune in winning this battle. I am sure that we should give them every possible support. Then, but not until then, we can look forward to seeing these designs for the Territorial Army put into practice and brought to the successful conclusion that they need to be.
Having said that, my Lords, may I come for a moment to the provisions of the Bill itself? Of course, if the plans for the Territorial Army work out as they are meant to do, that in itself will be a considerable contribution to manpower, but only, I think, in a major emergency. What we have to envisage now—and it is the background to the Bill we are discussing—is not the major emergency so much as what have been called "fire-brigade" operations, what used to be called "small wars". But that is no longer a fashionable phrase; and they are not wars, anyway. When the decision was taken to do without National Service in peace time, I imagine that the calculations of the numbers required took into account the numbers of troops whom it was thought necessary to hold available for all these fire-brigade purposes, without impinging, or at any rate without impinging too much, on the numbers required to keep NATO commitments and to keep the proper number of troops in B.A.O.R. Here again, the answer to this question must be secret, so I am not asking for it; but I have a strong suspicion that those calculations, most of which I think date from the 1957 White Paper, were mute in a period which we could call pre-Congo, and therefore may not necessarily represent the number of troops

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required for these operations at the present time.
If that is true, then those calculations can hardly be realistic in terms of to-day, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, said. In fact, I feel strongly that all the different operations with which we may be faced, such as in Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya, British Guiana and all the rest, between them may have demanded much more fire-brigade manpower than was ever allowed for in these calculations. On top of that, recruiting has been slow. Voluntary recruiting in this country, whatever its virtues may be—and they are great—has proved, over the ages, to be most resistant to attempts to increase numbers rapidly, in exactly the same way as attempts to raise the Territorial Army to a noticeably higher strength than it has been for many years always prove difficult. That may be right or it may be wrong, but it is one of the facts of life that those who have to handle Service manpower need to contend with and to recognise.
We may be able to withdraw our troops from Central Africa, and I hope that it will be possible for those who govern the territories in those regions to feel sufficiently secure to do without them at an early date. But I feel fairly certain we shall have to keep those troops at call for a very considerable time, even if they are not kept in the territories concerned; and also that we shall want at least two other "fire brigades" ready to be sent off elsewhere at the same time. If we are not prepared to deal with all these outbreaks of international fire—and it seems plain to me that ill-disposed people will not fail to produce outbreaks at so many places at once in the hope that we shall not be able to deal with them—if we fail in one place, we are likely to fail in all.
Therefore, I would ask whether the requirements have really been foreseen to a sufficient extent; and, if that is the case, are those responsible really happy that the present measures will provide adequately for what is wanted? If so, all well and good. At any rate, these events in Africa—and I should like to associate myself with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, about the speedy mobilisation and des
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patch of troops to the spot—have taught us a clear manpower lesson. They have taught us that if trust is reposed in us by people like the Governments of Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika, it has likewise brought us obligations which we cannot fail to meet.
The Bill itself is a technical Bill. There are bound to be some hardships when reservists are called upon. These are inherent in the business of being called up. Like the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, I have been called up myself and know quite well that, viewed from certain angles, the process has not much to be said for it. But this Bill deals with two classes of people, some who have accepted the liability of their own tree will, and others who have had the liability imposed on them by Parliament under the National Service Acts. I cannot pretend to have studied the details of the Bill so closely as has the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, but I feel fairly confident that the actual details now embodied in the Bill have had sufficient study in the Service departments to make one fairly certain that any change in them would only throw the burden on the other people, and the result would be, out of the frying pan into the fire. So I am satisfied about the terms of the Bill.
None the less, I am sure it is right that this afternoon we should attempt to look round the corner and see what is going to happen after this Bill has been passed, as I hope it will be. As has been said, the provisions of this Bill are by way of taking us up to 1969. What then? 1969 is not very far off from a planning point of view, and I think it is fair to say that the very complexity of this Bill shows that those concerned have gone through the process of scraping the bottom of the barrel; in other words, of using the last expedients before they are faced fairly and squarely between studying selective service or defaulting on their obligations. It is quite possible that these provisions of the Bill, coupled with the slow and steady rate of recruitment to the Regular Army—because it is slow and steady—will actually provide what is wanted. But who this afternoon would say that they are certain that the provisions of this Bill, and anything more of this sort that can be done, will really take us all the way in any eventuality which may

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face us? I am not talking at the moment about another world war; I am talking about "fire brigade" operations, because they themselves will consume a great deal of manpower, and we may very well find ourselves faced with a situation where the strain on manpower, and therefore the strain on the Regular Army, becomes intolerable.
Here I appeal to my friends in the Regular Army not to take every opportunity of opposing even the idea that selective service may be necessary. If some of the things which I have said might happen, and pray will not happen, come about, the administrative chaos in the Regular Army when it is called on, as it well may be under those conditions, to play the part of a stage army will be something to be seen to be believed. While I want to make it clear that I am not saying that selective service is necessary—I still hope, as we all do, that it will not be—I am saying very strongly that I likewise hope the matter will be studied, not only by the Government Departments but by the Regular Forces themselves, so that if the call comes (as I hope and pray it will not) we do not run the risk of falling down on obligations which we have undertaken when being called upon by many other countries, such as the emergent countries of the Commonwealth, to undertake measures for their salvation. I have gone wide of the Bill, but I do not think we should pass this Bill without realising how it fits in with the problems of manpower, what it does in making a very considerable contribution to immediate needs, and also what lies beyond its scope.
3.57 p.m.
LORD KENNET: My Lords, those were grave words that we heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman. The Bill is something which goes to the root of the whole defence of this country in that it is connected with recruitment; the level of reserves; the awful possibility of having to adopt some form of conscription after all; and the balance between nuclear and conventional forces. These topics have been well debated this afternoon by noble Lords who have greater knowledge than I. I hope therefore the House will bear with me if I enlarge the scope of the discussion a little to take in the whole question of this balance between one sort of force
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and another in the defence of this country, in the rest of this decade and in the next decade.
A few weeks ago the Prime Minister said that he was going to make defence policy an Election issue. I think the hearts of sober and responsible men sank at that statement. Then a little later he said he was not going to make defence an Election issue, and that was obviously the wise and right decision. For a few weeks he kept his good resolution. But last Monday, in a speech at Bury, he cast his restraint to the winds and made an attack on Labour's defence policy, which was in the ordinary tradition of electoral speechifying. I very much regret that. I think all those who care more for country than for Party should regret it. Unfortunately, it was not the sort of speech which can be left unanswered, and I have no doubt it will be answered many times over in the next few months.
Before this happens I think we all ought to be absolutely clear, both in this House and in the country, that it is not the Labour Party's choice to make defence policy an Election football. It is not our choice if the Prime Minister decides to kick the defence of this country around. The Labour Party's defence policy differs in several respects from that of the Government, and in those respects we have attacked the Government, I hope moderately, in Parliament. Everybody knows what the differences are and we shall set them out fairly and squarely for the electorate when the time comes, just as we have no doubt the Conservative Party will set out its policy equally squarely. But it is a far cry from that to the challenging and fractious tone of the Prime Minister's speech last Monday.
I would ask the House to listen for a moment to what he said.
"At this moment of all times in history Britain must show herself above all things magnanimous, authoritative, and strong. Everywhere, wherever you look at the map of the world, law and order and justice are threatened. It is at this critical moment that the Socialist Party mean to deprive us of power. For months and months Mr. Wilson has hedged but at long last I have extracted from him what he would do about Britain's nuclear arm. The truth is, he would abandon all control of it."
"At long last I have extracted the truth from him!" Well, it does not read quite like that in Hansard but let it go.

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"He would abandon all control" of our nuclear arm.
To begin with, my Lords, we have not got a nuclear arm as such. We have some bombers, long-range bombers, which can carry either conventional or nuclear bombs; we have some shorter-range, carrier-borne bombers which can carry either conventional or nuclear bombers, and we have some guns which can fire either conventional or nuclear shells. It is all mixed up at every level. But, of course, you have to invent a separate and distinct "nuclear arm" before you can accuse the Labour Party of wanting to abandon control of it. It is true that we in this Party do want to assign the V-Bomber force definitively to a NATO Command; that is, to abandon—and mark how different this is!—the specific right to go roaring around using it on our own in one of those supreme national interests which the Government see growing on every tree. We think this might be a good way to get a more logical command system for NATO, which is badly needed, God knows.
Now back to the Prime Minister:
"The sole result of abandoning our nuclear arm"—
and here mark how the distortion has gone further; we are now accused of abandoning not only the control of our nuclear arm, but our nuclear arm itself—
"would be that Britain would not be able to sit at the top table"—
and so on: the familiar argument. You see how the Prime Minister has been edging round to imputing to the Labour Party the great pipe dream of a loud splash in the Lake of Geneva one day when the delegates are drowsing over their coffee. They all sit up and say, "What is that?", and the proud, pacifist, Socialist, unilateralist, British Minister for disarmament says, "Gentlemen, that was the independent British deterrent," and they all begin counting, "One, two, three", and two hours later they finish counting, "178, 179, 180", or whatever it is, and that is the end of the British independent nuclear deterrent! Is that what he thinks we would do? It is what in his speech he seems to be telling the country we would do, and it is extremely misleading. But he knows
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as well as we do that we have said we will keep the V-Bombers until the end of their natural operational life, whatever that may be.
At this point I would commend to the attention of the House the leader in this morning's Times, which complained of the way defence policy is enunciated in this country by an annual series of White Papers which say absolutely nothing—with between those, from time to time, announcements of this or that element of progress of this or that weapon system—which never relate anything to anything else, and may give an extremely tendentious impression of what the weapons can do. In particular, The Times leader-writer takes leave to cast doubt on the apparently new Government line, that the V-bomber is going to be operational throughout the 'seventies with the help of Blue Steel. The leader contrasts this approach to the annual statements made to Congress by the American Secretary of Defence. He has just published his annual book: 170 pages of extremely detailed information, each part of which is related most rigidly and most frankly to every other part of it.
To revert to the Prime Minister's speech, I want to make the point that to go round the country saying that the Labour Party will "abandon our nuclear arm" seems hardly worthy of a man of his experience and integrity. In my view, a Prime Minister should not fight an Election in a manner which misleads not only his immediate audience (who seem to be fair game), but also allied and other Governments. Now let us proceed. The Prime Minister also said:
"I do know that unilateral disarmament for Britain is a futile gesture".
Mark once again: the Labour Party has now become out-and-out unilateralist. You see how the distortions pile up in series. He went on:
"How is it that within hours we were able to intervene in Cyprus to save war, and how is it that we were able to go to the help of three Commonwealth countries to forestall an illegal takeover?"
How is it, indeed, that we were able to do these things? Perhaps the East African mutineers were rounded up by Polaris rockets fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean? Perhaps the cordons in the towns and villages of Cyprus were

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set up with 20 megaton bombs withdrawn from NATO command in the supreme national interest? Perhaps the Indonesian guerrillas are held off from Malaysia by supersonic bombers hugging the treetops at dead of night and firing stand-off, stellar-inertial guidance, multi-megaton high-penetration rockets?
We were able to do these things because, in spite of the Government's highfalutin programmes, we still had just enough mobility and equipment for the simple, decent, old foot soldier to do it. But it is touch and go. That is precisely what the Labour Party has consistently reproached the Government with: that they have been looking for space-age Russians under the bed, while the real security operations on which we and our friends in Asia and Africa depend are conducted with rifles and helicopters.
This brings us back to the present Bill. I do not know whether it is going to be enough. I very much hope it is, because, my goodness! we need it. The Labour Party has said often enough that we will not throw away what we have got, but we will not officiously strive to prolong our so-called independent nuclear capacity for ever. In practice this will probably mean hanging on to the V-Bombers, evaluating TSR 2 as it comes along, and using the nuclear-powered submarines being built under the Nassau Agreement for some other purpose; that is, other than carrying thermo-nuclear rockets which we buy from the Americans to put in them. This is what the Prime Minister reproaches us with, that we believe there are better things to come to an agreement with the Americans about, than the next generation of strategic nuclear weapons.
He intends to forge ahead whatever the price. He is so concerned with his famous seat at the table, that he has apparently forgotten what the table itself is for. No one is going to ask for credentials at it, in terms of weapons. When we sit at the table where the test ban is extended to cover underground tests, as I hope we soon shall, we shall be there not because we have twice tested nuclear weapons underground, but because we in this country have outstanding seismologists who can help find the way to do it. Jodrell Bank and the brains of the people who designed it and work it—these are what
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make our voice heard in space, not our running behind the others trying to develop our very own military missiles and having to scrap them one after the other.
My Lords, what is the table for—the one that we must have our seat at? When Governments are thinking in terms of independent nuclear weapons they do not sit at international tables; they avoid them of all things. The only table where the security of this country and any other can be enhanced is the table at Geneva. There, while our Prime Minister is boasting about the control he hopes to buy over a rather small number of American missiles, President Johnson, on the other hand, talks of a verified freeze on the number and characteristics—and this is the point—of all strategic delivery systems. The Soviet Union talks not only of a freeze, but of a reduction to agreed and inspected low levels. Poland talks of a freeze on the numbers of nuclear weapons in Central Europe.
Britain's Prime Minister, or, rather, the Conservative Party in Britain, advised by whom?—the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence or a public relations firm?; I do not know—is talking about the necessity of buying new weapons in order, apparently, to keep up appearances in the 1970's. On this side of the House we hope for some arms control long before that. This plank of Conservative election policy is quite at variance with United States policy enunciated by President Johnson early last month and, since then, reiterated by United States negotiators at Geneva, we thought with the support of our own negotiators—namely, that there ought now to be a freeze on the characteristics of nuclear weapons systems; in other words, countries ought not to develop new types of delivery systems. I hope the Prime Minister will tell the country that he will work for the freeze which the Americans propose. Let him tell the country that that will mean no Polaris system for Britain, and that this will be a highly desirable measure of international arms control, separate from general disarmament, long before the possibility of these things becoming operational comes about.
Let the Prime Minister tell the country also that, if this freeze does not come off by the 1970's, the Polaris

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submarines he plans to buy us may very well not be effectual in any case. For one thing, the nuclear-powered submarine itself is not going to be invulnerable for ever. For another, the Russians are working "hell for leather" on antimissile systems; and this would be the most prodigiously expensive thing you could imagine to deploy. We have not the faintest chance of going into that business at all; so, if there is no arms control, we face a situation where our famous independent missiles may be able to be picked off one by one in flight, while we can do nothing about theirs. But that is the darker view. My Lords, the tide of arms will be receding in the next decade, and the right policy for Britain is not to stand out against that movement but to go with it and help it on.
4.12 p.m.
LORD SAYE AND SELE: My Lords, the noble Earl may remember mentioning in the early part of his speech that fresh units were to be added to those Territorial units which already do training in civil defence once in four years—a very pitiable amount of training, but, even so, it is an addition. He will also remember referring to a million and a half or so men who seemed to be going spare—presumably men who, in the past, have been trained. I wonder whether he could give us some idea how many of that million and a half who have gone back to civil life had any form of training in civil defence during their Army existence.
One other little point which set me wondering about the noble Earl's speech is this. The men from the Territorial Army go abroad to Germany; but do they go across to be trained themselves and then come back to their own units, or do they go across to reinforce the Regulars? If they go to be trained for their own units, well and good; but if they go over there and are then caught to stay in the Regular units and leave their own Territorial units at home bare, it means that the Territorial unit loses its feeling of Territorialism (if there is such a word) and has its enthusiasm reduced by a most remarkable extent. That has been done already by amalgamating the various Territorial units until they have almost disappeared as Territorials; but if they are to send men
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abroad and leave them there and lose them from themselves, I think it is most discouraging. That is all I wish to say about the admirable speech by the noble Earl.
4.15 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I have sometimes felt, when listening to our more general debates on defence matters, that we slap so much paint on the canvas, and cover so large a canvas, that it is a little difficult to discern the wood for the trees. By mixing a few metaphors in this respect, I would therefore entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton (and the noble, Lord, Lord Ogmore, made the same point), that it is particularly useful, on occasions, to look somewhat more closely at, and to concentrate rather more particularly on, specific aspects of the defence problem. The usefulness of this more selective approach has been demonstrated, I think, by this short discussion this afternoon, not least because all noble Lords who have spoken bring very considerable experience and expertise to these questions. I am therefore very grateful to those noble Lords who have spoken on this Bill; and, although some of them have made some slightly tart remarks on various aspects of the Government's defence policy, I am grateful to them for their general welcome in principle to this relatively modest but not unimportant Bill.
Perhaps those noble Lords who have spoken will forgive me if, in the ambit of a fairly short reply, I do not deal with some of the points raised; they were rather detailed, and perhaps we could come back on them at a later stage. Or I will write to noble Lords about them. I do not think that I would include in that particular category the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. As usual, he was interesting, stimulating, informed and provocative. I thought that his subject matter—the deterrent, Polaris, Jodrell Bank, the logical command structure for NATO, the 178 pages of Mr. Macnamara's Report—though vastly interesting, was somewhat removed from the subject matter of this particular Bill. He accused the Prime Minister of bringing defence into the Election campaign. I can only say that I very much admire the bland manner in which the noble

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Lord introduced these somewhat extraneous matters into our somewhat more limited discussion on this particular Bill. None the less, they were not without point and pith, as one expects from the noble Lord.
To come to the various matters which have been raised, a number of noble Lords have asked about the recruiting position at the present time. To summarise, so far as the R.A.F. is concerned the recruiting position is very satisfactory. So far as the Navy is concerned, the recruiting position is generally satisfactory. It is up on last year but that, of course, is necessary because the requirements of the Royal Navy are increasing. So far as the Army is concerned, I would state straight away that the recruiting picture of the situation in 1963, following the bumper crop of 1962, has been disappointing. But, of course, we all know that there has been some improvement over the last four months. As a basis of comparison, the War Office have taken the average recruiting figures over the last five years, which I think give a fairly good spread. From April to August last year, we recruited 71 per cent. of the average figure for the last five years. However, from September to December of last year we recruited 82 per cent., and the December rate, which is always a low one, was in fact 85 per cent. of the average figure. As noble Lords will realise, the figures for January are not yet available; but from what trends I have seen I am pretty confident, that when we get the detailed January figures this improvement will be shown to have been maintained.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think the noble Earl is being very subtle. He says the December figures were 85 per cent. of the average; and he remarked at the same time that December was normally a low-rate month. What is the relevance of those two figures? This December figure is certainly not in relation to the average monthly figure; it is the average December figure, I take it. In which case, to say it is normally a low month merely shows that that high figure is of less value than of the other months.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I was not being particularly subtle; if I was, I have been found out in my subtlety. What the noble Lord said is true. I was comparing month with month, December,
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1963, with the December average for the last five years. When I said that recruiting in December is usually low, and that the figure went up to 85 per cent. of the average, what I had in mind was that, although there had been this maintained improvement from an admittedly much too low base, this was not enough to offset the outflow from the Army. Therefore, there had been some net decrease in the Army during December. I had no intention of being subtle. But I am sorry if I have confused noble Lords. I agree with noble Lords who have spoken to this point that it is absolutely imperative to come up as soon as we possibly can to the target we have set ourselves of 180,000; and that, as my noble friend Lord Bridgeman said, our true glory in recruiting will be only in the achievement.
But there is another point. Some noble Lords tended to suggest that there was some direct and very tangible connection between these recruiting difficulties and this particular Bill. To suggest that is rather to over-simplify the position. Recruiting, and the speed with which we can recruit up to our 180,000 target, has some bearing on our reserves; especially on the "Ever-readies." We need "Ever-readies" with an Army of 172,000, but we should also need them with the Army of 180,000, especially when Section "A" of the Reserve is not up to strength.
Therefore, I would suggest to noble Lords—and I do not think this was pressed very hard—that it would be quite wrong to suppose that this Bill is the result in any way of our present recruiting difficulties with the Army. We should need this Bill, and the Reserves provided for in it, however recruiting was going—for two reasons. First, because of our general concept of a highly professional and, therefore, relatively small Regular Force which needs the backing of adequate reserves; and, secondly, because of the changeover which is foreshadowed in this Bill to an all-volunteer Reserve structure with the phase-out of National Servicemen.
As regards the "Ever-readies," about whom I was asked, I would not at all dissent from the noble Lords who stressed the importance of this Reserve. It is, indeed, extremely important, but

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it is at the present time much too small. The strength as of (I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, was lying in wait for me, for using the words "as of") on January 22 was 4,587. Given the great potential value of this Reserve, I cannot be content with that strength. The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, suggested that, it was rather curious that we should be, as it were, turning away volunteers; and in that context he asked me about the waiting list for the "Ever-ready" force. The waiting list exists for purely technical reasons, and purely because of the fact that in certain trades the "Ever-readies" have been temporarily oversubscribed. It is a matter of balance; but this is a temporary phase. We want all the volunteers we can get for the "Ever-readies."
The noble Lord also asked me what happens, when the "Ever-readies" are called out, to the holes they leave in their Territorial Army units. I think that was the point he queried. There is a fairly straightforward explanation. Not more than a proportion of each unit of the Territorial Army is, in fact, permitted to volunteer for the "Ever-readies". This immediately puts a limiting factor on them. I would mention, parenthetically, that, so far as I know, no unit has yet reached its particular ceiling; but as soon as someone joins the "Ever-readies" from within a Territorial Army unit he is counted as potentially non-effective in the event of general mobilisation, and the posting authorities then post someone else to fill that place which he has, at least theoretically, vacated. There should not be, at least in theory, any gaps to fill: they are provided for.
The noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, also asked whether, in the present circumstances of a number of contingent and simultaneous crises on our hands, we would consider the question of calling up the "Ever-readies". I think I can give a perfectly categorical answer: we have certainly considered this possibility, but as a result of that consideration we have come to the conclusion that in present circumstances such a call-up would not be warranted. This possibility will, however, continue to be kept under close review.
I was also asked about the National Servicemen and the feeling that it was
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perhaps unfair that those who have already done their extra six months' stint should be caught by the provisions of this Bill. On this my only reply, rather shorthand-wise, is that we need all we can get; and that to accept the exemption from the call-up of men who have done their six months' National Service, or who may do six months extra as part-time, would straight away remove half of our new Army general Reserve; and in present circumstances that is something which we could not contemplate. Several noble Lords, not least the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, and my noble friend Lord Bridgeman, have alluded to the great importance of the Territorial Army. I would wish straight away to endorse what they said in that respect. So far as its rôle in Civil Defence, especially the fire-fighting aspect, is concerned, I am afraid that I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Saye and Sele, the statistics for which he asked—and I would suspect that he did not expect me to know the precise answer to his question. But perhaps by the time we come to the debate on Lord Lindgren's Motion on Civil Defence, someone more skilled than I in statistics will have worked out the answer to the noble Lord's question.
There was some discussion about how the Territorial Army would fit into the rôle of reinforcing the British Army of the Rhine. I tried to follow this closely, but I am not certain whether I have the questions which were posed to me clearly in my mind. What is intended, as I understand it, is that reinforcement should take place in the post-Proclamation phase. That reinforcement might be either by individuals, to go to specific units which are below their war-time strength, or by units or sub-units, to reinforce specific units of the Rhine Army.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, the point I was getting at was whether it is intended to be after or before general mobilisation.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, this would be post-Proclamation and therefore, I understand, after general mobilisation, but I speak subject to correction on this point. I should like to check, if I may, whether I am right in drawing this parallel between Proclamation and mobilisation.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, although I speak subject to correction, I think that embodiment might have to be done by Proclamation. I am not quite sure what was done last time, because we were all in such a state of "flap" at the time that I do not remember.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am beginning to get in a slight state of "flap" myself on this point, and, since we are both speaking subject to correction, I think it would be better either to clear up this point in correspondence or for the noble Lord to put down a Question on it. But in this general context I would refer the noble Lord to the statement by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for War in another place on January 22, where he set out pretty clearly the Government's intention with regard to the reinforcement of the Rhine Army by the Territorial Army. In that statement he also said that further study was being given to the very point which my noble friend Lord Bridgman particularly has in mind—that is, the better equipment of the Territorial Army and its training, in particular the possibility of members training either as individuals or in subunits with the Rhine Army abroad.
All noble Lords have somewhat reproached me for my failure to deal with the effect of this Bill on our Strategic Reserve. Of course, much of what I was saying by way of introduction bore on that, although not explicitly. Here and now I should like to associate myself with the tributes which have been made to those responsible for the very quick response which the Armed Forces have made to the recent emergencies. I think it argues extremely good planning and good execution by the three Services.
Of course, these three simultaneous emergencies have stretched the reserves, in particular the Strategic Reserve, available in these islands. That is not unnatural, because, within my recollection, we have not been faced with three parallel emergencies of this kind in the post-war phase. The reaction is not only proof of the ability and planning of those responsible, but also in some way a tribute to the Strategic Reserve itself. I think that those noble Lords who have suggested that we have only just got through and are now very close to the bottom of the barrel have somewhat exaggerated the position.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, is that not exactly what the Minister of Defence himself said?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I have already said that it stretched our reserves, but, if the noble Lord will bear with me for a moment, I would point to the facts that, first, there are still units available to the Strategic Reserve in this country; secondly, that within each of the three theatres there is some flexibility within the Forces concerned, especially in the Far East; thirdly, that we have the right, and have already gone on notice, to call on one brigade of the B.A.O.R., if necessary, and if we do so we are merely exercising a right which other members of NATO have exercised in the past; and finally, we have the "Ever-readies" and all the other pre-Proclamation reserves available, should we decide to call them out. But, all that said, I admit that this has stretched our reserves. All this reinforces the obvious need, which we acknowledge, of reaching the manpower target for the Army as quickly as we possibly can.
We often say, at the conclusion of a debate, that we have had a very useful debate, and perhaps that is not always quite the case, but I sincerely feel that this has been a useful and constructive discussion and I am sincerely grateful to those noble Lords who have taken part in it. I trust that your Lordships will feel disposed to accord a Second Reading to this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

FAMILY ALLOWANCES AND NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL
4.37 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD DRUMALBYN): My Lords, I beg to move that the Family Allowances and National Insurance Bill be now read a second time. It is a pleasant task to be able to introduce a measure of this type, the principal object of which is to provide further help for widowed mothers. Widowed mothers with families to bring up without the help of father and breadwinner have always attracted, and deserve to

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attract, special sympathy. If I may, I would recall to your Lordships what the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, said in the debate in another place on May 9, 1951, when she said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 487, col. 1984]:
"I am sure honourable Members realise that the widow with children is in a special position. Overnight, she suddenly becomes the wage-earner, the home-maker and the protector of her children. All the responsibilities she used to share with her husband suddenly fall upon her shoulders. I feel sure she is in a special position and I want to put it on record that we must always regard her as such".
So it was that the Labour Party, in their 1951 legislation, especially benefited the widowed mother.
This kind of preference has been continued and expanded by the present Government. We have on several occasions made especially favourable provision for widowed mothers—for example, by the introduction of preferential rates of benefit for their children and by further relaxations of the widowed mothers' earnings rule. While the present measure will benefit other beneficiaries under the National Insurance, Industrial Injuries and Family Allowances schemes, it is principally designed to continue this process of help for widowed mothers.
The Bill gives effect to a series of improvements announced by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on December 10 last. In brief the allowance for each child of widowed mothers is increased to 37s. 6d. a week. The earnings rule for widowed mothers is raised from £6 to £7 a week. The upper age limit for children's allowance and family allowance is raised from 18 to 19. This last change benefits not only widowed mothers but also the unemployed, the sick and the retired, who have children still at school or in low-paid apprenticeships. Finally, the earnings rule for widows and for the retired is raised from £4 5s. to £5.
Yord Lordships will expect me to explain the consideration which led the Government to propose these changes. The Government have been studying for some time the ways in which more help could be given to widowed mothers. I would remind your Lordships that in the 1963 Act a new way of helping them was devised. A provision was included
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which enabled all widowed mothers, whatever their earnings, to retain at least 26s. of their allowance. This was the difference between the ordinary benefit for a single person and that for a married dependant. We thought it reasonable that that amount should be retained as a contribution to the home which the widowed mother keeps for her children. Of course, the allowance for her children is never affected by her earnings in any way. The most she can lose under the earnings rule is 41s. 6d. out of 67s. 6d.
But the Government have always recognised that the best way of helping widowed mothers within the framework of the National Insurance scheme is to increase their children's allowances. At present, the allowances are 30s. a week for each of the first two children, and 32s. for the others, taking family allowance into account-10s. more than for other children. It is proposed in the Bill to increase them to 37s. 6d.—17s. 6d. more than for the first two children in other families and 15s. 6d. for the rest. Already 37s. 6d. is the amount which is payable as guardian's allowance for an orphan. The increase will mean that the widowed mother who has three children will be receiving a total payment of £9 a week, which in real terms is about 125 per cent. more than the benefit of £2 15s. paid to her when we took office in 1951. And even if the maximum reduction in respect of her earnings is made, this widow with three children will still get £6 18s. 6d.
I come to the raising of the upper limit of age for children's and family allowances. At present, not only do these allowances come to an end when the child reaches 18, but so also does the widowed mother's allowance when her only or her last child reaches 18. There are many widows struggling to keep their children at school before going on to higher education who find their National Insurance and family allowance benefits stopped although their commitments go on just the same—at least, until the son or daughter goes on to the next stage of their higher education or training, when they will get the appropriate allowances for further education.
The proposal to raise the upper age limit to 19 will benefit widows in three

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ways. First, as well as their own allowance, they will get the appropriate child and family allowance for the son or daughter so long as they continue their schooling or apprenticeship up to 19, instead of 18 as at present. Secondly, where the child has left school and is living at home, they will still get widowed mother's personal allowance until the child is 19; that is, instead of 18. In consequence, each year over 20,000 widows will receive widowed mother's allowance for a further year. Some of these will get an extra year's benefit. The rest, who would otherwise get widow's pension, will have the advantage for another year of the mere favourable earnings rule applying to widowed mother's allowance. Thirdly, it will increase the number who will pass from widowed mother's allowance to widow's pension. At present, a widowed mother gets widow's pension if she is over 50 when her youngest child reaches 18. But most widowed mothers transfer to widow's pension when they cease to receive the allowance; and their numbers will be increased.
The change in the upper limit, as I have said, will benefit not only widowed mothers, but also the sick, the unemployed, retirement pensioners and those receiving family allowances who have children over 18 years of age, so long as they are under 19 and continuing with their education. A new upper limit is desirable because since 1956, when 18 was adopted for this purpose, there has been a considerable increase in the number of children remaining at school beyond 18. In 1956 (I think your Lordships will be interested in these figures) some 19,500 children stayed at school after 18, but by 1963 this figure had reached 31,500. Roughly 9 out of 10 of these children will have left school by age 19, and where they have gone on to university will be getting university grants. Age 19, therefore, will correspond more closely with the educational realities.
I come now to the third main change—namely, the raising of the earnings limit. I feel that it would be worth while for me to say something at this point about the earnings rules. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of the reasons why they have formed part of the National Insurance scheme since it was
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first introduced in the Act of 1946, and why the Government still feel that they are necessary, even though they are irksome and widely misunderstood. To start with, may I correct two false impressions? First, the earnings rules do not prevent anyone from earning and secondly, they do not deprive people of benefits already paid for by contributions. Like any general statutory scheme, the National Insurance scheme is based on a principle, and principles are not always easy to apply in practice. The principle is that National Insurance benefits are payable to people who, for one reason or another, cannot work and support themselves by their earnings. That is the basic principle, and it is on that basis that contributions are assessed. And that it why instead of an old age pension we now have a retirement pension. It is also why, instead of unconditional widows' pensions such as existed under the pre-1946 contributory scheme, we have widows' benefits paid only to those widows who, because of age or family circumstances at the time when they become widows, or when their youngest child ceases to be dependent on them, cannot generally be expected to provide for themselves by their earnings—and I am speaking here in general terms.
The effect of the earnings rule is that if a pensioner earns more than so much a week, his pension is adjusted. The levels at which deductions begin to be made for widows and retirement pensioners are at present £4 5s. a week, and for widowed mothers the preferential amount of £6 a week. These amounts will go up under the clause to £5 and £7 respectively. This represents not merely an adjustment to match increases in average earnings since the last move in the earnings rules, but a real improvement for those concerned. If we were to abolish all the earnings rules we should have to abandon the whole retirement principle, thereby putting the clock back twenty years to the old conception of unconditional old age pensions. The immediate annual cost of doing so would be well over £100 million a year. Most of the money would go to pay full pensions to people who go on working or earning as before during the five years after reaching pensionable age. There are nearly 400,000 who are doing so at present.

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In the same way, in the case of widows' pensions, the earnings rule supports the important principle that the pension is designed for those who cannot work and earn. The dividing line is taken as age 50 when a woman loses her husband, or in the case of a widowed mother when her children have all reached 18. But some widows over 50 can and do take up full-time work—some of them may have been working all the time. So it is necessary to have an earnings rule to make sure that benefits are paid to those widows for whom they are intended, in accordance with the basic principles of the National Insurance scheme.
Widowed mothers are already treated as a special group, because their problems and responsibilities are greater than those of widows who have only themselves to support, and we are proposing to maintain the special preference given to them so that they will receive most of the benefit payable regardless of their earnings. Under the Bill a widowed mother with two children will be entitled, with family allowance, to £7 2s. 6d. a week. Of this she can retain £5 1s. a week, however much she earns. If she is not at work, or is earning not more than £7 a week net, she will be able to receive her £7 2s. 6d. in full, and this will not be reduced to the minimum benefit of £5 1s.—the amount that all widowed mothers with two children receive—until her earnings reach £9 12s.; that is, when her total net income is £14 13s. Thus, while we have not abandoned the main principle, the conditions are relaxed to the greatest possible extent in recognition of the widowed mother's particular needs.
My Lords, having explained what the Bill does, I do not think I need spend much time on the clauses, because they are pretty fully explained in the Explanatory Memorandum. Clause 1 deals with the increase from 18 to 19 in the age limit for the definition of a child for family allowances and for dependency increases of benefits under the National Insurance and Industrial Injuries schemes, including the allowances for children which are paid to widowed mothers. The insurance schemes have always applied the family allowances definition for the purpose of
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widows' and dependency benefit, and it is obviously sound both in principle and as a matter of administration, that a child should be defined in the same way for allowances under all the three schemes. The change to age 19 can therefore be made by the simple amendment of the Family Allowances Act contained in subsection (1). Subsection (2) provides a similar extension for the widowed mother who has residing with her a son or daughter who has left school and will usually be working.
Clause 2, with Schedules 1 and 2, provides for the increases in the allowances for the children of widows and in the rate of child's special allowance. It secures that in future a total payment of 37s. 6d. a week will be made for each child, including family allowances. This represents a substantial increase in the benefit. Subsection (2) of the clause makes a technical change and tidies up the provisions which apply where the child is not living with his mother.
Clause 3 safeguards the position of a relatively small number of widowed mothers who are at present receiving from the National Assistance Board a supplement to their insurance benefit. It will enable the Board to disregard the increases in children's benefits, provided that the total weekly income disregarded does not exceed 30s. Normally, as the law now stands, the Board do not disregard National Insurance benefits, but this special provision has been included on this occasion in order to ensure that every widowed mother, including those receiving supplementary assistance allowances, will benefit from the Bill. Subsection (2) of this clause makes a consequential amendment to the Acts relating to legal aid, so as to ensure that the increases will be disregarded for the purposes of determining the disposable income of widowed mothers who apply for legal aid.
Clause 4 deals with the earnings rules. Clause 5 provides for payments out of the Exchequer, and Clause 6 is formal. The extra expenditure from the National Insurance Fund resulting from the Bill will be about £6½ million in the first year, and there will be an additional £1 million from the Exchequer for family allowances. Widowed mothers will benefit to the extent of some £5 million

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a year. The Schedules to the Bill contain provisions which are consequential or transitional. I have already explained that Schedules 1 and 2 go with Clause 2 to make 37s. 6d. payable for each child. Schedule 3 deals with transitional matters and also contains the usual provisions for appointed days—to be fixed by order. My right honourable friend proposes that all the changes in the Bill shall come into operation simultaneously from March 30. Schedule 4 is formal.
My Lords, I hope that I have said enough to explain what the Bill is intended to do, and why the Government are doing it. I hope that the measure will be generally welcomed by the House as a useful advance in this sphere of social provision. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Drumalbyn.)
4.56 p.m.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for his lucid explanation, coupled with his usual courtesy? It was interesting to learn what I said thirteen years ago. There are not many politicians who can have a quotation made from a speech which they made thirteen years earlier and still wholeheartedly endorse it. It concerns, of course, that aspect of the Bill which I wish to elaborate to-day. Everybody, on both sides of the House, will approve these increases in the allowances for the children, and so on. But I want to challenge the noble Lord on what he called important principles—certain principles which are embodied in this Bill.
Noble Lords will remember that it was necessary, when the comprehensive National Insurance scheme was introduced in 1946, to proceed on certain basic assumptions. Indeed, those basic assumptions were familiar to everybody in the country, because it will be recalled that a great deal of propaganda was done. There were many talks on the radio, and everybody was told that this all-embracing National Insurance Bill was going to be introduced. But after the implementation of the Act—and of course I, as Minister, was very close to it, and recognised this at the time—many anomalies were revealed, and it was clear that amending legislation would have to be introduced.
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Undoubtedly the experience of operating such a vast organisation was necessary before anyone, however knowledgeable, could foresee the omissions and possible contradictions of the original measure. I would remind your Lordships that there were many knowledgeable people involved in the creation of this scheme, but it is not surprising that a highly technical and detailed piece of legislation should prove fallible.
With that as a background, my criticism of this little Bill is that it is another example of the piecemeal legislation with which we have become only too familiar. I think the indictment of the Government in the field of National Insurance over the last twelve years is that they have been content repeatedly to introduce small Bills of this nature, instead of questioning some of the basic assumptions of the National Insurance scheme. They need not apologise. I suppose it might be said that it is easy to say this after the event. But, of course, if we had stayed in, I am quite sure that we should have challenged those basic assumptions, because one cannot continue to introduce amending legislation, always having to explain just how it stems from some action that was taken in another piece of legislation a few years ago.
It was these initial assumptions that led to the introduction of the earnings rule—and the noble Lord has described some of them. Fears were expressed (this is how it arose) that unemployment might rise after the war, and it was considered necessary to ensure that pensions were not used to subsidise wages. Those fears have, fortunately, proved unfounded, and consequently I say that the earnings rule should be abolished. Yet this Bill seeks to preserve it while amending the amount of the earnings, and I think the noble Lord's explanation itself shows that the position is becoming a little ridiculous because these women, except for a pound or two, can now earn to their maximum.
How does it operate to-day? The noble Lord went so far as to say (and may I just preface my remarks by reminding your Lordships that the average wage for men in industry to-day is £16) that a widow with two children, if she does not work, will receive a pension and allowance of £7 2s. 6d. I think that

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it would be a matter for strong comment if the average wage for a man with two children was that amount. Yet if this woman, with all the worry and anxiety involved in being solely responsible for her children, decides to go out to work, an earnings rule of £7 is imposed—at least she can earn only that amount—and the noble Lord quite rightly said that benefit would not be withdrawn until her earnings reached £9 12s. 0d., when her total net income would be £14 13s.
He finished there, and I admire him for not going on to say what his Minister said in another place. The Minister said precisely the same: that she can earn £14 13s. Then he went on to add that many married men bring up families on this amount. But the noble Lord to-day was wise enough to know that this is a completely fallacious argument. You cannot equate the conditions of a widow with a family man. When she is working she has to pay somebody to look after her children. When she is working, even if the children have meals at school, if the woman is out the whole time, a neighbour has to be paid to look after the children. In the holidays she has to pay something to her neighbour to look after the children the whole time; and in these days it is a not inconsiderable amount. As noble Lords know, to get people to do ordinary domestic work is expensive, but to get them to look after and feed children all day long is an expensive outlay. So I say that it is absolutely fallacious to equate what a married man is earning with what a widow earns; and I am astonished that the Minister in another place did not realise the expenses of a widow.
It is significant, I think, that for the third time in four years a Private Member's Bill designed to abolish the earnings rule will come up for Second Reading on February 14. I believe that both sides of the House in another place feel strongly about this, and I hope that noble Lords on both sides of the House here feel equally strongly. The earnings rule applies to one category only of widowed mothers. Widows whose husbands died while in the Armed Forces or as a result of industrial accident are exempt, as the noble Lord will agree. This is a ridiculous anomaly. Why
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should they be exempt?—though I am all for their being exempt. Moreover, widows who have private means may also keep their full benefits. These anomalies cannot be answered, and the noble Lord, quite rightly, did not try to answer them.
I repeat even more strongly what I said thirteen years ago. The widow carries the burden of the wage earner and the home-maker. She is a prey to anxiety; she is emotionally torn; she is striving to hide her fears and loneliness from her children, and, having paid for the care of her children out of the amount she earns after her work outside, she must, unless she can pay someone else to do it, do her washing, cleaning, cooking and mending—all the things that were done by the wife of the male earner. This, my Lords, is the woman to whom the Government have chosen to apply an earnings rule! The widow without children, or the retirement pensioner, will be permitted under this new Bill to earn £5 without the earnings rule coming into operation.
Apart from the injustice of this proposal, how short-sighted it is! All over the country—and this was raised during a medical debate only two weeks ago—in institutions, hospitals, and private homes women are desperately needed for a variety of jobs, yet the earnings rule is imposed which prevents many of them from taking up a job. The matter was dealt with in the 1956 Report of the National Insurance Advisory Committee, in the Minority Report of Professor Titmuss and Mrs. Spelman. This is what they said:
"Elderly women refuse urgently needed work so as to be on the safe side. Their attitude is that if 'we do not earn anything, they cannot get us'."
The Report also said:
"There is evidence to suggest that the present system of rules is accompanied by wide-spread deceit and evasion."
Women feel justified in doing this because they feel that it is grossly unfair, and while I cannot stand at this Box and justify deceit and evasion, I can well understand how tempted these women are, if they are offered a good, fair wage, which is offered to-day, to take it without informing the authorities.
Your Lordships will remember that I introduced a little Bill called the

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Married Women's Property Bill in order to ensure that the wife who was married to a feckless man might, over the years, save a little nest egg in her own right in case she became a widow. The position is that when a woman becomes a widow she has had no right during her married life to save, however thrifty she may have been. She is the one worker in the country, and a hard worker, too, who has no legal right to save while she is married. Therefore, most widows have no capital at all. Yet when her husband dies she is again discriminated against. I am sure a widow would be the first to say that the real cruelty falls on the fatherless child, who suffers not only the loss of a parent but from a much inferior standard of living.
I would ask noble Lords to read Margaret Wynn's little book Fatherless Families. She tells us that in this country there are 785,000 children brought up by their mothers alone. These are the children made fatherless by divorce, separation, illegitimacy or death. Why do we single out those made fatherless by death for discrimination? Why should these children be called upon to carry a load of poverty. Fifty per cent. of the children receiving National Assistance are fatherless. These figures are an indication of the injustice of this measure of continuing the earnings rule.
I say that we cannot diagnose the various stresses to which these families are subject, but at least we can diagnose poverty. If the widow collapses under the struggle we are prepared to take the child into care in a children's home at a cost of £10 a week to the tax-payer. Perhaps the little extra which legislation of this kind keeps her from earning would have enabled her to carry on with that child on her own. And most of our homes, as we know, are very full.
There is another anomaly. While we are treating the widow as meanly as this, if a child is looked after by a foster mother then 10s. more is paid to her for his support. Who can justify that anomaly? The scheme is getting so complicated now that there are nine different categories of widows, each of whom draws a different kind of benefit on a different basis. As I said in my opening remarks, surely the time has come when instead of bringing these small Bills to us we must examine the basic assumptions
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of the scheme, and I must say that this small Bill to-day points the Government's failure over the last twelve years to re-design the whole scheme in keeping with contemporary needs.
5.10 p.m.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I must first of all declare an interest, because I believe that if this Bill goes through it will be worth several pounds in my pocket, less income tax and surtax. I welcome the Bill, particularly this relaxation of the earnings rule, which is regarded generally in the population as a pinprick though I do not think they realise quite how expensive it would be to remove the whole thing. This relaxation and the various figures it brings with it will, I believe, tend to encourage the half-time employment of widowed mothers, and I, for one, should be very reluctant to see all the widowed mothers in the country employed full time. I think it is very bad for their families if mothers go to work full time, whereas half time can often be conveniently fitted in after children have been packed off to school, and the mother can get back in time to receive them and give them their tea in the afternoon. When the noble Baroness opposite was talking of the heavy expenses of widowed mothers she was, of course, thinking of the full-timer who might be compelled to have her children cared for, or the widowed mother whose children have not yet reached school age.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I remind the noble Lord that he has forgotten school holidays?
LORD HAWKE: I admit that; but then, of course, the expense for looking after children for school holidays is only for a portion of the year. I do not think the most ardent feminists are on very sound ground when they compare a widow's overheads with those of a family with a man attached, because it is well known that the vast majority of man-containing households in the country have heavy overheads in the guise of the expensive hobbies of betting, drinking, smoking and various other forms of sport to which women are not quite so addicted.
Any system, of course, is bound to have great anomalies. If you want to remove all the anomalies in the system

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there is only one thing to fall back on, and that is to go back to the actuaries; in other words, let everybody draw out of the pool what they have actuarially paid in. Of course, nobody would like that at all. The anomalies are the result of grafting a State assistance scheme on to Lord Beveridge's insurance scheme, and so long as we do that we are bound to have these anomalies. The noble Baroness said there were nine classes of widows. I thought there were many more myself, but no doubt she is talking about insurance classes. If we have a State support system grafted on to an insurance system we shall always get new classes being created, whenever Parliament is stimulated to compassion or whenever the Government of the day want to buy some votes. There will be the tendency to create new classes and new anomalies; it is inevitable with the type of system we have. I wish the whole earnings rule could go, because it is a nasty thing that the population does not understand; but it would be so expensive that I do not see it going in the near future, whatever form of Government is likely to be the next one in this country. Nevertheless, I support this step.
5.15 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, one of the advantages of speaking in this House is that one can be completely out of order and there is no one to correct it. One can speak about something that the Bill under discussion does not purport to deal with; and that is what I propose to do for one moment. The compensation I offer the House is that the statement I want to make will be a very short one. My noble friend Lady Summerskill called for a comprehensive measure to deal with all forms of assistance given to widows and other persons, and I should like to fasten my few remarks on to that. In particular, I want to refer to one class of widow who is receiving a pension which has not increased at all since the end of the 1914–1918 war; that is, the widow of a person who was killed in that war, 1914–18, and whose pension remains exactly as it was then.
Recently a number of cases have come to my notice of extreme hardship. They are obviously very elderly widows today and they are finding it very difficult.
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Of course they can go to the Assistance Board and get help, but it is understandable that many of these elderly ladies are reluctant to go to the Assistance Board; they still have a feeling of going for public assistance. I think that these ladies are entitled as of right to have their pensions increased in accordance with the increase of cost of living since 1918. I know that this is not relevant to the purposes of this Bill, but I thought I ought to give voice to it so that the Government may know that there is a case here and something ought to be done about it. This Bill is not, of course, designed to deal with it; nor have the Government taken this into account.
Of course, if the Government were prepared to do it, they could extend the Long Title and could provide some means by which these pensions could be increased. I hope that this will be regarded as something very urgent. It would not be expensive—it cannot be; there can be relatively few, although, as I have said, it so happens that in the past month or two a number of these cases have come to my notice. I hope the noble Lord who is to reply will be able to give some encouragement to these ladies, who are very badly in need of help.
5.20 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, as is the case with my noble friend Lady Summerskill, this particular Bill brings back memories of years ago. My particular memory is of more than seventeen years ago when, in Committee Room 14 upstairs, in a crowded meeting, there was an announcement that the Government of the day were going to increase the pension, which was then 10s., to 26s. In those days and in the circumstances of the time, that seemed a most remarkable and welcome achievement; indeed, in the economic circumstances it was an act of faith and courage. But I confess that over these last few days when I have again been looking at this subject after a lapse of years, I am appalled at the mass of anomalies, inequalities and, indeed, injustices which have arisen from the original structure. It has been patched, added to and amended, so that now I feel that only experts like the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading can find their way through the 70 different rates of pension which are payable: not merely

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as my noble friend mentioned, are nine different rates of pension payable to widows, but 70 different rates are now covered.
Naturally, like all noble Lords, I welcome the provision in the Bill of £6½ million of extra benefits, most of it going to widowed mothers, with some small improvement for some retired pensioners. But like my noble friend, I regret that the opportunity has not been taken, as it could have been, to remove some of these anomalies. The noble Lord was at considerable pains to explain why the earnings rule for widows had not been removed altogether. If I understood him aright, he argued that to do so would mean scrapping the insurance principle, the basis on which all this rests. This measure, to which I hope we are going to give a Second Reading to-day, is a further step away from the insurance principle in respect to widows. You are really only hanging on to it by a narrow thread. Indeed, this measure is an admission by the Government that this is a special case.
Imagine, a widow with three children will now get £9 a week in pension and allowances, and she is allowed to earn £7 without deduction. That is an income of £16 a week for her without deduction. The national average earned by women in full-time employment, as I understand it, is somewhat less than £8 10s. a week; and I think even the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, will agree that it could involve no large cost to scrap the earnings rule altogether. Indeed, if one counts the considerable administrative cost which must continue if you keep the earnings rule, I should have thought the net cost would have been small.
As my noble friend has mentioned, widows do not understand this earnings rule. They consider it unfair and unjust. In particular, they consider it unjust that it applies not to incomes but to earnings. You can have two widows living next door to each other. One widow may, for instance, have an income of £12 a week from investments left by her husband. He may have won a football pool before he died. She would suffer no deduction from that income. But if her neighbour goes out to work as a typist or a secretary and earns £12 a week, she will suffer the
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maximum possible deduction and have only 26s. left of her pension. There cannot possibly be any moral justification for this.
Obviously, as my noble friend pointed out, there is no point of principle involved, because if a woman's husband was killed in an industrial accident she would not suffer from the earnings rule. The loss and deprivation is the same in each case. I do not think that anyone can argue that a different set of rules should apply if a man dies in his bed, from those which apply if he is killed at work. In both cases the widow loses the breadwinner; if she can earn she should be allowed to, and the earnings rule should be scrapped for all widows.
I should also like to deal with a point which my noble friend did not touch on—in fact, she may not even agree with me. I regard the total allowance of 37s. 6d. a week as completely inadequate if it is regarded, as indeed it must be, as keeping a child of any age up to nineteen. In some cases, widowhood comes suddenly. In others, it comes after the husband has endured a long illness; the couple's savings have gone and the widow has nothing left except the allowances. In many cases the husband is a working man who has earned £20 a week and the family has commitments—perhaps a house that they are still paying for, a refrigerator and things of that kind. In any case, there are commitments and nothing to meet them with, except the pension and the allowances for the children. The widow is expected to keep a fully grown boy or girl on 37s. 6d. a week. Of course we all know that they eat as much as a man. So far as clothes are concerned, those are frequently more costly.
Foster parents are paid 50s. a week for keeping a child, and even that is considered inadequate. There is some reason for believing it is, because out of every five children put to foster parents two cases are unsuccessful, the children have to be re-circulated and perhaps go to local authority homes wher they cost an average of £9 10s. a week, or eventually finish up, as 4,000 of them do, in penal institutions where they cost £13 10s. a week.
I submit that all these special regulations that we have had, like this Bill, should acknowledge the strain and

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struggle of the widowed mother: she worries about the home getting shabbier because she cannot replace things when they become worn out; she worries because she feels that the children cannot invite their school friends home; she worries because she cannot give them the little extras that they need for school and recreation. Indeed, as is mentioned in the book by Margaret Wynn which my noble friend referred to, the fatherless family is, generally speaking, poorer, lonelier, less secure and worse housed than other families. The exceptions to this are where the great efforts of the mother have overcome this big handicap. In my view, it would be economically wise and socially just to increase this 37s. 6d. on a sliding scale according to the ages of the children; otherwise, we are just trading on the mother's instinctive determination to keep her children at home not to let them go into the care of the local authority, and we are risking the breakdown of the mother.
Then I would mention the great majority of widows who will get nothing under this Bill. My noble friend Lord Silkin has spoken of one class, perhaps small numerically, who have suffered injustice for a very long time. There are about 2½ million widows, who are looking after, in all, nearly one million children. That means that perhaps 500,000 widows are looking after children, yet fewer than 150,000 of them are drawing widowed mothers' allowances. That means that at least 350,000 widows with children get little or no help under this Bill. There are others among the eight varieties of widow whom we are not going to help this afternoon.
One numerous, and in my view ill-treated, class are widows under 50 whose children have ceased to be dependent and who receive no pension at all. I gained some insight only a few months ago into what this can mean to a widow when one of my own employees died. The family had children of 15, 17 and 21 years of age, but fortunately a latecomer aged 3. So there is no difficulty about pension in that case, nor any real financial difficulty, because they own their house and are otherwise provided for. But the point is that the widow—a woman I know well, a devoted wife
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and mother—had no skills, had married young and had never done any job other than the very important one of running a home with a fair-sized family. Like so many more widows, particularly widows in her shattered state—a condition which in her case still continues—she is not really employable; yet, but for an accident of birth, she would at 48 have had no pension.
In many parts of the country, in the North-East and in Scotland, it is extremely difficult for women of over 40 or 45 or 48 to get employment. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, will recall, when Labour was in power we pensioned widows at 40, as indeed they should be now—particularly as an increasing number have children who are no longer dependent by the time the mother reaches the age of 40. In my view, it is just not good enough to expect a woman to do her utmost for her children until they are a certain age, then, as it were, roughly tell her, "Off you go and start a new life, which you know nothing about", and let her scramble along somehow until she qualifies for a pension at 60.
Then there is the unfortunate band referred to as the "ten shilling widows", of whom there are 84,000 under 60 and 27,000 over 60—over 100,000 in all. The great majority of this class of pensions have come into existence since 1948, 35,000 in the last five years. I do not want to delve into the reasons for this curious anomaly. It is an unhappy hangover of pre-war legislation and of the 1948 Act, but it is undeniable that the 10s. dole which was considered appropriate in 1939 is impossibly inappropriate in the comparatively depreciated currency of 1964. It is useless to talk about which fund or pocket—and the total cost would be about £4 million—the money is coming from. I submit that the least we can do, and must do, is to raise the 10s. to 30s. so that it will buy what it bought before the war. Again, that is certainly what we will do if and when Labour is returned to power.
My noble friend commented on the extension in this Bill of the definition of "child" from 18 to 19 years. I congratulate the Government on having broken through in a field where they had assumed this was impossible, and I am

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glad to hear that some 20,000 widows will benefit substantially. However, I feel quite strongly that the only fair criterion here should be, not the age of the child at school, but dependancy; and that the allowances should be paid so long as the child is receiving full-time education. Again, we should be removing an anomaly, because in the parallel case of income tax the allowances depend on whether the child is receiving full-time education, not on the age of 18 or 19.
There are two smaller points that I should like to submit to the noble Lord, first, in regard to the "disregards" to which he referred with a maximum of 30s. in cases when mothers apply for National Assistance. This Bill, I am thankful to say, will take many widowed mothers out of the orbit of National Assistance, but those whom it will not free from the need to apply for National Assistance are those with the larger families—in fact those with the greatest need. It will be precisely those with the larger families of children who will be hit by this maximum of 30s. imposed on the "disregards". I do not know whether the noble Lord takes my point. If a family has only one child, the 30s. does not matter; but if there are five or six children, it will begin to matter; and it is precisely those families who are in the greater need. I feel that it is only a very small matter financially and that this limit should be abolished. This is one matter which my noble friends and I might consider raising on Committee.
Another point is the suggestion which has been made, as the noble Lord is aware, that it might help retirement pensioners if their earnings could be averaged throughout the year. The answer which has been given by the Government on that point is quite convincing; namely, that their earnings would be calculated in retrospect; that averaging might operate against the pensioner; and that if the earnings were averaged it would possibly create a break of a week or two when the pensioner would get no pension at all. I am wondering if the Department have ever considered whether it would be possible to devise a rebate scheme operating in exactly the same way as rebate operates under P.A.Y.E. If that were possible, the pensioner would get a rebate in
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weeks when he was not earning or when the earnings were below £5—which would be quite a help to the considerable number of pensioners who do part-time and seasonal employment.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, has the noble Lord thought this one out? The pensioner is paid on a warrant every week. How is the noble Lord going to work a rebate scheme there?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I should have thought that it would be worked through the Post Office quite simply by means of a supplementary pension. That is done easily, and it is varied. It seems to me that if it can be done with P.A.Y.E., it can be done in exactly the same way with these other earnings. Why not? The pensioner has to pay income tax. When his earnings fall and he is paying income tax, he will get a rebate. In exactly the same way, he should be able to get a rebate on any deduction made from his pension. In any case, this is not a matter for a violent battle. I merely make the suggestion.
My Lords, I would support what was said by my noble friend Lady Summer-skill about the woes of the children who are fatherless. She gave very convincing and, indeed, distressing figures, and there is no need for me to repeat them. I understand, however, that the Government's view in this matter is that it is impossible to deal with these children—the children of fathers who are divorced or who desert their children, or who are separated from their mothers and who then die—because it is not possible to insure the father against acts which he can avoid doing, or acts which he wilfully commits. But I do not think that that is other than a sophistry which is quite unworthy of discussion; because it is the child who matters, and it is the child who must be provided for like any other child. Otherwise, we have the situation where, because the child had a bad or neglectful father, or perhaps because the child is illegitimate, a lower rate of allowance is payable than in the case of other children. Indeed, as the noble Lord will be aware, there are cases where in the same family you have some children in receipt of allowance, and other children who are not; where you have some children in receipt of a full allowance and others in receipt of

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only a partial allowance. That situation arises simply because we are visiting on the children the sins or omissions of the parents; and it is a labyrinth of rules which we should abolish.
My Lords, it is no consolation that some of the gaps and holes are partially filled by National Assistance. It is surely an intolerable situation, and one which, in effect, translates social condemnation of the parents into cash penalties for the child. And I think that this is something that must be altered as quickly as possible. It would seem that a fatherless child allowance is the right answer, and that it should be paid equally to all children irrespective of the circumstances of a father's death, his contribution record, or the manner in which he discharged his parental obligations. As my noble friend has said, it is time that we ended patching and cobbling, and laid a new foundation and built a new structure. I am confident that it can be done. Like all noble Lords I welcome this Bill, but I believe that the next National Insurance Bill will be introduced by a Labour Government, and that it will remove the anomalies of which we complain and produce the social justice in which we believe.
5.45 p.m.
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, a great many extremely interesting points have been raised in this debate, though I am afraid that if I were to attempt to answer all of them I should detain your Lordships a very long time. However, I will do my best to deal with as many as I can. In particular, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, for the way in which she welcomed the Bill, but with the reservation, first of all, that she said that this was "patching", and that what was needed was a thorough and fundamental examination of the whole National Insurance principle.
I am bound to say that I find her comment that we are getting further and further away from insurance principles a little difficult to reconcile with the closing remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, who was urging us to get right away from insurance principles altogether. I would doubt whether we have, in fact, got as far away from insurance
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principles as the noble Lady suggested. The mere fact that we give preferences in certain circumstances does not mean that we are getting away from an insurance principle. This is one of the risks against which the insurance is given, and the mere fact that the payments are greater when that risk materialises—when the actual occurrence for which the cover is obtained happens—than they are otherwise, does not in any way mean that the insurance principle has been violated. Of course we all know that, in a National Insurance scheme of this kind, we cannot be exactly on all fours with ordinary insurance outside. Nevertheless, I think it is important to realise—(I think this was brought out, too, by one of the earlier remarks of the noble Lady) that this is a National Insurance scheme, and that there are contributions which are tied to certain definite benefits.
I was very interested in the way the noble Lady attacked the general conduct of the Government. I myself have thought that we have been doing our best to remove anomalies, and to improve the provisions of the National Insurance scheme as we went along. She seemed to think that, if anything, we had been increasing them, and that it was time we abolished the whole scheme and got away from the "basic assumptions", as she called them. Now assumptions are different from principles. It may well be that one of the reasons why, let us say, the Treasury thought that it was a good idea to have one single scheme, with one single conception of benefits, was that they did not want pensions, as the noble Lady put it, to subsidise unemployment. But this was not at all, of course, the basic conception of the Beveridge scheme which, by and large, came to be the 1946 Act. There we were substituting one single benefit for a number of separate benefits with different levels—unemployment, sickness, old age—and to justify that we had to have one single conception; and the conception, of course, is that the benefits are paid when earnings are not possible for one reason or another—"in the absence of earnings" is the classic phrase.
So I wondered, really, whether the noble Lady wanted us to be quite so fundamental as she indicated. She seemed to me to be arguing at one time

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that it was time we did away with the earnings rule for widows and widowed mothers, but at other times she did not seem to be so emphatic that it was necessary, also, to get rid of the earnings rule for retirement pensioners. One of the great fundamental difficulties of all this is that one benefit merges into another. We have already seen, in the course of the debate to-day, how the benefit for widowed mothers merges into or is substituted by, or, if you like, is taken over by, a widow's pension when the youngest child is off the hands of the widowed mother.
Perhaps at this stage I might just deal with the point which the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, raised. I think that what he was thinking of was the fact that the present Government have altered the basis of the transition from the widowed mother's benefit to the widow's benefit. It used to take place at forty, and it was subsequently raised to fifty, although the widow's benefit has always started at fifty. I think that, in his remarks, he rather gave the impression that the widow's benefit was payable originally at forty. That was not so, of course.
Just as we have that transition from widowed mothers to widows, so also we have the transition from the widow's pension to the retirement pension. A widow who is in employment may well go on working after the age of sixty. What are you going to do in that case? If you keep the earnings rule for retirement pensions, are you going to say that suddenly when she becomes sixty she becomes liable to the earnings rule? Even if you say, "No, she can go on having her widow's pension until she does retire," then suppose she retires at sixty-three and draws her retirement pension? She would then become subject, of course, to the earnings rule in respect of anything that she might earn over the earnings limit. Whatever you do in this field, you run into difficulties; and we feel it is much better to keep the principle clear and unblurred, that the earnings rule does remain for all.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I just interrupt the noble Lord? I am so sorry if the noble Lord was under any misapprehension. Of course, I am opposed to the earnings
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rule for all. I was really emphasising the case of the widow, because I did in a speech when I was a Minister, which the noble Lord mentioned. I thought I mentioned retirement pensioners in one sentence.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I agree entirely with the noble Lady; she did. I think that perhaps I was doing her an injustice. Perhaps she made her view entirely clear, but I think it is equally true to say that that is not the official view of the Party opposite, in so far as one can discern an official view in this matter.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the Labour Party is on record as being determined to abolish the earnings rule in respect of widows completely.
LORD DRUMALBYN: Yes, quite so; but, as I understand it, the noble Lady also wants to abolish the earnings rule in regard to retirement pensions, whereas the Labour Party has not, so to speak, caught up with her on that yet.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: Is the noble Lord sure of that? Which pamphlet has he been reading?
LORD DRUMALBYN: I do not know all the latest editions, but I think I have the last edition of the pamphlet which has been issued giving their policy.
If I may now turn to another question which the noble Lady raised, she stressed very much the effect that the earnings rule has on the widowed mother's family. I think I should make one thing clear, because I was not quite certain that she gave due weight to this. Everything that a widowed mother who goes out to work has to pay for looking after her family whilst she is working can, of course, be deducted, provided that it is for a reasonable amount, from the earnings when considering what the deductions for earnings should be. So I do not think that the particular point she had in mind is all that important. The noble Lady said, if I understood her argument aright, that if a widowed mother goes out to work then she has to pay so much for someone to look after her children. What I am saying is that that amount is eligible to be taken into account when considering what the deductions

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should be under the earnings rule. The truth of the matter is, of course, that in this Bill we are providing improvements in the benefits for widowed mothers and their children which will add something like £5 million to the amount that they receive; whereas, if you were to abolish the earnings rule for widowed mothers, the total cost would be only £1½ million—and, of course, by far the greatest benefit would go to those widows who, although obviously they would be very glad to have the addition, do not need it to anything like the extent of those who will benefit under these particular provisions, those who are much worse off than they are.
The noble Lady said she thought that, because the earnings rules do not apply to industrial injuries and war widows' pensions, they should not apply, either, under the National Insurance Scheme. Again, I would say that the conditions there are quite different.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: She is still a widow.
LORD DRUMALBYN: She is still a widow, but they are quite different schemes, and it is not reasonable, I think, to take a particular item from one scheme and say that it should apply to all three schemes alike. She also said, I think, that there were nine categories of widows. I am not exactly sure what she is thinking of, but certainly there are three different categories of widows under each of the three schemes.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: That is right. Three threes are nine.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I was not certain whether she was implying that there were now nine different categories under the National Insurance Scheme. Of course, that is not so.
To deal with the interesting point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I think the answer to him is that there was an alternative benefit available in the 1914–18 war, and those who elected to take the alternative benefit go on receiving it. It has not been increased at all; but I am told that it would not be increased so long as it is more than the current rates. But if it became less than the current rates, then I think that the beneficiary would be entitled to the
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current rates. But here again, as the noble Earl said earlier, I speak subject to correction, and I should like to go into the particular point further and write to him about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said that 37s. 6d. was an amount which was, as he described it, "totally inadequate". Of course, these things are all relative. He thought that there should be different amounts at different ages. It is of course true that it is much easier for the widow to get out to work as her children get older, so perhaps to some extent it is a counterpoise to the fact that her children, as they get older, cost more. But, in any case, I think that it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that the amount of 37s. 6d. for the first child compares with an amount of 10s. for the first child when this Government came into power and 7s. 6d. for the second and third children. So, if it is considered inadequate, we have certainly made great progress (I will put it that way) in the last twelve years.
LORD STONHAM: It is certainly better, but the noble Lord will agree that, in giving the figures of 10s. and 7s. 6d., he omitted the family allowances for the second and subsequent children, whereas the 37s. 6d. in every case includes family allowances.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I think the comparison I have made there is the correct one. But, again, if I am wrong, I will let the noble Lord know.
The noble Lord then talked about widows under 50 who receive no pension and went on to speak about the "10s. widows". Perhaps I may remind your Lordships who these "10s. widows" are. When the 1946 Act came into effect on July 5, 1948, those widows who were ill, or who had children to look after, were able at once to get the new benefit of 26s., plus the children's allowances as they then were. At that time also there were many workers who were insured for a 10s. benefit to their widows in the event of their death. It would have been possible at that time—and let us face it: it would have saved a great deal of administrative trouble—for the Government to stop that benefit. I think they were right not to stop it. There was a contractual obligation; and that obligation continues. The widows

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and those who were widowed after 1948 get the 10s. benefit if they were married before July 5, 1948, and their husbands were insured under previous legislation.
These are the "10s. widows". The suggestion is that the amount they receive should be raised very much. I think it is worthwhile to make the point that in fact most of them are in employment: the proportion of these widows receiving National Assistance is less than half the proportion of all widows receiving National Assistance. In other words, by and large these are the widows who have got into employment fairly early and are able to continue. They are, of course, that much better off than widows whose husbands were not insured before 1948; and, by the same token, they are that much better off than the spinsters with whom they are working side by side and the widows whose husbands were not insured before 1948.
These are the facts that have to be considered. This was a reserve right kept for these widows. It is at least arguable that there is no good reason, now that all other benefits have been increased, why this particular benefit, which is considered to be obsolescent, should be raised. The noble Lord said that it was an inappropriate sum. I think that under modern terms it is to be considered an inappropriate benefit. It is not a benefit that we should introduce to-day. I think there is no reason why on these grounds it should be raised. This is the view the Government have taken. If it were to be raised (if I may say this), the appropriate figure, on the basis of comparison with 1946 and 1948, would be not 30s. but something less than £1.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am aware of that. Will the noble Lord say why the Government do not even do that? During the period they have been in charge they have depreciated the currency and therefore depreciated the value of the 10s. Why cannot the Government do that act of justice and increase the amount to restore the value to what it was?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, this seems to me to be "pots and kettles". Certainly the rate of depreciation and devaluation of currency was much higher per annum under the Labour Government
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than under the present Government. I think that the arguments I have given show why, in the Government's view, it would not be appropriate to keep this particular benefit in line with any particular level, whether it be cost of living or earnings or anything else. I do not wish to detain your Lordships too long.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask a question on the last answer to my noble friend about the depreciation of currency? Does the noble Lord really believe that what he said was true? Look at the Budget for 1951–52, for £4,192 million, and a Budget this year which will, with Supplementary Estimates, run to over £7,000 million! How can that have happened without a grave depreciation of currency?
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, there has been some decline in the value of money and also considerable increase in the wealth of the country. I was about to deal with the question of disregards. I think this is a question that has to be seen in perspective. The noble Lord is quite right. Of course, if you have more than four children there will be some deduction in respect of this payment; but it will be only 1s. 6d. in respect of the fifth child; and, to keep this in perspective, it is worth saying that I am told that there are only 500 widows on assistance with more than three children. So this is a comparatively small issue. In the Government's view, it would not be appropriate to alter fundamentally the National Assistance Act in an Act which is dealing with insurance benefits.
I think I have covered almost all the points. I was interested in the noble Lord's suggestions that there should be a rebate scheme in order to average out earnings more easily. I think my noble friend Lord Hawke gave the answer to that. The only way in which this could be done would be from week to week by personal visit to the local office, which would perhaps cost more to get to in some cases than the amount of rebate. I think this is something we should like to look at; but I believe it would rather cut across the general system of issue of pensions by books and supplementary pensions also by books for periods of three or six months, whatever it may be.

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Finally, I think we shall all agree that, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, it is the child that matters; and this particular Bill is designed particularly to help widowed mothers in their task of bringing up children who are left as their responsibility. I am glad that the House welcomes this Bill. As in the case of all such Bills, noble Lords feel that it does not go as far as they would like, but nevertheless I would thank them for the welcome they have given it.
On Question, Bill read 2a; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

INFLAMMABLE NIGHTWEAR
6.8 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND LORD AUCKLAND rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the large numbers of accidents to children and adults caused by the wearing of inflammable nightwear, and whether they will take urgent steps to expedite discussions with all concerned with the production and sale of the garments, with a view to an early embargo on their sale and manufacture. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Unstarred Question which stands in my name. In raising as an Unstarred Question this very tragic matter of deaths and injuries caused by inflammable nightwear, my purpose has been to enable some discussion to take place on this problem, and I am especially grateful to my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood, the Chairman of the Consumer Council, for making a special journey from Scotland to take part. Already she has shown her tremendous talents in the capacity of Chairman of this Council and I am sure that her contribution to this debate will be very valuable. May I, in advance, thank all the Members of your Lordships' House who have signified their intention of taking part?
I suppose I have two qualifications for putting down this Question: I am a member of the Parliamentary All-Party Home Safety Committee and I am also the father of three small children, the eldest of whom is eight years of age, and
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it is around that age when many of these terrible accidents occur. Your Lordships may recall that three years ago I introduced a debate in your Lordships' House on home safety. It was nearly four years ago when the Molony Committee's Interim Report was issued. Paragraph 28 of that Report says:
"Deaths from clothing burns annually reach a disturbing figure. To these must be added a certain number of serious but nonfatal injuries. Action to reduce this hazard is therefore much to be desired."
At that juncture the Committee did not advocate compulsory flame-proofing, but said that the situation must be watched closely and if these accidents tended to increase or keep to their level the Government of the day should take swift action.
At this moment I believe that the Home Secretary is in the process of meeting representatives from the clothing industry and others concerned in this matter. That is certainly a step in the right direction. I have given my noble friend the Minister of State notice of one or two questions. When will this organisation be meeting? How long are the meetings likely to take? And, very important, what will be the terms of reference? The present Home Secretary is a man of humane feeling and, as a family man himself, is as anxious as anyone to see this dreadful toll of death and injury cut down.
I would pay particular tribute to the Daily Mail for the widespread campaign it has recently been carrying on to bring the attention of the general public to these accidents. As I have said before in your Lordships' House, accidents on the road, in factories and in coal mines, are usually witnessed by a number of people and inquiries usually follow; but accidents in the home are not subjected to this process, and any figures quoted cannot possibly include, for example, people who go to outpatients' departments for treatment. The number of fatal accidents to children between the ages of 5 and 14 between 1958 and 1962, caused by burning clothing, was 152. I do not have the exact figures of the number injured, but, of course, they run into far higher figures.
A number of disturbing features have come out of the investigations. It would seem that winceyette and flannelette-type materials are being imported from

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the Far East and sold at cheap prices particularly in markets. I would ask my noble friend to ask his right honourable friend to look into this point carefully, because it is a very disturbing situation. There is also the disquieting news that, out of the fourteen authorities which the Daily Mail research group visited, only four insist on the provision of fireproof pyjamas and nightdresses in their homes. And these do not include the London County Council, which has very many children under its care. I am informed that one authority that does is the Devon County Council, and they should be congratulated.
I know that there are difficulties here. Mothers buy these lengths of material and make them up into garments, and if one says that they cannot do this, there is the hoary old cry of, "The liberty of the subject". Nobody believes more than I in the liberty of the individual. But cars of five years and over must have an annual brake test. It may well be that crash helmets for motor cyclists will become compulsory. It is surely not beyond the wit of the Government to sidetrack these terrible accidents by some form of compulsion in this sphere of nightwear. There is a possible solution in the matter of purchase tax. I suggest that there could be a substantial reduction in purchase tax on treated and non-inflammable nightwear. The alternative is to put an extremely high tax on flammable material. Of the two ideas, I think that the former is probably the best.
Another newspaper which has gone carefully into this matter, as well as into other aspects of home safety, is the Daily Mirror. Last year they came forward with some shocking reports of burning accidents. I have myself visited the Proban centre in Knightsbridge, where many of these garments are treated, and the material is attractive and satisfactory. Two or three years ago my wife and I obtained one of these nightdresses for our younger daughter. The other day we washed out the remains of the nightdress, which is now used as a duster. We tested it for flammability by putting petrol on it and setting it alight, and still the material did not flare up. So this is a perfectly satisfactory method of dealing with this risk.
In the Daily Mail there have been some really heart-rending stories and pictures. There was one of a five-year-old girl who was burned and was crying because her mother could not accompany her in the helicopter taking her from Romford to the Mount Vernon Hospital in Northwood, where she was treated for burns. There was another one of a coloured girl from Leeds who was burned and her mother did not know that non-inflammable material could be obtained. This is the disturbing feature. Time after time it has been represented to me and to others by people that they do not know that this material is available. I would ask my noble friend to try persuade the Home Secretary somehow to advertise, if necessary through Government medium, that these things can be obtained.
This is a matter of tremendous concern. The cotton and fabric industry of this country has a great reputation, but it is a disturbing fact that in the eyes of some it is becoming a killer. I have visited Mount Vernon Hospital, and three ears ago I saw there a girl ten months old who had been burned by these means. I will not go into details at this stage, but sufficient to say that 50 per cent. of her limbs had either been burned off or otherwise rendered useless; she had lost one ear, and her scalp had been burned. I think any noble Lord or anybody else who had seen this child would have immediately reacted by asking Parliament to bring in some kind of legislation of this nature. I think this can be done.
One leading toy firm in this country is in future selling, so far as its soft toys are concerned, such as teddy bears, only those made out of non-flammable material. This is a step in the right direction. I feel that the same thing could be done as regards clothing. And this applies not only to children—being a father of young children, naturally I am more concerned about them—but elderly people, too, are burned in this way, and many of them live alone and have no help. The figures for deaths and injuries caused in this way to elderly people are, in fact, substantially higher. I hope that as a result of this Question the Government will see to it that action is taken. Indeed, I think there is great reason for using the quotation: "Action this day!"
6.25 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, I was not a Member of your Lordships' House in 1961 when the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, initiated his debate on accidents in the home. I should like at this stage to convey to the noble Lord the appreciation of the whole House that he has raised this matter a second time and given us the opportunity of discussing it again to-day. Reverting to 1961, although I was not then, as I say, a Member of this House, it is probably hardly necessary to say that I followed with interest what was said in the debate. From that debate I should like to mention just two facts which emerged and which I think have particular reference to to-day's discussion. The first was that over 80 per cent. of all accidents in the home concerned either children under 4 or adults over 65. Secondly, falls were shown to be the main cause of injury, followed next by burns. As the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has said to-day, at that time he did not see that legislation with regard to children's nightwear was practicable.
Following that debate in 1961 I tried to build up the background against which I felt this whole problem should be considered. The first thing I want to say is that, although it is easy to forget the fact, most clothes, and especially those worn by women, are flammable, obviously to a greater or lesser degree. I see that the noble Lord agrees with me. As we all know, and as probably the public know, the leaders in the field of treating textiles at that time were Proban; and Proban were, and are, owned by two firms—namely, Albright and Wilson and the Bradford Dyers Association. I think we should pay tribute to the fact that by the end of 1961 these two firms had invested nearly £500,000 in this venture; and to-day's figure is much greater.
In 1961 it seemed to me that there were three main consumer objections. First, the finish gave a harsh feel to the fabric, and it was this actual "handle" that the public did not like. Secondly, the treatment tended to reduce the wear-and-tear strength of the fabric. Thirdly, prices remained high: treated material cost 2s. to 4s. a yard more than the untreated; and this, for some garments, added 30 per cent. to the cost. As for the trade, they told me that the consumer would not buy. I thought
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that they were wrong. But it was I who was wrong, and not the trade. I remember an example they gave me at the time, to the effect that about 40 million yards of cloth that might be treated is sold each year. Yet finishers and retailers thought they would be doing well if they sold half a million yards of treated cloth that season. I need hardly point out to your Lordships that that is a very small proportion. That was the end of 1961—the year that saw 234 deaths due to burns by clothing. What of 1962? Well my Lords, 1962 saw this figure increased to 312. The figures for 1963 are still to come, and perhaps the Minister will be able to give them to us to-night.
As this House, and certainly the Minister, will remember, July, 1962, brought us the Molony Report. The Molony Committee told us in their Report that they had had a number of suggestions to stimulate the availability of flame-resistant materials. At page 74, paragraph 133, of the Report they gave us three suggestions that had been made to them:
"that the Government should subsidise research on the problem … that the Government should subsidise production so as to eliminate price differential … that the Government should finance a publicity campaign.…"
These proposals were all turned down by the Molony Committee. I would agree with them on the first two points, but I should like to return later to the last suggestion. In paragraph 235 the Molony Report told us that the Committee were
"hopeful that the public conscience has been stirred in a way which will render it"—
that is, statutory intervention—
"unnecessary in the future".
I do not know the views of your Lordships, or those of the Minister, but as matters stand at the moment I am afraid that this will not be so unless we have many terrible accidents, such as we had with oil heaters.
None of us in this House believes that, some few years ago, we got action on oil heaters because oil heaters had suddenly become more dangerous. It was simply because there had been many terrible accidents to which the Press gave great publicity, and for which we all thank them. This roused public opinion; and public opinion roused the

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Government or the Molony Committee, or both of them together, and we had some action. We might well ask here: Are the figures that have been mentioned not terrible enough—312 deaths in 1962? I do not know. I only know that, in spite of these figures—and the number of deaths has been increasing steadily since 1961; and I believe that when we get the most recent figures they will show a still-increasing trend—retailers and manufacturers of fire resistant fabrics and fabric processes feel that their efforts to sell safety have been a failure. In other words, they say to me, "It looks as though we are up against both consumer apathy"—which we know—"and consumer resistance." Is this true, my Lords? Yes, I think it is.
To find out just how true it is, I have been to two firms. I have been to Marks and Spencer and to Lewis's, Limited, which includes Selfridge's—and I add that appendage, so that people will not get muddled up with the John Lewis Partnership, as so often happens. Why did I choose these two firms? I took Marks and Spencer because I think they stand for real value for money and because, even more important for what I wanted to find out, the shopping public shares this opinion. I took Lewis's because I remembered having a note in my files as long ago as 1960, to the effect that in their group they had undertaken, in December of that year, to reduce their mark-on in made-up children's nightdresses made from Proban-treated winceyette materials, in order to bring the price within easier reach of the general public. What happened in each case?
Marks and Spencer told me that they had for a long time been conscious of the problems of fire hazard in children's nightdresses. They had eliminated children's winceyette nightdresses many years ago, probably soon after the end of the war. The only children's nightdresses they sell now are of brushed nylon, sold under the British Nylon Spinners' "flare-free" ticket. In 1961 and 1962, they had trials in stores of children's nightdresses and pyjamas in Proban-treated winceyette. These trials were unsuccessful, first, because the public did not seem willing to pay approximately 5s. per garment more, and, secondly, because the fabric was harsh and uncomfortable. On both occasions it was
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necessary to reduce prices to clear. I would stress that, in addition to having the merchandise for sale, Marks and Spencer briefed sales assistants to tell customers—and not only those customers who were interested in the Proban-treated garments, but those interested in any type of nightwear at all—of the advantages.
As a result of this experience, did Marks and Spencer throw in their hand? No, my Lords, they did not. They tell me that they are now looking at further samples of Proban-treated winceyette with an improved finish. Experiments are being made with an alternative fabric to winceyette, vincel-cotton, which may take a Proban finish more successfully. A trial quantity of children's nightdresses in knitted Teklan will be available and will be sent out to stores within the next two or three weeks. I would say to the House, in passing, that this fabric has a "handle" comparable with that of brushed nylon, but is flame-proof, and most shoppers like the feel of it.
What about Lewis's Limited? What happened to their experiment? They told me that in 1960 the resistance by customers was almost 100 per cent. because of the feel of the fabric and the high prices. In the autumn of 1962, several manufacturers produced a softer Proban winceyette and in early 1963 Lewis's reduced their prices to approximately 2s. to 3s. per garment above the price of that non-treated. In August, 1963, the sale of all non-treated winceyette nightdresses for children was discontinued. Yet the firm told me that they feel there is still a lack of interest by the public in flame-proofed materials sold either by the yard or in made-up garments. In an effort to bring this to the attention of shoppers, Lewis's exhibit a notice on untreated winceyette saying:
"This cloth should not be used either for children's nightdresses, or old people's nightdresses as it is inflammable."
The last point I would make here is that in most of their stores there is a recorded message on tape which customers can listen to by lifting a telephone receiver. The message explains to them the reasons why they should buy flame-resistant nightdresses, and encourages them to do so.
That, my Lords, is the retailing end. What about research? As the House is

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aware, I am a consultant to Courtauld's, and in this capacity I have the opportunity of learning much that otherwise might not come my way. I should like to stress that I also enjoy complete independence and freedom to express my views anywhere. Having declared that interest, may I go on to say that a great deal of expensive research and development has been done both by man-made-fibre producers and by the dyeing and finishing trade in order to produce low flammability and flameproof textiles. It is interesting to note that flameproof and low-flammability garments passing the British Standards Institution standard of testing can be produced by three methods. The first is by using fabrics comprising a fibre that is completely non-flammable, and which will consequently withstand repeated launderings without losing any of its flameproof properties. This fibre, called Teklan, was discovered by Courtauld's as a result of considerable long-term research efforts, and is at present in the commercial development stage.
The second method is by using manmade fibres which are flame-resistant or of low flammability by incorporating flame-proof chemicals in their composition before extrusion into fibre form. I went to see this done. I thought that some of your Lordships might be as ignorant as I was before I saw it, and that somebody might get up and ask me, "What on earth do you mean by extrusion into fibre form?'". Even if it is technical, may I, in case it should be helpful to some noble Lords, explain what I mean? A spinning solution which is a viscous fluid is forced through minute holes in a jet. Fine filaments are formed by evaporation of the solvent, and the textile fibres thus contain the flame-proof chemicals thoroughly dispersed and fixed. I have underlined the word "fixed" on my notes which is the most important part, as I see the Minister knows. There are two such fibres available—namely, British Celanese's "Dicel" and James Nelson's "F.R. acetate". These two fibres retain their flame-resistant properties undiminished after repeated washing or dry-cleaning.
The third method is by using chemical flame-resistant finishes which can be put
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either on to the fabric or on to the garment. These are of two types, temporary and durable. The temporary finishes, such as sulphate of ammonia, borax and boracic acid mixtures, are removed on washing and tend to powder off during use; the durable finishes will withstand many washing treatments but ultimately become less effective. Obviously, these finishes again add to the cost of the garments and, of course, all such applied finishes, whether temporary or durable, affect the handle or feel of the cloth; and, as I said earlier, this has been a contributory factor to the lack of public demand.
I am taking up a lot of your Lordships' time but I am doing so because I think those of us here to-day, and many others, have a deep personal concern with this problem and I do not think we should just skim the surface. If I may say so, I do not believe that this House itself believes in skimming the surface of something which really matters. We must have some idea of what we are tackling. Indeed, if the Home Office, as I read on Friday last, is really going to sift inflammable clothing facts it will have to look at the points I am now raising.
This durable type of finish that I have been talking about is adversely affected by chlorine bleaching, which not only vitiates the flame-proofing effect, but also deteriorates the fabric. Another factor to contend with is that washing the chemically flame-proofed garments in hard water with soap negatives the flameproof effect, since the layer of lime soaps deposited on the garment is itself flammable. This also applies to starching; but washing in hard water with non-soap detergents is permissible. Because of all this I want to stress to the House, and particularly to the Government, that if it is proposed to introduce legislation, or to act by Orders in Council, it is essential, as I hope I have proved, that garments made up from chemically flame-proofed fabrics should bear a sew-on label clearly indicating (and these words are mine) "No chlorine bleach: wash with detergents". These limitations do not apply to Teklan, or to the flame-resistant acetates that I mentioned previously.
The House may know, and I hope that the Minister may know, that there is a strong body of opinion which considers that an applied flame-proof finish that

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can be rendered ineffective as indicated a moment ago is more dangerous than no finish at all, because it can lead to a false sense of security. I share that point of view very strongly, and I am quite sure that every Member of your Lordships' House will share it equally. The launderers also share it. In the current issue of the publication, Calling All Supervisors, issued by the British Launderers' Research Association, clear instructions are given on how to minimise the risk of removing the finish—and I quote:
"The durability of the proofing depends very much on the washing treatment and there are certain essentials. 1. Unless you are dead certain the water is 100 per cent. soft, don't use soap. Better play safe and always use synthetic detergents for anything you think may have a flame resistant finish. 2. Do not bleach. 3. Do not boil. 4. Do not starch."
I hope that the House will agree that manufacturers and retailers are trying to help. I have given two examples of retailing, and one of research. Obviously, these are examples only, and everyone else in this House could add others. In view of this contribution by the manufacturers and retailers I think the Government itself should co-operate, and I am back here to the point I raised at the beginning, whether or not the Government should finance a publicity campaign.
My Lords, on November 14, 1962, we had a debate in this House on the Molony Report, and I asked the House [OFFICIAL REPORT., Vol. 244, col. 615] to look at what I called "the defeatist attitude" of Molony which kept appearing from time to time. Perhaps I might make a very short quotation, which I think is relevant:
"Obviously, the spending of the taxpayers' money is something to be considered most carefully, but in certain instances (and I will quote some of them) I should have thought that the gains would far outstrip the cost; and I should greatly welcome the opinion of the House, and of course the Minister"—
and it happened to be the same Minister, which I should not have thought would be the case—
"on this particular point. In so far as mass media are concerned, on page 283 (paragraph 860) the Report says, speaking of the Council"—
that is, of course, the Consumer Council—
"'We would not permanently deny it the right to use other methods of disseminating consumer
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information, e.g. Press advertisements, television; but the initial grant we recommend is not intended to cover such expensive forms of publicity'."
My Lords, this is an example of where I think the gain would far outstrip the cost. I think this job should be done by the Consumer Council. It is a piece of work so important to the nation that if the Government really mean business they will give the Council the money to do it. Let us make no mistake here. It is no use giving ourselves a false sense of security. I do not believe that the present risks will strike home to the general public short of a major catastrophe or time, repeated time, on television. And, personally, I prefer the time on television to the catastrophe.
After detaining the House to this extent it is a fair question to ask me what I suggest should be done. My first answer is that this is primarily a matter for education. It can be bolstered up by other action, but I believe that education is by far the most important—education, for example, that pyjamas are far safer than nightdresses. Second, there should be recognition by the Government that if they ban nightwear considered flammable then, by implication, what is left will be non-flammable. Third, any nightwear sold as non-flammable must have a sew-on label with washing instructions; and I would say to the Government, quite definitely, that if they take action without legislating that this sew-on label must be there, their action will be criminal neglect. I feel as strongly as that on that particular matter.
Then, fourth, the British Standards Institution should decide, as a matter of urgency, which nightwear can carry such a label guaranteeing that washing will not impair the flame-proof finish. After all, it is hardly necessary to stress the danger if parents, or others, buy more expensive nightwear because they accept that it is non-flammable, only to find out, perhaps by bitter experience, that the finish has been impaired. Fifth, I would then, and only then, ban nightwear not meriting this label. Sixth, I would define "nightwear". Seventh, I would stress the need to remember that more people over 65 suffer from this flammability than children, and that surely children alone cannot be catered for. Eighth, we should consider the problem of piece goods—after all, how much nightwear is made

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up at home? Are we going to ban flammable piece goods? To put it negatively, are we going to sell this material and mark it "Flammable"?—which I think is not a proposition—or, to put it positively, are we going to ban it and put permanent washing instructions on the rest: because I can assure the House, if it is necessary (I do not think it is), that labels given away with purchases would be of little use. They always get lost, so the instructions must be marked on the selvedge.
My Lords, I do not wish to be unkind, but I am sceptical about this Government concern for the consumer, and if the Minister thinks I am being a little harsh I would only say to him that I wish this concern had come during my ten years in another place. If the Government intend, apparently—and I have put the word "apparently" in quotes, too—to deal with this problem, it would not only mislead the public but cause fatal accidents. I say this because the sudden haste with which the Government have decided to look at this matter has greatly (shall I say?) surprised organisations who really have had no time to deal with anything before being called to the Home Office last week to look at this. Why have we got this sudden urgency? Is it really concern, or is it the General Election? I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us.
6.50 p.m.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I am very pleased to be able to take part in this short debate in support of the Question the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has put down, because not only did I speak in the debate which he initiated on home safety some two years ago, but I piloted through your Lordships' House a Bill which became an Act of Parliment in 1951 or 1952 and which required gas fires and electric fires to be given proper fireguards. One of the troubles about that Bill which I think may occur in bringing in legislation or regulations now is: what are we to do with the stocks which existed before such a Bill or such regulations came in? With regard to the fires there are quite a number of fires which were in people's houses before the Act came into force. There were large stocks in the shops which had to be sold. So I
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do not think the full effect of that piece of legislation has come into being yet. But there is one thing one can say which I think encouraging. Although the number of people dying from burns from these fires has remained fairly constant over the last few years, that has no relation at all to the number of fires which have been sold, so one cannot help feeling that supposing the fires sold had been as lethal as the ones sold before, the amount of deaths would have gone up quite considerably.
It is a rather frightening thing that even now such a large proportion of people admitted to hospital with burns suffer from burns caused by inflammable clothes. The figure, I think, is that about 60 per cent. of all burns admitted to hospital are caused by burning clothing. It accounts for about 75 per cent. of the deaths from burns. That really does seem a very large figure and is one which I think has all sorts of implications. The people who come to hospital suffering from clothing burns tend to stay about twice as long as people with other burns; and, furthermore, they tend to go back from time to time on many occasions because they are treated by plastic surgery to repair scars and make them into more or less normal looking people once again. The high mortality, as the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, pointed out, occurs in children under 15, and the number of children who come out of hospital badly scarred is about twice as many as the number who die. That means that they have to go back for many plastic operations, which is expensive in time and manpower and hospital beds, and at the same time has a very bad effect on the psychology of the children if they feel they are being treated in that sort of way.
One of the troubles about burns caused by clothing is that if a garment catches fire it burns a very big extent of the body. Not only do burning garments burn deep so that the skin can be completely destroyed, but the burns might well cover about 50 per cent. of the patient's body. Supposing that people have burns covering about 50 per cent. of the body, it means that about 50 per cent. of them, if they are children and young adults, will die. If older people are being dealt with, about 50 per cent. will die if they are burned on up to about 10 per cent. of the total

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body surface. That gives one some idea of the extent of the danger from these burns.
The noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, dealt with some of the factors to be taken into consideration, supposing some safe material can be put on the market which is non-inflammable. I think there are one or two points she did not mention that I should like to bring out. The material must be nontoxic, because one of the things children particularly do is to suck their clothing. And not only must the fireproofing be durable, it has to be as durable as the garment itself, because the garment will go to the laundry or be washed many times and the durability of the fireproofing must be just as strong when the garment is finally worn out as before.
What can one do to stop this terrible story? The first thing is that we can encourage the sale of these noninflammable garments. They have to be cheap and pleasant to handle; they have to be easily available. One thing which leads to burns is overcrowding, and here I think one comes back to the housing situation more and more. More people are liable to be burned if they are living in overcrowded conditions than if they are living in more reasonable conditions. There are two minor points. With children you have to be very careful at parties. You also have to be very careful not to put your looking glass over the fireplace, because a large number of burns are caused by people wanting to look at themselves in the mirror: they lean over the fire, whether it is coal or wood, gas or electric, and part of a garment comes almost into contact with the fire, and if it is there too long even the strongest and best guard will not stop it from igniting.
The other point is that one has to try to encourage the parents of young children not to let them wear nightdresses, but pyjamas. It is very difficult to give a real comparison between nightdresses and pyjamas, but so far as I can discover from the figures I have seen, about ten times as many burns occur with nightdresses as with pyjamas. Of course, one can say against that that one does not know what number of people wear pyjamas and what number of people wear nightdresses, so one cannot be completely accurate on that point;
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but, so far as one can see, that plays a big part in the matter. I was pleased to read in the papers, I think on Friday last, that the Home Office are thinking of making regulations banning these inflammable nightdresses.
I should like to support the noble Baroness on one point she made. What is going to happen in regard to people who make up their garments at home? Suppose we are going to control nightdresses sold "off the peg"; we must get the material for making nightdresses at home protected in the same way. Finally, supposing regulations are to be made, should they be made to apply to children's garments only, or should they be made to apply to adults' garments? My own feeling at present is that one should make them apply to children's garments only. For the grown-ups one has to rely on education by any means which are available. I should therefore like to support the noble Baroness in what she said about a Government campaign of education. I am extremely pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, has again brought up this particularly important matter.
7.2 p.m.
BARONESS ELLIOT OF HARWOOD: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, for putting on the Order Paper this Unstarred Question and for giving us the opportunity to have this discussion. My only regret is that it has come so late in the evening that many noble Lords are not here, because I think this subject is vitally important. I should also like to pay great tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, whose knowledge on this subject never ceases to amaze me. There is nobody who has made such a study as she has of the interests of the consumer in every field, and I think that what she has said to-day, which obviously has been studied with the greatest care, is something which the Home Office and the Government will look at carefully. Nobody could have brought forward more important points than she did in her speech. I think I would go even further than she has done. She said that she thought that a number of things should be done before banning the use of inflammable materials. I think I would go so far as to say that inflammable

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materials for children's clothing should be banned. I agree that there are many things that could be done as well, but I really think that this is something we should look at as seriously as we look at accidents on the road or danger from any other serious accident.
The figures that have been given I will not repeat. There is a 33 per cent. increase in fatalities. Just before he sat down, the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, said that he had no figures for the dangers from clothing burns other than from nightdresses. Well, I have a few figures here. Out of 99 incidents of clothing burns from nightdresses there are, in comparison, only 8 involving pyjama-wearers, with only one fatality, 8 involving dressing gowns with no fatalities, and 72 involving dresses. So that nightdresses are much the most dangerous kind of garment to catch fire. I agree also that publicity is of the greatest importance. But it is not the only thing. I do not think that publicity alone is going to cure this problem. But I would accept with alacrity the suggestion of the noble Baroness that if money were made available for the Consumer Council we should carry on a tremendous campaign on this subject. We certainly would; but it would cost quite a lot of money.
Just to show one or two of the things we have done, in a quite modest way I am afraid—but I think we did start the ball rolling on this matter before Christmas—I should like to tell the House that before Christmas I wrote letters to a number of big firms in the retail trade selling children's clothing. I wrote a further series after Christmas. I have written about 180 or 190 personal letters to firms throughout the country, asking them to do something drastic about the sale of children's nightwear made of inflammable or, as it is technically known, flammable materials. About one-third, or a little more, have answered and have said they are anxious to help, and I am hoping still to get answers from the remainder to give their views. Many stores have refused to sell inflammable garments, and many more are saying that they are going to look at the matter again and will do what they can to deal with this most important problem.
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We also organised a simple shopping expedition of three or four young women from our Council offices, who went out into the stores to see whether or not they could buy non-inflammable nightdresses, or what sort of reception they would have if they asked for these garments. They returned saying that no shop assistant gave them any information at all about the flammability or non-flammability of the garments that they were buying. When they asked for non-inflammable materials they were offered some, but in some stores there were none at all. There was no labelling on any of the garments to show whether or not they were inflammable.
Lady Burton of Coventry has told us about the difficulties in regard to inflammable materials, and also their properties. It is true that if a garment is made of an inflammable material it may be cheaper than one that is made of a non-inflammable material. These young women who went round reported that although they were offered, let us say, material at 5s. 11d. a yard and then offered material at 3s. 11d. a yard—I am giving now invented figures, but these are the sort of ranges—they were not told that the 5s. 11d. material would not go on fire and therefore was safe and that the 3s. 11d. material would go on fire and was not safe. So any ignorant person who was not able to find out these things would naturally probably take the 3s. 11d. material, because she might want something cheaper.
Another point is that many materials that are inflammable carry attractive designs, such as of toys, teddy bears, golliwogs and so on, showing that they are meant for children's clothing. Some of those designs are not on materials that are flame-proof or fireproof. I think it would be well to transfer some of the attractive nursery patterns to materials which are safe. That might well be an incentive to buy them. Then, people have said that sometimes it is difficult to define what are children's nightdresses. But that is not in fact so, because there are exemptions from purchase tax on children's nightdresses. The British Standards Institution have standard clothing sizes for children's nightwear, so it would be quite possible to see that material sold for children's

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nightdresses was certified as non-inflammable. Then, as the noble Baroness told us, there are materials certified as flameproof, more particularly the man-made fibres which have a nylon content. Those fibres make very attractive nightdresses. The noble Lady referred to one of the great stores which used these fibres, and used them very successfully indeed.
We come back—as we always do in nearly all the problems of the consumer—to accurate labelling. There, again, the noble Baroness mentioned the great importance of having accurate labelling, not on a little card or something which can be torn off, but sewn on to the garment. I am certain she is right that on this extremely important subject it is essential that one should know what are the properties of the material, how to treat it, and various other details about washing, ironing and so on. Therefore I would follow the noble Baroness in what she has said this evening, except that I should hope that we could ban the sale of flammable material for children's nightdresses. I hope that the success of the manufacturers with non-flammable materials will be such that they will soon make as attractive materials for children's clothes of the non-flammable variety as are made to-day of the flammable variety. I would ask that the attractive drawings and pictures of nursery subjects should be used on the non-flammable materials just as to-day they are used on flammable materials.
I would wholeheartedly support the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, on the question of labelling. It is essential, and is the only way in which one will get people to realise what they are buying and what the properties of the materials are. I hope, too, that there will be more education—there is at the moment a good deal of education in the training of shop assistants—to train people to tell the customer what he is paying for, and, if it is more expensive, that he is paying for safety. One cannot pay too much for safety. I am sure all mothers would willingly pay more for safety if it were explained to them. If you go into a shop and you are not told, "This one is safe", "That one is unsafe", you will
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probably be attracted towards the cheaper material; whereas for an extra 1s. or 2s. you would be buying a safe garment.
I would support the proposal made by Lady Burton of Coventry in regard to a publicity campaign. In addition to writing letters we have had one or two programmes on television which have been put on by the Consumer Council at the request of the television companies. These have been quite a success, but the thing should be multiplied one hundredfold if it is to be of any real value. This would cost money, but it might save a great deal of money in the end. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, has told us of the long period it takes in a hospital to heal the burns which come from these dangerous materials. If it saved that cost alone, it would help to repay any expenditure one might incur in a publicity campaign—and that is putting it at the lowest. From a moral point of view or from the point of view of happiness, publicity which would get across to the public the dangers that arise from this particular kind of material would be money saved and happiness and safety gained.
This is an urgent matter. I hope the Minister when he replies will tell us that it is not a matter involving just talk. Of course, we know that he must talk to the manufacturers, but there are different ways in which one can talk. One can say, "Will you go back and think about it, and perhaps we shall have a meeting in a month or two?"—that is one way of approaching it. But I hope that a far more urgent message will be put across at these meetings: that this is something which must be done quickly—just as the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, talked about the urgency of dealing with the motor accidents; and how right she was! This is an urgent matter from the point of view of the child, and no doubt in time it will be extended to old people. It is as urgent as anything we are facing at this moment. I would urge the Minister to tell us that the Ministry are not engaged merely in talking but are going to take some action soon. I can assure him that in so far as I and the Consumer Council are able we will back him up to the hilt.
7.15 p.m.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, I join with other speakers in congratulating the noble Lord in putting down this Un-starred Question. Speaking for myself, I believe that we have had a most interesting debate, a debate to which I tremble in adding my contribution, for I feel I am not as thoroughly qualified as some other of the speakers who have taken part. I was particularly interested by Lady Burton of Coventry's most informed words on the subject. I am a grandfather with four grown-up children and my house sometimes echoes to the patter of little feet again, and in that respect I have some expertise.
I am sure the noble Lady will agree that the little "dig" at the end of her speech was not intended to indicate that this anxiety did not affect all sides of the House. I feel, with others, that it is a good thing that this matter is being considered now, and being considered urgently. I happened to pick up the Medical News of February 7 which has devoted a whole leader to this subject and which ends with the words:
"As the requisite non-inflammable material is now available in ample supply, and at reasonable price, the time has clearly come for Parliament to take action."
I feel that this debate must have impressed on all of your Lordships the great difficulties which present themselves. The tenor of my speech will be that I am appreciative of the difficulties of legislating in this matter. It will be difficult for legislation to be so widespread as to be effective. So many mothers, as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, prefer to make up their own clothes from purchased piece goods. Also involved is the question of children's party dresses. While I agree with all that has been said about the branding and labelling of non-inflammable made-up garments, I feel inclined to deal with the problem of piece goods. I feel that what the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, said about purchase tax might be applicable here. Children's garments are free of purchase tax in certain sizes, but it might be a way of encouraging the purchase of non-flammable piece goods and, indeed, of advertising the fact that such exist, if the Government would relieve such goods of purchase tax only if they were non-flammable.
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One point has been made by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, that of course it is not only the young who suffer from burns; the old suffer terribly. I am tempted to mention that, because yesterday I took the trouble to visit a daughter who works in London to ask her about this. She is 20 years old and lives with three other girls, and she astonished me by saying, "Yes, we have had two girls on fire in this house in six months." I said, "Were they hurt?" and the answer was, "No". My point in mentioning this is that it is the very young who are terrified and run; and it is the old who are too infirm and slow, and they suffer dreadfully. Therefore I suggest that there are many accidents caused by garments catching fire which are never heard of, because they occur to young people who can "jump to it" and put themselves out without rushing about and setting things ablaze.
My Lords, in addressing you I am sorry that I also involve your Lordships in what I regard as a little bit of self-imposed penance. I do not mind telling you that at Christmas time I thought I would go and look at rooms which had been unoccupied, for grandchildren who have started to walk. To my astonishment I found that two of my electric fires were insufficiently guarded. This point was covered by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, but his Bill of 1952 did not apply to those fires as they were purchased before that. However I was able to put that matter right. Therefore I feel that I must impose upon myself the task of addressing your Lordships on this subject, if only to urge upon the Government that propaganda can provide an inspiration to people like myself just to go and see whether their equipment is safe. I thought mine was safe, but I looked and saw that it was not.
Talking of propaganda, I believe that, with the exceptions which the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, mentioned, the national Press could do more. I believe that all the Press could do more, and that the radio and television channels could also apply themselves to this matter right away, if only by starting in on reporting this debate and the fascinating information which has been put before your Lordships' House. There is "Family Doctor", there is

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"Panorama", there is "Tonight", and so on. Indeed, I have a feeling that I have seen something of this nature in "Panorama" or "Tonight", but, all right; let us have it again and again. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, made the point that if propaganda is to be effective—and I believe it can be—then this is the time to begin it, and this is the time to go on with it and bring home to the people the ease with which the personal care of parents and others can affect this dreadful situation.
My Lords, discussions are proceeding and they must of course take place. I suggest that it is obvious, from what has been said here to-night, that those discussions will range very far. No one will be happier than I if the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, can tell us that there will be legislation. But the only remedy ready to our hand now is intense propaganda and intense publicity, and I look forward with the greatest interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, is going to say.
7.25 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I intervene for a few moments in this important debate? I do so because for ten years immediately after the war I spent my time selling textiles, and studying many of the problems of bringing forward new qualities and new cloths. I was particularly struck by the speech of my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry, when she was dealing with the problem of cost. Cost in textiles depends mainly on the extent of production. At one time nylon, Terylene and the other acetate qualities that followed were very expensive cloths; but with the spread of popularity and the growth of production the cost of these materials has been considerably reduced. A nylon shirt to-day is no longer in the highest of the price brackets; it is one of the cheaper articles. In time we have been able to alter the feel, the handle, of the material. I well remember the first nylon shirts that came out. Their only value. I suppose, was that they were really "non-iron", but they were very hot to the body. But now, as a result of various advances in the industry, we have been able to produce many types of nylon quality suitable for shirts and many other garments. How
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ever, I think the extent to which the textile industry can sell an article depends upon its price, and the extent of production also depends upon the price.
I gathered from my noble friend Lady Burton of Coventry that there is still a long way to go before the right sort of cloth is available. May I say that I agree with her 100 per cent., that we should look very carefully at any of these fabrics which have a non-inflammable quality through having been dipped in a substance. I think my noble friend is utterly right; the only yarns that will stand up to the possibility of fire are those into which an ingredient has been introduced at a very early stage—the noble Lady mentioned a viscous quality. But to produce this type of yarn involves very considerable sums of money. There may be an advance which is not quite acceptable to the public and which may require twice the original sum in order to make the next advance.
It may well be within the capacity of Courtauld's, Nelson or I.C.I. to put money into research, but they may feel that they are not getting sufficient support from the retail trade and the general public to spend more money in this way. There are firms other than those three which I have mentioned, who are in this business, and I should have thought the first thing the Government could do was to get hold of these big organisations, which, as I say, are already interested, to see whether they could co-operate with, say, some of our leading universities, with the Government sponsoring the university side to see whether there could be greater speed in developing this new cloth. If I.C.I. and Courtauld's and any of the other big people were to get together, instead of working in isolation. I believe there would be infinitely greater speed in obtaining the right quality.
I hope that the Government will try to bring these big organisations together to pool their present knowledge, because previous experience has shown that the big organisations go their separate ways. They trade under a different name, and spend considerable sums of money in the individual organisations, only to produce a yarn or filament that is basically the same. I should have thought, therefore, in the interests of safety above all else, that these organisations would respond—

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I hope they would respond—to a plea from the Government, and particularly from the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, and try to pool their existing knowledge in order that we might see a considerable advance in the manufacture of this type of yarn.
In regard to propaganda, I have seen a good deal of this propaganda on the B.B.C. and I.T.A. Some of it is extremely good; but I cannot help remembering the tremendous campaign that the Ministry of Transport embarked upon just before Christmas in regard to safe driving and drink, and we saw the consequences of that. It seems to me, therefore, that if we are going to carry out a propaganda campaign it cannot be confined to just two or three weeks at a time. It would have to be a long, sustained programme, bringing before the public the story in its different aspects.
Might I say to the B.B.C. and the I.T.A., that much of their propaganda is very good, but why bring it on at five minutes to six in the evening? For the housewife, five minutes to six is the time when she is trying to get her young children to bed, or she may be trying to make a meal for her husband. This is certainly not the time in the evening when any person, except perhaps a teenager or a schoolchild, will have the opportunity of appreciating the propaganda that this important medium can put out. I hope, therefore, that both these organisations will try to put this type of propaganda material across at a time when they know that their own type of programme, their entertainment, has the maximum impact. If they know that 20 million people are viewing at 9 o'clock in the evening, then I should hope that, for the matter of half a minute or so, they would put on this type of propaganda so that it might have the maximum impact.
In regard to labels on garments, if it is possible to have non-inflammable material—and, of course, it is—it is obvious that we must support the manufacturer and also the retailer by ensuring that a proper label is affixed to the garment. This would require very careful wording because, from my experience in textiles and the manufacture of the made-up articles, gross misrepresentation might be found which however could not be classed as misrepresentation in
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law. The mere twisting of a few words can give the impression desired, but the article does not match up to what is described.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend, with the permission of the House? I should like to make it quite clear, if I did not, that I believe that garments which are sold as non-inflammable should have a sewn-in label attached to them, but this is to deal purely with the washing properties of the material, not with content; purely with how to take care of it.
LORD SHEPHERD: I take the point. I myself had rather rejected the so-called non-inflammable material that is dipped into a salt. To my way of thinking, the only non-inflammable material we are likely to obtain which is really non-inflammable is the viscous quality which the noble Lady was referring to—I think it was Teklan. But the label is very important, and the authorities will have to ensure that the labels are affixed only to garments and to qualities which come up to their specifications.
When we come to piece goods I think we run into very considerable difficulties. I would agree with the noble Baroness opposite that there is a lot to be said for banning all inflammable material. Winceyette is the most common quality used to make nightdresses and pyjamas. I think the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, from his experience at the Board of Trade, will agree with me that a very considerable quantity of winceyette that is sold in this country, if not well over 50 per cent., either as piece goods or as made-up garments, originates either in Holland or in Hong Kong. I know, in fact, that winceyette is by far the largest of the imports into this country from Hong Kong. If you ban inflammable materials for pyjamas and nightdresses, I do not know how you will get over the problems of regulating imports, because winceyette is used not only for pyjamas and nightdresses, but also in the manufacture of shirts and other children's garments, which perhaps do not run the risk of fire in the evening. I think this will be an insuperable problem unless you can pass on to the Hong Kong and other manufacturers the information that you have garnered in this country.

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My Lords, I myself feel that the only way to deal with this problem is to get our British manufacturers together, to pool their existing knowledge in the interests of the general public, and then to approach the leading manufacturers of garments, those firms which have a first-class trade mark. Here I agree with my noble friend Baroness Burton of Coventry who mentioned Marks and Spencers. We should approach firms of that type, whose trade mark stands for quality and is recognised as indicating quality. I will not quote any more instances, but there are a number of trade marks which, by the very mention of the name, clearly establish a certain quality. If these people could be persuaded to work with the producers of the yarns, then I think we could obtain an entry into the retail market; and then, with propaganda from the companies themselves, from both the retailer and the manufacturer, and with the use of Government machinery and the use of television and, perhaps, the Press, I think it might be possible to persuade people that it is far better to pay perhaps a few pence more in the initial stages for this material.
I do not believe that at this stage it is possible to ban inflammable material. I do not think it is possible without upsetting a very considerable part of the textile trade; but if the leading companies—Courtauld's, I.C.I. and those others who are well known, not only for the cloth they produce but for the garments they make—could get together, and if you could obtain the support of the leading retail organisations (Marks and Spencer, the Co-operative Wholesale Societies, Littlewoods and many others), I believe that it would be possible to make an impact on the public mind and the public conscience. But I think that this is not something that one can lay straight at the door of the Government—although the Government, because they are the elected heads of the country, have a very large part to play. I think they could bring the organisations together; but what is needed is mainly a co-operative effort, not only by Parliament itself, but by television and sound radio, and by the suppliers, the weavers, the spinners and the like. What is needed is a co-operative effort by all to bring this dreadful story before the public, and to offer them an alternative.
7.39 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, it is not for me to say "Thank you" to those noble Lords who have taken part in the debate—that has already been done by my noble friend Lord Auckland, whose job it is—but perhaps I may be allowed to say "Thank you" to him, at any rate, for putting down this Question, because it gives me a chance to say a few things I should like to say. I am grateful also to the other speakers for the suggestions they have put forward; perhaps I am allowed to say that. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, for one of the most interesting and informative speeches I have listened to for a long time. May I also say that, fortunately for all your Lordships, she has cut down my speech by half because she has already said some of the things I had been going to say.
I think that the best way of dealing with a lot of the questions is for me to give a very brief general outline of the present position. Then perhaps I will get down to answering the individual questions, and I hope to answer most of them. Her Majesty's Government have for some time past been deeply concerned about the tragic loss of life due to burns by flammable clothing and the immense amount of human suffering caused by the thousands of non-fatal burns. The majority of these accidents are avoidable. More than half of them arise from contact with unguarded fires, and the failure of parents to take adequate precautions, despite the considerable and sustained publicity given to the hazards of flammable clothing and unguarded heating appliances, must largely be blamed for the accidents involving children.
The Molony Committee (and I seem to remember that the noble Baroness and I have mentioned this Committee before) gave this whole question full and careful consideration, and in their final Report reached the conclusion that statutory intervention was not justified at that time. Their view was that
"the real safeguard lies in a proper sense of parental responsibility towards this particular hazard in the home".
These were their words that I quoted. I will not quote many figures, but I think one might mention that, prior to 1960, the total number of deaths in

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England and Wales due to burns by clothing exceeded 300 a year. In each of the three years 1954 to 1956, for example, the total reached 340. In 1960 and again in 1961 there was an encouraging drop in the number of deaths in this category, which suggested that the very extensive publicity from many sources, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Health, was having an effect. But unfortunately that trend has not continued. The number of deaths in England and Wales rose from 234 in 1961 to 312 in 1962. That was almost certainly due to the prolonged spell of cold weather in the spring of that year; and the figures for 1963, which are not yet available, are likely to show a further substantial increase because of the cold winter.
These increases do not necessarily invalidate the Molony Committee's conclusions. As my right honourable friend the Home Secretary recently announced in another place, however, the Government have decided, in view of the increasing number of tragic fatalities and injuries caused by clothing, particularly nightwear, catching fire, to have urgent—and I repeat, urgent—consultations with the trade and other interested parties on the possibilities of taking effective action by means of regulations made under the Consumer Protection Act, 1961. My noble friend Lord Ferrier thought that we could not move very quickly. I can assure him that when we are ready to move we can move very quickly by regulations under the Consumer Protection Act.
As the noble Baroness has already told noble Lords, a meeting with representatives of the trade associations and other interested bodies took place on February 6, at the Home Office. There are questions of some complexity which require further study. That is clear, I think, from what has been said this afternoon. But, for instance, the standard of non-flammability to be required must be laid down; and the range of garments to be covered, having regard—and this is very important—to the availability of material complying with this standard and to other factors. And when my noble friend Lord Ferrier said there is an adequate supply, then I must join issue with him on that. There are
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adequate supplies of some garments which may be considered by some people as non-flammable; but there must be adequate supplies, in our view, of garments that are non-flammable in accordance with the standards we have to agree.
LORD FERRIER: My Lords, forgive this interruption. I was quoting from a leader in the Medical News and I was as surprised to see those words as was the noble Lord.
LORD DERWENT: They were not completely correct. I say this to my noble friend Lady Elliot of Hardwood: it is hoped to resolve these questions quickly. As soon as that is done, the drafting of regulations can be put in hand at once. In the meantime publicity drawing attention to the dangers of flammable clothing and the need for adequate precautions will be continued. That is the present position and what we intend to do.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, might I ask the noble Lord a question? If he is proposing to deal with this I will sit down. Arising out of the matter of making regulations, would he feel able to say what importance he attaches to the fact that it is not only a matter of regulations and of deciding what materials measure up to non-flammable standards; it is a question also of what non-flammability is destroyed by washing?
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am coming to that point. I shall try to deal with most of the questions raised, and that was one of the most important of them. It was raised also by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood. May I start by saying that there has been some suggestion (it came mostly from my noble friend Lord Auckland, I think) that there has been some delay by the Government in dealing with this matter. As I have already indicated, we were originally of the opinion, as were the Molony Committee, that this could be dealt with better by education than by legislation; and there is still something to be said for that. But as I have indicated, we have started to alter our views on that.
The next point about any delay is that prior to the passing of the Consumer

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Protection Act of 1961—and the Act did not come into force until August of that year—there was no power to make regulations. The third point is that it is extremely doubtful whether the production capacity of safe materials has, until possibly recently—and I repeat "possibly recently"—been adequate to meet the total demand, even for children's nightwear, apart from other dresses. It is only recently that an improved method of curing fabric by the existing Proban process has been developed. Only within the last twelve months has the fabric been generally regarded as acceptable. Before that, it had a harsh "handle", as the noble Baroness has said, and it was alleged that the treatment reduced the strength of the materials. That was certainly the case up to twelve months ago. And, still recently, the price differential between treated and untreated cotton fabric has been very wide. Only recently it has been reduced to the more acceptable amount of 2s. a yard, instead of 4s. a yard. Considering all those factors I do not think there has been much delay.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend on what basis he makes the allegation about the "harsh" fabric? I know many people who have used the Proban-treated fabrics; and they have been perfectly comfortable to the skin.
LORD DERWENT: As the noble Baroness has said, they were until the last twelve months considered to have a harsh "handle". There was consumer resistance to them; that was one of the reasons. I am glad that my noble friend found no resistance to them. The next question he asked was, I think, how long would these consultations take. I think he may have suggested that we could short-circuit them. These consultations are necessary under the Consumer Protection Act; because the Act provides that
"It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State before making any regulations … to consult with such persons or bodies of persons as appear to him requisite".
The bodies we are consulting we consider to be requisite.
The next point my noble friend raised was in regard to street traders. Any regulations we make will cover street
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trading, in the same way as any other form of selling; but we are not prepared to make regulations that will apply only to street traders and not to other forms of trading. The next question was about cheap imports. If regulations are made they will apply to the sale of all nightwear coming within their scope, irrespective of the source of supply. Imported made-up garments and garments made up with imported material will be caught by regulation. There will be no difference in that respect.
My noble friend asked about local authority homes, and said that, especially in the L.C.C. area, such homes have no regulations about flammable nightdresses. This is a matter within the discretion of local authorities and voluntary organisations. While my right honourable friend has no detailed information about the present practice, he understands that the L.C.C. and other local authorities do not insist on the provision of flame-resistant nightwear. The fires in children's homes are normally extremely well guarded: that is their way of trying to stop accidents. But my right honourable friend is considering the issuing of advice to local authorities and voluntary organisations.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, may I make a point here of some value? Under many local authorities, children are boarded out, and the difficulty is to persuade foster-parents to buy flameproof nightdresses and pyjamas for the younger children. There are three ways in which we approach this problem; first, by circular. In my authority, we send to every foster-parent a circular about the importance of flameproof clothing. The second is by asking our visitors, those who visit foster-homes, to impress this upon the foster-parents in a tactful manner. The third is by offering to pay the extra cost of flameproof nightdresses, where that is required.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for his suggestions. As he says, local authorities are still responsible for the safety of children, even when boarded out. And we are considering drawing their attention to all these various aspects.
My noble friend and other noble Lords ask about Government research. This was considered by the Molony Commit

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tee, who, in their final Report, used these words:
"We do not think that any promising lines of research have been or are being neglected through lack of funds. Other companies besides the two already mentioned (Proban, Ltd. and British Nylon Spinners, Ltd.) have been engaged in this field, and if necessary in appropriate circumstances, a grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research could be obtained without undue difficulty."
I am told that this is still the case. The noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, raised two questions which I should like particularly to answer. She spoke of the effect of bleach in washing. The present relevant British Standards prescribing tests for non-flammability recognise that flame-resistant textile finishes may be impaired, if treated material is washed and bleached, and provide that in such cases the article should bear a warning on the lines of "Do not bleach". The Molony Committee, in their Interim Report, recommended that this should be a statutory requirement. It could be included in any regulations made under the Consumer Protection Act, the regulations which we are considering, possibly not only in relation to the made-up garments to which they may relate but also to flame-resistant garments and materials generally for which the quality of flame resistance is claimed. This is being considered. I think that we can deal with this adequately under the regulations, and I am very grateful for the additional suggestions made by the noble Baroness in this connection to-day. I will not go into the argument that is going on at the moment about how many times one should wash a garment, because manufacturers are being very cross with each other about that.
The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, raised the question of what to do about appliances which were in the shops when the regulations were made. The Heating Appliances (Fireguards) Regulations require that all gas, electric and oil fires must be fitted, when sold, with a guard attached. I think that I should add, for the benefit of the public, that the guard required is a dress guard and not a childproof guard. This is a matter which parents should consider.
My Lords, I think that I have dealt with most of the questions that have been asked me, with the possible exception of
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the question of publicity raised by my noble friend Lady Elliot of Harwood and by other noble Lords. It has been suggested that we have not up to now done enough in publicity. I am not sure that that is correct. Both the Home Office and the Ministry of Health have provided considerable publicity over recent years. One might think perhaps, in view of the rising figures, that it has not had very much effect; and it has been suggested—not by noble Lords to-day but in the Press—that the Government should finance a massive publicity campaign to persuade the public to buy flame resistant material and garments. The Molony Committee were not in favour of this and considered that
"… the necessary publicity can be obtained without calling on the National Exchequer."
I would point out that although we have spent the money of the National Exchequer, the manufacturers of non-flammable and flame-resistant materials have themselves undertaken substantial publicity campaigns, and I have no doubt that they will continue to do so.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents at present receives a grant of £7,000 a year solely for its work in connection with home safety. It has been accepted that the initiation of publicity and propaganda aimed at the prevention of accidents in the home can best be undertaken through the Society, although the Ministry of Health have done a great deal in publicising in various ways the dangers of flammable clothing, and they will continue to do so. Perhaps I should add here that a "filler" film for showing on television is now being prepared on behalf of the Home Office to supplement this publicity. We are continuing to support R.S.P.A.
I am sorry to keep your Lordships so lone, but I was asked so many interesting questions. I think that the only outstanding question is the one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, about the standard of non-flammability. A possible standard of non-flammability, on which the proposed regulations might be based, is that prescribed in British Standard 3121 (Performance Requirements of Fabrics Described of low Flammability). The Fabrics (Misdescription) Regulations, 1959, made by the Board of Trade under the Fabrics (Misdescription) Act 1913, require textiles to comply with

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this Standard if any claim of low flammability is made for them by the manufacturers. But, of course, the 1913 Act deals only with the case of the manufacturer who elects to make a claim that his material is of low flammability. The standard of non-flammability to be imposed by any regulations made under the Consumer Protection Act, which is what we are discussing, in respect of nightwear, is one of the subjects which I think may prove most difficult, and it is one which we are discussing with the trade associations, whom we have been seeing, and with the British Standards Institution. We must get this right before we can make regulations. We will do it, but it may take a little time.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that matter I should like to ask this question. If we have a regulation—and I think we should all like to see a regulation in this matter—should we reach the situation when perhaps British Nylon Spinners, who are a subsidiary of Courtauld's and I.C.I., are the only producers (I am sure the noble Lord will recognise that both those companies have entered into the making-up sphere of textiles) will the Government ensure that these yarns will be available for the rest of the textile industry at rates which make it possible for them to sell their garments competitively? If we are making a regulation
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of this sort and the production is in one hand, I think we shall have to ensure that the raw material for manufacturing the cloth is available to the weavers and makers-up in the rest of the country.
LORD DERWENT: I do not think I can give any undertaking of that kind. The only undertaking I will give is that the point raised by the noble Lord will be considered and discussions will take place on it. I do not think I can go so far as to say that if somebody discovers something quite new we will give it to the market at a competitive price. But these points will be discussed with the interested parties.
I hope I have answered all your Lordships' questions. I would repeat that these consultations will take a little time; but not only the Government, but also the manufacturers, are in somewhat of a hurry to get this matter settled.

TRUSTEE SAVINGS BANKS BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with an Amendment; the said Amendment considered and agreed to.
House adjourned at three minutes past eight o'clock.