Lords Sitting of 13 February 1964

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Lincoln

DOMINION STATUS AND COMMUNIST RÉGIMES
3.5 p.m.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is their intention in future to grant Dominion status to Communist régimes.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): My Lords, I am not altogether clear as to exactly what my noble friend means by the words "to grant Dominion status", but I take them to mean to grant full independence within the Commonwealth. The decision to grant independence to a Dependency is a matter for Britain and Britain alone, and the British Government will decide on the right course of action in the light of the particular circumstances of the Dependency. Membership of the Commonwealth, however, is of course a different matter and requires the agreement of all the other members. We cannot prejudge how they will reply to any particular request.
VISCOUNT MASSEREENE AND FERRARD: My Lords, I thank the noble Duke for his Answer. I was of the opinion that Her Majesty's Government had granted Dominion status to the new Government of Zanzibar. Is the noble Duke aware that, if that is so, many people are surprised by the alacrity of the Government in granting such status to a Government which, so far as the public can judge, appears to be of Communist origin and of Communist sympathies?
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, I would point out to my noble friend that, far from granting Dominion status to the new Government of Zanzibar, we have not yet granted recognition.

GRANTS FOR OVERSEAS SPORTS
3.7 p.m.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many applications have been received from governing bodies of sport asking for grant-aid for teams competing in overseas events; how many of these have been accepted and how many rejected; what amount of money has been granted for this purpose during 1964; and whether they will make a statement.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH): My Lords, 15 inquiries have been received in connection with the scheme for Government assistance to teams competing in overseas events, or which 5 may be regarded as applications for financial help. None of these has been accepted and none has been rejected. It follows that so far no money has been granted for the purpose. The Advisory Committee which was set up following the announcement in your Lordships' House on November 14, 1963, has been engaged in formulating the criteria for judging applications for assistance. A questionnaire designed to secure the requisite information will be circulated to the various national sporting bodies within a week.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that his reply is not quite straightforward? I do not mean that rudely, and I will ask him a question, if I may, to elucidate. First of all, is it not true that none of these applications has been accepted or rejected because none has been considered? The next question that I should like to ask the noble Earl is this. Is he aware that my Question asks how much money has been set

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aside during 1964 for this purpose? I wonder whether he could please deal with those two points first?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, these applications are being considered, but in fact it is not possible, I fear, to give the noble Lady a figure to-day, not even within broad limits. The difficulty is that this is a field in which at this stage no one, either in the Government service or outside it, has enough information on which to base a reliable estimate. The Committee is bound to feel its way. Much will depend upon the merits of the claims which come before the Committee. At the same time, I think the noble Lady will no doubt agree that there must be a limit to the sum which can be granted.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, the noble Earl is still being evasive. Does he not realise that the Committee has not yet met to consider these applications? Would he not agree that this is an extremely long delay, as we were informed in this House that this Committee was to be set up on November 14 last? Finally, is he aware that everyone who knows anything about these matters believes that the amount of money which has been set aside is so derisory that the Government are afraid to say how little it is?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, in regard to the first part of the noble Lady's supplementary, I do not think that there has been any avoidable delay, having regard to the fact that Christmas intervened and that there has been a change in the chairmanship of the Advisory Committee. The first task has clearly been to decide how to process the applications.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, the noble Earl stated that there must be a limit to the amount of money made available for this purpose. Would he be good enough to tell the House what the limit is?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot do that to-day.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, I wish to be fair to the Lord President of the Council, who is, I think, still responsible for sport. Would it not
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be a reasonable defence for the noble Earl to advance that the Lord President was occupied for some weeks in the campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party in furtherance of his own career, which might well explain the delay during that time, when he could not give attention to the work of his office?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, am I right in thinking that in his reply my noble friend stated that, of the applications received, none was rejected and none was accepted? Is he aware that the British Universities Sports Federation put in an application last summer for aid to help them send a team to the World University Games in Brazil, and that this was rejected?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, this particular re-formed Advisory Committee was not in existence at that time.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Question is:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government how many applications have been received from governing bodies of sport …"?
It does not say anything about any Committee.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether he has been good enough to look into the question which I asked him yesterday—namely, the position of Wales with regard to membership of this Committee?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: Yes, my Lords, I can add something to what I said yesterday. The position of Wales is, of course, somewhat different from that of Scotland in that there is no completely separate Welsh Education Department; but I am glad to be able to inform your Lordships that Sir John Lang's Committee intend to invite a representative of the Welsh Committee for Physical Recreation to attend meetings in all appropriate cases.
BARONESS BURTON OF COVENTRY: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell me, in conclusion, whether, if I put down a Question say in two weeks' time, he could then tell us a little more about which applications have been accepted

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and which have been rejected? Will the Committee have met by then?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: The noble Lady can always put down a further Question. I know the noble Lady well. After all, she has been the World Sprint Champion, and I feel this afternoon it is not possible for me to sprint much further along this particular track. She is also a remarkable skater, and I think she will appreciate that if I go any further this afternoon I may be skating on rather thin ice.
LORD WISE: My Lords, before we conclude, may I say that the noble Earl mentioned applications in regard to overseas athletics. Could he tell us how many applications have been received in other branches of athletics at home, or would that require the putting down of a further Question?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: The Question relates only to overseas grants.
LORD WISE: If I were to put down a Question, would the noble Earl be able to give me the information as to how many applications have been received?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: Any noble Lord is welcome to put down a Question.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, are all these governing bodies of sport set against the idea of games being played for fun?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I play all games for fun.

HONG KONG: REFUGEES AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
3.15 p.m.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government—

(1) Whether it is true that on or about November 26 last a junk escaping under gun-fire from the mainland was arrested at Lamma Island by the Honk Kong Water
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Police: and that this junk contained 52 refugees (27 men, 19 women, and six children);

(2) and whether a few days later these unfortunates were returned by Hong Kong across the Chinese Railway Frontier to the Chinese authorities;

(3) if so, whether any serious attempt was made before doing so to pass on such of them as Hong Kong could not absorb to some alternative safe refuge such for instance as through the Red Cross or some refugee organisation under the aegis of the United Nations;

(4) and finally whether, in view of the outstanding record of Hong Kong in such matters, it is not most unfortunate that such an incident should have taken place; and whether strict orders against its repetition should not be issued, bearing in mind the obligation entailed by the Declaration of Human Rights of June 18, 1948, which prescribes (Article 12(1)) that "Everyone has the right to seek and be granted in other countries, asylum from persecution".]

THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE): My Lords, it is true that on November 26 last year the Hong Kong Police intercepted a junk carrying 52 illegal immigrants. We have no evidence that this junk left the mainland under gun-fire. Two members of the party did say, however, that their boat had been chased by an armed Chinese junk and that their party had thrown fish bombs at it in order to get away. This story was not corroborated by any of the other members of the party and is believed by the Hong Kong authorities to be false. After the usual careful inquiry, the party was returned to China across the land frontier at Lowu on December 3, the Hong Kong immigration authorities having satisfied themselves that this was a case of attempted illegal entry. The question of asylum did not therefore arise.
As I feel sure the noble Lord is aware, the return of illegal immigrants to China is a frequent occurrence. In 1963, 1,883 were returned. I am glad to note that in the fourth part of the

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noble Lord's Question he pays a tribute to the outstanding record of Hong Kong in receiving and caring for immigrants. As your Lordships are aware, more than a million immigrants have been absorbed into the Colony's population since 1949.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Marquess for his Answer, the first part of which does in fact confirm the truth of what I asked him to confirm in regard to two of my points. The actual number of persons is slightly different, but that really does not make much difference. What matters very much in the latter part of my Question is whether any alternative asylum was sought for these unfortunate people before they were returned, which on the grounds both of humanity and of international law should have been done. The more so, as I am informed—and I have no reason to doubt it—because an offer was made from a neighbouring territory not only to pay for these people, but to receive them. I yield to none in my admiration of Hong Kong—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Question!
LORD KILLEARN: I am very sorry, but I am determined to pay a tribute to Hong Kong, if you do not mind. I have been there countless times. I started in Hong Kong first as long ago as 1902 and know the Colony extremely well. There is no greater admirer of it than I am. I am terribly pained by an incident of this kind because their record as regards immigrants is marvellous.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Order, order!
LORD KILLEARN: May I have an answer to the latter part of my Question?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I am very glad indeed that the noble Lord has repeated his tribute to the Hong Kong authorities. It is certainly richly deserved. The point the noble Lord must accept is that this case to which he has referred was a perfectly normal, straightforward case of an attempted illegal entry and therefore the question of asylum did not arise. Illegal entrants to Hong Kong have to be returned to China. As I said in my
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substantive reply, no fewer than 1,883 were returned last year.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I should like to ask one question as a matter of elucidation. One can say that a man is an illegal immigrant or one can say he is a political refugee. The noble Lord described them as illegal immigrants. Were they also political refugees? Were there any political aspects involved?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I am glad the noble Marquess has asked me that question. Your Lordships may have noticed that in my substantive reply I made it clear that careful inquiries had been carried out. These careful inquiries cover, among other things, the circumstances in which these people leave China.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: They were not political refugees?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: No.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, could the noble Marquess define briefly the difference between an illegal immigrant, coming from such countries as China or East Germany or places of that kind, and a refugee?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: I should be pleased to answer a Question on that subject if the noble Lord wishes to put it down. It has no bearing on this Question.
LORD KILLEARN: My Lords, could the noble Marquess enlighten the House as to what an illegal immigrant is?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: Yes, my Lords. Every day 50 immigrants from China are allowed into Hong Kong.
LORD KILLEARN: Who gives them papers to that effect? There are no relations between the two.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, they leave China with exit permits from China and we have arranged in Hong Kong a quota system of 50 a day. This has been maintained more or less through the last year. Your Lordships will see that the life of the whole Colony would be threatened if there were not immigration control, and therefore it is necessary, if people try to break the rules, to send them back to

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the country from which they come. I think the noble Lord will appreciate that.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I am not absolutely clear even now. I was very grateful to the noble Marquess for his Answer, but if a man was both an illegal immigrant and a political refugee would he be sent back? I ask that, because I cannot believe that any political refugee would have legal immigration forms.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: No, my Lords. I think this is quite clear. I have been rather drawn on this question. This situation obviously arises in other parts of the world. But if a person can establish that he is a political refugee and the question of asylum arises, this is another matter. But in this case we were quite satisfied that there was no question of these people being political refugees running from possible persecution. Therefore the question of asylum did not arise.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, what happens when they get a permit from Red China for an exit into Hong Kong? Are these people who are given a permit by China to come out all political refugees, or are they coming out for some other purpose? That does not seem to me to be very plain.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I am sorry that I have not made myself clear. The position is that there are a number of people in China who, for one reason or another, wish to come into Hong Kong. One of the reasons given—a perfectly normal human reason—is that they have relations there. When they wish to leave China they should ask for exit permits from China. If they have not asked for exit permits from China, they have infringed the Chinese regulations. Therefore it is possible that if, over the 50 quota in a day, some people were returned who had not asked for their exit permits, they would have infringed the Chinese regulations and I cannot say what the Chinese authorities would see fit to do about these people. I hope that the noble Earl has followed the point. The 50 who come in every day
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is a quota which the authorities in Hong Kong have thought it is possible for Hong Kong to bear. That is the position.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, arising out of the original Question and the supplementaries, it is obvious—and perhaps the noble Lord will confirm—that the quota of 50 is established by the Hong Kong Government in the light of their existing difficulties and the large number of refugees. But the Question which the noble Lord, Lord Killearn, has put on the Paper is: what efforts can be made to assist those people who wish to leave China and who can obtain permits to leave? If countries like the Philippines or Formosa and others were willing to take Chinese who were able to get an exit permit from China, would the Hong Kong Government uplift their quota in order that this could be achieved?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, this is a very difficult question. I was perfectly frank and straightforward in my reply. I think the noble Lord will appreciate that a number of people might say that they wished to travel on further, but, when they got to Hong Kong might not, in fact, do so. So we have to be particularly careful not to exacerbate a situation that is already very difficult.
LORD SHEPHERD: It could be conditional.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: It is perfectly possible for people, as the noble Lord is well aware, to leave China to go to Hong Kong and then go on overseas. I have some quite interesting figures here which I will give, as your Lordships have gone into this in detail. In May, 1962 (which noble Lords will remember was the time of the tremendous exodus from China), at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a resolution was passed about these refugees and the Formosan authorities declared that they would be very pleased to take them. The total number of people who arrived in Formosa was 771, and the figures with which we were dealing, of course, were between 60,000 and 70,000.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords—
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, I wonder whether I might remind your Lordships that we are perhaps in danger of having a debate on this subject. We have had three Questions in 20 minutes, and we have three very important debates on Bills to come. I understand perfectly that this is an important matter. If your Lordships are not satisfied with the very full answers that my noble friend Lord Lansdowne has given, perhaps it would be convenient to put down an Unstarred Question.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, I appreciate the point that the Leader of the House has raised, but I was on my feet when he rose. As one who has visited Hong Kong, I appreciate the difficulties of the Hong Kong Government. There is the great overcrowding in Hong Kong and a terrible housing problem. I want to ask the noble Marquess whether, if someone comes on an exit permit from the Chinese Government, investigations are made to ensure that that person is not going to function in espionage or subversive activities in Hong Kong?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I do not want to be drawn into too close detail about the exact nature of the investigations. The noble Lord, I am sure, can draw his own conclusions on exactly what these investigations are. But one of the important aspects of the investigations, of course, is that the authorities should be satisfied that the people are not fleeing from persecution; in which case, of course, they would receive asylum. But their background is, so far as possible, gone into, and the people concerned do all come from Kwangtung. They do not come from other parts of China. It is a stipulation, the idea being that if people come from Kwangtung they are more likely to be related to people in Hong Kong than if they come from any other part of China.

CYPRUS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that in a few minutes' time my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a statement on Cyprus.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I had only just been informed privately that it was understood that the statement on Cyprus would not be made, as there had not been time to deal with it. Which is correct?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I have not heard about that. I will look into the position for the noble Earl. It is, of course, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations who is due to make the statement. I have not seen him for half an hour, but I will let the noble Earl know the position.

LICENSING BILL [H.L.]
3.28 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the House to be in Committee (on Re-commitment) on Report of the Bill from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill. The Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills have made some Amendments to the Bill. These Amendments are printed on the Paper available to your Lordships and are included in the Bill which is now to be considered by the Committee of the Whole House.
On Question, Motion agreed to
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES: This Bill has been amended by the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills. I understand that no further Amendments have been put down to this Bill for this afternoon.
House resumed: Bill reported without further amendment; Report received.

LEGAL AID BILL
3.30 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I do not think that your Lordships will expect me to speak for very long on this Bill, for in its main features it is similar to one to which your Lordships gave attention in March of last year. I then explained it pretty fully, and it is not very easy to make a different speech proposing for a second time that the same Bill should be read a second time. But if perchance some of your Lordships have looked at Hansard and seen what I said then, I hope they will forgive me and not accuse me of tedious repetition if I say much the same to-day.
When the Legal Aid Scheme was being devised by the Rushcliffe Committee, and the Legal Aid and Advice Act was considered in Parliament—and, indeed, since then—there has been much discussion in Parliament, in the Press and in legal circles about the problems which this Bill seeks to tackle. It has, indeed, been an intractable problem. Many suggestions for its solution have been considered, and this Bill contains what we believe to be the best way of dealing with it. As your Lordships know, in the ordinary way the successful party in litigation obtains an order for costs against his unsuccessful opponent. If a man is sued by an impecunious person whose claim fails, it may not be possible to obtain from him the costs which he has been ordered to pay. That is one of the chances of litigation.
I think it is generally agreed that the provision of legal aid to help those considered to have cases worthy of litigation (maybe to recover damages for personal injuries, maybe to establish some right or other) is a very desirable and beneficial social service of which we may well be proud. But if, as a result of obtaining legal aid, a man embarks on litigation and loses his case, and is then ordered to pay the costs incurred by his successful assisted opponent, the result may be to ruin him or drive him to bankruptcy. That is why Section 2, subsection (2)(e), of the 1949 Act pro-
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vides that the assisted litigant's liability to pay his opponent's costs is not to exceed
"the amount (if any) which is a reasonable one for him to pay having regard to all the circumstances, including the means of all the parties and their conduct in connection with the dispute".
I am sure your Lordships will agree that this is a proper provision so far as the assisted litigant is concerned. But it must be recognised that it operates unjustly in relation to the successful unassisted litigant. He is unlikely to get an order for the payment of all his costs made against the assisted litigant. He may not get any order at all for the payment of any of his costs. So it can be said, as my noble and learned friend Lord Reid has in fact said, that, so far as the assisted litigant is concerned, this is an example of "Heads I win, tails you lose". The injustice is even greater if the assisted litigant appeals and loses again, for then the unassisted litigant, though successful, may find himself having to pay two sets of costs: and if the assisted litigant appeals to your Lordship's House and loses, three sets of costs. It is in an endeavour to remedy that situation in some degree that I bring this Bill before your Lordships.
There are, I know, some who hold the view that if the State aids a litigant who loses, then if that litigant cannot pay the successful litigant's costs, the State should do so. That would indeed cast a heavy burden—and an unacceptable one—on the Treasury and the taxpayer, and it is open to the serious objection that to adopt that solution would put the successful unassisted litigant sued by an assisted person in a far better position than the successful litigant sued by an unassisted person of limited means. In the former case, the successful litigant would be certain to get all his costs paid: in the latter case, he would be unlikely to do so. The provision made in this Bill is designed to secure that a person sued by an assisted person is not put in such a preferential position.
Clause 1 gives the court power to order the payment out of the Legal Aid Fund of costs to the unassisted party. It provides in subsection (2) that before such an order can be made the court has to be satisfied
"that it is just and equitable in all the circumstances that provision for those costs should be made out of public funds …"

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and, further, that the court is under a duty to consider
"what orders should be made for costs against the party receiving legal aid and for determining his liability in respect of such costs".
The purpose of this is to ensure that the court keeps in mind the fact that the assisted litigant can be ordered to pay costs, and to ensure that the court considers whether he should be ordered to do so. These two matters must be considered by every court, whether appellate or of first instance, before any order is made for payment out of the Legal Aid Fund.
My Lords, there is one further limitation imposed by subsection (3) on the power to order payment of costs out of the Fund. That subsection provides that no order shall be made for the payment of the unassisted party's costs if these were incurred at first instance only unless that party was the defendant and the court is satisfied that he would suffer severe financial hardship if no order were made. There are two points I should draw to your Lordships' attention in connection with this. First, in courts of first instance such orders for the payment of costs out of the Fund can be made only in favour of unassisted defendants. The reason for this is that, if a man chooses to sue then there seems to be little justification for the State's being required to pay his costs if he succeeds against an assisted litigant. Secondly, the order can be made in favour of a successful unassisted defendant only if the court is satisfied that he would suffer severe financial hardship if no order were made. It was this provision that gave rise to some discussion and criticism in another place.
I have carefully considered the views expressed, and have given much thought to the suggestion that this particular provision should be dropped. I have come to the conclusion myself that this provision must be retained in the Bill. If it is omitted, the result will be that the Fund will become liable to pay all the costs of every successful unassisted litigant when the litigant could not show that the failure to pay him out of the Fund led to his suffering severe financial hardship. Big corporations and insurance companies, who are of course frequent litigants, might
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thus get their costs, and this would place a very substantial burden on the Fund, and so on the taxpayer. It is not possible to calculate with any certainty how great it would be; but to do this would indeed be to place the successful defendant sued by an assisted plaintiff in a better position than one sued by an unassisted plaintiff, from whom he would not be certain of getting his costs.
Clause 2, subsection (1), is new, and it is my intention to make regulations for the purposes contemplated by the three sub-paragraphs of that clause. It is necessary, and I think appropriate, to prescribe by regulations what are to be treated as separate proceedings, and also what are to be treated as instituted by the party receiving legal aid—for instance, proceedings by way of counterclaim and cross-petition. I am at present considering the manner in which this Bill should be applied where the unassisted party is acting in a fiduciary, representative or official capacity. It will be necessary to adapt the "severe financial hardship" requirements for unassisted parties such as trustees, executors and administrators. It is not by any means easy to devise a fair scheme for the application of the Bill to such persons, but I am confident that it will be possible to devise a satisfactory method in relation to their costs. The regulations will of course be laid before your Lordships in due course.
Clause 3 makes the necessary provision for adaptation to Scotland. Clause 4 makes it clear that if the Northern Ireland Parliament decides to legislate on the lines of this Bill it can do so in relation to Northern Irish appeals to the House of Lords or in references to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
My Lords, I do not think you will expect me to say much more about this Bill. I commend it to your Lordships, It is, I think, a useful reform and will at least go some way to remedy an injustice which has been apparent ever since the Legal Aid Scheme was devised, an injustice to which much thought has been given over many years in an endeavour to find a satisfactory way of dealing with it and I commend this Bill to your Lordships as one that gives the courts considerable powers to alleviate the hardship suffered by successful opponents of

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assisted litigants. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)

BRITISH NATIONALS IN CYPRUS
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, perhaps I might now repeat the Answer to a Private Notice Question put to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations in another place. The Question was whether, in view of the widespread disturbances which occurred this morning in Cyprus, he would make a statement on the position of British nationals on the island. The Answer is as follows:
"For some time the Commander-in-Chief of Cyprus has had authority to arrange for the exacuation of Service dependants and other British nationals who are living outside the Sovereign Base Areas. Plans have been made for this purpose and the necessary air transport is held in readiness. In view of the renewed outbreak of intercommunal violence the Commander-in-Chief was reminded this morning that he has full discretion to proceed with the evacuation of British civilians should be consider that their safety requires it."
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for getting the Answer that I was doubtful was going to be made. I must apologise for having made the interruption I did, but I had other information which led me to do that. May I say that we have been very concerned at the sudden transfer of heavy armed activity to the neighbourhood of Limassol; and I think the last part of the statement that has just been given to us is of importance. But I feel we can be satisfied that proper steps have been taken.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl. Her Majesty's Government share the concern that he has expressed at the deterioration of the situation in Cyprus, and hope that all parties will act with restraint.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the statement he has made. I am quite sure that the Government have taken the right course.

LEGAL AID BILL
3.44 p.m.
Debate on Second Reading resumed.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, those of us who are interested in the subject of legal aid will have had the advantage of hearing the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on this subject once before. It was an unfortunate occasion because I think there was some mishap and the Bill should never have been introduced in this House at that time. But I was glad that on both occasions the noble and learned Lord went out of his way to say that the Legal Aid Bill had been a success and that a great many people who would not otherwise have been able to get justice done had benefited from the provisions of that Act. That is certainly true.
This is not the occasion to go into the statistics or to discuss the workings of the Act; we have done that on a number of occasions. The extent of the successes of assisted persons is really remarkable and it does justify the provisions of this Act in every possible way. I thought I would say that, because it might be thought by the introduction of this Bill that some reflection was cast on the system of legal aid; and I am quite sure that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will agree that there is nothing of the kind involved. But we all recognise that injustice can be done or hardship caused to successful litigants who are not State-aided as a result of the assistance given to persons to bring actions. This Bill is an attempt to try to mete out some kind of justice and to alleviate hardship.
My criticism of the Bill is that it is rather vague in the way in which it is going to operate. It leaves far too much to the discretion of the court without giving the court any direction as to how that discretion is to be exercised. In order to qualify for assistance three conditions have to be satisfied. First, the unassisted party must have been the defendant in an action brought by the assisted party. That is quite understandable and, I think, right. But the Bill

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makes no provision in terms for the position where there is an action brought by an unassisted party and there is a counterclaim brought by the assisted party and the real proceedings are based on the counterclaim. Whether in that case the unassisted party can get relief under the terms of this Bill is not clear.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, forgive me for interrupting for one moment. I thought that I indicated this when I said that that is one of the matters that will be dealt with by regulation under Clause 2 (1). As a matter of fact, I gave the instance of a counterclaim as one of the particular cases.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sorry but I did not catch the actual terms of that. I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is getting powers to make regulations. I wanted to confirm that it would be on this point among others. So far, that is all right.
The other condition is that the court must be satisfied that it is "just and equitable in all the circumstances" that there should be relief given to the assisted party. What is going to be the criterion? I cannot say; and the Bill gives no assistance in that direction. Will it be the normal thing for the unassisted party to qualify for help, subject of course to the third condition, or will it be something exceptional? Or will there be any kind of direction given to the court: as to what is meant by its being "just and equitable in all the circumstances" that provision for an unassisted person should be made out of public funds? It strikes me that this provision is so vague that different Judges may interpret it in different ways. There certainly ought to be some guidance given either in the Bill or by way of regulation as to what should be the criterion upon which the court should act.
But once they are satisfied that it is "just and equitable" that relief should be given, then the unassisted party will have to show that he is suffering "severe financial hardship" unless an order is made for his assistance. Again, what is "severe financial hardship"? Does it differ from "financial hardship"? Does it mean, for instance, that you have to show you literally cannot pay the costs that have been caused as a result
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of the proceedings? Does it mean that you will be bankrupt if you have to pay them? Or, does it mean that your family will be deprived of necessities? It is capable of so many interpretations. This expression, "severe financial hardship" is capable of so many interpretations that I should have hoped that it would be possible to have some kind of clarification, or direction as to what is intended, in the Bill itself. Obviously, as the Bill stands it can apply to very few cases indeed. I imagine that "to be satisfied that it is just and equitable" and also that "severe financial hardship will be caused" would make it apply to exceedingly few unassisted litigants. The measure of this is that, in another place, it was stated that the estimated total cost of this scheme would be something in the order of £40,000. Obviously, that cannot involve very many people, and I hope it will be possible to give some guidance as to what these words mean.
The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was quite right in saying that in another place these particular words were the subject of a good deal of controversy. And it was not based on Party at all. I think that most of the objection was taken by the noble and learned Lord's own political friends. They wanted to go too far, in my opinion, and to delete these words altogether, so that every unassisted person who was successful in the terms of the Bill should qualify for assistance. I agree with the noble and learned Lord that that would be going too far. But would it not be possible to find some halfway house between severe financial hardship and hardship? If it were possible to devise some form of words where "hardship is caused" to a person as a result of having to pay these costs, then he should qualify for assistance. I think that that would meet with the approval of most people and I should be grateful if, at a later stage, the noble and learned Lord would examine that, without going all the way.
The only other point I want to refer to is the direction to the court that they should take into account the possibility of getting a portion of the costs from the assisted party. This is put in terms in the Bill, though it is already the duty of the court to ascertain

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whether, in the event of an assisted party being unsuccessful, he should be ordered to pay costs. So far as I can see, in the vast majority of cases he will not be able to make any contribution at all, because already, in assessing the contribution which the assisted party has to make towards the cost of proceedings, the fullest possible levy is imposed upon him, based not only on his own earnings but on his wife's earnings as well—which I always think is most unjust. It seems to me difficult to think of many instances where the assisted party would be in a position to make any further contribution beyond that which he is already asked to make. But what is the point of putting this in terms in the Bill, when it is already the duty of the court to make these inquiries in any case?
I realise that most of the points that I have made can be dealt with in Committee, but I thought I should raise these points so that the noble and learned Lord could look into them. I am sure he realises that at least this question of severe financial hardship will definitely be discussed at the next stage of the Bill. In general, I am sure that every Member of this House will wish to give this Bill support in principle, and we hope that it will receive an unopposed Second Reading.
3.55 p.m.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, I do not know whether making a maiden speech on the 13th of the month is a sign of courage or of recklessness, but I suppose that the principal worry of all maiden speakers is to ensure that they observe the custom of your Lordships' House in not making a controversial speech. It is, of course, my desire at all times to observe the customs and great traditions of your Lordships' House. At the same time, I have had very little experience of making non-controversial speeches, and I cannot remember when I last made one. However, I shall hope to keep out of trouble if your Lordships will allow me to make some observations on the place of this Bill in our legal system as a whole.
I cannot remember a time when I had not concern, in the Quaker sense, about legal aid. If I look back to the days
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before the war, legal aid to me meant stopping work at midnight in order, while my wife went to sleep upstairs, to start reading memoranda written by many people about whether we could not one day achieve a system under which it would be true to say that no one in this country could not afford to enforce his legal rights. And sometimes I myself would write such a memorandum, because it has always seemed to me that if men and women have legal rights which they cannot afford to enforce, they might just as well throw them into the wastepaper basket, for all the use they are.
In those days, in the '20s and '30s, as your Lordships will remember, we had a very limited system of legal aid indeed: very little in our criminal courts and, so far as civil litigation was concerned, nothing in the county courts, nothing before the magistrates; it applied only in the High Court, and then only if you had an income of no more than £2 a week or, in exceptional circumstances, £4 a week, and if you have no more than £50 or, in exceptional circumstances, £100. If you fell within those limits, then your litigation was done for nothing, and one might even reach your Lordships' House—though the qualifications for that were still stricter, because you had to have no more than £5 in the world. If you fell a penny outside those limits, you got no help at all. This all seemed to me, on the face of it, a system which lacked common sense. Of course, if you received legal aid for litigation, the litigation was done entirely by lawyers—I would have said free; but that perhaps would not be quite accurate, in view of the fact that every barrister or solicitor who had to go to another town to undertake such a case had to pay out of his own pocket his travelling expenses and hotel bill, so that in fact he ended up with a minus quantity.
Outside the field of litigation, there was a very great need for legal advice in those 20 years in which we had an average of 1½, million—and sometimes 3 million—unemployed, and their families. As your Lordships may remember, all this was catered for, in the main, by bodies of lawyers attending "poor man's lawyer" centres. The three political Parties helped; the trade unions helped

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their members, and there were one or two religious societies. But it may not be out of place to remember bodies, like the Bentham Committee, which did such valuable work in this field, and Cambridge House, which had the largest legal advice system in London, dealing with 30 or 40 cases in an evening. There were other bodies, like the Mary Ward Settlement, where young barristers and solicitors used to go along in the evening and do what they could. In the main, too, they were financed by the legal profession, though not, I suspect, by young barristers, who had their own problems in that field. I remember that when I started at the Bar it took me three years to earn three guineas.
Such was the legal aid system, so far as it went, before the war broke out. Then, as your Lordships may remember, it all collapsed, partly because of the increased need for solicitors, owing to the complexity of war-time emergency legislation, housing difficulties and, unhappily, the start of the break-up of so many marriages. And out of 19,000 barristers and solicitors in practice when the war broke out, 11,000 joined the Forces. Those who were left simply could not cope, and all over the country the thing just ground to a standstill.
I remember one Saturday, with others, getting together representatives of all the "poor man's lawyer" societies in London to see whether we could present some agreed scheme to the Government. There were, I remember, very different views. Then I went off myself. Perhaps I may mention, just as an example of the intense interest I have always had in this subject, one occasion that I recall. On the day I left Chambers, as I was going out of the door, not knowing whether I should come back to practise at the Bar, I remembered something, and I went back and wrote a letter to the then Lord Chancellor begging him to do something about legal aid. While I was away he appointed the Rushcliffe Committee, of which the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack was a member. By the time I came back that Committee had reported; and in 1949, as your Lordships know, the Labour Government passed the Legal Aid and Advice Act, the finest system of legal aid, I think, in the world.
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I do not say that because all English lawyers feel that all foreign lawyers think that everything to do with English law is better than their own; but for two reasons. The first is because in the last fifteen years I have had an opportunity of seeing the system at work at very close quarters, and in detail, and when Chairman of the Bar Council I was naturally concerned to some extent with its administration. It has seemed to me to work extremely well and to be a system of which members of all Parties may well be proud. It is none the worse, I hope, for being run by the lawyers themselves. All the work on the legal aid committees—local legal aid committees, area legal aid committees and the central committee in London—is done by solicitors and barristers, giving their services free. I should like, if I may, to say, on behalf of the Bar, that the major part of the work has always been borne by the solicitors' branch of the profession; and I would pay my tribute to the extremely efficient manner in which it has been run by the legal aid department of the Law Society. I think that, wherever public money is involved, we should look from time to time to see that it is being spent with due economy. But the system has seemed to me to work extremely well.
The basic principle that people should pay what they can is, I am sure, the right one. As your Lordships may know, the contribution which the legally aided person is required to make is what he can afford. I remember a time, two or three years ago, before the regulations operated by the National Assistance Board were altered, when one-third of all the certificates granted by legal aid committees saying, "Yes; you seem to have a good case", were not taken up simply because the legally aided person could not afford the contributions he was called upon to make. If I emphasise this to-day, it is because I get a little tired, as I think many lawyers do, of continually reading in the papers, or hearing on the wireless or on television, references to our "free legal aid system", which, of course, it is not.
The second reason why I feel, with some confidence, that this is the best legal aid system in the world is because, through my association with the International Commission of Jurists, I have been to meetings of lawyers from all

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over the world in The Hague, in Delhi, in Lagos and in Rio de Janeiro, and have therefore had perhaps rather more opportunity than most English lawyers of hearing what foreign lawyers think of English law. If it is not thought to be irrelevant, I would say that one is naturally glad when one hears from lawyers of all nationalities the view expressed that English Judges are the best in the world. If I may say so, nothing has been more remarkable during the whole of the period I have been at the Bar than the way in which the standard, both of the High Court Bench and the County Court Bench, has continually gone up. There are reasons, tax-wise, pension-wise and otherwise, for this. On the Bench to-day we lack, perhaps, one or two of the flamboyant characters that we used to have; but they are better Judges for that; and I strongly suspect that we have perhaps the best Bench that we have ever had.
So, too, in any discussion with foreign lawyers of any question of legal aid I have never heard any view expressed except that of course the English system of legal aid is much the best. When it comes to English law, however, the opinions expressed are very different. Naturally enough, they say—and it is true: "You have a system of law under which the Acts of Parliament are contained in 43 volumes of existing Acts, starting with an Act in 1235, so that you may look at 60 different Acts to find the law on one point; 99 volumes of delegated legislation, and about 350,000 reported cases". My Lords, one may remember that the whole of the Code Napoleon was drafted complete in ten months—and it is not perhaps surprising that to some the format of our law hardly seems to be right in an age when we are on the threshold of a scientific revolution. But about our legal aid system, I think I can say that they are all agreed. As a whole, it seems to be working extremely well and smoothly, subject, perhaps, to three points.
The first is that I think we ought at some time to consider whether or not it should be extended to at least some administrative tribunals, because the decision of an administrative tribunal may be just as important to a citizen as the decision of a court. Secondly, there is the difficulty of the man of moderate means
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who has an action brought against him by a legally-aided person and then cannot recover any of his costs—and it is, of course, that difficulty which this Bill is designed to meet.
But, my Lords, there is a third and much greater defect in our legal aid system: that, while our legal aid system in criminal cases works, as a whole, extremely well and very smoothly until the convicted man leaves the dock, it then completely breaks down. He has to decide within ten days whether or not to appeal. His legal aid certificate has expired. Of course, the solicitor or barrister who has appeared for him may or may not advise him free. But they are under no obligation to do so; and if he is at once whisked away to a prison a hundred miles away it would be unreasonable to expect them to go there. So there he is, faced with a form which muddles up an appeal with an application for leave to appeal. As your Lordships know, broadly speaking, there is an appeal by right on a question of law, which is narrowly construed, and in any other case you need leave. I say "muddled up", because Parliament provided that the Rules of the Court of Criminal Appeal must have Parliamentary sanction—and they have—and for two forms, one for appeal and the other for application for leave to appeal. But the Court, without any Parliamentary approval or sanction—though it has been sanctioned since—put the two forms into one.
So here the man is: he does not know himself what are grounds for appeal and what are not. "Do you wish", he is asked, "to be present at the hearing of your appeal?" "Yes, I do", he says. Do you wish to apply for legal aid?" "Yes", he says. And in the large majority of cases the next thing is that he gets a notice saying: "Your application for leave to appeal has been dismissed." He has not been there; he has not been represented, and he has not been heard. No wonder he thinks that he has been "done". If he has the right to appeal, and his appeal is heard and is dismissed, he is then sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment for having dared to exercise a legal right. It is not done quite in that form, but in the form that, unless the court makes an order to the contrary (which

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is very unusual) the time up to six weeks taken by an appeal does not count for the purposes of sentence. So the practical effect is that, for having appealed, he gets an additional six weeks in prison, originally based on the time when there were different conditions obtaining with regard to an appellant and other prisoners.
Those conditions do not now obtain. That admirable body, the all-Party body "Justice"—for which my noble and learned friend Lord Shawcross, and my noble and learned friend whom most of us have been used to calling Sir Edwin Herbert, but must now remember as Lord Tangley, have done so much work—has recently published a fully documented Report calling attention to the urgent need which arises in this field. It is there pointed out that the Court of Criminal Appeal is cluttered up with appeals many of which would never have been brought at all if only the man had been able to get some legal advice at the time when he had to decide whether to appeal or not.
I am hoping that perhaps at some time the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, whose keen personal interest in legal aid I know, will be able to tell us whether, and, if so, when, the Government propose to deal with this problem. He will not, I hope, tell us that it must await the Committee on the work of the Court of Criminal Appeal which is to be presided over by my noble and learned friend Lord Donovan, and I hope that he will not do that, for two reasons: first, because this is not really a question of the work of the Court of Criminal Appeal—it is really a legal aid question to be considered by the legal aid authorities; and, secondly, because I am not young enough not to know that if the powers that be want to stall on something, the appointing of a Committee is not at all a bad way.
I welcome this Bill, and the only observation which I would respectfully make about it is this. The problem with which it is dealing, while it is increased by legal aid, is not fundamentally a legal aid question, in this sense. Everything has advantages and disadvantages, and having more money than other people has certain advantages. But in any country, whether you have this legal aid system or some other legal aid system, or no legal aid system at all,
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there will always be solicitors who, in some cases at all events, will take up the cases of poor people, either for philanthropic reasons or simply because they think it is a good case and they are going to make some costs out of it. Your Lordships may remember that one of the results of our present legal aid system was to kill stone dead the "ambulance-chasing solicitors", as we used to call them.
Therefore, in any system it is, I am afraid, one disadvantage in being a rich man that you may find an action brought against you by a poor man and you will not be able to recover your costs. I agree that the anomaly is increased by having a legal aid system, and it is increased in a country where, unlike America and so many countries where each litigant always pays his own costs, under the sporting spirit in which we conduct litigation the loser pays all, and, of course that aggravates him. This is not to deny that there are cases in which a man of moderate means, not requiring legal aid himself but having a large action brought against him by a legal-aided plaintiff, may suffer real hardship from being unable to recover his costs. Therefore I would join in welcoming this Bill, but express the hope, if I may, that the Government at some time—whether they think it has any vote-catching propensity or not—will deal with the two other problems to which I have ventured to refer.
4.15 p.m.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, it falls to me to congratulate my noble and learned friend upon his maiden speech, to which all of us have listened with the greatest attention and appreciation. We have known, of course, that he has a great command and knowledge of the law, and we are glad that he is now present with us and able to contribute to our discussions upon this and, I have no doubt, upon many other matters which will come before your Lordships. I am sure that he will always be listened to with interest and attention. He has, in fact, contributed to this discussion a very succinct and able survey of the problem of legal aid generally, and of the situation with which we are now confronted.
I suppose I ought, before continuing, to say that, like many other lawyers, I have an interest in this matter. I have

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conducted cases for legally-aided litigants, and no doubt I shall do so in the future. In this respect, the legal aid system in this country is, I think, unique and extremely valuable, because its fundamental principle is to try to make available for every litigant the kind and quality of legal assistance which he would be able to get if he were not handicapped by lack of funds, so that there may be no discrimination between the service which is rendered to him as compared with that which somebody else, who has command of ample means, can get on his own account. So the services of the great majority of solicitors and barristers are available to those who are granted legal aid certificates, and they can choose to conduct their cases whomever they please. That, I think, is a very great merit.
The Bill which is before us has arisen out of the seeming anomaly that, in an appreciable number of cases, people who are putting forward claims, and do so having been granted legal aid, do not succeed in them, and the party against whom they have made the claim is unable to recover the costs which normally he would have been able to recover if his opponent had had sufficient means to pay. It may well be said that that is a risk to which people are subjected in any case. They might have claims brought against them unsuccessfully by impecunious people, whether those people are legally aided or not, and the law hitherto has provided no remedy for them. Still, the fact remains that the number of such claims has been increased by the institution of legal aid, and it is regarded as a grievance that people should be subjected to expenses by an institution supported by the State, and not be able to recover the expense to which they have been put.
A particularly galling feature of this arises occasionally. I have experienced it when I have had a claim put forward against a client, and I have been told in effect: "If your client is not prepared to make some offer to settle this, his opponent is going to seek legal aid". If that opponent is not successful in it my client will have to pay the costs anyhow, so it would pay him better to
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make a small payment and avoid having to run this risk. That is one of the ways in which I think legal aid can become a little obnoxious, although its general principles and its object must be commended by all of us.
This Bill attempts to remedy some of these grievances by giving the court the power in certain cases to order the payment out of the Legal Aid Fund of the costs of the successful party who has not been legally aided. This power is hedged about with very severe restrictions. First of all the court has to find that it is just and equitable that it should make such an order. In the ordinary way, if there is no question of legal aid the practice of the courts in this country is to order the unsuccessful party to pay the successful party's costs. The phrase which is used here, that the court should be "satisfied that it is just and equitable", appears to import some new criterion of an entirely unknown and undefined character. It may be that it is impossible to define it at this stage and that the only way in which the thing, can be done is to use some phrase of this kind and leave it to the experience and the ingenuity of the Judiciary to put an interpretation upon it which, in time, will become standardised and which we shall all then be able to understand. But at the present moment I must confess that it seems to be extremely vague.
There is then the further qualification that the court must be satisfied that the successful unassisted party will suffer severe financial hardship unless such an order is made. Again, I do not know how "severe financial hardship" is going to be determined. It seems that every litigant who wants to invite the court to take advantage of this provision will have to make a very full and complete disclosure of the whole of his resources and income. I suppose that these matters can be referred to masters or registrars in Chambers where they will not receive publicity; and that undoubtedly must be essential, otherwise people who want to apply will be placed in a very difficult and humiliating position—indeed, one which might subject them to other unfortunate consequences.
But, apart from the necessity to disclose the whole of the applicant's financial position, there still remains the question, what is meant by "severe financial

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hardship"?. I do not feel at all happy about that, on the face of it. It will be said, in the first place, that the unassisted litigant is not likely to suffer a great deal of hardship, otherwise he would, presumably, have been able and willing to apply for legal aid himself. Therefore this provision must mean something a great deal more than that. Here, again, I feel that, there is a case for looking at this phrase once more. I think I should feel happier about it if some other wording than "severe financial hardship" could be adopted, because this is an entirely intangible criterion. I cannot, myself, see by what means it is going to be assessed. In fact, I am not at all sure that this would not be a better provision if this were left out entirely and it were left to the court to say whether or not it is just and equitable to make the order, and to leave it to them. But these are matters which no doubt can be pursued in more detail in Committee. On the general principle of the Bill, I am certainly very happy to welcome it.
4.27 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to say a few words on this Bill as one of those who were lined up on the last occasion when the pistol went off, who found ourselves near the back and the race never started. I think it is good that the Bill should now come to us when we are in a position to handle it effectively, and I should like to address some remarks to your Lordships rather on the lines of those which I made on the last occasion. Before doing so, however, I should like to add my tribute to what has been said about the maiden speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner. Those of us who have worked with him on very many public causes for many years, know very well of his eloquence, and his even greater powers of persuasion; and I think this House as a whole, and we on these Benches in particular, are extremely fortunate that we now have the advantage of his counsel and eloquence in our discussions here.
On the last occasion, I recalled to your Lordships that it was the driving energy of the late Lord Jowitt to which we owe the passage of this Legal Aid Scheme which has received so much commendation this afternoon, and I
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should like to feel that I was on that occasion a humble lieutenant of his. Since then it has developed into a very fine system, and tribute has very properly been paid to it, not only here this afternoon but in other surroundings, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has reminded us. We are, in a way, now building up a double system of legal proceedings in this country. In a sense, it is parallel with the National Health Service, in which there are now many medical practitioners practising, so to speak, independently, some with a foot in the National Health system, and others entirely devoted to it. That system is not working too badly, but, of course, the emphasis is very much on the National Health side of it. In legal proceedings the emphasis is still more on the private enterprise side than on what one might call the public side. But I think the drive is in that direction, and it may well be that before long a great deal more of the litigation in this country will be conducted on lines in which the State is providing the legal assistance which every citizen ought to have at his disposal in connection with the solution of his legal problems.
This Bill, as has been pointed out this afternoon, is intended to assist the defendant who succeeds in an action which is brought against him by a legally assisted person. Unfortunately, as this type of legal aid has developed it has become more and more realised by that small but very active section of the community who are only too ready to find ways of cashing in on public help of this kind that the scheme can be used as a very effective method of blackmail; indeed, I have even heard lawyers refer to the Legal Aid Act as the "blackmailer's charter". It was referred to very knowledgeably by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner in his speech, and he drew our attention to the fact that this has always been a difficulty, and no doubt always will be, but that the legal aid provisions have, in fact, very much assisted this type of blackmailing litigant in his endeavours to increase his fortune at the expense of much more respectable citizens.
I believe that, quite apart from today's Bill, there are a number of ways in which the actual machinery of the legal aid could be improved. I have

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been told by people involved in litigation of this kind that the first thing they knew was the service of a writ upon them. In the ordinary sort of decently conducted litigation there are very often long negotiations, which I should think, from my own not very great experience of it, result in three or four cases out of five in some kind of intelligible and intelligent compromise. That, I think, is greatly to the benefit of everybody concerned, because as we were told in the New Testament long ago:
"It is much better to make peace with thine enemy while thou art in the way of him."
Unfortunately, to a large extent at any rate, it seems that legal aid does not conduce to that type of "making peace with thine enemy"; that is a great pity, because the result is a great deal of expense which could be avoided.
I should like to follow up, first of all, the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch, in respect of the last two of these conditions before the making of an order for help with his costs to the successful litigant in these circumstances—this "just and equitable" condition on the second head. I think I am very much in sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch, was suggesting: that it ought rather to be twisted the other way round; the order should be for the costs unless, in the view of the judge, it is just and equitable that he should not have them. The ordinary rule is that if you win your case you are entitled to costs; and prima facie, it should be only in those cases where it is not just and equitable that the man should have his costs that he should be deprived of them. That would be, I think, an improvement of the Bill.
But the real difficulty, of course, is this qualification about "severe financial hardship". This was in the Bill when we had it here before, and I think that, with the possible exception of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, everybody who took part in that debate, just as this afternoon (I remember the noble Lord, Lord Silkin referring to it), felt that this is altogether too severe a limitation upon a successful litigant getting an order. I remember a speech
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by the noble and learned Lord, Lord McNair, very well argued, and very convincing, which carried a great deal of weight with your Lordships. All the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack can say in answer to this is that very careful consideration has been given to it, but that he has not been able to think out any methods by which the wealthy corporation, the millionaire, and other people like that, would not be able to cash in. If there is no other method, I think it would be better that they should have it rather than that middle-class people of limited means should be brought to the verge of ruin—as I have known happen in a number of cases, and as will continue to happen if these words are strictly construed by the judges.
On the last occasion somebody said, "It is true that this is not perfect, but it is half a loaf". I am not sure that it is as much as half a loaf. I do not think it will prove to be more than a few crumbs. The number of these cases that go to appeal, which are the ones in which this aid will be given, is very small indeed. The real burden of the expense is at the trial, when the matter is fought out, with the expenses of all the witnesses, and very often long-drawn-out proceedings; and if a successful litigant on that occasion is not going to have much help, I am afraid that it is going to be a matter of a few crumbs and not half a loaf of bread. I am sure that, with the resources at the disposal of the Government, and the ingenuity they are able to display when they are driven to it, they should be able to think out some method which would at any rate alleviate this position. On this occasion we shall have a Committee stage, which we were deprived of on the last occasion, and I hope that it will be possible to put down Amendments to make this a better Bill than the one now before your Lordships' House.
4.38 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, with the exception of the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, this Bill has, so far as I can see, received a very favourable reception from your Lordships' House and I thank your Lordships for it. I should like to say straight away, in reply to something the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said, that I

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certainly think nothing that I said in the course of moving the Second Reading could possibly be regarded as any reflection on the operation of the Scheme.
Perhaps before I come to reply to the detailed criticisms made of the Bill, I might refer to the somewhat general observations which have been made. Indeed, the short debate we have had has traversed a wide field. I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner—I am not sure whether it is proper for me to call him "my noble friend" any longer, although of course we were both for many years on the same circuit; we have known each other for many years; we have engaged in controversy on previous occasions and I look forward to enjoying some controversy with him in your Lordships' House. I listened to his speech, as I know your Lordships did, with the greatest possible interest, and I am sure that he will contribute very greatly to your Lordships' debates. I can assure him that, so far as I am concerned, I thought that he succeeded in being almost, if not entirely, uncontroversial.
I was grateful to him, too, for the tribute that he passed to the Legal Aid and Advice Act. He emphasised the fact that that Act was passed by the Labour Government of that time. That, of course, is true. It was in fact, I think, perhaps the only Act of that Government to which I was able to give complete support, for of course that Act embodied the recommendations of the Rushcliffe Committee of which I was a member, and which was, as the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, said, set up by Lord Simon when he sat upon the Woolsack. I was grateful to the noble Lord, too, for reviewing the history in relation to legal aid. Of course, the Act passed in 1949 had very limited application during the period of the Labour Government, and, as the noble Lord would recognise, it is since then that it has been gradually extended from one court to another court; it has been extended in scope almost consistently, until now it covers almost the entire range of legal procedures.
He drew attention to the extension of legal aid to tribunals. That is a big and a difficult question, which of course has to be considered. He drew attention, too, as indeed "Justice" has, to the
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difficulties that convicted persons may have with regard to getting legal aid after conviction. I can say that that is being considered also. He drew attention to the use of the forms between the notice of appeal and application for leave to appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal. I hope that the whole system of appeals to the Court of Criminal Appeal will fall to be considered by the Committee of which Lord Donovan will be chairman.
I must say that I have never heard, as Lord Chorley says he has heard, the Legal Aid and Advice Act—passed, as I have said, by a Labour Government—being described as a "blackmailers' charter." I do not believe that that really is the case. I recognise, as indeed Lord Douglas of Barloch said, that sometimes people may say, in the hope of getting a settlement, "If you do not settle with me, I will get legal aid and take you into the courts." But it does not follow that because someone says that, he will get legal aid. He has to show that he has a good cause of action, and he has to come within the financial limits. Then Lord Chorley went on to assert that in legal aid cases—
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, may I just say that I did not associate myself with this view, but I have heard it so described by members of the legal profession, it may be inaccurately, and it may be that there are few people involved in this.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord should have thought it right to give such an accusation the widest possible publicity, as indeed anything that he says in this House naturally has. I want to go on to point out that the noble Lord went on to assert that in legal aid cases service of the writ takes place without notice. I must confess that I am surprised to hear that. It may have happened in some cases; I do not know. For instance, it may have happened where a case has come forward so late that, to avoid the Statute of Limitation from operating, the writ has been served without delay. But when the noble Lord bears in mind that the effect of a legal aid certificate will be to enable solicitors to be employed who can act, as they do in the case of an unassisted litigant, I must confess that I see no

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reason at all why solicitors acting on behalf of the legally aided client should not follow the normal procedure.
Nor do I think that the noble Lord is on any sound ground when he says that the receipt of legal aid does not conduce to "making peace with the enemy". I do not think it is right to assume that the receipt of legal aid is a bar, in proper cases, to achieving a settlement. But in relation to that, there is one point to which I would draw the noble Lord's attention—namely, that if, as he suggests, you give the unassisted successful defendant such enlarged rights of getting costs against the State if he wins, then, indeed, that may tell against the achievement of a satisfactory settlement.
Now may I come to the criticisms of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, made a point that he thought that there was too much discretion left to the Judges. The Judges always have discretion as to costs. They have laid down certain principles which they follow in exercising that discretion. I quite agree that this proposal leaves a great deal of discretion to Her Majesty's Judges, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, paid a well-justified tribute. I think we can rest content in leaving it to them to exercise that discretion properly. I should, in passing, just like to say that your Lordships will know that, under the Bill, the test about it being "just and equitable" to make the order will apply in every court, appellate courts as well as in courts of first instance. I can assure your Lordships that I have given, and indeed I know that my predecessor gave, most careful and prolonged consideration to seeking to devise a satisfactory way of expressing the tests which have to be laid down, if you do not go so far as I gather Lord Chorley would want to go, of giving the successful unassisted defendant the almost invariable right of recovering his costs against the State. I do not think that the Judges will, in fact, have any difficulty in exercising their discretion properly under that phrase.
Nor, indeed, do I think that they will have difficulty in interpreting and applying the test of "severe financial hardship", which applies only in relation to the costs incurred by the successful unassisted defendant in the court of
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first instance. Again, I can assure your Lordships that most careful consideration has been given to that wording. It was suggested that the words "exceptional hardship" should be used. There is a real risk, if you use that formula, that it would be interpreted more restrictively than "severe hardship". Again, "substantial" was a word that was contemplated, but there were reasons against that which I can, if need he, deploy later. It has been suggested that the word "severe" should be left out, but a successful unassisted defendant who does not get his costs paid or an order for costs against the unsuccessful plaintiff will always suffer some financial hardship, and I believe the concept of "severe financial hardship" for this test is right, if you accept the principle which I invite the House to accept, that the successful unassisted defendant sued by an assisted person should not be put in a better position than he would be if sued by an unassisted person.
I do not think—I can assure your Lordships that great thought has been given by many people to this—that it is possible to give any clearer guidance to the courts; nor is it possible, I think, or indeed desirable, to limit their discretion in the operation of this Bill. In each case they will have to consider the circumstances of the parties. If Lord Douglas of Barloch looks at Clause 2(2) he will see that there is power to make regulations for referring
"questions of fact relevant to … applications, for inquiry and report by a master, a registrar or a district registrar, as the case may be".
I think that answers the question he put about that.
Finally, I would say that I think the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, is wholly wrong in suggesting that this test of "severe financial hardship", if left in the Bill, will mean that in future successful unassisted defendants will still be brought to the verge of ruin, or actually ruined, by the imposition of the costs. I do not for one moment think that that will be the case. If that would be the result, then I cannot believe a Judge would not say that that particular defendant would suffer severe financial hardship if an order for costs against the Fund were not made in his favour.

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I think the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Douglas of Barloch, was that the successful unassisted defendant would not get an order for costs in his favour unless he was otherwise able to apply for legal aid himself.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, I may not have made myself clear to the noble and learned Lord. What I was suggesting was that if he himself was not legally aided, then one started off with a presumption as to what his financial position was and as to what might or might not be severe hardship.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I think we are on the same point. I do not think that follows at all. His means might not be such as to bring him within the scope of the Legal Aid Scheme. On the other hand, he might find himself, while just beyond that scope, faced with having to defend a case which might last a considerable time and incur a considerable amount of cost. I certainly would consider that one of the matters to be taken into account in the exercise of this discretion should be not only the means of the defendant but also the extent of the costs which will have to fall upon him if no order is made. I have no doubt, from what your Lordships have said, that we may have some further discussion on this matter during the course of the Committee stage. We take the view that it is not possible to go so far as the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has indicated; that we must have some greater fetter in the court of first instance than in the appellate court; and we take the view that this wording, which has been considered and seen by Her Majesty's Judges, and indeed has been seen and considered by the Bar Council and the Law Society, is really wording which is appropriate to achieve the result desired.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL
4.53 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD HASTINGS): My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. It is some years since a Public Works Loans Bill was last before this House and it would perhaps be helpful to your Lordships if I were to sketch in the background to this Bill before going on to describe its main provisions. Some time ago the Government felt that the time had come to have a general review of local authority borrowing arrangements. This review was carried out in association with representatives of the local authorities. The policy changes decided upon in the light of this review were incorporated in a recent White Paper on local authority borrowing. The White Paper contained three main proposals. The first was that a limit should be placed on local authority temporary borrowing because of the consequences which an unchecked increase could have for monetary arrangement. The second proposal was that local authorities should be allowed greater access to the Public Works Loan Board, and the third that impediments to the adoption of modern lending and borrowing technique should be removed.
The Government intend that local authorities' temporary borrowing shall be limited to 20 per cent, of their outstanding loan debt and that authorities whose temporary borrowing exceeds this figure shall be allowed four years to get it down. There are perhaps 300 or so authorities in this position, mostly larger ones. The Government propose that local authorities shall have access to the Public Works Loan Board on a rising scale. The intention is that in the financial year 1964–65 they will be allowed to meet 20 per cent, of their long-term need from the Board. In the following year they will be able to meet 30 per cent., in the third year 40 per cent, and in the fourth year, the financial year 1967–68, 50 per cent, of their needs in this way. Thus by the time that the restriction on temporary borrowing becomes fully effective, local authorities

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will be able to meet half their long-term borrowing needs from the Public Works Loan Board.
It is recognised that smaller authorities do not find it as easy to borrow on the market as larger ones. It is accordingly intended that the percentage quota arrangements I have described should be coupled with a provision that favours smaller borrowers. It is proposed that any local authority should be allowed to meet the first £50,000 of its long-term borrowing needs from the Board. This arrangement will enable between 300 and 400 of the smaller authorities to meet all their long-term borrowing needs from the Public Works Loan Board—if they wish to do so—even during the first year of the new arrangements. It is hoped that in subsequent years it may be possible to allow local authorities to borrow up to £100,000 each from the Board, if this is greater than their percentage quota for the year would otherwise allow. Finally the Public Works Loan Board will act as lender of last resort, as now, and be empowered to make additional loans above a local authority's quota, if it is satisfied that the authority cannot raise the necessary funds on the market.
Greater freedom to borrow from the Board will be accompanied by a change in the terms on which loans are made. In future the rate of interest on loans from the Board will be mostly related to the rate at which the Government borrow, instead, as at present, to the rate at which local authorities borrow on the market. This should reduce the cost of their longer-term borrowing. It is impossible to say in advance what the saving will be, because the trend of interest rates cannot be forecast. All I can tell the House is that if the new arrangements were in force to-day charging interest on the new basis would mean that local authorities would pay up to ¾ per cent. less on loans from the Board, depending upon the period of the loan. I should add that not all the Public Works Loan Board loans will be made at the Government rate. This rate will apply only to loans within an authority's annual quota. Any additional loans which the Board makes as lender of last resort will be made at the local authority market borrowing rate, as at present.
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The general effect of these new arrangements will be to introduce a measure of control over temporary borrowing and to permit substantially greater borrowing from the Public Works Loan Board. Noble Lords who are wondering whether the mixture of stick and carrot is suitably balanced may rest assured that the ratio of carrot to stick is agreeably high. It is estimated that the amount of excess temporary debt to be funded is about £300 million, whereas Public Works Loan Board loans to local authorities in the four year funding period will be several times as great as this. For example, loans by the Board in 1964–65 and 1965–66 are expected to be in the region of £240 million and £340 million respectively, and in subsequent years they will be even greater.
I turn now to the provisions of the Bill. Clause 1 makes the necessary new provision for funds for the Public Works Loan Commissioners. The clause provides that £650 million shall be available for making local loans. We believe that this amount will provide the Public Works Loan Board with sufficient funds for the next two years. The clause also enables the Loan Commissioners to undertake to make loans after the period during which money may be issued under this Bill. Because the commitment provision covers a rather longer period than the lending provision, we need to specify a larger amount. As is usual, and as has been done in past Bills of this nature, we have provided an additional £100 million for this purpose.
Clause 2 of the Bill specifies the Treasury's powers to fix and vary the rate of interest charged by the Board. To a large extent the provisions of this clause actually reproduce and consolidate existing legislation, some of which dates back to 1897. But the clause is also designed to provide for the introduction of the dual interest rate system which I have already described. The reference in Clause 2 in lines 9 and 10 on page 2 of the Bill to
"different rates of interest may be fixed in respect of different sums borrowed for the same length of time "
is a reference to the system of dual interest rates. It does not imply that different types of local authority will have to pay different rates of interest

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or that smaller authorities may have to pay higher rates than larger ones.
Clause 3 of the Bill provides for a number of procedural changes on Public Works Loan Board matters and in the law relating to temporary borrowing by local authorities in Scotland. It contains some useful reforms which I know that local authorities welcome and which my Ministry welcome, too, for the simplifications they will introduce into local authorities day-to-day accounting operations. Clause 3 (b) (i) for example gets rid of the existing restrictions that the P.W.L.B. loans must all be repayable by instalments. This will be a considerable convenience to the growing number of authorities which practise loans pooling in one form or another and prefer to borrow a fixed sum for a fixed period. Clause 3 (c), (d) and (e) simplify the accounting arrangements for the loans. The repeals here are largely designed to bring the law into line with existing practice.
I should perhaps also refer to Clause 3 (g), which repeals the existing legislation that restricts temporary borrowing by local authorities in Scotland. The present law provides that these authorities may not have more than 15 per cent. of their outstanding debt in the form of temporary borrowing. The effect of repealing this section of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947, will therefore be to permit Scottish authorities to increase their maximum temporary borrowing from 15 to 20 per cent. of their outstanding loan debt. Incidentally, the new restriction is not provided for in this Bill. This is because existing powers under the Control of Borrowing Order, 1958, permit the new restriction to be imposed without the need for fresh legislation.
Clauses 4 and 5 provide for the write-off and remisison of various 19th century loans to four harbour authorities, three of them in Cornwall and one in Northern Ireland. These are loans where the outstanding principal is unlikely to be recovered and the Government feel that the time has now come formally to remit the loans in question. Clause 6 amends and clarifies the re-borrowing powers of local and other public authorities. The length and apparent complexity of this clause is due to the variety of circumstances which have to be covered, such as different methods of repaying loans and the different situations in which the
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need for borrowing may arise. There is some obscurity in the present thirty-year old law—the 1933 Local Government Act is the main provision—brought about by changes in accounting techniques, and in particular there is some doubt as to the situation when repayment is made through a loans pool. This clause is designed to put the matter beyond doubt.
Clause 7 increases the limit on outstanding Treasury advances to the Government of Northern Ireland for the use of the Northern Ireland Government Loans Fund. This fund makes loans for public works, mostly to local authorities. The effect of this clause is to increase the present limit of £30 million on outstanding loans in the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Act, 1955, to the £40 million provided in the present Bill. At a time when we were increasing the funds available for local authorities to borrow from our own Public Works Loan Board, it seemed appropriate to extend the Treasury power to make advances to the Government of Northern Ireland for the purposes of its own comparable fund, since outstanding advances are over £25 million, less than £5 million short of the limit. Clause 8 provides for any increase in rate deficiency grant or Exchequer equalisation grant that becomes payable as a result of changes brought about by this Bill. It is customary to include a provision of this kind whenever there is a possibility of this sort of thing happening.
As your Lordships will realise from what I have said, this Bill, besides increasing the amount available for loans from the Public Works Loan Board to local authorities, also provides for a number of helpful procedural changes. These will be supplemented by other administrative changes, one of which will enable the P.W.L.B. to advance money in about half the time required at present. This will, I am sure, be welcomed by the local authorities.
In concluding my remarks, I should like to remind your Lordships of the general object of the policy changes that are being made. It is to reconcile the needs of monetary management with the natural and proper desire of local authorities to have ready access to capital as cheaply as is compatible with prudent finance. This demands some

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restriction on both the use of temporary borrowing by local authorities and the provision of long-term finance by the Exchequer. The Government believe that their proposals strike the right balance and that the new arrangements provide an answer to the needs of 1964 and the future. With this thought, I commend the Bill to your Lordships, and I now beg to move that it be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Hastings.)
5.6 p.m.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, I am sure we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, for his explanation of the provisions of this Bill and for his compendious summary of the new proposals embodied in the White Paper. This Bill is, in fact, unobjectionable, and it is also unexceptional. It does not enshrine any element of high policy. Its main purpose, as is stated in the memorandum accompanying the Bill, is to give effect, in so far as legislation is necessary, to the new proposals as set out in the White Paper. Accordingly, there can be no objection to the Bill.
That is not the case, of course, with regard to the new proposals. They are objectionable, and they will have a serious effect upon the finances of local government. It is proposed to impose a restriction upon local authorities as regards the measure and volume of temporary borrowing. It is very difficult at the present time for local authorities to obtain the finance for capital projects which they need from year to year. The local authorities borrow in total something in excess of £500 million a year—in 1962 I think the sum was £550 million. The loan charges of local authorities are at present in the region of £415 million a year; in the future, the borrowings, and, as a consequence, the loan charges, are likely to grow very substantially. After all, we have a good deal to do in the field of local government in the building of houses, clearing the slums, building schools and rebuilding town centres; so the measure of increased finance that local authorities will need will grow and grow.
The noble Lord did not, I feel, explain why the Government are taking these
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steps at the present time. The result will be that loan charges of many local authorities will be increased, and there is no suggestion, in the White Paper or elsewhere, that this change, which is important, has been made in the interests of local government. It has been made, of course, in the interests of the national finances. To that one could take no exception, except on this basis: that the local authorities will have to pay, because the proposals embodied in the White Paper, which we understand will become effective as from April 1, will result in the local authorities having to pay higher interest rates for their monetary needs. My Lords, it is to these proposals that I shall address my remarks.
It is the case that, since 1954, successive Governments have forced local authorities to borrow temporarily as a result of denying them, except in the last resort, access to the Public Works Loan Board. The consequences of this will be seen in a moment, when I give the figures. But the Government now propose to restrict the proportion of temporary borrowing, which will inevitably result in local authorities having to go into the long-term market for at least 50 per cent. of their long-term requirements, and they will have to pay a higher rate of interest. No doubt the Government have become somewhat frightened at the consequences of their policy of non-access to the Public Works Loan Board since 1955—and well might the Government be frightened—for at the present time temporary borrowing of local authorities amounts to no less than between £1,200 million and £1,300 million, representing 15 to 16 per cent. of the total local government debt. Of this total, £800 million is on seven days' notice, and £160 million is from foreign bankers.
My Lords, it is an unedifying story of the actions of successive Governments since 1953 in regard to local government finance. It deserves recounting, and I am perhaps not wholly disqualified from recounting it by the circumstances that I was for fifteen years a member of the Public Works Loan Board and I was intimately concerned with the discussions which took place in 1945 and led to the very wise decision of the then Coalition Government, that the

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Public Works Loan Board should provide all the capital needed by local authorities except in certain quite unimportant special cases. Sir John Anderson, as he then was, later Lord Waverley, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He realised that, on the conclusion of hostilities, there would be an enormous demand for money by local authorities to carry out war damage repairs, to replace destroyed buildings and to carry out accumulated repairs to houses which had been neglected for years—and, indeed, for repairs to roads. He knew that if the local authorities were left to their own devices to get this money, there would be an unholy scramble; that there would be the chaos of competition, with the result that the rate of interest would be pushed up.
To avoid that, as I have said, the Government introduced the Local Authorities Loans Act, 1945, under which the local authorities were required, save in special cases, to borrow money from the Public Works Loan Board. In short, it was a planned provision of the necessary finance. The rate of interest charged was roughly the same as the Government paid; and, as I have said, legislative effect was given to that by the Act of 1945. Experience has shown how wise that policy was. Over the seven years from 1945 to 1952, over £1,600 million was provided for the local authorities by the Government, through the Public Works Loan Board, and it was provided at a rate of interest of just under 3 per cent., taking one year with another. Contrast this with the state of affairs after the conclusion of the 1914–18 war, when there was no planning of the provision of finance. Local authorities were left to their own devices; there was a scramble for finance which pushed the rate up to over 6 per cent., and local authorities were compelled to finance housing schemes by money borrowed on long-term at 6 per cent.-plus. Some of these stocks were issued at a discount, and some of them for 60 years—and certain local authorities are still paying the high rate of interest of 6 per cent.-plus.
This arrangement of 1945, it is quite clear, was a sound and wise one, as the comparison I have given amply demonstrates, I submit. Indeed, it was so successful and so sound that the Tory
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Government of the day promptly put an end to it—I suppose in pursuit of "setting the people free". But it is the case that, as from January 1, 1953, that arrangement came to an end; it lapsed. Local authorities were told to get their money where they could, except that they could not, other than in very special cases, obtain any of it from the Public Works Loan Board.
That has been the position since October, 1955. The Board became lenders only in the last resort, and they became lenders in the last resort at a steadily rising rate of interest; so that, between 1954 and 1961, the rate of interest was, on occasions, 7 per cent. My Lords, 3 per cent. under a Labour Government and 7 per cent. under Tory Governments—which, I suppose, is how Conservative planning works! At any rate, it is an outward and visible sign of "setting the lenders free". The enormity of this increase in the rate of interest will be appreciated when I say that a 1 per cent. increase on an expenditure of £550 million on a 30-year redemption basis amounts, over the whole period, to no less than £83 million. On coming down to smaller matters, 1 per cent. on a house costing £2,200 represents 7s. 3d. per week on the rent for 60 years.
As I have said, this has been done, not to help local authorities but to help national finances—I suppose to avoid the approaching balance-of-payments crisis. It was, I submit, my Lords, to mitigate the consequences of the mismanagement of the national finances. It is really a little unworthy that the London County Council should go to the market with a stock carrying £5 17s. 7d. on redemption as a rate of interest and have most of it left for the underwriters. In my submission, that is monumental evidence of the mismanagement of the national finances. At a time when local authorities face vast expenditure they are very much concerned that the rate of interest should be as low as possible. Not only has the rate of interest been higher than it need have been, but it is higher than it was under the arrangements negotiated by the late Lord Waverley. It is not very comforting that money for local authority needs should be obtained from abroad. It is neither encouraging nor worthy that the credit of British local government should

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be hawked around the money markets of Europe. As I have said, £160 million of "hot money"—or, as some people a little more correctly call it, "vagabond money"—has been borrowed from foreign banks and is repayable at short notice. Waiting, I suppose, for another balance-of-payments crisis, the high priests of the Treasury sit around telling their beads in a state of buoyant pessimism.
As a result of Government policy, something of the order of £1,200 million worth of permanent assets, of schools, colleges, houses and roads, have been financed by short-term borrowings. I suggest that no sensible people can derive any comfort from that situation. Much of the borrowing—£800 million—is on a month's notice, and some of it is on seven days' notice. The Government are scared, no doubt, and propose some new arrangements. The noble Lord has indicated what these arrangements are. I am informed that there are 300 local authorities where the outstanding short-term borrowing is in excess of 20 per cent. of the total local debt; and some where the proportion is 50 per cent.
The application of this 20 per cent. proportion to those authorities where the short-term debt is at present in excess of that figure imposes on them a double obligation: they have first of all to bring their existing debt within the framework of the 20 per cent., and they must then see that in any future financing or borrowing they are still within that proportion. Therefore you are imposing on these authorities a double obligation. These authorities have not got into this position through any wilfulness; it is because they have, for the most part, been active, vigorous local authorities, getting on with the job of providing the social services which their ratepayers are entitled to have. The result will be that these authorities in excess of 20 per cent. will be punished—if I may use that term—because they will have to borrow more in the long-term market than would otherwise have been the case.
So, my Lords, we take the view that these new proposals ought not to receive the support of Parliament. They are not, as I have said, embodied in the Bill. As was the case between 1945 and 1952 the local authorities should be financed
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by the Government through the Public Works Loan Board; and the rate of interest should be the Government lending rate and not the local government borrowing rate. There is an enormous amount of work to be done by the local authorities. Since they are, for the most part, agents of the Government and are carrying out a social and welfare policy decided upon by Parliament, at the instance of Government, the local authorities who incur the capital expenditure should be able to obtain it at a rate of interest that is about the same as the Government's own rate of interest.
There is a case to be made for having a specially low rate of interest for local authorities, having regard to the social significance and social value of the services upon which the money is spent. There can be no expenditure of greater social value than that upon social services, schools, houses and roads. Indeed, it is the case that much of the infrastructure of society needs to be repaired, to be reconstructed, to be refurbished, as it were. Much of it is a survival from the Industrial Revolution. They had the spacious ease; we now have the liability squeeze. We have to rebuild the centres of many towns and cities, and it is not inappropriate that the money necessary for these social purposes should be provided by the Government at a low rate of interest. This is especially so at the present time, when the burden of revaluation is supposed to be bearing hardly upon a considerable number of ratepayers in a number of districts, and when legislation is being considered for the relief of the alleged hardships in those cases.
Side by side with that we have the proposals as set out in the White Paper for adding to the burden of rates by increasing, or taking steps which will increase, the rate of interest that will have to be paid by the local authorities. My Lords, here we are, after twelve years of Tory rule, reaching the edifying position of putting ratepayers on a means test. Councillors are to become guardians, and local government officers are to become relieving officers. That is the position regarding local government rates and the financing of local government to which the Government have brought this country. As I have said, the Bill is not concerned with any

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matters of policy; it is a Bill to correct certain anomalies and, principally, to give effect to the legislative aspects of the proposals set out in the White Paper. The consideration of the finance of local Government will have to be dealt with when the Rate Relief Bill comes to your Lordships' House. In those circumstances, there is no reason why the Bill before us this evening should not obtain a Second Reading.
5.30 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I should like to intervene briefly on one point: this question of short-term borrowing by local authorities. I think it is sometimes forgotten, and the White Paper rather tends to gloss this over, that local authorities indulge in short-term borrowing for two purposes, and only one of them is because it is cheaper from time to time to borrow on short-term than to take long-term loans. Sometimes this works the other way round and the local authority are prepared to pay a higher rate for a short-term loan rather than be committed for very long periods to what they consider to be a high rate of interest. I know that more than one authority has been prepared to pay 6 per cent. for loans of three months rather than be committed to a rate, which they consider very high, of 5½ or 5¾ per cent. for twenty or thirty years.
To that extent, I am pleased, rather than otherwise, to see in paragraph 19 of the White Paper that local authorities, in going to the Public Works Loan Board, will not require to take their loans for the full sanction period and may borrow for a shorter period, and then go back when the loan has been repaid to borrow the balance of their needs at that time. I am disappointed, however, to see that the minimum period for which they can borrow under these arrangements is being raised from 7 to 10 years, because I am certain that there are many authorities who would be reluctant to enter into an arrangement to borrow at high rates of interest, even for a period of ten years, if they thought that there was the possibility—in fact, one might say, if some of them foresaw the certainty—under another Government of being able to borrow for a much shorter time and at a considerably lower rate of interest. I hope, therefore, that the Government, who after all are
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seeking in this Bill merely to remedy some of the worst consequences of their own actions since 1953, as my noble friend Lord Latham has said, will reconsider this question of raising the minimum period from 7 to 10 years.
I have never been able to understand Government policy in relation to borrowing, either from the Public Works Loan Board, in relation to local authorities, or from the Treasury in the case of nationalised undertakings. Now that this Bill has been produced to improve the arrangements for local authorities, I wish the Government would give some consideration to the circumstances in which nationalised industries borrow. At the moment, the policy applied to them is the very reverse of that applied to local authorities.
To local authorities, the Public Works Loan Board was the lending authority of last resort and they only came to the Board if they could not get their money by other means, particularly by going to the market. The nationalised undertakings, by action of the Government, have been prevented from going to the market and must do all their borrowing, except for comparatively small amounts on overdraft, from the Treasury. They have had no other option. If the loan sanction period has been in excess of 30 years, they have had to take the money for 30 years, at this exceptionally high rate of interest, and they have no authority whatsoever to borrow short-term money, as have the local authorities.
Inasmuch as the Government's interest in relation to both these bodies is to exercise some measure of control over the total amount of money that is being borrowed at one time, it seems to me reasonable that the same set of principles should apply to both types of authorities, and the most favourable conditions which are to be enjoyed by local authorities should be extended to undertakings which, in many cases, are doing work which, prior to nationalisation, was being done by local authorities. We have the ridiculous situation that if a local authority had still been the electricity undertaking, it would have had the benefit of these operations in relation to its electricity undertaking, but now that there is a nationalised electricity undertaking they must go to the Treasury and pay the extortionate rates

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of interests that have been demanded over recent years, as high as 6½ and 6¾ per cent. There are quite a number of Boards which have this millstone round their necks for the next twenty or thirty years.
I recognise that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill which is before the House, except that it is reasonable to say that if the Government think that this is good policy to apply to public borrowing in one field, it cannot be bad policy in another, just because the borrower happens to be another type of public authority. I am in favour of Her Majesty's Government's giving consideration to applying these conditions, unfavourable as they are, to nationalised undertakings also, because these conditions will be of considerable advantage compared with the present system.
5.37 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Latham, started by saying that he had no objection to the Bill, I was prepared to congratulate myself, but obviously that was rather premature, because he then raised a great many objections to the proposals for carrying out the principle of the Bill. I must therefore address my few remarks in winding up this short debate to some of the noble Lord's objections. The noble Lord started off by criticising us for restricting temporary borrowing, but, later on, he said that the Government were evidently dismayed by the extent of borrowing and added, "And well they might be". It seems to me that if he believes that the Government were justified in being frightened at the extent of temporary borrowing, he can hardly criticise them for wishing to restrict temporary borrowing in the interests of sound finance.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, authorities had to borrow on short-term by reason of the Government's own action, because the Government ceased to provide money for the local authorities.
LORD HASTINGS: None the less, I think that the noble Lord's two arguments cancel each other out. The third one he has produced I shall mention later. The noble Lord went on to say that it was difficult enough already for local authorities to raise money in the
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open market. But I would remind him that it will be much easier in future, because no less than half their requirements will now be met from the Public Works Loan Board at the Government rate of interest. So there is no question of making it more difficult for local authorities to borrow money; it will be made much easier, and I am sure that they will welcome that.
The noble Lord said that loan charges would be increased for many local authorities. That is true in respect of 300 or so whose borrowing at short-term rates is in excess of the 20 per cent. figure which we are now going to fix, but that will not be true for the vast majority of local authorities—some 1,400 or 1,500—who, as a result of this, will still be able to borrow, and borrow more than they are doing at the moment, at short-term rates. The noble Lord quoted a figure of 15 per cent. as the overall national figure of the amount of short-term borrowing by local authorities. The preponderance of these authorities will be able to increase their short-term borrowing up to a figure of 20 per cent. It is only the minority of 300 or so who will face increased loan charges as a result of this Bill and the proposals to carry it out. One cannot argue that this is putting a greater burden on local authorities because this minority have simply wished to take advantage of cheaper rates or other reasons, such as those the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, mentioned, to borrow short. The majority have not done so and they will merely be facing the same sort of charges as the majority of local authorities are already facing. I do not think that one can call that unfair to the minority.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, that is not the view, as the noble Lord probably knows, of the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants, who have definitely stated that for many councils it will mean an increase in the cost of servicing loan debt.
LORD HASTINGS: I have said that in some cases this will be so. The next point the noble Lord made was that this Bill and these proposals are not in the interests of local authorities, but of the Exchequer, the Government, or, in other words, the national economy. Surely the noble Lord cannot divrce

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the interests of local authorities, borrowing, £1,000 million a year either for new works or for servicing their loan charges, from the interests of the nation as a whole, especially when the Government are financing the local authorities to the extent of more than half all their expenditure. Surely, in the interests of sound economy the local authorities and the Government must stand together. One cannot sink while the other swims; and we hope that they will both swim. That is one of the purposes behind the Bill.
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, the local authorities stood together in the seven years when they obtained their finances from the Public Works Loan Board at a rate of interest of 3 per cent.
LORD HASTINGS: I am coming to that now, if the noble Lord will be patient. I think that what I have said so far also, to some extent, looks after the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, about the reasons why sometimes local authorities borrow short at high rates rather than accept a debt over a long period, in so far as they will still in the majority of cases be able to borrow more short-term money than they are doing at the moment.
The noble Lord has gone over old ground, of course, and we are really brought up against the fundamental difference of opinion between his Party and mine on the question of finance and the way to manage the economy. He said that the Government have forced temporary borrowing on local authorities by denying them the use of the Public Works Loan Board. It is quite true that there was after 1952 a transitional stage for three years when the local authorities could borrow either from the Public Works Loan Board or from the market, and then in 1955 they were obliged to borrow entirely from the market at large. As a result, and quite rightly and properly, they began to look around to see the advantages of short-term borrowing, especially for repaying their maturing loans. That was foreseen.
LORD LATHAM: Surely they did not borrow short in order to repay a long loan?
LORD HASTINGS: As the noble Lord himself said, they have to service charges of over £300 million a year, and
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have borrowed short in the pooling system to help repay. As I was saying, this was foreseen, and at the time of the Radcliffe Committee, which reported in 1959, the Government were fully apprised of the future possible difficulties of short-term borrowing. They arranged to collect a lot more statistical information than was available at that time. As a result of that information they began to review the situation two years ago and came to the conclusion that, in view of the great increase in local authority borrowing in general, which had doubled since 1955—that is an important point—it was now desirable to introduce the system by which half the requirements would be met from the Public Works Loan Board and half on the open market. This is not a reversal. It is a consistent policy, and an evolutionery one. We are not going back to the period of the Labour Government.
I would remind noble Lords opposite that their cheap money policy—which they are now advocating again—led them into serious difficulties and eventually ended up in inflation which they found they were unable to control. We do not intend that to happen. That is why we are adopting this system now. I hope that most noble Lords will be satisfied with these explanations and will give the Bill a Second Reading.
If I may just refer to this question of the nationalised undertaking—and as the noble Lord said, it is rather outside this Bill—this was mentioned in a speech of my noble friend Lord Amory when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Radcliffe Committee was being discussed. I think it was in November, 1959. If the noble Lord will refer to that speech I think he will see that this particular point was then considered and was adequately answered. I now ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to the Bill.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, before the noble Lord finishes, he mentioned the fact that what is being done to-day is done because circumstances are very different from those in 1955. It may be that something which appeared satisfactory to the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, in 1959 is not necessarily satisfactory to-day. In fact, during the years 1959 to 1964 the nationalised under-

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takings have continued to suffer under this disability. I would suggest that the Government might have another look at this. As I say, what was considered reasonable in 1959, either before or just after an Election had been successfully fought, might not be so good in 1964 and I do not put this point forward for electoral reasons.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

NEW TOWNS BILL
5.47 p.m.
Order of the day for the Second Reading read.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, in moving that this Bill be read a second time, I would suggest that the Bill is of a strictly non-Party nature. I cannot believe that there is any disagreement between the political Parties as to the necessity for, or the desirability of, this Bill. I think it would be entirely appropriate for me at the outset of this debate to pay tribute to the work of the Committee presided over by the noble Lord, Lord Reith, and to the work and vision of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who was responsible for the first New Towns Act in 1946. The experiment which was started then has stood the test of time and is likely to go on to further success.
The Bill before your Lordships is a short one, and its main purpose is to continue the work begun in 1946 by providing authority for further loans of £150 million for the New Towns. The last New Towns Act, 1959, brought the total amount available for the New Towns up to £400 million, and that was the latest of a series of increases from the modest £50 million with which a start was originally made. In addition, I should mention that the 1959 Act provided for expenditure by the Commission for the New Towns. The total commitments to December 31 last were £394 million, although the advances actually made lagged somewhat behind commitments and had reached the figure of £339 million. These overall figures relate to the New Towns in Great Britain as a whole.
The second purpose of the Bill is to simplify the financial procedure in connection
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with the New Towns Commission. The Act of 1959, which provided for the setting up of the Commission for the New Towns, required that advances to the Commission to meet capital expenditure liabilities taken over from development corporations should count against the £400 million authorised for advances to those corporations. On the other hand, advances required to finance capital expenditure of the Commission on its own account were to count separately against a total of £5 million authorised for that purpose. As a matter of financial administration, however, it is impracticable to make this distinction because when advances are made it is not possible to say precisely how they will be spent.
The Commission employs all its financial resources, whether they accrue from rents or other income, or whether they are advances made by the Minister, to meet expenditure of all kinds. In this way its borrowings can be kept to the absolute minimum with advantage to itself and to the Exchequer. The Commission cannot keep its borrowings in watertight compartments and still make the best use of its resources overall. In any event, the distinction between expenditure on liabilities taken over from development corporations and on liabilities undertaken on the Commission's own initiative is not significant, since both are for the same general purpose of managing and improving the New Towns. The Bill therefore provides that in future all advances to the Commission, as well as to the development corporations, should count against the single authorised total. If this were not being done, it would be necessary to provide for an additional sum for the Commission. So much for the outline of the Bill.
I think we should not let this occasion pass without a brief review of the progress of the New Towns. Crawley and Hemel Hempstead have now passed to the Commission for the New Towns, having reached their target populations. Apart from Skelmersdale and Dawley, which have only been established quite recently, the other New Towns in England and Wales are all well on the way towards their main targets. It is therefore an appropriate moment to look at the financial position, and I think we

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can claim that this is reasonably satisfactory.
Approximately 80 per cent. of the total expenditure is on housing, and the aim of housing is to make ends meet with the aid of the Exchequer housing subsidies. It follows, therefore, that it would be too much to expect a high rate of return on the total investment. We expect corporations to aim at getting current market value for their factories, shops and offices, but the surplus on this relatively small proportion of the total capital expenditure, when spread overall, will inevitably be quite modest.
On a total capital expenditure in England and Wales of £280 million to March, 1963, there was a net revenue surplus of £360,000. On General Revenue Account there was a surplus of £730,000, but a deficit of £370,000 on Sewerage Revenue Account reduced this to £360,000. Over the whole of the New Towns there was a cumulative deficit at March last of £2½ million. This is gradually being reduced, but it will be some time yet before these deficits are wiped out.
These figures summarise the revenue position shown in the audited accounts of the corporations and the Commission. There has been correspondence in The Times, your Lordships will have seen, suggesting that there is really a much larger surplus, which was arrived at by adding back various transfers to reserve, provisions and other charges against revenue. That is as may be. The accounts have been published, and the reader is free to construe them as he wishes. For my part, I am quoting the final revenue position as shown in the balance sheets. The important thing, whichever way one reads these accounts, is that investment in the New Towns is paying its way. It is right that this kind of investment of the taxpayers' money should be subjected to the normal financial tests to ensure that they are getting value for money. The return is small, it is true, but it will improve steadily. I would remind your Lordships that the figures I have quoted above relate to the New Towns in England and Wales.
The position in Scotland is rather more difficult because of the lower level of house rents which have obtained there in general. The revenue deficits of the
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four Scottish New Towns totalled £4½ million at March, 1963. This is mainly attributable to losses on housing, offset by returns from industrial and commercial development in the same way as their English counterparts. Nevertheless, it is only right to add that the Scottish Development Corporations are charging rents which are more realistic than those of many of the Scottish local authorities. I should not like it to be thought that, because I have concentrated on the financial picture, the Government are content to judge the success of the New Towns by that criterion alone. I believe that the success of the New Towns programme, considered as a social experiment, is now generally accepted, not only in this country, but throughout the world. I do not think it necessary to take up time in arguing the point, but I did not want it to be overlooked.
The additional amount made available in this Bill for advances for New Towns purposes is expected to cover expenditure during the next three to four years. It might be helpful if I were to say a few words about likely development in the near future. In the South-East, the eight New Towns designated between 1946 and 1949 to accommodate overspill from Greater London, and which had an existing population of under 100,000, have so far grown to nearly 400,000 and are at present planned to accommodate, eventually, well over 500,000 people. Meanwhile, we have had to face the prospect of a very rapid growth of population in the South-East region in the next two decades, the greater part of it arising from the natural increase of the population now living there. The full scale of this prospective increase became apparent only in the late 'fifties. For the past three years a comprehensive study of the planning implications for the South-East Region has been going forward, and the Government will publish the results of this study soon. The matters considered in the course of the study have included not only the possible need to create more New Towns, but also the desirability of expanding the planned population of some of the existing New Towns.
So far as possible expansions are concerned, studies have already been made and published, at the Minister's request, by the Stevenage and Harlow Corporations.

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A good deal was said about the proposals for Stevenage recently in another place, and I do not propose to go over that ground at this stage. I anticipate, however, that we shall hear a good deal more upon this subject today, and I prefer to wait and see what is said. In any case we have a considerable way to go before final decisions are taken.
There are, however, three general points about the expansion of existing towns which I should like to put forward. First, the time factor. Neither the building of a New Town nor the expansion of an existing one can be started very quickly. In both cases, there are the necessary but time-consuming preliminary processes of consultation to be gone through and much basic planning to be done. But, other things being equal, you can get an expansion under way more quickly because there is an experienced and fully staffed Development Corporation there ready to move into action as soon as the word is given.
Secondly, experience has shown that many of the facilities which people nowadays look for in a town—such as big departmental stores, shops serving special interests, a second cinema, a concert hall, a civic theatre and things of that kind—do not become a commercial proposition until the population has risen above the sort of levels which we had in mind when New Towns were first designated. Thus, a New Town of 100,000 to 150,000 can offer its citizens a fuller life than a smaller town.
Thirdly, it is only when populations of New Towns have reached 50,000 or 60,000 that they have begun to show signs of attracting office employment on a large scale. For example, in Harlow, out of an estimated population of 55,000 in 1961, only 800 people were in office employment. By 1963, when the population was nearly 62,000, the number of office workers had increased by almost a half to 1,150. The great majority of the growth of employment in London is, as we all well know, in offices and commerce generally. Further growth in existing New Towns should, therefore, attract more of them out of London; it is unlikely that a fresh New Town would do so for many years. There are important
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considerations; but, of course, each town has its own character and its own problems, and there is no rule of thumb which can be applied to all of them. Each must be considered on its merits, and a balance struck between the factors favouring and those working against expansion.
Turning now to the West Midlands, we have Dawley, where the Corporation has been set up and is preparing to receive overspill from Birmingham; and we have the proposal to set up a new town for the same purpose at Redditch, on which a public local inquiry was held recently. In the North-West the position is much the same, with the Skelmersdale Corporation getting into its stride and a decision pending on the proposals for Runcorn. Both of these are intended to accommodate overspill from Liverpool and North Merseyside. In addition, as we know, a New Town is necessary in the Manchester area, and the Minister hopes to make an announcement about its proposed location shortly.
In the North-East we have Peterlee and Aycliffe, both of which are in the growth area defined in the recent White Paper on that region, and both of which it is proposed to expand—Aycliffe to accommodate a further 20,000 people, and Peterlee to provide additional land for industry. A third New Town is proposed at Washington as a contribution to the housing and employment needs of the Tyneside-Wearside area.
To round off the picture, in England and Wales, we have the New Towns at Corby and Cwmbran which were set up to meet local rather than regional needs. Additional land was designated in 1963 for Corby, and the present population of over 41,000 is now expected to grow to 55,000 to provide for the increased labour requirements of the Stewarts and Lloyds' Steelworks; and thereafter by natural increase, to 75,000. Cwmbran, which is planned to reach an eventual population of 55,000, has so far grown to rather over 32,000.
My Lords, in Scotland the population of the first three New Towns—East Kilbride, Glenrothes and Cumbernauld—now exceeds 56,000, and, of course they still have a long way to go. In the fourth, Livingston, which was designated less than two years ago, house building

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has started and factory building will shortly begin. The industrial success of the New Towns in Scotland was recognised in the recent Central Scotland White Paper which identified all four as major growth areas. Technical investigations are now under way at Irvine, in Ayrshire, which was mentioned in the White Paper as a possible fifth Scottish New Town. These will enable the scope for growth to be assessed, and in the light of the outcome and the views of the local authorities my right-honourable friend will decide whether the expansion of Irvine can most suitably be undertaken under the New Towns Act.
To conclude this review, I wonder sometimes whether the magnitude of this undertaking is always fully appreciated. Already the combined population of the New Towns in England, Wales and Scotland—that is, 570,000—is greater than the population of Sheffield, which is about half a million. Looking to the future, if all the new foundations and expansions now proposed go forward the number of New Town dwellers will eventually equal the combined present populations of Sheffield and Birmingham—1½ million. These figures, I may add, take no account of any new proposals for New Towns which may emerge from the current regional studies.
My Lords, I hope that, in view of the necessity for going ahead with the New Towns programme, and for the expanding of the existing New Towns up to their target figures, and perhaps in some cases beyond, this Bill will commend itself to your Lordships, and that you will give it a Second Reading. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Hastings.)
6.5 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I have no doubt at all that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading. The noble Lord, in replying to the previous debate, said that when he heard the statement from my noble friend Lord Latham he assumed that the Bill was going to be non-controversial and that there would be no criticisms of it. I hope he will not assume that on this occasion. While we recognise the need for more Government money for the New Towns. I think
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he will hear in the course of the debate this evening a good deal of comment on the way in which it is proposed to spend that money. But, so far as the noble Lord's own speech is concerned, I should like to congratulate him on having made a very able statement of the position, an impartial review of the New Towns and of what they are hoping to do. I would also thank him personally for the references he made to the noble Lord, Lord Reith, and to myself.
The fact that we are about to authorise an expenditure of £150 million on top of the £400 million already authorised, is, of course, a measure of the confidence the Government, and this House, have in the advantages of dealing with social, housing, and other overspill problems by way of New Towns. We recognise to-day that people living in the New Towns are being provided with a healthy and convenient way of life in a new and better environment. The New Towns were started as a social experiment, and I think it is fair to say that they have now gone beyond the experimental stage and are accepted as a successful way of life.
I was also glad to hear that the financial position is, as the noble Lord said, reasonably satisfactory. He referred to some correspondence in The Times in which Sir Frederic Osborn, among others, tried to establish that it is more than reasonably satisfactory. I am not going to enter into that discussion. Which view one takes depends on the way one looks at the figures: and I think that any competent accountant can establish either view. But I am satisfied with the statement that the financial position is "reasonably satisfactory". After all, we have to bear in mind that the financial position of New Towns cannot be compared with a private venture. If this were a private venture there would be a profit on the housing, as well as on the other facilities provided—shops, industry, and so on. But in this case, where 80 per cent. of the expenditure is non-profit-making, it is very satisfactory indeed to find that, as regards the 20 per cent. expenditure, there is a reasonably satisfactory return.
It had been the original intention to develop, as a beginning, some twenty New Towns. I think that fourteen were

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actually started during the days of the Labour Government and since then we have seen four more started. But still we have not reached eighteen completed. While I do not want to spend much time in criticising the Government for their belated conversion to the idea of New Towns (because it is only in the last two or three years that they have actually decided to designate areas for New Towns), the fact remains that for a very long period nothing at all was done about New Towns. The result is that we are very much behind in dealing with the problems of Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and other of the large conurbations. The noble Lord said that we may expect an announcement about Manchester. But I have heard that for a very long time; as a matter of fact I had hoped to make an announcement myself about Manchester some sixteen or seventeen years ago. I hope that it will not be delayed the same length of time from now.
Quite obviously, we are all now taking credit for the success of the New Towns. But it was not always so, and last night I had the curiosity to look up the Report of the debate on the Second Reading of the New Towns Bill in 1946. I may say that it is the first time I have read that debate since 1946, but I thought that, in view of this debate, it would be interesting to see how the New Towns were received at that time. They were not opposed, but they were received in a very cool and sceptical manner. Indeed; there was only one speaker who came down definitely and strongly in favour of the New Towns, and that was the noble Lord, Lord Molson. I do not know whether even he remembers the speech he made at that time, but he was strongly in favour of the principle, of New Towns and of the Bill. Other speakers were not entirely enthusiastic—even my own colleagues; but they were more encouraging than the then Opposition. But the Opposition, apart from being sceptical about the whole thing, doubted very much whether anything would come of the proposals. However, here we are, and let us all take credit for them; because the New Towns have been developed—initiated under one Government and developed under
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another—and we are all entitled to a certain amount of credit.
One of the features of the New Towns (I hope the House will not mind my travelling a little wide) was that each one had a separate development corporation, and the purpose of that was to give them a fairly free hand to carry out experiments and to ensure that New Towns were not necessarily all built on the same pattern. And I think that principle has largely worked. Almost every New Town has some special feature which is attributable to the ideas of the particular development corporation concerned, and to its architects and other officers. Just to mention one or two, I think Crawley's industrial area is unique—I should think it is one of the finest in Europe. Harlow's general layout is most attractive; I think it is almost the most attractive of the New Towns. Stevenage has a civic centre which is almost unique and certainly its shopping centre is something that we can feel very proud of. I could go on and say that there is something about each one of the New Towns, some special feature, which I think justifies the original conception of entrusting the work of developing the New Towns to separate development corporations. I am therefore very sorry indeed that this Government departed from the original conception, and are handing over these New Towns to a Commission for management when they are substantially complete. Incidentally "substantially complete" does not mean what it says, because each of the New Towns that has been handed over as being substantially complete is now in process of being substantially expanded; but I will say a word later about expansion.
The original conception—and this was one which was accepted on all sides; indeed I was pressed at the time by the Opposition to ensure it—was that when New Towns were substantially complete they should be transferred to the local authorities. And I still think that that was the right thing to do. I do not say necessarily hand it over lock, stock and barrel without any financial conditions: of course, the nation, which had spent large sums of money, was entitled to be safeguarded in respect of its expenditure, and to ensure that it received back what it had spent. But, subject to that, I believe

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that it would have been wiser, if it was desired to end the development corporations, to leave the further management and development and expansion of the New Towns to the local authorities. I say that because the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, referred to the new Commission and to the complications in finance which have arisen. I still think that perhaps the day is not too far distant when we shall have second thoughts about that plan and hand the New Towns over to the local authorities as originally envisaged.
We are now coming to what one might call the second generation of the New Towns. We started off with a maximum population for each New Town of 60,000. It was always envisaged (although, of course, the population figures were not known at that time; nobody contemplated so large an increase in our population) that there would be some natural increase in population, and that provision ought to be made for it in connection with the development of the New Towns. One thought in terms of 10,000 or 15,000 additional to the 60,000 population originally planned. I do not think that anybody ever contemplated a vast expansion of any of the New Towns where they had been substantially completed.
With a town like Corby, which was originally planned for say, 15,000, I could understand it if, at an early stage, it were decided to expand it to a much larger population; or Newton Aycliffe, which was designed for the same population. If development has not gone too far, it is possible to expand a New Town to almost any size you like, if other considerations are favourable. But where you have got a town that is substantially completed, where you have virtually got your target population, where you have built up all your services and amenities, your shops and industry, civic centre, educational facilities, your social amenities and all the rest of it; where you have built it up on the basis of a certain population, it seems to me to be thoroughly bad planning then to contemplate increasing the population to more than double its original figure. And that is the position in Stevenage.
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I should like to say something about Stevenage. I have a great affection for Stevenage. It was the first of the New Towns, and, to put it no higher, was not very favourably accepted at the time. Indeed, I was taken to the courts, and the case had to come as far as this House before the plans were finally allowed to proceed. To that extent, the progress of Stevenage New Town was retarded. It has more than made up for lost time, however, and I would say that, taking it all in all, it is to-day probably one of the finest of the New Towns that we have. As I have said, all its services, its amenities, and everything that has been provided there, have been geared to a population of about 60,000. It is capable of expansion to 80,000. But to try to expand it to 140,000 or 150,000, as is now contemplated, is, I believe, sheer madness. Indeed, I can only think that the Minister is so exuberated with the success of New Towns that he wants to build super-New Towns, regardless of the local conditions or anything else.
I have in the last week or two gone into the question of this expansion of Stevenage, and I have tried to find out what is the case for it, who is backing it, who are the advocates of the expansion. I have found no advocates for the expansion other than, I presume, the Minister himself. All the local authorities in the area are against it. Every possible planning consultant who has taken an interest is against it. Every individual I have spoken to is against it. None of them is in any way biased. This is not a Party political matter, as the noble Lord will soon find out. This is a matter on which all Parties feel the same. I have taken the trouble to consult my own political friends, as well as my political opponents, and there is no difference of opinion among them.
I have discussed the matter privately with members of the Stevenage Development Corporation. They were asked: Is it feasible? Is it physically possible to expand this town to 140,000 or 150,000? They went into the question, and their answer was: "Yes, it is physically possible". But they were not asked whether they thought it was desirable. Had they been asked that question, they might have given a quite different answer. How is it physically possible?

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It is physically possible not by adding to the New Town, not by normal expansion, but by building virtually an entirely New Town, separated from the old by a busy arterial road, by the old Great North Road; by industry; by shopping; by a main-line railway, and by various other obstructions of that kind. Communication from the existing Stevenage to the new Stevenage, across all these obstructions, can be only by tunnelling or bridging. If, for instance, it were thought that the existing shopping centre should be used by the new expanded town, people would have to come, either by way of bridges across the arterial road or by means of tunnels, both of which would be expensive. Apart from that, they are most undesirable.
The drainage and sewage disposal services also would have to be new ones. I am not sure about water, but I think that here too there is some difficulty. At any rate, it means virtually building an entirely New Town. It may be called "Stevenage", although that may lead to a good many complications, if a person is asked to find his way to a certain street in Stevenage and does not know which side of the railway or the arterial road it is. So the new addition will have to be given another name. Be that as it may, it cannot in fact be part of one town; there will be two separate towns.
I recognise that the Minister and the Government have a problem in finding accommodation for the increase in overspill population in London, and that they must find accommodation somewhere. My own proposal would be that, now that the New Towns have been established as successful, other New Towns should be started further away from London. As a matter of fact, looking back, I suppose that none of us was courageous enough to go further away from London. We wondered whether people would be willing to travel more than thirty miles away from their existing homes to a new home. We thought of the old folks wanting to visit the youngsters who had gone to the New Towns. We did not want to make it too difficult for them. But, looking back to-day, if one had one's time over again I think it would have been much wiser to go fifty or sixty or more miles away
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from London and there would have been no difficulty in getting either industry or the population there.
I would suggest to the Government that they are making a terrible blunder in creating this expansion at Stevenage. Apart from anything else, this area is already full of built-up populations. If it is expanded as intended it will be within a short distance of Luton, which itself is expanding, and of other towns. It is already close to Welwyn Garden City, Hitchin and so on, and we are in danger of creating a large conurbation, which is exactly the thing we are trying to avoid. In any case, the idea of having towns built on both sides of an arterial road is abhorrent to all planners, and most of all to the Government themselves. Just imagine a private developer coming along for planning permission to develop on either side of the main arterial road! What would be the Government's or the Minister's view about that, if the Minister had to decide it on appeal? He would dismiss the appeal without hesitation. Yet that is the thing which the Government are proposing to do.
Moreover, this provision for an increase in population is not entirely for an expanding population; it is, as I understand it, intended for commuters. Do we really want to encourage people living in these New Towns to travel to and from London every day? Surely that is the thing we are trying to avoid? Yet the Government themselves are wing to accentuate the problem. I imagine that the noble Lord will tell us that, if the Government decide to proceed with the project, the area of the proposed New Town will be designated by the Minister; that it will be open to objection: that if the objections are serious there will be a public inquiry and then the Minister will decide. In the case of the ordinary New Town, that is the procedure laid down in the New Towns Act, and I think it might be regarded as satisfactory. I think the Minister could be trusted to look at the proposal objectively, even though he initiated it himself. I know that it has been criticised in the past that the Minister himself initiates a proposal and then is the judge of whether or not it is to proceed. And this would be the case here. But this is quite exceptional.

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This is a case where Parliament ought to have a voice in the matter.
In the case of the ordinary New Towns Parliament is merely informed that a New Town is proposed to be developed in a certain place; there is a public inquiry, and one can trust any Minister to deal effectively with the objections. But this is really a very serious matter of national policy, and I do not think it should be entrusted to a Minister without reference to Parliament. Therefore I would suggest that before the Minister goes any further he should seek the approval of Parliament for this particular proposal. It is so important and has aroused so much opposition that for his own sake he would be wiser to get a full discussion on it, with his proposals definitely on the table so that they can be thoroughly studied, and to take the views of Parliament without putting the Whips on. If he did that, we should probably get a satisfactory result. Perhaps wisest of all would be if he withdrew this nonsensical scheme—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Hear, hear!
LORD SILKIN: —and did not waste any of our time. I hope that in these circumstances the noble Lord, who I am sure is himself perfectly blameless in this matter, will convey to his right honourable friend what I imagine will be shown to be the feelings of this House about the matter—they have already been expressed in another place—and that wiser counsels will prevail.
Having said that, my Lords, I want to conclude by saying that there is, of course, no objection in principle to a proper expansion of the existing New Towns. They must be reasonable and bear relationship to the old population and to the services which have been provided, so that such services are not overburdened in relation to shopping, social amenities and all the rest. Subject to that, I recognise that there is a problem which must be met, and none of us would wish to put undue difficulties in the way. But the case of Stevenage is really a piece of thoroughly bad planning, and I hope we shall have heard the last of it in the course of the next week or two.
6.34 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ALBANS: My Lords, I welcome the proposal in the Bill to raise the amount of advances to
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development corporations and to allow the Commission for the New Towns to have a new limit of £550 million for capital expenditure. Four of the New Towns are in the diocese of St. Albans, and in the twelve and more years I have been Bishop I have seen these towns grow, not only physically, but in their sense of responsibility. I have no doubt at all that those who live in the New Towns have opportunities for fuller lives before them than they enjoyed in their previous homes. As the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said, they provide a fuller way of life. I consider that the Government who sponsored the New Towns Act of 1946 and all who have developed this work deserve our gratitude. I should like to express my own grateful thanks to the noble Lord who has just spoken for his powerful speech. He addresses this House with great authority and knowledge on this subject.
Last week the Church Assembly was debating the Leslie Paul Report, The Deployment and Training of the Clergy, and I greatly hope that a Measure may later come before Parliament providing for a new parochial form, for a major parish (unless some more suitable description is found), to be run by a college of clergy, all of whom would enjoy incumbent status and all of whom would work together under a leader who would properly be called a dean, and that at last one might have a town dean to distinguish him from a rural dean. If a Measure on these lines is approved, then I can see that, even if a New Town reaches a ceiling figure of 160,000, it would provide in this century an opportunity for a unique experiment in pastoral care, with a dean in charge, say ten incumbents in his team, and all of them co-operating in the one ecclesiastical unit.
These New Towns have certain great advantages and, as has been mentioned, there are financial gains. Nevertheless, within New Towns much needs to be done for neighbourliness, and here the Churches have played a distinctive part. Our policy in the diocese has been, so far as possible, not to split up these areas into new parishes, but to have a rector or vicar and under him assistant curates; in each neighbourhood unit a church and a parson—but only one church, one parson—for 10,000 people. This is inadequate, but it is all we can

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afford in terms of men and money at present. This pattern of parochial work, as informal observers have said, has helped to build the different neighbourhood units into one community. I have heard members of the development corporation remark that, even if their town has greatly to increase in size, they hope in the future that it may still be treated by the Church of England ecclesiastically as a single unit.
I should now like to turn from New Towns in general to say a word or two about Stevenage. There are three points want to put before the House. I know there is a feeling among clergy and ministers in the area that some expansion is inevitable and that we must provide more homes for our younger people. But the population of Hertfordshire having been increased more rapidly than in any other county, we in Hertfordshire face an enormous special problem in housing our young couples as they grow up in these New Towns and housing estates. Reference has already been made to local opposition to the proposals for Stevenage. I respect the force of the argument submitted by Hertfordshire County Council, that they will amend their development plan to take any increase in population which is shown to be necessary but that they oppose the expansion of Stevenage and insist that it is for the local planning authority to decide where the increase can be best accommodated.
Speaking in another place, the Minister of Housing and Local Government said that the Government had in mind to raise the population to 100,000 and to reach this total by 1981. I welcomed Lord Silkin's comment that this was thoroughly bad planning and, in his judgment, sheer madness. The Minister has admitted that, though he sees expansion to the 100,000 figure as the sensible course, it would have been desirable to await the publication of the South-East Study, so that public opinion and Parliament could see the background as a whole before this expansion was begun. I endorse Lord Silkin's plea that Parliament should be consulted.
The Minister said that his trouble was that if he deferred this decision, the momentum of Stevenage could run down and valuable staff and the cohesions of
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a team in a few months could be lost. I wonder how far this conclusion of the Minister of Housing would be generally supported. There are those well able to judge who maintain that there is no sign of slackening momentum in Stevenage, where expansion to whatever the approved figure may be is awaited with keenness and anticipation.
The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, told us that there is a considerable way to go before final decisions are taken, and I submit three reasons for urging the Government to allow further time for reflection. First, there is strong local feeling against any expansion West of the Stevenage by-pass. We have already been reminded that this is not a political issue; Conservative and Labour are of one mind. I am told that all Hertfordshire Members of Parliament oppose their own Minister on this proposal.
Then there is an unbalance in this plan. Bedfordshire is about to lose Luton when it becomes a county borough. Bedfordshire would welcome an increase in population. The Bedfordshire County Council is to-morrow to consider a plan for expanding certain areas in that county. Would it be possible for a New Town perhaps to be sited in Bedfordshire? Certainly, the country between Stevenage and Luton on the West contains thriving villages, listed villages allowed a limited expansion for their own needs, and these villages could be swallowed all too easily. Here is attractive rolling country, good for farming, and the Hertfordshire executive committee of the National Farmers' Union is reported to have described the proposals as a disaster to agriculture in Hertfordshire. And, my Lords, if Stevenage were to expand too rapidly it could overgrow its strength—and it has a proper pride in its strength and in being the first New Town.
I believe that when you live in a place with a population of over 1,500 you lose your sense of community. Nevertheless, there are community groupings at work. There are societies and organisations connected with schools and youth work and various recreative activities, that all weld a place together, and this welding should be seen to be done before a further load of population is added. In this work the Churches

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are active and, as Christians share common concerns and are alive to others' needs, there is an unfreezing and a mixing of people taking place. Let this go on!
If I may, I will make two points before I close. I consider that the Church's work in future years would be greatly helped in certain New Towns—and here I do not have Stevenage specially in mind—if more facilities were available to householders to buy their houses. This would deepen people's roots. If some men only rent their houses they feel they have no real stake in the town. Further, we could do more in some New Towns if the authorities were less demanding in their building standard for churches and church halls. We are finding that a well designed but inexpensive church hall, adequate for our needs, is rejected because it does not come up to New Town specifications, and churches cannot compete with those who can draw on the public purse. Stevenage expanded to 140,000 people would be within four miles of Luton, and there is no comparison between this situation and the three miles between Hemel Hempstead New Town and Watford. I find it impossible to believe that Stevenage and Luton would not become one big sprawl before the end of this century.
I have made a few down-to-earth comments on a matter that concerns our use of Mother Earth. I am sure, from my knowledge of Hertfordshire, that the county would gladly accept its fair share of increased population provided its county council is taken into close consultation with the Ministry, and there is general agreement where the newcomers shall be housed. I believe that to pause now, to consult now, to wait now for the South-East Study, before taking this decision about Stevenage's future size, would be wise tactics and make for good will. But, my Lords, whatever may be decided, this to me is clear: the Christian community must do its utmost to serve the newcomers wherever they are from and however many there be.
6.45 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I almost feel it is incumbent upon me to start with an apology for trespassing in Stevenage, because although the remarks
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which I have to make are not directed to Stevenage at all, I have no doubt that in their general application they might have some bearing there, also. I am particularly pleased that I should be following the right reverend Prelate, because I should like to say that in Scotland we have found that in the New Towns one of the biggest single factors contributing to the establishment and building up of the community spirit has been the part played by the new churches built there. We have found, as appears to be the case this side of the Border, that people coming from older communities, where they may not have taken a very active part in church life, seem to regard it as part of the new spirit, that they should become not merely members of the Church but active members of the Church. And, together with clergymen, they become very active in building up that new spirit.
The second thing I should like to observe about New Towns is that it is surprising how very quickly a community spirit develops. One hears people who have sometimes come from very far away talking within only a few months about "we"—"what we have done"—and about "our town", as if they had lived there all their lives. A New Town is really for a very long time quite an artificial thing, and it needs all the encouragement it can get from everybody concerned. One of the difficulties is that amenities, which have sometimes grown up naturally over very many years in older communities, have to be created artificially in a New Town. The local government body is very often the smallest body—I do not know the designation in England, but in Scotland it is a district council—with very limited functions. The local authority having responsibility for the area is more generally the county council. They have very large problems placed on them by the very fact that a New Town is being built in their area. They have to provide a great deal of new roads and sewers; they have to provide a considerable expansion of their school building programme; and very often they have to do so in the teeth of opposition from other parts of their area who feel that this section of the community is being favoured at the expense of the older areas. It is surprising, therefore, that the existing local authorities have in fact

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done as much as they have done, and one cannot blame them for leaving other aspects to a later date.
When I was in conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, earlier in the day on this subject he reminded me of the change that has taken place in the Government's attitude to spending for amenity; that New Towns, in Scotland at any rate, have the power of spending up to £2,000 a year in revenue on the amenity side of things; that they have authority to spend up to £4 per head of the projected population as a contribution to capital developments. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, talking about the larger population which enabled a second cinema to be constructed. In Scotland we cannot get a first cinema, because with the change that has taken place it is no longer a commercial proposition for anyone to put up a cinema. We have been trying for a very long time to get the Scottish Office to permit us to do it ourselves because, strangely enough, a cinema is one of the things which the New Towns are very keen to have in their midst.
It may well be that the commercial interests are as wrong in their attitude to a cinema as the Church might have been if they had been timid in relation to building new churches. Because just as people who were not accustomed to taking an active part in church life in an older community become active church members in a New Town, it might well be that people who had ignored a particular kind of amenity such as a cinema might not ignore it when they came into a newer community. I do think that the Government ought to be, not merely empowering the development corporations to spend money on capital projects, but going out of their way almost to compel them to use this money ahead of requirements.
One of the difficulties in a New Town, if it is growing fairly slowly—and I should imagine this has a bearing on the Stevenage problem—is that if the process goes on for a very long time there is the rather artificial condition that the town consists very largely of people in particular age groups—almost entirely in, say, the 25 to 40 or 45 age groups, because it is generally the
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younger people with children who tend to go into the area. If the development is expanded so that another ten or fifteen years is added to the growing period of the town, then you add another ten or fifteen years to the time during which these almost artificial conditions exist. In the New Town with which I am particularly associated we have, for a variety of reasons, deliberately sought to import old people into the town. We have done so because we have felt that a town without old people is not a natural community. But old people are not necessarily going to find jobs in a New Town.
Quite a number of the folk who have come to work in Scottish New Towns have come from South of the Border. One way we have found of encouraging them to do so, and of helping the better aspect of the New Towns, has been to encourage them to bring their elderly relatives with them. If a man has a widowed mother whom he lives near in, say, Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle, or even in London, he might be reluctant to go 300 or 400 miles away from her. But in such a case we have found that by saying, "If your father or mother or your parents would like to come up also, we will put a small flat at their disposal, and they can still live near you", we have encouraged these people to come all that distance, and, at the same time, it has helped us to have this better-balanced community.
For these reasons, although the town with which I am particularly associated is still only 15,000 in population, it is a remarkably well-knit community, with a real sense of community life. But it has taken us from 1948 up to this date to reach this figure of 15,000. Our target population figure has recently been increased to 55,000, but I think it would be a disaster if we were to proceed from 15,000 to 55,000 at the same rate. In fact we are taking steps to see that the rate of progress is at least three times as fast as anything that has been accomplished in the past. I think it is important to avoid spreading this wholly unnatural sort of thing over many more years than is absolutely necessary. It would seem to me, if I might be forgiven for intruding into Stevenage for just a moment, that to seek to take it from

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the figure of 80,000 up to 150,000 and to extend its development to 1981 is to inflict on a community which will be relatively complete, and which has perhaps got over all its initial difficulties, the same difficulties all over again by grafting on to it a recurrence of its initial problems. I think the Government will be well advised to look at that aspect also before committing themselves too far on the matter.
But hope that the Government, in so far as they function from St. Andrew's House, will give every encouragement, even to the extent of bringing pressure to bear on the New Towns in Scotland, to their making use of the monies which are available for the development of amenities; because without that being done by a development corporation, it must wait until the local authorities take over in due course, some years ahead, whether it is handed over to them directly or not, and a great deal of the advantage of living in a New Town can be lost in the interval.
6.55 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, this New Towns Bill which we are discussing this afternoon is, at a first glance, in one sense, a very simple and straightforward Bill. It is different from many of those Bills with which your Lordships have been concerned during recent weeks, in that it consists of only two clauses and covers only two quarto pages. I will not say that it is a small Bill, for even in the days in which we live no Bill that asks Parliament to vote over £150 million can be called small; but, at the same time, it does appear, as I have said, short and straightforward. In fact, however, I believe, with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, that it requires a great deal more examination by Parliament than might at first sight seem necessary; and that that is the general view of all Parties in this House is shown, I think, by the number of Peers who have put down their names to speak this afternoon, including the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, himself, who is, after all, the creator of the original New Towns Act, and who has spoken with such force and such wisdom this afternoon.
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I think it is not surprising that this should be so, for, after all, we really have been told terribly little except generalities about the purposes for which these very large sums are required. It is, indeed, I am afraid, yet one more rather disturbing example of the growing practice of Governments of all Parties to govern from outside Parliament. They come to Parliament with some Bill of apparently quite unexceptionable character but drawn in very wide terms, and, having got extensive powers under that Bill, they exercise them in an extremely far-reaching manner without further reference to Parliament at all.
What, after all, does this Bill in effect say? It says, first, that Parliament has already approved in principle the creation of New Towns. Then it says, secondly, that, in accordance with that policy which Parliament has already approved, the Government have now spent the full amount, or practically the full amount, that Parliament sanctioned. Now they ask Parliament for an additional £150 million to carry further that policy which Parliament has approved. "Please give us this money," they say, in effect, "and we will spend it as seems to us best for this purpose". It is apparently regarded as a matter for Government and Government Departments alone, and not for Parliament.
Of course, it may be argued that in any case it is not a matter for your Lordships' House, for this is a Money Bill and, since 1911, matters of finance are outside our sphere. We therefore could not in any case, as I understand it, vote against the Bill, even if we wanted to. But I suggest that in this particular case the question of how the money is to be spent is a matter not only with which we in this House can properly concern ourselves but in which we have a definite duty to concern ourselves, for we have an equal responsibility with another place to ensure that the principles and purposes of the original New Towns Act of 1946, which we in this House helped to pass into law, are not infringed, much less set at naught, by subsequent legislation. That is always a danger, and I think it is especially a danger in this particular case. Like the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, I am not an opponent of New Towns. I was a friend of Sir Patrick

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Abercrombie, from whose Greater London Plan the whole idea of New Towns originally derived. I think it was a fine idea; and I think the practical experience of nearly twenty years has amply confirmed this. I live on the very edge of a New Town myself, so I can speak with personal experience.
But the success of Sir Patrick's conception—and I am quite sure the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will agree with this—depends entirely on the recognition by everyone, from Governments downwards, that the New Towns must remain limited, to some extent, in population, and must cover only a limited area. He was concerned, as was the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, to check the sprawl of London (already growing wider and wider) over the whole surrounding countryside. It was an integral part of his conception, as I understand it, that not only London itself, but the New Towns also, should keep within bounds, or the whole principle underlying his Plan would be entirely nullified. And that, too, as I understood it, was the principle underlying the New Towns Act, 1946. Indeed the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—who is not here at present—in a speech in which he moved the Second Reading of the New Towns Bill on July 11, 1946, emphasised this. He spoke Of [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 142, col. 323]:
"a long-range programme for the establishment of new towns, of moderate size, where people can live … in healthy and pleasant surroundings."
Going into rather more detail subsequently, he referred to the population of these towns as varying between 30,000 and 60,000.
That I would suggest is the broad principle—I am not talking of exact figures—which must govern all legislation relating to New Towns. And as I see it, it is the duty of Parliament, when voting money in relation to them, to obtain as much information from the Government of the day—whichever Party they may represent—to ensure that this essential principle to which I referred is not vitiated. This seems to me to become particularly important in the case of the present Bill in view of certain statements made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of
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Housing on the Second Reading of the Bill in another place, which, I must say, rather alarmed me, and I feel may well have alarmed other people also.
I will quote what the Minister said. It is rather a long quotation, my Lords, but it is necessary to give it fully [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 687 (No. 34), col. 727]:
"… there seems to be an assumption … that there is necessarily something sacred, something finite, in the originally designated area of a new town. Obviously, when a new town is designated, successive Ministers of Housing and Local Government make their decision on as long-term a basis as they can on the population and other data currently available to them, and the same applies to local planning authorities when they are preparing development plans and town maps. But none of these people, whether they be Ministers—not even Conservative Ministers—civil servants, or local planning officers, are prophets, and if planning is to work at all it must be on the basis of a considerable degree of flexibility—in other words, of changing plans to meet changing circumstances."
My Lords, the Minister obviously regarded that as a platitude, almost as a truism, and everyone must agree. Indeed, at first sight it seems full of sweet reasonableness. But, in fact, if one examines it further, it drives a cart and horses through the whole great basic principle underlying both the Greater London Plan and the New Towns Act, 1946. There are, apparently, in his mind—and, I suppose, in the Government's mind as well—no limits to the possible growth of the towns created under the New Towns Act. It is merely a question of expediency, of what seems convenient to the Minister of the day and to his Ministry at any given time; and neither Parliament nor anyone else can do anything to stop it. Once Parliament has voted the money, the Minister can do what he likes. That is surely something very alarming in principle, and, I think, yet more alarming when the curtain is lifted for a moment and we can see what the Ministry actually have in mind to do with the money we are now being asked to vote.
Of course, I cannot speak with personal knowledge of the greater part of this country—the industrial Midlands, the North and Scotland—to which the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary equally applies. I cannot, therefore, follow the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, in

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the most interesting remarks he made this evening. But there is one county about which I do know something, and that is Hertfordshire, which happens to be one of those counties where we have been given just such a peep into the Ministry's future plans: and that gives one, I think, no reassurance at all.
What I have in mind is, of course, Stevenage, which has already occupied a considerable part of our debate. When I remember Stevenage first, it was a small, sleepy, country town with a population of 6,700 people, through which there happened to run both the Great Northern Railway and the Great North Road. It was for that reason, I suppose, chosen to be one of the New Towns under the Act of 1946, with a target population of 60,000; although I gather it was already recognised that that figure might have to be expanded to 80,000. But that 80,000 has always been accepted, until lately, as the largest population compatible with general planning for the county, as envisaged under the Abercrombie scheme.
It was therefore with a serious sense of shock that the county authorities—and I imagine everyone else in Hertfordshire—heard a little over a year ago that the Ministry now contemplates this much larger increase to 140,000. This is more than double the figure which hitherto had been regarded as the limit of ordinary good planning under the Act. I should like briefly to present some simple figures to your Lordships—they have not been given before—in order that the House may appreciate what this new and startling proposal will mean for Hertfordshire. By 1973, just under ten years from now, if this plan goes through in its present form, Stevenage (which will have a population of 140,000) will be within four miles of Luton and Dunstable, of which the estimated population by that date will be 212,000. It will be three miles from Welwyn and Hatfield New Towns, by that time with an estimated population of 73,000; and it will be, I gather, only 1½ miles from the conurbation of Hitchin, Letchworth and Baldock which, by that time, will have an estimated population of 72,000.
That must mean that if the Stevenage proposals go forward in their present form, there will be, between all these
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towns concerned, no longer any countryside in the real sense of that word, but only a kind of suburban "no man's land" between the various towns—and that can be narrowed every time the Minister changes his mind; and what, under the original New Towns Act, was intended to be an imaginative scheme for increasing the population of Hertfordshire but preserving the countryside will end by spreading a vast sprawl of housing over a hitherto relatively untouched area of rural England. That is what it means.
Moreover, I suggest to your Lordships that what is proposed for Stevenage itself is not even based on the principle of good urban planning. For, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has already said, it will create a community, one part of which will be cut off from the other by the double barrier of a main railway line and what will be rather ironically called "the by-pass". I have been told—with what truth I do not know—that the Government have been advised by planning experts that that will not interfere in any way with the unity of the community as a whole. Well, I can only say that that has not been our experience at Hatfield. We, too, have the Great Northern line running right through the town, cutting off the part on the East side of the line from the part on the West, and I could almost say that they are still different worlds. I am quite certain that it would be the same thing, in a much greater degree, in Stevenage. Why, then, with these other experiences before us, are we asked to fall once more, quite unnecessarily, into the same error?
I have dealt, I hope at not too great length, with some of the wider issues raised by the Minister of Health's new plans, and I have instanced the case of Stevenage. They have aroused, as the Government knew before and as they have been told this afternoon, the widest opposition in Hertfordshire. The County Council are against them, the local authority of Stevenage are against them and the Hertfordshire Society are against them. It has united sections of the population which could not, I suspect, see eye to eye on any other question. And what worries them most is that they have the disagreeable feeling (if I may use so vernacular a word) that they are being "bounced".

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Although the present Bill makes no mention of Stevenage, yet, after it is passed into law, not even Parliament, as I have already said, will have any further say in this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, if I heard him aright, said that he was not going to say much about Stevenage at this stage; but what other stages are there for us? I cannot see any stage in which he will have an opportunity of developing this point.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I meant to say that I was going to keep it for winding up, after I had heard the noble Marquess.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, the later part of the present stage. And what is more, a very dangerous precedent for other areas will have been created. I fully realise that the Government spokesman, the noble Lord, may retort to those of us who have criticised the Government policy, "That's all very well: but what is your alternative? It is all very well to criticise; but what, faced with the same problem, would you do?" I think that that is a perfectly valid point and I must try to give an answer to it. And my answer, before I heard the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, would have been this. First, I would say—I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, would say after the inquiries he has made—that according to all my information there is plenty of room to accommodate a population up to 100,000 within the existing designated area of the New Town of Stevenage merely by developing fully the eastern part of the area. I understand that that could be done, because it has not been fully developed yet, without overcrowding and without going anywhere beyond the designated limits of the town.
That should deal with a prospective population of up to 100,000. That leaves still a gap of 40,000, and surely that could be bridged by building, not outwards, but upwards, by building higher houses to accommodate the larger population which is now envisaged. That, I should have thought, could be done without any injury to the Abercrombie Plan or the New Towns Act. I do not say that higher houses are an ideal solution—those great massive residential
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towers reaching up into the upper air. We have one at Hatfield. I cannot say that I am greatly enamoured of it. But these towers do maintain the balance between the town and the countryside, which is now so gravely threatened and which would be more gravely threatened if the present scheme for Stevenage went through. What is more, I believe that they are not unpopular—that, at any rate, I understand is the experience at Hatfield with those people who live in them.
There is also the new proposal—new, at any rate, to me, which was put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, this afternoon, to build yet newer New Towns yet farther out. That is clearly something that deserves most serious consideration, and I should like to think it over before coming down on one side or the other. But with regard to the outer limits of the existing New Towns, at any rate, beyond which they must not encroach upon the countryside, they surely must remain virtually inviolate. Otherwise, all we have sought to achieve in the last half century of town and country planning would be steadily eroded, till finally, almost without our knowing it, the battle might be irretrievably lost.
I do hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, who is to reply, will be able to assure the House, therefore, that he will report what has been said in your Lordships' House to-day to his right honourable friend the Minister and that he will particularly ask him to give an assurance that before matters have gone any further—I was going to say, before the Committee stage of the Bill—he will consider further, before it is too late, this plan for Stevenage, which seems, I think to the whole House, to infringe every principle of good planning. I also hope that he will adopt the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, this afternoon that this scheme, which has such very wide implications, should be submitted to Parliament for its approval before any final steps are taken to implement it.
7.16 p.m.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I find myself, I think almost for the first time in my life, in most hearty agreement with the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury. I only hope that it will not

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give him any doubts of his own rectitude in this matter of Stevenage. I hope that there may come out of this impending disaster a useful lesson—that is, that it is always likely to be attractive to Ministers, of any Party, to expand an existing town rather than become involved in all the expenditure necessary to supply what is called nowadays the infrastructure of another New Town. But, as the noble Marquess said at the end of his speech, another New Town is the real answer to the problem of Stevenage.
And it is the answer not only to the problem of Stevenage but also to the problem of the country as a whole. I have seen a list of 25 proposed sites for New Towns drawn up by a planner, and 25 New Towns is what I think we shall need in the not very distant future, because we have already in our cities half a million certified slum dwellings and another couple of hundred thousand which will have only another five years' existence. If we are to deal with a problem of this size, then the answer is the creation of more New Towns, because there is not the accommodation within the towns where these people are now living.
I agree with the noble Marquess that, when a New Town is founded, a fixed population ought to be settled. I do not think that the noble Marquess, any more than I, would wish to be too firm about the figure, though no doubt we should be anxious when we caught the Minister wobbling. What I think is not always realised is that every town, big or small, if it is to be a success, must have inherent in it the ability to house its second generation. Every New Town will come to a stage, within 25 years or so, when a considerable increase in size is essential to meet this, amounting to a good 50 per cent. Therefore, when planning a New Town, allowance must be made for this aspect.
I thought that my noble friend Lord Silkin, who was so largely responsible for New Towns, was very restrained in his criticisms of the Government, and I am going to follow him in restraint; but even at the cost of sounding as if I were indulging in recrimination, I cannot but mention the falling of in the construction of New Towns under the present Government.
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The Labour Party founded fourteen New Towns. The Conservatives during their twelve years of office have founded only four New Towns, and of those, two (one of which is not yet designated), Runcorn and Redditch, are not in the strictest sense of the word New Towns. I assure your Lordships that I am not saying I do not desire the towns of Runcorn and Redditch, because I have no doubt that they are admirable sites for the purpose for which they would be built. But they are not New Towns: they are satellite towns, which is something different. As I say, the present Government have designated only this limited number of towns. The result will be, I fear, that we shall find the construction of New Towns in the future considerably more difficult, because the people who have worked in the original New Towns, seeing no prospect of further New Towns, will have tended to go into other employments and taken with them their all too rare skills. This is a difficulty which inevitably the New Towns corporations will come up against when they need to establish New Towns.
This seems to me to be extremely serious, and I do not see how it can be got over. What is more, I feel that there is another trouble which will make the work of the new corporations extremely difficult, and that is the lack of adequate statistics and research. It is true that a certain amount of information is given by the Registrar General, but by this time there ought to be an immense fund of knowledge available from research made into these towns which would enormously facilitate the foundation and development of others.
I have tried to point out the urgency of this question. I hope that the Government will go ahead now, and I hope and pray that they may not again decide to put up the red signal and say "Stop!" Let us now go forward with a practice of whose success we are assured, and not only shall we thereby be doing good to our towns and finding dwellings for their inhabitants, but we shall be saving our countryside, because the alternative is sprawl.
7.24 p.m.
LORD BROCKET: My Lords, even in 1964 there appear to be miracles. I

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never expected to see the noble Lord who has just spoken on the same side as the noble Marquess who spoke before him. It is almost a case of the lion lying down with the lamb—although I should not like to say which is which. Last July, your Lordships will remember, the last time we had such co-operation between both sides of the House, some of us voted against the Government and defeated them on the Peerage Bill, which, incidentally, enabled us to have our present Prime Minister. So anything may come out of this debate, although, this being a Money Bill, we shall not have the pleasure of voting either against or for the Government this time.
I was most interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said, because, as we all know, he is really the father of Stevenage. And from what he said this afternoon he looked almost as if he might be the father of twins. Many years ago there was another famous pair of twins who lived at Stevenage. They were well-known poachers called Albert Ebenezer Fox and Ebenezer Albert Fox, and from time to time they used to come up for poaching offences before my father, who was chairman of the bench. Both of them had committed over 100 poaching offences, and when one had too many, his brother used to go and act for him. Incidentally, my father used to tell me that the way he could tell them apart was because one had three creases at the back of his neck and the other had only two. I would suggest, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, thought that the twin new towns of Stevenage might have to have names, one might be called Ebenezer and the other Albert.
To come to rather more serious matters, I should like to say that I am speaking this evening as Chairman of the Hertfordshire Society, an office which I have had the honour to hold for 28 years. I would say that, since I became Chairman of the Hertfordshire Society 28 years ago, I do not remember any proposition which has resulted in more opposition than this extension of Stevenage. I have been approached by the Chairman of the Hertfordshire Branch of the National Farmers' Union, who came to see me; and to quote the local Stevenage and Herts Express, the heading says:
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"Expansion Across A.600 Would Be 'Disaster for Agriculture'. Stop this dastardly ruination, say N.F.U."
That is the sort of heading that is appearing in the local papers. Another heading, in the Herts. Advertiser, is:
"Ministry planning to grab rural strip? Farmers shocked to hear of plan."
I will not quote more from these newspapers, but I should like to say, from the agricultural point of view, that this enormous spread of Stevenage from its present site right across to the West, within four miles of Luton, would cut Hertfordshire in two. It is not easy in these days to farm in Hertfordshire because of the competitive wages in industry. But I feel that if Stevenage is to grow to 150,000 population, and other towns such as Luton and Dunstable, which are also twin towns now and are expecting a population of 200,000, in addition to, as the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, said, Welwyn and Hatfield—another pair of twin towns, expecting a population of 73,000 or 75,000—we in Hertfordshire are going to become like Southern Lancashire, where we have all the towns of Bury, Oldham, Bolton, Wigan, Leigh and so on, almost joining each other.
I feel that Lord Silkin's advice to the Minister who will be replying, either to refer the matter to Parliament or to withdraw the scheme and not waste any more of our time, is very good advice. But it is not advice that the poor noble Lord, Lord Hastings, can take personally, although it is advice which I hope he will transmit to the right honourable gentleman, the Minister of Housing and Local Government (as I believe he is now called although at one time the Department was called the Ministry of Town and Country Planning). I feel that it might almost be suggested, if the Stevenage plan goes on, that it should be called the Ministry of Town into Country Sprawling—we have heard so much of the word "sprawl" this afternoon.
I should like to say a word or two about the Hertfordshire County Council. I do not think that the Hertfordshire County Council have had fair treatment in this matter. I was on that Council for fifteen years, from 1931 to 1946; and I was also on the Town Planning Committee in those days. On November 26 last the Hertfordshire County Council published a little booklet called

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Representations on the Expansion of Stevenage. In that booklet, on the first page, about halfway down, occur these words:
"The County Council have now carefully considered the technical appraisal by the Stevenage Development Corporation and have consulted all the county district councils concerned which all oppose very strongly any expansion of Stevenage above 80,000."
That statement is most interesting, because the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, told us that the Stevenage Development Corporation was asked for its opinion on feasibility, but not on desirability. This calls it "Technical appraisal", which is almost the same thing as feasibility. It is interesting, in this connection, that the Stevenage Urban District Council are against this scheme, as are all other rural councils and urban district councils in the County of Hertford. I should like to suggest that the question which was asked should have been rather extended, because Stevenage Corporation have done a good job, and I think they would have been able to express an opinion to the Ministry, and if the Ministry had taken their advice as well as that of the County Council, we might never have got to this stage.
This afternoon we have heard some excellent arguments against the extension of Stevenage put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury: and also, I am glad to say, the Church has come to the aid of the State. We have heard from the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of St. Albans more excellent reasons against this expansion of Stevenage. But I feel there are two other reasons against it: the questions of water supplies and drainage. Some noble Lords may be aware that in 1948 I had to start an action (which I won in due course, after eight years) against Luton Corporation for polluting the River Lea. The Luton Corporation spent, I think, £600,000 or £700,000 on their sewage works at the time and the use of the River Lea was the only possible way in which the Corporation could get rid of their effluent. It still comes down the Lea, although the situation is greatly improved, apart from the effect of the Surf, Tide and Daz, which froths where we have a waterfall or mill, as it does in so many other rivers. It was suggested that Luton Corporation
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might pipe its effluent to the sea. That proposal would have been far too expensive. In 1948 they said it would cost £30 million; in these days £70 million.
As regards Stevenage, the Hertfordshire County Council memorandum called Representations on the Expansion of Stevenage goes into the question of water supply, and also drainage. I should like to quote from page 11 of their memorandum. They, of course, quote the words of the drainage consultants, and these words occur:
"Moreover serious difficulties are known to exist at the present time at Rye Meads on the treatment of sewage, particularly purification, and the Metropolitan Water Board and the Lee Conservancy Catchment Board are deeply involved in the results of treatment and the Catchment Board have urged that the whole question of sewage treatment and disposal should be very fully investigated in consultation with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and before any decision is made on the expansion of Harlow and Stevenage. The same applies to the cost of extensions to the Rye Meads works in that the implication of further expansion of towns other than Stevenage and Harlow does not seem to have been taken into account."
I regard that as a very serious statement regarding the sewerage question.
If we come to the water question, a little further down this document says:
"The Lee Valley Water Company's report shows that some of the short-term and all the long-term water supplies required would not be obtainable locally and would involve the provision of impounding reservoirs (to conserve winter flows) and trunk pipe-lines on a scale and to a cost not hitherto contemplated. This would inevitably increase very considerably the cost of water supply."
At the very bottom of that page, the last paragraph says:
"The County Council are therefore strongly opposed to any expansion of Stevenage over 80,000 for all the reasons advanced above."
As this document runs to eleven pages, a good many other reasons are given, though I have not quoted them. I feel that this is a most serious document, and that it should be given the publicity which it deserves.
I have little more to say, except that I am assured by the Hertfordshire County Council that the number of inhabitants of Stevenage could be increased to between 90,000 and 95,000, on the land which is at present designated, without going to the west of the main road or the main railway. A good deal of in-filling could be done. And I

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would point out here that it is a fact that people do not like living too far from the main shopping centre. The noble Marquess has suggested what I was going to suggest, that the buildings should go up instead of outwards. I live near Welwyn Garden City where there is a wonderful new hospital, but I am told that the patients, when they can walk about from the hospital, and also the employees, find that this hospital is a long way from the centre of Welwyn Garden City. The fact is that people like living near the town centre if they can, and I think they would prefer to live in a building which goes up, such as a block of flats near the town centre, rather than miles away from it.
I should like to talk for a moment or two on this question of how far the New Town should be from London. It was stated the other day that Stevenage, which is 28½ miles by train from King's Cross, might become what is called a commuters' paradise. That is not the purpose of New Towns. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, the late Government and the present Government did not put New Towns further from London. I am sure that New Towns as near London as Stevenage do encourage commuters. I am definitely in favour of planning in these ways, although I sit on these Benches, and I am sorry that such a large extent of office building has been permitted in London. I am told that there is room for 400,000 more commuters to come into London to work in the office buildings which have been put up. That is a very large number, and we do not want them to have to live 28½ miles from their work. In fact, one of the only good reasons put forward for the expansion of Stevenage to the west of the main railway and the main road was that Dr. Beeching, who is a very ingenious man, thought that it might enable British Railways to make a profit on that particular line to King's Cross by baying more commuters going up to London every day. That is certainly not a sufficient reason for this expansion.
Perhaps I may quote one or two more figures. In 1946, the area of agricultural land in Hertfordshire was 69 per cent. of the total acreage. From 1946 to 1964, 300,000 extra inhabitants had been absorbed into Hertfordshire, and
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the area of agricultural land, as against built-up land, had been reduced only to 61 per cent. I think that is very satisfactory. I feel that much of that is a result of the good town planning of the Hertfordshire County Council and the other local authorities. If we could be assured that the Minister would consult with the Hertfordshire County Council and ask them to produce alternative plans, a lot of the population which the Minister and the Ministry appear to think are likely to come into South-East England could be absorbed in other parts of Hertfordshire without this extension of Stevenage.
There is only one other fact that I should like to bring to the attention of your Lordships. We have been told that it is essential to increase productivity, increase employment, and to encourage people to live in and not come away from such areas as the North-East, about which our former Lord Hailsham, now a Member of another place under another name, has produced a report in order to try to help that part of England. I hope that this urge to allow people to come to the South-East will not have a bad effect on employment and productivity in the North-East, the North-West, or even in Scotland. I feel that this is really a national matter, and I am delighted that this debate has not gone on Party lines in any way. I have not made any political remarks—they are remarks from my experience of Hertfordshire, and also my views of planning, which in many ways correspond more with those of Lord Silkin's Party than with some of my own. I hope that, when the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, replies, he will be able to say (if he cannot say what the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, would like him to say) that this matter will be referred back for further serious consideration.
7.40 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, so many admirable speeches have been made in the course of this debate that it is almost superfluous to add anything. The main reason and excuse for my intervention is that I have taken a lifelong interest in planning and I have been concerned with the problems of planning, both in office and as a private Member in another place and here; and

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it is from the planning point of view that I wish to intervene. I can do so more briefly than would otherwise have been possible because the main facts have been so excellently stated in a memorable speech by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. My experience in dealing with planning in office, though far less important and distinguished than his own, was, in fact, even earlier, because 22 years ago I became the first Minister to be concerned wholly with this subject of town and country planning, and many discussions did I have with my friends, Patrick Abercrombie, William Holford and others. I intervene now because I believe that this proposal, and the evils which are implied or likely to follow, will prove one of the most serious setbacks that has taken place to the cause of planning in this country.
The objections to the expansion of Stevenage beyond the motorway are so enormous that one does not know where to start. But I am not going to say anything at all technical. I am going to call attention to one fact which must be obvious to any layman, even if he has never studied town and country planning at all: that it is not a very good idea to put a motorway designed to take traffic from London to the North of England in the middle of a town. That proposition is so simple that, really, I think it should not be lost sight of: nor should we accept ridiculous answers to it.
In another place, my Lords, believe it or not, there was a passage in the Minister's speech suggesting, in answer to those who had raised this objection, that, after all, Professor Buchanan's Report had made us familiar with the idea of motorway standards in cities. Has there ever been a greater misunderstanding of Professor Buchanan? The title of Professor Buchanan's work was Traffic in Towns. He came to the conclusion, quite rightly, that, for the sake of internal traffic in some of our existing cities, modern conditions might mean that we had to perform rather difficult and painful acts of surgery. But there is not a syllable in Buchanan's work, from beginning to end, which suggests that a motorway, designed for long-distance traffic, is the proper thing to put into the middle of a town. Really! The fact that the Minister should have
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included a passage raising such a point in another place makes one doubt the intellectual calibre that lies behind the proposal to put this New Town on the other side of the motorway. Since I have the greatest admiration for the present Minister and his capacity, I am bound to say that I do not think he has received good advice, and I hope that he will look at the proposal again.
My Lords, I have never known a proposal against which there has been quite such a consensus of expert opinion, in both Houses of Parliament and in the country. When, in 1946, the New Town of Stevenage was started, there were respectable arguments on planning grounds for considering that the place should not have been selected at all; and that it was too near London. But there were very powerful arguments on the other side, too, and I think that those of us who studied the problem could have felt a good deal of sympathy for the then Minister (now the noble Lord, Lord Silkin) when, anxious to make a start, he decided that this was the place at which to do it. But what I am quite certain of is this: that, had he been told that that New Town was to be a town of 150,000 people, or thereabouts, he was far too good a planner to say that this was the place to put it. He would have done nothing of the sort.
Passing for the moment from the impossible conditions in Stevenage itself, let us look to the area on which it is proposed to put this other New Town—because, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is quite right; it is, to all intents and purposes, another town, however much it is linked with the existing one. That area is outside the existing Metropolitan Green Belt, but it is within what has been called the "Extended Green Belt", which was proposed as long ago as 1956. Successive Ministers of Housing and Local Government, or successive Ministers of Planning, by whatever title they have been called, have made it their policy to prevent development within that area just as though it had been the Green Belt. Now, that Green Belt, which is of the greatest importance to other places in Hertfordshire, and is extremely important to Luton, is to be invaded on the proposal, not of any planning

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authority outside London, but on the proposal of the Ministry itself. The Ministry itself that wished to protect this Extended Green Belt is taking the lead in destroying it. It was suggested in another place that it might still be possible to separate this extended town from Luton. I wonder for how long. My Lords, in this House we are all old enough to remember when Luton and Dunstable were separate. Look at them now!
I shall not labour the point of how bad the planning is that is involved, both in Hertfordshire and in Stevenage itself. I turn to the only defence and explanation that has been advanced. There has been no real attempt to say that what is proposed would not be disastrous for many good causes, but it has been said that there is a great increase in population and that this great increase renders this action necessary. Let me say at once that I think the Minister is right to attempt to be far-sighted and to take population into consideration. Where he seems to me to have gone so far wrong is in assuming that he is the only planner who considers population. What does he suppose the Hertfordshire County Council do? The Hertfordshire County Council happen to have as their planning officer a Mr. Doubleday, who was one of the advisers in the original Ministry of Town and Country Planning and who will be well known to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, both in his ministerial days and afterwards. Of course the County Council have been considering the increase of population, immediate and more distant, and what should be done about it. But the County Council were not consulted at all. Why not?
Why was it so important to ask the Corporation, "Will it be possible to expand up to 140,000 or 150,000?", but not to ask the County Council, "What do you think about it? What are your plans for dealing with an increased population?"? I have always held, and hold to-day, that there is a lot of physical planning in town and country in which the Ministry in London must be closely concerned; but I have never thought this involved not consulting the county councils in this matter. The reason why the County Council were
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not consulted, I suppose, was based on administrative convenience. It is easier for a Ministry in London to deal with one single Corporation, and to arrange an enormous increase in population with that Corporation alone, without bothering about what anybody else thought. It is easier to do that than to ask the County Council, who have devoted so much time to studying this problem. It is easier, my Lords; but is it tolerable?
I come to the point that has been made, I think, by several of the previous speakers, and in particular by my noble friend Lord Brocket; that, of course, expansion, and large expansion, of population in Stevenage is possible without increasing the area at all. There is no question that a population of 95,000 at least could be accommodated. I am not saying necessarily that it ought to be accommodated, but it could be accommodated within the existing boundaries; and more compact building which would make that possible would not only do no injury but, in the opinion of most architects and planners, would greatly improve the quality of the place, and would do so without the sacrifice of open space and amenities. I beg the Minister to think again and not to persist in a plan so injurious to Stevenage, so injurious to Hertfordshire and so injurious to England.
What appals me is the power of the Minister to proceed with what we, unanimously, I think, judging from the speeches, believe to be a disastrous scheme, without any Parliamentary control at any stage. As I have said, of course these things are administratively convenient; but administrative convenience is no ground whatever for treating the County Council in the way that this County Council have been treated and in the way in which it is proposed to continue to treat them. One of the Acts I helped to conduct through another place, when I was a Minister, was precisely an Act to give planning powers to county councils, because up to that date the planning powers had been vested in authorities far too small. I little thought that the time would come when the county councils to whom we transferred these planning powers, county councils that were using them and planning to save their countryside while providing more houses would be overridden entirely as is now proposed.

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I expect that the Minister, when he comes to reply, will say that nothing has been finally decided yet. Of course it has not. But the Minister has shown his affection for this scheme; he has got the Corporation to say that it is feasible, and he could go ahead, when this Bill is passed, without any vote of either House at all. I have no doubt that there will be a public inquiry, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said. But the public inquiry, whatever the inspector reports, will not bind the Minister. I do not believe that this is the way to make town and country planning, which is so necessary for the immediate future of England, either easy or tolerable. I beg the Minister to think again.
7.58 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, so much has been said in your Lordships' House this evening about the Stevenage plan that I would only seek to add my voice to the objections which have been put up to it. It seems to me, from what I have been able to study on this subject, that the difficulties from both technical and policy viewpoints are so acute that my right honourable friend the Minister really must look at this again, and preferably drop it altogether. But what I did think might be convenient would be to take the opportunity of this Bill to raise the subject of the inquiry procedure, if such an inquiry into a draft designation order for a New Town should come about, which has in the past caused a great deal of difficulty. It may be that I ought to have known about the developments that have taken place, very largely, I think, as a result of the Report of the Franks Committee and the most enlightened interpretation that the Government have put upon that and the measures they have brought in since.
I asked my noble friend Lord Hastings about what the procedure would be, hoping that a great change had taken place since the days of the case of Franklin v. Minister of Town and Country Planning, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. I am glad to have had his assurance that this is so, and that a very different method of procedure is now adopted, but I feel it is not very widely known, and I should be very grateful to my noble friend if he could repeat
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for the benefit of the House, and for the public of this country, who may come as objectors to one of these local inquiries, what the up-to-date procedure is. Because it seems to me that it fulfils everything that the Franks Committee reported and recommended, and it gives a very fair chance indeed to an objector at one of these public inquiries properly and fully to deploy his case and bring all the arguments that he can conceivably wish to bring before the Minister and his Inspector. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will be able to give the details of this new inquiry procedure to the House this evening.
8.0 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: My Lords, I suppose that any uninitiated person reading this debate would think that some miniature Frankenstein had come across the House of Lords and deliberately sabotaged what appears to be a relatively innocent Bill. But anybody with any knowledge of the background of what is planned for Stevenage would surely have a very different conception, whether or not he was an expert on town and country planning. I have a great many local ties with this area. From my early childhood until my late teens I lived in the town of Baldock, and I still have relations and close friends in the Baldock and Stevenage areas and in the areas approximating towards Luton. So I feel justified in taking up some of your Lordships' time in adding my protest on these extraordinary proposals.
I do not intend to go into the technicalities of the planning side of this matter, because I am not an authority on that, but I wish to say a word or two about the principle of the whole thing. Granted there is a shortage of housing for people who want to work in or near London. Granted, too, that there must be a solution to the present pockets of unemployment. But there are a number of alternative areas, not so far from London, which could have been chosen for this increase of conurbation. For example, there is Huntingdon, where a large L.C.C. development plan is already taking place. Is that not a possible alternative solution? Then there is Peterborough. There is a good deal of land in that area which would help in regard to the allegation that the

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British Railways commuting service between Hitchin and London is losing money. Housing could surely be diverted to the Peterborough area, because it takes just about as long to get from Hitchin to Peterborough as from Hitchin to London.
In any case, I do not accept the premise that only a few people travel from Hitchin to London. I used to travel on that line a great deal. I now use it only occasionally, when I go to the area visiting friends or speaking. But, travelling back to London during the morning rush hour, I observe that the compartments on the trains are relatively full, so I do not think that that argument can be put forward. In any case, one has only to travel in the conditions which those living in Surrey, Sussex and Kent endure, to the City of London or the West End to see what could happen if these proposals regarding Stevenage go forward. The public transport is already stretched to the limit. Stevenage and Baldock stations and all the others are small, and whilst the train service is reasonably adequate at the moment, it would have to be considerably increased to take the large, increased number of commuters (if one can use that word) if this plan goes through.
As has been said, all this discussion has been on non-Party lines. I know that my honourable friend the Member for Hitchin has had messages of support from all sections of the community, from the Letchworth Young Socialists to the leading landowners of Hertfordshire. I should like to pay particular tribute to the Hertfordshire Express. Speaking for myself, it was from that source that I got my first intimation of this scheme. As has been pointed out by other noble Lords, there seems to have been little or no consultation with the Hertfordshire County Council, or the Hitchin Rural Council or any other responsible body.
I should like to quote briefly from what the representative of Kimpton, which is part of the Hitchin Rural District Council, said in a recent edition of the Hertfordshire Express:
"The Housing and Town Planning Committee of this Council (the Hitchin Rural District Council) have today refused permission for eight houses to be built in Kimpton because this is a restricted village. But now it seems
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it is good planning to have a housing estate of about 150,000 people within three miles."
That seems to me to be pretty fair comment on what will happen if this scheme goes through.
There is also the point that when the New Town of Stevenage was designed, the factory area was placed on one side of the Great North Road and the housing area on the other. It seems to me that if this plan goes through we shall have an extraordinary conurbation of factories and houses, which is a quite appalling piece of planning. The present New Town of Stevenage, with its compact shopping centre, with every safety precaution taken for children, with its new community centre and its new Locarno ballroom, seems an altogether compact outfit for the mainly young population which it serves. It is surely ordinary common sense to see, from the fact that many of its residents are young people, that they will themselves have children—the birth rate in Stevenage is high, as it is in all New Towns—and therefore, if this greatly increased conurbation takes place, an enormous strain will be put on the hospital services and all the welfare services.
Equally, from an æthetic point of view, some of the loveliest countryside within 70 or 80 miles of London is going to be uprooted. Good farmland will be lost. I know that in ministerial circles that might be ruled out as a parochial and sentimental objection, but already there is the cry that agricultural land is diminishing. Truly, this proposal is going to make it far worse. It might be said that a public inquiry will take place. Certainly, it will. But even those who have limited knowledge of the law must realise that public inquiries are lengthy and costly. Surely the fact that there has been so much righteous opposition to this scheme is grounds alone to make the Minister think twice.
I suppose that on these things I am getting a reputation as a rebel. There was a certain matter over the London Government Act (as it is now) over which I rebelled, and I make no apology for it; and I shall certainly make no apology for rebelling here. My own childhood memories, and even present-day memories, of this area are of an essentially happy community with its

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services geared to a proportionate number of people. On grounds of amenity—hospital facilities, clinics, children's facilities, transport and everything else—this is nothing short of a crazy scheme.
Having said that, I would add that in principle I support this Bill. We certainly need New Towns. I have always supported the idea of New Towns because they mean that young people have more chance of getting a decent home; but conurbations of this kind add to the problem rather than help in its solution. I join with other noble Lords in urging the Minister to think again very carefully before carrying out a proposal that is opposed by countless thousands of people.
8.12 p.m.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, those of your Lordships who know me will know that nothing but the strongest feelings would have induced me to make a speech in the middle of dinner. I know that most of your Lordships will feel the same. Therefore, although I promise your Lordships that I shall be as brief as is humanly possible, I should like your Lordships to realise the sincerity with which I speak.
I am here to-night basically because for most of my life I have lived within eight miles of Stevenage, in North Hertfordshire. Therefore, because I am deeply in agreement with all other noble Lords who have spoken tonight, I felt that I had to add my support and voice my protest against what I can regard only as a completely deplorable proposal. At this stage in the evening, especially in light of the number of speeches we have had (and weighty speeches, too: for such speakers as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, should not lightly be disregarded in matters of this kind; and others of your Lordships who have taken part in the debate have spoken with knowledge either of planning or of Hertfordshire, sometimes of both), I should like briefly to sum up the views of my noble friends who have spoken against this proposal.
First, on the matter of principle, I do not think a single voice has been raised against the principle of New Towns, nor have we considered—even had that been possible—any opposition to the voting of money for this purpose. What we have felt (and I think this was voiced
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by my noble friend Lord Salisbury) was that it was becoming a matter of increasing anxiety to many people that, having voted the money for this general purpose, neither Parliament nor any local body, so far as one can see, has any further say in the matter except by way of a public inquiry. The Minister himself is directly responsible for New Towns, and in the normal way the procedure of a public inquiry is not entirely unsatisfactory. The planning authority usually puts up a proposal; there is an objection by local interests, and the matter comes un before an inspector and is eventually adjudicated upon by the Minister. But in this case the Minister is judge and jury in his own case. In this particular case, as my noble friend Lord Conesford mentioned, he has consulted nobody. He has not consulted the planning authority. He has consulted his own creature, the development corporation, I do not know why—possibly for motives of convenience. That is the first principle.
The second principle is this. The Ministry must make un their minds on which leg they stand. Either they believe in the Green Belt policy or they do not; either they believe that New Towns should be subject to Green Belt policy or they do not; either they believe the English language means what it says or they do not. We cannot build bypasses in 1962 (and the word means that the roads should by-pass towns) and then, in 1963, say that motorways should go through the middle of towns. The Ministry must set out their ideas about this. The Ministry on the one hand tell the local authorities they must preserve the Green Belt, and they then tell us that they are taking elaborate steps to make sure that the preservation of the Green Belt is impossible.
I dare say that I shall be told by the noble Lord who is to reply that, by administrative action, having expanded Stevenage in this way they are going to stop the erosion of the Green Belt. I do not believe any capable planner would believe that a Green Belt of four miles could be sustained, let alone a Green Belt of one-and-a-half miles. This is the sort of proposition we are going to be faced with in Hertfordshire. I believe the thing is completely and totally untenable. We shall have erosion

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and within a generation we shall have another Lancashire in North Hertfordshire. As regards the detailed planning of Stevenage, the matter was adequately dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and other noble Lords, and there is little more that one can add. On the face of it—and I do not pretend to be a planning expert—the whole scheme was a travesty of good planning. I should also have thought it was unworkable.
There is one further point which has not been very much aired this evening, and that is the educational aspect. As the Under-Secretary said in another place, these New Towns have a very high proportion of young people—as, indeed, I think was their purpose. And the Minister said that in Stevenage over 70 per cent. of the population in 1961 was under forty years of age, compared to the national average of just over 50 per cent. The natural corollary to that is, presumably, that they have young children. Therefore, the educational provision that has to be made in New Towns is a great deal more complex and elaborate than is needed in some of the older towns. One of the great disadvantages of this particular plan for Stevenage is that educationally this could well be appallingly expensive or unworkable—or both.
My noble friend Lord Conesford, in his admirable speech, said that this scheme was bad for Stevenage; and I agree with him. He said that it was bad for Hertfordshire; and I agree with him. At the moment we have to drive something like 20 to 25 miles before we in London get into anything like real country. If this sort of scheme is persisted in, I believe that somebody in the metropolis will have to drive something like 45 miles before he gets into country. When one considers other capitals, such as Paris, Rome, Bonn—even New York—this is an appalling thought. London will become worse than anywhere else in the world, and I believe that there is nothing more important than to avoid this ghastly conurbation. There must be Green Belts; that is the most important thing of all.
I think I have said enough on this subject. I would say to the noble Lord who is to reply that I do not entirely envy him his task. His right honourable
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friend seems to me to have got together an almost unique body of people, as has been pointed out. It is the first time in my memory that all the local authorities in Hertfordshire have ever agreed about anything. The Hertfordshire Society, the farmers, agree with the people who live in the towns. That is most unusual. The right reverend Prelate has added his voice for the Church. There is practically nobody, so far as I can see, who is a friend of this scheme. Every Back-Bench Member in the House of Commons takes this view and, so far as I can remember—I have not been here for every speech—I do not believe there has been a single speech in your Lordships' House to-night in favour of the Minister's proposal. If I may say so to my noble friend Lord Hastings, I do not know whether this constitutes a record, but it seems to me very near it.
I hope that, in the light of this feeling, the Minister will really think about this matter again. I know the noble Lord will say that nothing is decided, and I hope, indeed, it is not. But we have made our protest this evening because, as has been pointed out, this is the last chance we shall have in Parliament of making a protest. It was therefore most important that we should make it, and I hope that the noble Lord will think the protest has been clear enough and loud enough. Incidentally, I may say that the noble Lord has had a very bad Press. This is the first time for a very long time that I have seen the Daily Telegraph and the Observer agree. This is an unusual conjunction.
I should just like to quote to the noble Lord the last paragraph of a leading article in the Observer. This says, rather pessimistically, I think:
"It will probably be done."—
this was a reference to the scheme—
"Regional protests of this sort are mouse squeaks in Westminster. In fact, the new appendage will solve less than 1 per cent. of the Ministry's southern housing problem. It seems a high price to pay for so small a relief."
We have had our "mouse squeak" in your Lordships' House. I thought the noble squeak was a very good squeak, and I hope that it has been a loud enough squeak to reach my noble friend's ears. I can assure him, having lived in Hertfordshire for many years,

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that there is really deep feeling on this matter and that if the Minister pursues this particular policy he will find himself in real trouble, both nationally and locally.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, I rise to say two things. First, the Town and Country Planning Association, of which I am President, is firmly convinced that these proposals with regard to Stevenage are thoroughly bad planning. Secondly, I have been asked by my noble friend Lord Salter, who was my predecessor as President of the Town and Country Planning Association, to say that he much regrets that a previous engagement prevents him from being here to-night, for he would have expressed the same view.
8.23 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, we have certainly had a most stimulating and impressive debate, if only for the unanimity of the views expressed on one aspect of the Bill before us, which is to authorise further loans of £150 million for all the existing New Towns, including the recently designated ones. And here I would express the hope that the main purpose of the Bill will not be forgotten by your Lordships.
Before coming to the main topic of Stevenage, I think I need refer to only one matter with which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, dealt in a general way; and that was his regret that the New Towns were being handed over to the new Commission instead of to the local authorities. As he knows, we changed our mind about that, and did not hand the two towns over to the local authorities. The noble Lord seemed to admire the independence of the development corporations and the way they were able to get on with the job, and I should have thought the same thing applied equally to the new Commission for New Towns. After all, it has local committees, a local manager and staff on the spot. I do not think I need say any more on that point. I was grateful for the interventions of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, on Scottish affairs, and of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, who has given me an opportunity to clear up a point which I think is well worth clarifying for the greater confidence of the public, not to mention that of noble Lords behind me.
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To turn now to this question of Stevenage, so much has been said about it, that I feel that, to put the matter into proper perspective, I should explain the present position precisely. In view of the forecast by the Registrar General of a very much greater growth of population than had previously been envisaged, the Government early in 1962 put in hand a thorough study of the problems of the South-East of England. This, of course, is already well known. But from the beginning of this study it was apparent that there would have to be substantial growths of many towns in the South-East. The Minister therefore invited Stevenage and Harlow, which seemed to be the New Towns most capable of further growth, to make technical studies of the feasibility of further expansion. The report from Stevenage was submitted to him early last year and was published by the Development Corporation at that time.
I think it is just worth pointing out, in view of what has been said about the feasibility only being investigated, that when it reported the Corporation did say that the expansion would be advantageous. So far, the Minister has neither accepted nor rejected this technical report. He has had the report examined, and has also had a number of other possibilities explored. This he is entitled to do; indeed, he would be open to serious criticism if he did not investigate such an issue very thoroughly before making public any proposals. He has not yet, however, made any formal proposals for the expansion of Stevenage. Criticisms and comments on anything other than the Stevenage technical report are therefore based on no more than speculation and rumour. If and when the Minister is satisfied that there is a clear prima facie case for expansion of Stevenage, and he has specific proposals for expansion in mind, then he will consult the local authorities formally on them, as he is required to do by Statute.
The noble Lords, Lord Brocket and Lord Conesford, in particular, referred to the fact that the Hertfordshire County Council had been ignored, had not been consulted and had been badly treated, and that they had had technical investigations carried out of which the Minister has not yet taken any notice. My

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Lords, the Minister must first carry out his own technical investigations, and must come to some conclusion on whether or not this expansion is a reasonable scheme. When he has done that he will go to the County Council and have the full consultations which noble Lords wish him to have. At that stage, of course, any technical investigations the Council have carried out will be tabled and comparisons can be made. Does the noble Lord want to say something?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, what I do not quite follow is this: if there is this problem of population, would it not be relevant to ask the County Council at the same time what are their plans for housing this increased population?
LORD HASTINGS: I shall be coming to that point a little later.
LORD BROCKET: My Lords, would it not avoid doing it twice if the Minister obtained their advice first, before making up his mind?
LORD HASTINGS: I do not think it is quite so simple as that. Unfortunately, there are always procedures to be gone through. If after this consultation the Minister still thinks he ought to proceed, he will publish a draft designation order which can be the subject of a public inquiry. This part of my speech is important, and is in answer to the queries of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross. At this public inquiry a representative of the Minister will be present to explain and defend the proposals. In addition, the Ministry representative will be open to cross-examination on matters of fact and expert opinion, but not, of course, on questions of ministerial or Government policy. The person appointed by the Minister to hold such an inquiry is not normally, in the case of New Town inquiries, a Ministry inspector but someone from outside the Department. He has power to make recommendations, and, indeed, would be expected to do so. Finally, the report of the inquiry will be available to those interested.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, could my noble friend also say whether or not it is true that the Ministry will make available beforehand
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to those who are interested in the public inquiry a statement of a fairly wide-ranging nature of the proposals which the Minister has in mind and the reasons for them?
LORD HASTINGS: Yes, that is quite true, my Lords. The Minister will make available such a statement in writing before the inquiry, and the representative of the Ministry will attend the inquiry to explain that statement and to be cross-examined upon it in the way I have indicated. Therefore I think the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, is going beyond what is justified when he says that the Minister is judge and jury in his own case. That is certainly not so. Only after a very full public ventilation of a scheme will the Minister decide finally whether the plan should proceed. The decision is by no means a foregone conclusion, and that must be fully realised.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, referred to the problems of expansion.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, before the noble Lord passes on, I am sorry to intervene again but he referred to my speech. I think I must ask this: if there is an inquiry and the Minister is not judge in his own case, then who is? The Minister is the ultimate arbiter. The noble Lord said that I was inaccurate in what I said. I do not quite understand why. Perhaps he will explain.
LORD HASTINGS: He certainly is not jury in his own case.
LORD LLOYD: I withdraw the word "jury", but he is the judge.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, my noble friend is using the word "jury" in a curious way, because if the Inspector is called "the jury", the Minister can completely ignore the "jury", which normally a judge cannot.
LORD HASTINGS: The Inspector is an independent person. We all know the Minister has power to take the decision, but the decision will be taken with an objective report before him. That is really the point I wish to make. There is every possibility of deploying the case in opposition.
I was talking about the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on the problems of expansion of New Towns whose

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services and amenities are based on a known population of 60,000 or 80,000.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves the point about the inquiry, I did make the point—and so did the noble Marquess—that in the very exceptional circumstances of this case (it is the first time that there has been a proposal for a large expansion of this nature), ought not. Parliament to have the opportunity of expressing a view before even it went to a public inquiry, and ought not Parliament to be in possession of all the facts? I am not asking the noble Lord to say, "Yes" or, "No" now. I realise that this is a matter which must be considered, but I hope that it will be taken very seriously.
LORD HASTINGS: I had not overlooked the point; I was coming to it in precisely one minute, I think, or half a minute. I was referring to this question of the problems of expansion from a known base to a different target altogether. I feel sure that such matters will be considered at the inquiry to which I am referring. The right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of St. Albans made a most interesting and constructive speech about the community spirit—which was echoed in a slightly different way but none the less echoed, by the noble Lord, Lord Hughes—and how a community spirit can be achieved gradually; but then, with a sudden expansion of population, it may be lost and has to be refound and he dealt with the problems of pastoral organisation. These things are all part of the consideration of a proposal for an expansion such as this.
The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who also spoke upon this particular matter, quoted my right honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary in another place. This brings me to the question of national policy, which the noble Lord opposite first mentioned and which has been referred to by other sneakers: that because this is not merely the establishment of a New Town but an expansion or almost doubling of an existing New Town it is therefore such a special case that it assumes the nature of an issue of national policy about which Parliament should be consulted. I will certainly draw the attention of my right honourable friend to this opinion of your Lordships' House, but
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I would suggest that even if such a procedure as that proposed were eventually to be followed by my right honourable friend, possibly a public inquiry, where all the facts would be threshed out in much greater detail and at much greater length than we have been able to do this afternoon, and the results of which would be available to Parliament might help the consideration of this matter as one of national policy.
To go on from there, I just want to say that the arguments which have been put forward this evening have been broadly grouped under three heads: first the growth of Hertfordshire—the argument that the County will be taking too great a share of the growth in the South-East; secondly, the risk of coalescence and the running together of the various communities in the area; and, thirdly, the effect on Stevenage itself—that further growth, particularly if it takes place west of the A.1 motorway, will spoil Stevenage as a town.
My Lords, the share of the further growth in the South-East which ought to be taken by Hertfordshire is a question which can be considered properly only in the light of the full South-East study. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said, "Why not put the New Towns further out?"; the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, said that we should need many more towns—he spoke about twenty-five or so. Then the right reverend Prelate asked, "In any case, why should not a local planning authority—that is to say, the county council—decide about where the populations grow?" I can only say to noble Lords that this study will be published soon and I am afraid I must ask noble Lords to wait for it. It is extremely difficult to discuss this problem without having seen the study and all the arguments that are put forward. When this is possible, perhaps noble Lords will appreciate better the great difficulties of the situation.
Of course, the purpose of the study is to aid local planning authorities in deciding where to put the bulk of the population, but noble Lords will find that the likely increase in population is such that we shall have to have a number of New Towns. As noble Lords know, decisions on such matters would be outside the scope of the local plan-

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ning authorities. But there is no question of neglecting the place of the local planning authorities when the facts and results of the South-East study are published. The Minister has given assurances that if he should decide to start the process of consultation on Stevenage to which I have referred—consulting with the county council and local authorities before publication of the study—the inquiry itself would certainly not take place before the study is published or before all the arguments in the study are known by all concerned.
The right reverend Prelate asked why we had to take the decision now even to go ahead consulting, but we do not see any reason to postpone such a decision or to waste any time. Among other matters, it is important for the Development Corporation of Stevenage to know where they are—they have of course a population of some 55,000 now and according to present plans they would stop building when they reached 60,000, which would presumably be next year. Then we have to allow for natural increase which will bring the population up to 80,000. That meets the point of the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, who was talking about making an allowance in a designation order for natural increase. That is done. The building by the Development Corporation will stop at 60,000 and then over the years natural increase will take the population to 80,000 as it is now planned. So obviously the moment is coming now when the professional and expert staff of the Corporation, not to mention the building force, will be leaving Stevenage if a decision on possible expansion is not taken one way or the other; and that is why we shall go ahead with consultation at any rate.
There are arguments about spread—I think the noble Marquess called it the suburban "no-man's-land" when referring to the coalescence of one town with another—and about the policy of the Green Belt to which my right honourable friend is firmly wedded: he has constantly stated he is a firm believer in the Green Belt. There were technical arguments about the motorway, about the A.1. My Lords, at this time of the evening I need not go further into these arguments. They will be gone
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into very much more thoroughly if there is a public inquiry on this question of expanding Stevenage. All I would say is that there are arguments on the other side; that the case has been rather overstated in regard to the A.1 motorway, and that there would be great difficulties in expanding Stevenage up to 100,000 or so entirely on the East side of the motorway, as has been suggested, for it would create serious traffic and road problems for the people travelling to work on the present industrial site. These are matters which will be threshed out in detail; and I think I have said all that I need at this moment.
I ask noble Lords to believe that we are examining the whole proposal most carefully. No decisions have been taken yet, no proposals have been made; but my right honourable friend will certainly consider deeply, and study deeply, what has been said and the feelings of your Lordships' House. I am sure your Lordships can go home feeling that my right honourable friend and the Government are not committed to anything. Having said that, I hope you will not resist a Second Reading of this New Towns Bill which is designed mainly to carry on the good work in some 18 or so New Towns, both existing and designated towns where building will shortly start.
On Question, Bill read 2a; Committee negatived.