Lords Sitting of 18 February 1964

Preamble
The House met at half past two of clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Leicester
The Lady Kinloss—Sat first in Parliament, pursuant to the Peerage Act, 1963.

WATER RESOURCES BOARD
2.35 p.m.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is to be gained by delaying appointments to the Water Resources Board.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD HASTINGS): My Lords, the Board has to be in operation by the time the river authorities, which are to be established under the Water Resources Act, 1963, come into existence. This, it is hoped, will be in the autumn. There is no question, therefore, of the appointments having been delayed. My right honourable friend will ensure that they are made in good time.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Although it is not his Department, I think he must be aware that the interim Waterways Board have asked for consultation with other water authorities no fewer than three times. Would he not think, therefore, that an earlier appointment of some experts on these subjects would be a wise thing?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I think that the noble Earl's supplementary almost refers to his second Question, which he is going to put in a moment, but I can assure him that there is going to be no delay in appointing the Water
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Resources Board. It will be appointed as soon as possible.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that already, in February, there is a great anxiety about future water supplies? No doubt he has heard the announcement on the wireless news of the position in Nottingham, which is perhaps a little more favourably placed than the Eastern counties farther South. The water shortage is already great, yet almost towards the end of what is going to be described as the driest winter for a hundred years nothing seems likely to be able to be done until the Government have appointed the people required to be appointed under the Act which the noble Lord mentioned. Something ought to be done about this now.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I must point out that it was made clear, during the course of the Bill which is now the Water Resources Act, that it was never intended that either the new river authorities or the Water Resources Board should be appointed by now. There are still river boards which are functioning in the usual way, and there is no reason to suppose that there is any exceptional crisis on account of the lack at this moment of the appointment of a central Water Resources Board.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord, but would he not consult his right honourable friend as to whether he could make a statement to this House on the present situation of water supplies, and what is being done about it?
LORD HASTINGS: Yes, my Lords, I will certainly do that.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLEhad given notice of his intention to ask the following Question:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they recognise that the water problem would benefit from periodic conferences between the Waterways and the Water Resources Boards which have many similar duties.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg leave not to ask the second Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

ALBERT BRIDGE TRAFFIC AND NEW FIRE STATION
2.38 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government—

(1) what is the estimated increase of traffic along Oakley Street that will result from the proposed tidal flow across Albert Bridge;

(2) whether they have taken the increase of traffic along Oakley Street and King's Road into consideration in siting a new fire station near the junction of these roads;

(3) whether the area to be served by the fire station includes any area south of the Thames; and

(4) if so, by what route fire engines from the station will cross the Thames during the period when Albert Bridge is given over to northbound traffic.]

EARL FERRERS: My Lords, It is estimated that the proposed tidal flow arrangements for Albert Bridge will increase the traffic in Oakley Street by some 150 vehicles an hour during the morning and evening peak periods. This represents increases of 21 per cent. and 15 per cent., respectively. The siting of this fire station is the responsibility of the London County Council as fire authority. I understand that the site was purchased in 1940 and that the order for work to commence was placed in June, 1962, shortly before the tidal flow proposals were announced. I understand that the area to be served by the new station is wholly to the north of the River Thames, except for purposes of support. On occasions when support is given South of the river, this would principally be to the area between Battersea Park Road and Albert Bridge Road, and for this purpose appliances can conveniently use Battersea Bridge.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for his Answer and ask him this? Is he aware that 1,400 vehicles an hour are already passing along this part of the King's Road at peak periods before the increase that he mentions? Secondly, do the Government
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still intend to have tidal flow traffic over Albert Bridge and to open this new fire station? And, if so, are they satisfied that these two proposals together make sense? Finally, is their satisfaction shared by the fire authority?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, my noble friend asked a number of supplementaries. With regard to the last one, the fire authority are satisfied that the arrangements of the tidal flow will not impede the services which they will be called upon to give. I have forgotten the other three questions—would the noble Lord be good enough to remind me?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, my first question was whether the Government were aware that 1,400 vehicles an hour were already passing along this part of the King's Road before the increase mentioned in my noble friend's original Answer; and my second was whether the Government propose to proceed with both these schemes and, if so, whether they are satisfied that together they make sense.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, of course, the flow of vehicles along King's Road has been taken into account. The object of taking the tidal flow across Albert Bridge is in order to increase the movement of traffic and, if it is increased, presumably that would facilitate the movement of fire appliances.
THE EARL OF SANDWICH: My Lords, is not the tidal flow under Albert Bridge and not across it? How does it come about that my noble friend Lord Cones-ford, who hates neologisms, uses this form?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I would not be able to answer the last question of my noble friend, but with regard to the first, of course, it entirely depends on what method of transport one is using.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is the noble Earl not aware that his first Answer means that the increase of traffic in Oakley Street amounts to one vehicle per second? When these changes are decided on, are the views of the inhabitants of the area considered? Because this means virtually that life will not be worth living for the people in Oakley Street.
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, before any alterations of this nature are brought into operation a number of different points of view are taken into account, one of which is the movement of traffic, and I have no doubt that in this instance another is the representations which have been made by the people who live in Oakley Street.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, is it not a fact that the fire authorities are sufficiently worried by the prospect for them to be asking that they should be able to work the traffic lights from inside the station?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I do not think the fire authorities are usually the people responsible for working traffic lights.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, can the noble Earl say whether the Chelsea Metropolitan Borough Council, which I think is the local authority concerned, has concurred in this new scheme?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, the fire authority is the London County Council.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, I know that; but with respect I was not talking about fire. I am talking about the highway and the points of possible congestion to which attention is drawn by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, in his Question. The Chelsea Metropolitan Borough Council, if I remember rightly, is the highway authority. Has it concurred in this scheme of the Ministry of Transport?
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I have not at the moment the information which the noble Lord requires, but I will certainly find out and let him know.

BRITISH AIR ATTACHÉ IN TOKYO
2.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider reviving the post of Air Attaché at the British Embassy in Tokyo.]
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, this matter is at present under active consideration.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, while I am grateful to my noble friend for his reply, which of course means anything or almost nothing (perhaps that is slightly unfair), may I urge him that this matter should be pressed on with? May I also ask whether he is aware that this situation has happened before, in Latin America, where we lost the chance of re-equipping many of the Service and civilian fleets there owing to the withdrawal of Air Attachés, who were subsequently put back there, of course, after the horse had bolted.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am sure that my right honourable friends will bear in mind these South American considerations which my noble friend has mentioned, but I think it would be wrong for me to try to anticipate the collective wisdom of their final decision on this matter.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask whether this decision is likely to be taken before the Service Departments are put into an entirely different position with the Minister of Defence under the new orders? How long have the representations of the particular Service Departments been before the Minister of Defence?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think I can assure the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition that this matter is being pressed forward with a good deal of energy.
LORD MERRIVALE: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend, as there was an Air Attaché at least in 1960 in Tokyo, on what grounds our Air Attaché was withdrawn from that city?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I think he was withdrawn in June last year because his normal tour of duty had expired.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if his normal tour of duty had expired, what about his replacement?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, this is one of the matters at present under consideration.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, what is the reason for this enormous urgency? Is it the coming Election? Everything now is exceedingly urgent. You have had ever since last June to get this done.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I do not think I can, or indeed should, add anything further.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: Why not?
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I think I can help the noble Lord opposite. There is a Naval Attaché now who doubles the rôle of Naval and Air Attaché. That is the point. The fact is that the Air Attaché having returned home, and a Naval Attaché having taken his job, Naval is talking to Air, and it does not work; somehow, we lose contact.

NATIONAL PROVIDENT INSTITUTION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and referred to the Examiners.
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
WENTWORTH ESTATE BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and referred to the Examiners.
CHICHESTER RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

CHURCH COMMISSIONERS (LOANS FOR THEOLOGICAL COLLEGES AND TRAINING HOUSES) MEASURE, 1964
2.48 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. I do not think that it will be necessary to detain your Lordships for
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any great length of time. The Church Assembly has recently embarked upon a programme of modernisation and improvement of the theological colleges and establishments for the training of women in the pastoral work of the Church. The greater part of the cost will be provided by grants made to the colleges by the Church Assembly. The money is to be raised by the Central Board of Finance by loans, the servicing of which will be a charge on the Church Assembly Budget. The Church Commissioners, who are at present lending considerable sums of money to the Central Board of Finance for similar capital expenditure on the Church training colleges for teachers, are willing either to make further loans for the purpose of theological colleges or to guarantee borrowing from other sources up to a limit of £1 million, if they are given the necessary statutory authority. The object of the Measure is to provide that authority. Money so borrowed will be repaid over a period of years and interest will be payable at current rates. Therefore, there is no question of diminishing the income of the Commissioners which would otherwise be devoted to the maintenance of the clergy.
I should like to add a personal word. It so happens that I have spent a great deal of my own ministry in theological colleges, and I know that until the most recent years the whole of the provision of theological colleges has been left to private enterprise. This Measure is really part of a rather belated conscience on the part of the Church that the Church as a whole should undertake some responsibility for the provision of these institutions. The Measure met with no opposition in the Church Assembly, and I trust that your Lordships will find no difficulty in passing the necessary Resolution. I beg to move.
Moved, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 this House do direct that the Church Commissioners (Loans for Theological Colleges and Training Houses) Measure 1964 be presented to Her Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(Lord Bishop of Leicester.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

INCUMBENTS AND CHURCHWARDENS (TRUSTS) MEASURE, 1964
2.51 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion, which also stands in my name. By the Parochial Church Councils (Powers) Measure, 1956, the property of the parochial church council is, generally speaking, vested in the diocesan authority. It can be acquired only with the consent of the diocesan authority, and certain transactions, such as selling and leasing, also require the consent of that body; but subject to these safeguards, parochial church councils remain managing trustees. In many parishes both funds and real property are held by incumbents, by churchwardens or by incumbent and churchwardens acting together. There are three reasons why it has been thought desirable that the position with regard to these latter trusts—that is, those in the hands of incumbents or of incumbent and churchwardens—should be brought into line with that relating to those of parochial church councils.
In the first place, there are legal difficulties, in that the churchwardens or the incumbent and churchwardens are not a corporation, and, strictly speaking, whenever there is a new incumbent or a new churchwarden there should be a new appointment with a transfer of the trust property. In practice, such an instrument is rarely executed, and difficulties can, and do, occur if and when real property comes to be sold. In the second place, the absence of adequate supervision causes trusts not uncommonly to be wrongly administered or even lost sight of altogether. But the immediate reason for bringing this measure forward is the Charities Act, 1960. It is proposed to seek exception from registration under Section 4 of that Act for all charities which are vested in a diocesan authority, and it would be greatly advantageous to all concerned if the charities vested in incumbents as churchwardens could be included in any excepting regulation which may be passed.
The object of this Measure is, therefore, to place trusts in the hands of incumbents and churchwardens upon the
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same footing as those already held by diocesan authorities for parochial church councils. The diocesan authority will then become a little more than a Custodian Trustee, while responsibility for management will remain in the hands of those who are at present managing the trust. The Measure provides that property does not vest automatically on the passing of the Measure, but on a vesting declaration made by the diocesan authority. It is the duty of the trustees to inform the diocesan authority of trusts covered by the Measure, but there are provisions to meet the case where the diocesan authority becomes aware of the existence of trusts of which it has not been otherwise notified. The opportunity is given to the trustees, the incumbents and the Charity Commissioners, to make representations, and subject to them the diocesan authority can make a vesting declaration which may apply to more than one item of property or more than one body of trustees, thus, it is hoped, considerably reducing the expenses.
I must tell your Lordships that this Measure had a difficult passage through the Assembly, and was given final approval, on a Division, by 265 votes to 102 votes. I think it is fair to say that a good deal of the opposition resulted from a failure properly to understand the somewhat complicated provisions of the Measure. The Measure has been drafted and dealt with throughout in close consultation with the Charity Commissioners, and has been favourably reported upon by the Ecclesiastical Committee. I trust, therefore, that your Lordships will be prepared to pass the necessary Resolution. I beg to move.
Moved, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 this House do direct that the Incumbents and Churchwardens (Trusts) Measure 1964 be presented to Her Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(The Lord Bishop of Leicester.)
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, might I be allowed to ask the right reverend Prelate one question? I can understand their difficulties in some of the circumstances he has described, but who is responsible to-day, under the Union of Benefices Measure, for sites which are now vacant,

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churches having been pulled down, sometimes in main shopping theatres, where the capital value is great, but apparently not yet disposed of? Who are the trustees? It cannot surely in this case be the incumbent or the churchwardens of the particular parishes concerned. Who deals with this matter, once those parishes have been abolished?
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the Church Commissioners are the really responsible body. I would not profess to speak about the subtleties of each situation, but I know myself, in dealing with vacant sites in my own diocese, that it is the Church Commissioners who act as the final umpire.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Perhaps the right reverend Prelate will send me confirmation of that.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: My Lords, may I ask the right reverend Prelate a question? The Church Assembly has decided that women should be admitted. May I ask him why, in the middle of the twentieth century, they are to be admitted only in a subordinate manner? I should like to know the answer.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, that question seems a long way removed from the Motion, but if an answer is required I have no doubt that the custom and practice of large sections of Christendom is the place to which the noble Lady should look for a explanation.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

CHURCHWARDENS (APPOINTMENT AND RESIGNATION) MEASURE, 1964
2.58 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, I beg to move the third and last Motion standing in my name. This Measure arises due to the revision of Canon Law which has been occupying the attention of the Convocations and the House of Laity for some considerable time. The law relating to the appointment and resignation of church-
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wardens is in part contained in the Canons of 1603, and in part in the Common Law. It is in many places by no means clear, and it was therefore thought desirable to attempt to remove the obscurities before proceeding further with new Canons to replace those of 1603. The Measure lays down the number and qualifications of churchwardens, but provides that its provisions cannot over-ride a Private Act, Statutory Scheme, or custom to the contrary.
At present, churchwardens need not be members of the Church of England. The Measure now provides that they must be actual communicant members of the Church of England, except where the Bishop shall otherwise permit. Under the present law, in the absence of a custom to the contrary, the churchwardens are chosen jointly by the minister and a meeting of the parishioners or, if they fail to agree, one by the minister and the other by the meeting. Where there is no minister the meeting chooses both. In practice, there is often no attempt at a joint choice, but it was thought desirable in this Measure to make the law clear. I think your Lordships will be aware that in a very large number of parishes the two churchwardens are, in fact, chosen respectively by the incumbent and by the people respectively. Although that is not provided for in the Act except as a kind of emergency procedure, I have no doubt at all that in a very large number of cases custom will continue to do things in that way.
This Measure also gives the churchwarden the right to resign, provided that the minister and any other churchwarden consent and the Bishop accepts his resignation. That would be a considerable convenience, because even when churchwardens have left the district it has been impossible for them to vacate their office until the next annual church meeting. The Measure also makes it clear that the office is vacated if the churchwarden ceases to reside in the parish or to have his name on the electoral roll. The Measure also provides for appeals in the case of arguments or disputes for which there is at present no provision. The Measure was never regarded as a controversial one. At no time during its passage through the Assembly was there a division, and it has been favourably reported upon

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by the Ecclesiastical Committee. I hope therefore, that your Lordships will be willing to pass the necessary Resolution. I beg to move.
Moved, That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Churchwardens (Appointment and Resignation) Measure, 1964, be presented to Her Majesty for the Royal Assent.—(The Lord Bishop of Leicester.)
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords I am much obliged for the explanation. I sometimes think that the ways of Ecclesiastical Law are beyond the understanding of most; they do not seem to fit in. We had a very hurried and disjointed debate recently, last May or June, upon a Church Measure, and there we were dealing with a State Church setting up an entirely new legal system under which all the appeal members to be put upon ecclesiastical courts, in particular, were to be communicants of the Church of England. Now, apparently, in this much more minor Measure there is to be a provision that churchwardens must be, of course, communicants of the Church of England, and, I should think, in most cases must reside in the parish, but so far as I can see, it is to be left to the Bishop to approve anybody else he likes. What inconsistencies these are! It is a pity these matters are not considered much more deeply before they are brought to the House. Now, by the Bill passed last year, we have lost the eight of the ordinary citizen to go to the Privy Council about matters in which he is interested regarding State Church Law, but in this case it is to be left to the Bishop to decide what is to be done about a particular churchwarden.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, may I, following up the question asked by my noble Leader, ask the right reverend Prelate in what circumstances it is thought that a Bishop would approve the appointment as a churchwarden of a person who is not a member of the Church of England? In relation to what my noble Leader has said, I ask this question as a former churchwarden and as a former member of the Ecclesiastical Committee.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, I must not be drawn into a discussion of the Measure that was previously debated and decided, although I can well understand that the noble Earl might have anxious thoughts about some part of that particular Measure. But I can only commend this Measure to your Lordships. I think the gravamen of the noble Earl's question, or criticism, was that there was something inconsistent or superficial in this provision for a Bishop to allow someone who is not a member of the Church of England to be a churchwarden. I think that really was also the point behind the question of the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. If your Lordships really desire to know, the fact is that in some very small communities there are hardly any likely candidates for the responsibilities of churchwarden, and in some cases—one, at least, is known to me personally in my own diocese—a member of another Church, out of general concern for the building and the institution of a church to which he personally does not belong, has been willing to be churchwarden in it. That is what is intended in this Measure.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: It seems difficult to understand this in the case of a church that apparently has almost no congregation. You close down in cases in which I have been interested, in dealing with appeals of churches which are in populous areas; yet, just to suit the kind of case you refer to, you can take a separate action and appoint as churchwardens people who are not members of the Church. As I say, the inconsistencies of Ecclesiastical Law pass my comprehension.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LEICESTER: My Lords, I feel it only right and fair that a definite procedure should be laid down, not so much by the Church as by the law of the land, whereby churches can be considered for closure and eventually for being pulled down. That process goes on, and it is in fact being done from time to time. But all the while the church is there it has to be cared for, and because there is an insufficient number of people with the necessary qualifications to take on the responsibility of churchwarden it in no way follows that a Church is not being used.

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I do not know how far it is customary in your Lordships' House to debate these matters in any detail, but I feel that those brief replies at least are due to the Church on this occasion.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

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

DEFENCE (TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS) BILL
3.06 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Earl of Jellicoe.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Transfer to, and discharge by, Secretary of State and Defence Council of certain statutory functions]:
LORD TEYNHAM LORD TEYNHAM moved, in subsection (1)(b), to leave out "Navy Board" and to insert "Admiralty Board". The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment I am afraid that it will be necessary to repeat a portion of my speech which I gave on the Second Reading of the Bill, in order to make clear the point I raise in this Amendment and also for the benefit of your Lordships who were not able to be present on that occasion. The intention of this Amendment is to substitute the words "Admiralty Board" for "Navy Board" in Clause 1, followed by two consequential Amendments.
I really cannot understand why Her Majesty's Government should offer any resistance to this Amendment. It cannot in any way interfere with their ideas of integration, and I hope that at this stage they are prepared to accept this Amendment or at least to consider the Amendment again. I have previously suggested to your Lordships that we must be on our guard against the tendency of planners to forget the greatly different roots and great traditions of the
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Armed Services. I would say that this applies particularly to the Royal Navy. There is a fundamental difference between the Navy and the other Armed Services. A soldier has loyalty to his regiment—although I believe there are to-day those in some quarters who would like the regiment system to disappear and be replaced by a corps of infantry. In the Navy the advent nowadays of short-service commissions of only some eighteen months means, of course, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to build up a similar loyalty to a unit such as one of Her Majesty's ships. I maintain that something higher is required which the sailor can look up to as a focus for his loyalty, and this must be the Admiralty.
I would repeat what I said on Second Reading: that the word "Admiralty" goes back many centuries into the shadowy mist of the past. It is also a collective term for the Royal authority vested in the office of the Lord High Admiral. This was the case whether the Lord High Admiral was an individual as, of course, he was for many years, or whether the office went into commission, as we know to-day, as Lords of the Admiralty. Throughout the Royal authority has been maintained, and with Her Majesty resuming the office of Lord High Admiral there will be a continuity of the Royal authority exercised through the collective term "Admiralty", now to be changed for no apparent reason to "Navy Board". It is so easy to discard the old name and throw it away, but how many years will it take to build up the new one? I earnestly commend this Amendment to your Lordships. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 10, leave out ("Navy Board") and insert ("Admiralty Board").—(Lord Teynham.)
LORD COLYTON: I rise to support very briefly my noble friend's Amendment. Unfortunately, owing to a longstanding business engagement in Germany I shall have to leave from London Airport in a few minutes and shall therefore not be able to be present at the end of the debate. I would, however, most strongly urge the House to pass this Amendment, the arguments for which

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seem to me to be conclusive, as much from the practical point of view as from the sentimental and historical angles. The practical importance of retaining the term "Admiralty" was fully demonstrated by my noble friend in his speech on February 4 and he has repeated some of the arguments to-day. There can be no question whatever that the abolition of this name would have a damaging effect on morale in the Royal Navy, and I imagine it would also be repugnant to the majority of those working in the Admiralty itself.
On what might be called the sentimental side, I feel sure that the disappearance of this great historic name of "Admiralty" would also come as a shock to the great mass of the British people. They would ask themselves why this was done, and would find the arguments in favour of this step adduced by my noble friend the First Lord and by my right honourable friend the Minister of Defence in another place in Committee on December 5 very weak and unconvincing. With all respect to the other two Services, I venture to say that the general public know and perhaps care very little about the Army Council or the Air Council, and the minor changes involved in this Bill in that respect would cause little criticism or interest. On the other hand, I feel that people in this country and, indeed, throughout the Commonwealth would be much distressed by the abolition of the ancient name of "Admiralty" which has played such a part in our history. We may even remember Kipling:
"If blood he the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!"
It is on this historical side that I should like to say a word or two this afternoon. The conception of the Court or jurisdiction of Admiralty goes back to the dim ages, certainly as far back as the reign of Henry I. As related to the fighting Navy, we first hear of the appointment of a Lord High Admiral in the person of John, Earl of Somerset, in 1406, under Henry IV. The term "Admiralty" itself appears on the second page of the first volume of the Black Book of the Admiralty, which your Lordships will find in the Library, written in Norman French, Latin and English, somewhere between 1440 and 1460. Again, according to Clowes' History of the Navy,
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when the Navy was reorganised under Henry VIII in 1546 the Admiralty Office or Board was formed under the Lord High Admiral, who was described as Minister of Marine, for purely naval and operational matters. The Admiralty Board had no fixed abode at that time and met at the Lord High Admiral's house or even afloat.
At the same time Henry VIII also set up a Navy Board, which consisted of civilian officials and was entirely concerned with questions of supply. This Navy Board—the term now suggested to be revised—continued right down to the Crimean War when its inefficiency led to its abolition and the absorption of its functions by the Board of Admiralty. It is not a term, I would venture to suggest, which commands any great respect or meaning in the Navy or in the country. It seems to me that, as my noble friend said, the change is unnecessary as part of this great reorganisation of our defence machinery, which I think we all support. The new name which is proposed in this Bill, moreover, constitutes a far greater change so far as the Navy is concerned than it does in the case of the other two Services. I strongly hope that Her Majesty's Government will think twice before abolishing this great and honourable name, by accepting the Amendment that stands in the names of my noble friends and myself. I would make a special appeal to my noble friend the First Lord and to the former First Lord who sits beside him to accept this Amendment, and I feel sure that if they do so it will be a decision which will be popular as well as wise.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: I also rise to commend this Amendment to your Lordships' House. I myself can see very little merit in change merely for the sake of change. Nor do I see merit in change in a case of this kind merely to obtain uniformity. As my noble friend has suggested, the word "Admiralty" has been in use for hundreds of years and has, I believe, a better reputation than that of the late and unlamented Navy Board. Further, many other Navies are governed by Navy Boards but, as I understand it, only in this country by an Admiralty. So far as the maritime nations of the world are concerned, that body which governs our

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Navy is known as "the Admiralty", and if we change to Navy Board presumably the Admiralty in future will be known as the British Navy Board, to distinguish it from the Canadian Navy Board, the Australian Navy Board and no doubt from others. For these reasons, as well as those advanced by my noble friends, I sincerely hope that your Lordships will accept this Amendment and so preserve this ancient and honourable title for that body which in future will govern the British Navy.
LORD SOMERS: I also support this Amendment. I am constantly dumbfounded by this wave of desire for simplification of terms and names which seems to have swept through our country—so that even those who are mentally retarded, I suppose, can understand them. I can assure Her Majesty's Government that the Board will not work any better for having a simple name. I am tempted to believe that they would have called it Sea Board had it not been for the fact that that name was already used by the South Eastern Electricity Board. I sincerely hope that the very ancient and very honourable name of "Admiralty", which has inspired so many people not only to love the Navy but also to join it, will be retained.
LORD AMPTHILL: I rise to support my noble friends in this Amendment, both on the grounds of tradition and on the grounds of practicability. My noble friends who have already spoken have covered the grounds of tradition so fully that I will not repeat them. But the word "Admiralty" has one meaning all over the world; it is the Admiralty here in Whitehall. I have served with French, American and Dutch naval officers. They always spoke of "the Admiralty"—meaning our place in Whitehall. They did not say, "your Admiralty", or, as they might have to say now, if this Bill is passed in its present form, "your Navy Board". In our previous debates on this subject we had some discussion on the practicability of the Admiralty Fleet Orders, confidential Admiralty Fleet Orders, Admiralty charts and all the rest; but nobody has mentioned Admiralty Chart Depôts all over the world used by all the navies of the world and the Merchant Navy as well—and
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exceedingly useful places they are. During the Second World War, Admiral Cunningham, in Algiers, was served by the Admiralty Chart Depôt in Gibraltar which supplied different Allied Fleets in the Mediterranean. It did a wonderful job, and everybody knew it as the Admiralty Chart Depôt. I reveal to your Lordships that we on Admiral Cunningham's staff also used it to supply ourselves with an occasional case of sherry. I remember an occasion when a ship sailed into Algiers harbour and made a signal to the commander-in-chief:
"Have three cases of charts for you. One is leaking."
That is a signal that we did not show to the late noble Viscount, Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Before the First Lord of the Admiralty replies, in what is approaching his last use in the House of that great title, I should like to say that, having served as First Lord of the Admiralty altogether for nearly nine years—the longest of any elected Member of another place in the history of the Admiralty—I am shocked at the temerity of the Government in introducing such a change as this. I am perfectly persuaded that had a Socialist Government made this proposal, all the Party now opposite would have wanted to tear us limb from limb.
This is an astonishing decision to make. I am quite well aware that the noble Earl may say "Ah, but then this term 'Navy Board' was once in use for a time"—although it was not for long —"in the days of the famous Sam Pepys." Perhaps that is so; but both before and after that date the British Royal Navy made a place for itself in the world which has never yet been matched. I listened to the Secretary of State for the Navy of the United States of America in the Royal Navy College, where we entertained him during the war. We did not ask him to say it, but he said, "This is the greatest institution of its kind in the world, and what it has turned out is the greatest." He said that the White Ensign of the Royal Navy was a major factor in keeping the world from world wars, and he said, "We in America must take a greater share in part of the great work that they have been doing and will continue to do."

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This is in accordance with the term "Admiralty".
I am glad that the noble Lord, who first served under me as a Captain in the Royal Navy not so many years ago, has raised the question of charting. From all the things which have been introduced by the Government during the last twelve years which have led to financial failure the charting establishments of the Navy are exempt. I was able to point out from time to time that not only were we able to erect new premises at Taunton and continue to widen our services to the world, but we did it at a profit to the State. International maritime law is practised in the Court of Admiralty in this country in numbers of cases covering all nationalities. I think it would be a great retrograde step for this term now to be abolished simply as a matter of verbal convenience, to make all three Service Departments conform to the name of a board. We do not mind the use of the term "Board" but it must be "Admiralty Board". I am going to invite as many of my honourable and noble friends as agree with me to come into the Lobby to support the Amendment moved from the other side.
3.24 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: I think it might be convenient if at this stage I were to state the Government's view on this matter, as my noble friend Lord Carrington will also be speaking later. I should like to say how grateful I am to noble Lords who have put down this Amendment, because I know that they have the interests of the Royal Navy greatly at heart. I am grateful for another reason: that they have given me an opportunity of explaining to your Lordships in rather more detail than I was able to do earlier, the reasons behind the Government's approach to this matter. My noble friend Lord Colyton described my arguments on Second Reading as "thin and unconvincing". I hope that my arguments on Committee stage may be rather more convincing. They will, I fear, be rather fatter, and for that reason I shall not be able to deal with this matter with quite the brevity with which my noble friends who have spoken on this Amendment have done.
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First of all, I must remind your Lordships of what this Bill really is all about. In the circumstances of contemporary warfare, when everything moves so fast, and when almost every military intervention depends on the intimate co-operation of all three Services, we believe that our defence policy requires a stronger and more integrated central direction. It is our belief—and this belief underlines the Bill which we are discussing—that this object is best achieved by establishing a single unified Department: one Ministry concerned with defence, instead of four Ministries or Departments—Defence, Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry, who are at present concerned with defence matters. Of course, my right honourable friend the Minister of Defence already has considerable powers, but in the last resort many of these powers are in essence co-ordinating powers. At the present time, as my noble friend Lord Swinton pointed out on Second Reading, he is often more the arbiter between the conflicting Services and their claims than the real and absolute controller of defence policy.
As I see it, the essence of the new set-up is that the political head of this new unified Ministry should become not a sort of referee between the three Services, but the effective captain of a truly inter-Service team. That is what we are getting at. To this end, the Government have proposed, and the Bill embodies, two main constitutional changes. The first is that the statutory powers for the defence of the realm which are now vested in the existing Service Ministries should be vested in the Secretary of State for Defence; the second is that a Defence Council will be established to exercise the powers of command and administrative control previously exercised by the three Service Departments. Under the Secretary of State and under the Defence Council there will be three Service Boards—the Navy Board, the Army Board and the Air Board—to exercise, on a one-Service basis, those functions which are devolved upon them by the Secretary of State for Defence and by the Defence Council. That general set-up was not, I think, challenged in another place. Moreover, despite the nostalgic glances

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a little bit backwards by the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, on Second Reading, it was not, I think, challenged on Second Reading in this House.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, would the noble Earl allow me to interrupt him? I think we are starting again on a Second Reading debate. We have already debated this. With the greatest respect, I would suggest that the noble Earl devotes his remarks to a reply to the particular Amendment, otherwise this debate will go on for a long time. He is already beginning to make remarks in a wider context to which some of my noble friends may wish to reply.
EARL JELLICOE: I think that the noble Lord is being a little unfair. I think it was perfectly valid and legitimate for me to sketch in the general background before coming to the immediate points, because the general background is extremely relevant to the particular argument which I am now going to adduce. I should now like to explain why, in the Government's view, given the proposed new organisation, it would be wrong for us to call the new Navy Board the "Admiralty Board", as this Amendment proposes.
I would remind your Lordships that "Admiralty" as defined by Statute—the Interpretation Act, 1889—is "The Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom for the time being, or the Commissioners for the time being for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom." I do not deny that, as my noble friend Lord Colyton pointed out, the term "Admiralty" has a wider and, indeed, more ancient connotation than this. But the particular functions of Admiralty to which this Amendment is addressed are those discharged by the Board of Admiralty, as defined in this Statute of 1889. That is the legal position. What happens under the new set-up to the responsibilities at present discharged by the Board of Admiralty? Because of the historical associations of the office and the desire to perpetuate its name, Her Majesty has consented to continue to assume the title of Lord High Admiral, but the functions of Admiralty, as distinct from the title, will be transferred, under the new set-up, either to the Secretary of State for Defence or to the Defence Council. That was why I
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thought it right to sketch the background of this matter; because it is extremely important: this is where the functions are going.
It is true, as I explained on Second Reading, that important responsibilities, especially in the field of management, administration and discipline, about which the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, was concerned, will be conferred upon the new Navy Board. We must have continuity and, as my right honourable friend put it in another place during discussion of the Bill there, we must keep the shop open for business. But although the new Navy Board will be discharging many of the responsibilities at present exercised by the Board of Admiralty it will not be doing so—and this is the important point—in its own right. The responsibilities which it will be discharging will be those specifically devolved upon it by the Secretary of State or by the Defence Council. Therefore, constitutionally it will be a very different animal from the animal which at present exists, and over which I have the honour to preside—the Board of Admiralty.
The principle may be right or it may be wrong—and so far as I know, it was not challenged on Second Reading or in another place. But if the principle is accepted; and it is cardinal to this Bill, I suggest that it would be wholly inconsistent to retain the title "Admiralty" for this new Board. We are in fact making a real and substantial change here, and, that being so, it would be wrong for us to obscure or fudge the issue by retaining something closely akin to the old title. It would also be confusing. This new Board would possess in its own right none of the powers of the present Board of Admiralty; but if we retain the name "Admiralty" the new Board would inevitably be identified, not only in the public mind but also in Whitehall, with the present Board of Admiralty, and this would be bound to make for confusion.
I now venture on to rather more delicate ground. There is a rather special reason why I feel that it would not be in the Navy's interest for us to depart from the term Navy Board and to opt for Admiralty Board, as the movers of this Amendment would like us to do.

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The War Office and the Army Council are to disappear; the Air Ministry and the Air Council are to disappear. Speaking very parochially, I cannot quite bring myself to regard those titles as quite so old and as glorious as those of Admiralty and of the Board of Admiralty. But those bodies mean, and have meant, a great deal to the two Services concerned. I realise full well that those who are moving this Amendment have the interests of the Royal Navy just as much at heart as I have, but I should like to put it to them that it might well not be to the advantage of the Navy for us to appear to go into this new organisation on a basis of what I would term incomplete equality with the other two Services. If your Lordships persist with this Amendment there is a danger that the Navy might appear to the other two Services as being the odd man out. I do not wish to labour this argument unduly, but I know that it is one that weighs with professional naval opinion, and it is therefore a factor which your Lordships should at least weigh. I would not put it higher than that.
I should feel very differently about this if I did not myself feel that the Navy Board was a distinguished, honourable and fitting title. Historically, the old Navy Board, going back, as it does, to the time of Henry VIII, pre-dates the Board of Admiralty. The Board of Admiralty existed in that form, of the Lord High Admiral being in commission from Charles I in 1628. This is an historical point which I could perhaps argue out with my noble friend Lord Colyton later. Your Lordships will recall that Samuel Pepys was Clerk of the Acts of the Navy Board before he became Secretary of the Admiralty. It is true that the Navy Board has not been in existence for some time, but it is not true that it went out with a whimper in the Crimea War. I do not know where my noble friends have got this piece of historical fiction from, but in fact the Navy Board was abolished by the Admiralty Act of 1832. So if there was a nigger in the Navy woodpile at the time of the Crimea War it was not the Navy Board. From the point of view of history, I can see no harm in reverting to this old and distinguished title, Navy Board.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, I apologise for intervening but would my noble friend remind the House what were the functions of the Navy Board?
EARL JELLICOE: The function of the Navy Board involved matters of management affecting the Royal Navy. I do not wish to prejudge what the functions of the new Navy Board are going to be, but they will certainly include that broad function. That is another reason why I believe it is perfectly fitting that this new Board should be called the Navy Board. In any case, if we are going to move away from the title "Board of Admiralty," I, for one, would much prefer to go back to its old title of "Navy Board" than to adopt this hybrid "Admiralty Board". I would entirely agree we must not be iconoclasts in this matter. It would be absurd to abolish old and honourable names just for the sake of change, and I have sought to explain the real and solid reasons for our choice.
If some of your Lordships feel—and I have detected this from what has been said this afternoon—that we are intent upon abolishing old titles just for the fun of it, I would remind your Lordships that it is precisely because we agree we should make the minimum disturbance of tradition that my right honourable friend proposes, perhaps against the grain of logic, to retain the great titles of First Sea Lord and Second Sea Lord. It is precisely for that kind of reason that it is proposed to retain names such as Admiralty Arch, Admiralty Flag, Admiralty House, Admiralty moorings—and, as the noble Earl, Lord Alexander of Hillsborough, will be glad to hear, Admiralty charts. We are also to retain Admiralty Notices to Mariners and Courts of Admiralty.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: You are giving us the case.
EARL JELLICOE: The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, says I am giving him the case. I am not giving him the case. The point here is that, for example, the Admiralty Chart Depôt will not change its function. But the Board of Admiralty is going to change its function. The Navy Board is going to be a different animal altogether. There is a Naval vessel—I am not quite certain I know what it is—called an Admiralty

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spud pontoon. After April 1 the Admiralty spud pontoon will do precisely what it does now, and there is therefore no reason at all why it should change its title.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: The noble Earl will agree that the functions of the Navy Board as proposed under the Bill will be different from the functions of the Navy Board associated with the name of Samuel Pepys, which surely was more in the nature of a supply organisation than otherwise.
EARL JELLICOE: It had a great deal to do with supply, but it also had a great deal to do with the actual execution of the administrative side of Naval policy. This is certainly going to be one of the functions with which the new Navy Board, whatever title it has, will be very intimately and vitally concerned.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: May I say, on this change of attitude, that I welcome very much the idea that the two senior officers should be First Sea Lord and so on. But the appointment of First Sea Lord is made by the Admiralty, in which there is a Board of Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. As a matter of fact I was greatly honoured to-day to receive an invitation to a dinner at Greenwich, to take farewell of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. But abolishing the Lords Commissioners, and keeping the title of "First Sea Lord" is just as bad as dropping the name of "Admiralty" from the Board.
LORD COLYTON: Far worse.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I consider that the present First Lord of the Admiralty has given his whole case away, and I think the whole House will recognise that fact.
EARL JELLICOE: I was careful to preface my remarks in this respect by saying that this was somewhat against the grain of logic, precisely because my right honourable friend was so anxious to preserve these particular and very distinguished titles. But, following the noble Earl's interjection, I would merely hastily add that I hope very much that he will be accepting the invitation which he has just received. May I say (because I think this is rather important),
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that I am most anxious that the name "Admiralty" or "Royal Naval" should be retained for the Admiralty outside establishments—important establishment like the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment and the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment. There are about 40 or 50 establishments of that sort. I must go carefully here, because I do not wish in this matter to shelter in any way behind opinions other than my own. But I should like to emphasise that such soundings as I have taken of naval opinion, and, indeed, of civilian opinion in and around the Admiralty, have certainly led me to the conclusion that there is a much stronger desire among those who serve the Navy to retain the word "Admiralty" for establishments such as these, these very important outside establishments, than there is enthusiasm for the retention, or for the adoption, of this hybrid "Admiralty Board".
Finally, I would say that I agree entirely with those other Lords who have expressed the view that in the last resort men are much more important than names. If I believed that by refusing to accept this Amendment I was in any way diminishing the loyalty of those in the Navy to the Naval Service, then I, for one, should not support the Bill as it stands. My noble friends have, I think, argued that the loyalty of Naval officers and ratings past and present is focused to some extent on the Board of Admiralty. But this has not always been so. Perhaps I might bring to your Lordships' recollection two extracts from the correspondence of a famous Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Fisher. In 1900 he wrote that:
"The intense ignorance of the men at the head of affairs in the Admiralty is what frightens and appals."
And, again, in February, 1916, in a letter to my father he wrote:
"Balfour can now put the case for Admiralty lethargy and apathy without you being there to refute it."
Of course things have changed for the better since then, thanks to the administration of First Lords like the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, my noble friend Lord Selkirk and my noble predecessor Lord Carrington. But, more seriously, I would express the view—and it is a view which I hold strongly—that

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the loyalty of the officers and men in the Navy is basically to the Navy itself.
May I, in conclusion, very briefly summarise my argument, which is really three-fold? In the first place, I believe that in this Bill we are making an important change in our constitutional arrangements for defence. The functions at present exercised by the Admiralty are being transferred elsewhere. Given that, I think it would be wrong to retain the title "Board of Admiralty". Secondly, if we are going to make a change, then I believe that the title "Navy Board" is better and more fitting than that suggested in the Amendment. Thirdly, and lastly, I do not believe that this change of title will in any way impair the efficiency of the Royal Navy or the loyalty of the officers and ratings who serve in it. I can assure your Lordships that it gives me no particular pleasure to advise your Lordships against accepting this Amendment. The name "Admiralty"—and, more so, what lies behind it—means as much to me as I think it does to any other Member of your Lordships' House. I should therefore not advocate the retention of this title "Navy Board", unless I believed, and, indeed, believed rather strongly, that this was both right and in the best interests of the Service that I represent.
3.46 p.m.
EARL ATTLEE: I find the noble Earl's argument entirely unconvincing. The suggestion that the titles of various offices should have some reference to function may be all very nice, but it is not of course what happens in practice. We have in this country historical precedents. Why should we not embody them in the names we use? We have the Chancellor of the Exchequer but he does not play chequers now. I suppose we have abolished the Lord High Treasurer's Office. The old Lord Treasurer, no doubt, never imagined that the Lords Commissioners exercising the functions of Lord High Treasurer would be from the Government Whips. But we are always having these changes, and always getting more and more dull. I like these old names. I like the picturesque names like "Master General of the Ordnance". I suppose that the Government would call him Minister of Gunnery, or something like that. I do
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not think there is any need whatever to try to bring us down to the level of some newly formed State which adopts these dull epithets. In this particular case, the name "the Admiralty" embodies very ancient traditions. During my life I have not liked the word "Board" very much: it had a curious Victorian smack about it—like the Poor Law Board. I much prefer the Army Council to the Army Board, and I was Vice-President of the Army Board nearly 40 years ago. I like these names, and the longer they last the better liked they are. I object very strongly to any attempt to play down our old historical names, and to adopt something which might refer to a newly set-up State with no traditions.
LORD AILWYN: I listened with the closest interest to my noble friend the First Lord, and, as usual, he exercised his well-known charm and persuasion to try to justify what I believe to be a very thin case. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that he has not made out his case, and I am bound to say that I am unconvinced. I rise in a very few words to support the Amendment. I believe that the Government have been unimaginative and rather unclever in this matter. One would have expected them to do all in their power to preserve wherever possible old honoured titles and traditions in fact, almost to lean over backwards in order to minimise the feelings which are bound to be aroused—feelings of nostalgia or frustration, that might be expected to follow these drastic changes in organisation. They were bound to bring feelings of that sort at the top. Instead of that, the Government seem almost to have gone out of their way to destroy utterly—I would have said needlessly and quite pointlessly—such fundamental matters as this time-honoured name of "Admiralty". There is a quite deplorable lack of vision here, an absence of discernment—in fact, if I may so put it, a lack of finesse.
In addition to the retention of the word "Admiralty", I should very much have liked to see the preservation of that honourable title, "First Lord of the Admiralty". I know I cannot discuss that, because it does not arise on the present Amendment, but one cannot but sympathise with my noble friend the First Lord in the melancholy task

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which falls to his lot at this time. One can almost hear the bones of the old sea captains of the past, not least those of the illustrious and never-to-be-forgotten father of my noble friend the First Lord, under whom I had the honour to serve a half-century ago, stirring uneasily in their graves at this unhappy and hurtful proposal of Her Majesty's Government. I beg the Government to think once more on this matter.
LORD SHACKLETON: May a member of another Service join in and say straight away to the First Lord that I cannot really believe that the Royal Air Force will suffer such acute feelings of inferiority as to be unable to co-operate with the "Admiralty Board"? I think this oversensitivity on the part of the Admiralty, although in many ways admirable, is misplaced. The First Lord deployed as good a case as was possible. Indeed, I thought he made an extremely able case; and, for those of your Lordships who accept the principles behind the Bill, to which he referred, he destroyed the argument for the change by admitting that there was no logic in the retention of "Admiralty".
There are some noble Lords who do not like any of this change. I think I go further than some of my noble friends in accepting the principle of the new Ministry of Defence. But the history of the word "Admiralty", to which there has been much reference this afternoon, is far too varied for us to be bothered about the precise contemporary meaning that has been applied to the "Board of Admiralty". May I also refer to Sir William Laird Clowes's great History of the Navy?—and although my own personal connections are mainly with the Royal Air Force, I may say that he happened to be a cousin of mine, and therefore I was brought up on his great book. He makes very clear that the history of this word and its meaning has changed and developed. I suggest that the First Lord would have done better to consult, not his friends in the Navy but someone like Professor Richard Hoggart, who understands linguistics, and who could have pointed out to him that language is a living thing, that the meanings of words evolve and that it is perfectly acceptable to give a new use to a word which
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already has six or seven meanings. It was Bacon who, in 1626, wrote:
"For Admiralty or Navy I see no great question will arise."
No great question does arise: the reorganisation of our defence forces will go on.
Although I am not as emotionally committed as many of your Lordships are to this particular proposal, I would urge the Government very strongly to accept the feeling of the House in this matter. It is, I think, pretty certain that if the Government resist this Amendment they will be beaten in a Division. I therefore suggest that the First Lord has done his best, that he has done a very good best, but that the case is not good enough; and I hope he will now accept this Amendment.
LORD CONESFORD: I think the balance of argument is rather closer than has been represented. Both "Admiralty" and "Navy" are very splendid words. I sympathise entirely with what the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said about what a great pity it is to do away with some of these ancient titles. In fact, I wish that the sailors who have spoken so eloquently to-day had backed me more, as did the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, when I objected nearly four years ago to the proposal that a "leading signalman" should become a "tactical communication operator". I remember asking the then First Lord, who I see has put his name to this Amendment, whether he could assure us that a naval officer would never again make a signal but would "operate a tactical communication". I so far forgot myself as to remind him [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 211, col. 120]:
"that for centuries our sailors have been masters of terse and vigorous English",
and to ask him whether it would not be better to
"honour this tradition instead of wallowing in gutless verbosity?"
The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who was not then in the Government, asked the very pertinent question whether an Admiral would be called a "leading personnel operator".
Having said that, I can see the force of the First Lord's observations to-day. I should greatly prefer, for instance, "Board of Admiralty" to "Admiralty

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Board", but it would have the disadvantage, such as it is, of being slightly misleading, if we consider how very different its functions are from those of the new Navy Board. I am, however, very much impressed by the fact that all the sailors and ex-sailors who have spoken feel very strongly that the name "Admiralty" should be retained. I rather agree with two of the speeches that have been made from the Front Bench opposite, that there are no great demands of logic either way, and I think that there are some advantages in supporting this Amendment, which will at least ensure that this important question is considered in another place.
LORD ALPORT: May I add very shortly to what noble Lords have said with regard to the value of the Amendment before the House? I speak completely objectively, having had no connection whatever with the Navy in the past. I am sure it is a misconception on the part of the noble Earl the First Lord, when he believes that there may be some feeling of distinction between the Navy and the other two Services if the Admiralty Board is entitled to retain its old name whereas the Boards controlling the other two Services are not. The Army, if I may speak for them in a very modest way indeed, have never, I think, felt any sense of jealousy of the special position occupied by the Navy among the Services of the Crown. Indeed, we have always been proud of that and have derived some advantage from it, because I remember that at the War Office we knew that if we could get an allowance agreed to on behalf of naval officers it was the best argument we could advance for obtaining the extension to Army officers as well.
Therefore, on these grounds, I think, there are strong arguments in support of this Amendment. Indeed, it follows an institutional principle of British life. We have on many occasions faced changing functions among our institutions, but have always maintained a continuity of value in our public life by maintaining old designations and names. Frankly, I see no reason at all why it should not be done in this case, and I hope that the Minister will accept it and that the House will support this Amendment.
LORD SOMERS: May I ask my noble friend Lord Jellicoe why he does not go the whole way and call this House the Lords Board?
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: May I say one or two words? I am glad that my noble friend Lord Conesford drew attention to the appalling re-naming of certain offices which took place during my period of office. When I found it on the Paper I was no less appalled at this than he was. But it demonstrates that sometimes naval officers are not wholly wise in the selection of terminology of certain high offices. I will only say to the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, that I do not think it is simply a question of nostalgia; it is not simply this point. The name "Admiralty" is known all over the world. You would miss something which would never be replaced.
I do not know—and, as a matter of fact, none of us knows—just what they want these Boards to do. We do not know whether they are a false prop to the Services, or whether, in fact, there is a genuine determination to have some decentralisation of this enormous organisation. I hope it is the latter; but if it is the latter then they want to have all the fortified strength that they can. I hope sincerely that the noble Earl will think about this. There was the suggestion that the Admiralty Board might draw allegiance to itself and take allegiance away from, perhaps, the new principle on which the pentapod is being developed. I do not know whether this is true: I am much more concerned about the outward appearance of this great Department. We do not want to do anything to make the task of the Minister of Defence more difficult than it will be. I believe that this Amendment will help, rather than make it more difficult.
4.2 p.m.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: Roses, they say, smell much the same however you label them. This Amendment has been put forward by a group of noble Lords whose opinions, especially on naval matters, are always listened to by your Lordships with great attention. They support their argument by speaking of tradition and morale; and those are both things which we all value greatly; certainly I would claim to do

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so. They put forward their plea on behalf of the Royal Navy. It does not matter what profession or Service one comes from, I am sure every man and woman in this House and outside has real pride and love for the Royal Navy and would wish to do anything within reason that was asked for on behalf of that Service. So, for anybody to stand up this afternoon and resist this Amendment takes, shall I say, a good deal of courage. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Somers, say that anybody who did that must be mentally retarded; and that may be the trouble with me. Certainly I feel that it is a brave thing to do, in the tenor of this debate at the moment, particularly coming from me, a mere landlubbing "pongo". But I would say this, in extenuation of my crime: that I would take exactly the same view if it had been a question relating to an Amendment to retain the title of the Army Council.
I have heard it said this afternoon that one should not mind about the disappearance of the title of the Army Council. That is as may be. It is a point on which there might be two opinions. But I am not putting forward my view as a soldier. I have not been in communication with any soldiers on the subject: nor am I aware that there is any jealousy on the part of the soldiers towards this Amendment. I doubt if there is. I have been told—it is only a rumour and no more, and I hope I am in order in saying this—that the proposal for retention of the title of the First Sea Lord came from the soldiers. I do not think there is any jealousy on the part of the soldiers towards this Amendment, but I feel bound to speak against it, and I am encouraged in my reckless path by the fact that the noble Earl the First Lord—and a Jellicoe—has spoken against it. He has done what I think was extremely necessary to do; that is, to remind your Lordships what this Bill is about. He has done it, so I need not do so; but I ask the Committee to bear in mind the wisdom of his words on what this Bill is about.
The fact is that the conditions of war have changed fundamentally since the last war was fought; and there are many people who do not seem to appreciate that point. What was right in the last war is not necessarily right now. In this connection I am aware that I am speak-
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ing against something that was said by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, during the debate on Second Reading; but I feel very strongly that if there has been a complete change in the conditions of war then one must be careful about pressing for the retention of things of the past simply on the grounds that they worked well in the past. We need a change in organisation and, as the White Paper says, we need
"an organisation in which defence rather than single Service considerations would be paramount".
That is something new. Hitherto we have had soldiers, sailors and airmen each arguing from the point of view of his own Service and hoping to arrive at a compromise.
We want a complete change of organisation; and the Committee will agree that what is more important is that we need a change in mentality; that is what is involved. Keep former names and you will run the risk of keeping the former mentality. This was a good mentality in its day; but we need a change, and we need to show that we have made a change, and we need all to see that a change has been made. That is why, it seems to me, it is right to change the name. We all hate to break with tradition; we are a people greatly attached to our traditions; and those surrounding the Royal Navy are among the strongest and dearest of all. But there comes a time in history when one has to be careful about traditions, when one can become a prisoner of traditions, when for the sake of tradition one resists necessary changes. I think we have to be careful about that. There come times when one should break with tradition and endeavour to build up a new one. I think this is one of those times.
It has been argued by many noble Lords this afternoon that the Amendment is right for the sake of morale. I have said before that I do not want to underestimate the importance and value of morale; but whose morale are we thinking about? I have not had as close contacts with senior officers in the Royal Navy as some of those who have supported this Amendment have had; but I am not without some contacts, and I listened without surprise to the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, when he told us that he did not think there was any great enthusiasm for the Amendment

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among those officers. That confirms what I have heard. Indeed, I have heard it said that they do not care about it too much, not because they fear jealousy from the other Services, but because they do not want to give the appearance that the Royal Navy are "dragging their feet" over this new organisation and over the great changes that it will imply. As to the officers and ratings of the Royal Navy and their morale, I find it difficult to believe they will fight their ships less skilfully and less bravely because the focus of their loyalty is a Navy Board instead of an Admiralty Board. I find it difficult to believe that it will make that difference in battle; and, after all, that is what loyalty is about. The only test of loyalty that is worth while is what happens in battle, and I find it difficult to believe that it will make that difference.
The Government have already made a number of concessions on this Bill. A long time ago, when the Bill was being drawn up, they agreed that the First Sea Lord should retain his title. Although the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was to drop his rather grandiloquent title, the First Sea Lord was to retain his. That has been accepted, and good luck to him! Then, when this Bill was under discussion in another place, the Government agreed that the titles of the three Ministers who are to have special responsibilities towards the three Services should be modified in some way to increase their status, a concession which undoubtedly gave great pleasure to that body of opinion which, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, rightly said, exists and which does not really accept the rightness of having a single political department in charge of defence. It gave great heart to those people. The Government made these concessions, but I, for one, hope that the Government will now draw a line to concessions of this sort, which seem unimportant in themselves, which are urged upon us with arguments that, as it were, touch the heartstrings, that bring back nostalgic memories and touch our pride, yet which are really unsound in themselves. I hope that the Government will draw the line, or they will end up with a Bill that does not mean very much.
LORD KENNET: Only two reasons have been adduced against this Amendment: first, that it might make the Army and the Air Force jealous—and this point has not been supported by noble Lords associated with those Services; and, secondly, that when demoting an organisation, as this Bill proposes to do in the case of the Navy Board or Board of the Admiralty, it is wrong to keep the same name. You must change it, in order to rub it in. I would remind the House that various other organs in our history have been demoted over the years. The Monarchy was sharply demoted in the 17th century, and we did not find it necessary to re-christen the King "the hereditary President." This House itself, at the beginning of this century, was sharply demoted, and we did not find it necessary to re-christen it the Board of Parliamentary Revision. I think that, once we begin with this principle that when we move anybody down one in the scale of power, we must give them a new name, we shall never get anywhere and may, indeed, make future such moves difficult.
LORD FORBES: In view of the feelings of the House, may I ask the Government to make a tactical withdrawal, which would not be regarded as a retreat?
4.13 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CARRINGTON): I have listened with great interest to the debate on the Amendment moved by my noble friends behind me, and I have listened with sympathy to what they have said, since I know very well that they have moved this Amendment with the idea of preserving and continuing the important and historic title, "Board of Admiralty" or "Admiralty Board" which is held in such high esteem. I think that they have made a formidable case. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I intervene for a short time, but since we have heard from the First Lord of the Admiralty, and from all available ex-First Lords, I think it right that I should not remain silent, lest it be thought that I was at variance with my noble friend the present First Lord. I had the honour to be First Lord of the Admiralty for four years, and there can be no-one, not even the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition, who is prouder than I am of his connection with the Royal Navy or

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more determined to see its tradition and heritage maintained. I hope, therefore, that my noble friends who have promoted this Amendment will acquit me of any motive other than to serve the Royal Navy if I say one or two things on the other side of the case.
My noble friend the First Lord has explained that the Board of Admiralty is really the Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom for the time being or the Commissioners of the Board for the time being for executing the office of the High Admiral. There is a distinction, as he has said, between the Board of Admiralty and the term, "Admiralty". This ancient and honourable body is greatly respected, but I confess to having doubts whether my noble friend Lord. Teynham and others are right when they suggest that the Board of Admiralty has ever been, or ever can be, the focus of loyalty in the Royal Navy. Certainly, my experience has been rather more like that of Lord Fisher, who thought that the average officer and rating might greatly have respected some of the individuals on the Board of Admiralty, but that the Board of Admiralty itself was generally regarded as a rather remote body of men, who made irrevocable decisions based on what was considered the most inadequate and out-of-date evidence, long after decisions had to be taken and months after they ceased to have any relevance. This may be rather a harsh view, and I do not go along with it; but I do not believe that the change of term from Admiralty to Navy Board would have much effect on the uniformed members of the Royal Navy. I think that their loyalties go much deeper than that.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge, that the real crux of the matter seems to be that it was decided by the Government, with the agreement, I think, of most competent observers—certainly of noble Lords on this side of the House, and I think also of more noble Lords on the other side than might at first be generally supposed—that the time had come to reorganise our de fence set-up. It was felt that, now that the Services were irrevocably joined together, the separateness of their organisation was a hindrance rather than a help. And, as my noble friend reminded your Lordships,
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this Bill provides for a single unified Department in place of the four Ministries that now exist, with a Secretary of State to be in charge of the three Services. The Defence Council will take over largely the duties of the Board of Admiralty and of the Army and Air Councils.
These are far-reaching changes. The Admiralty, as we now know it, will disappear, and an entirely new outlook will be necessary among those who work in the Service Departments and will now find themselves working in one new Defence Department. I do not know—I think that it is arguable—whether this drastic change should be recognised by a change of title, and I am not sure that the name "Admiralty Board" should be kept just for the sake of retaining the word "Admiralty". Because, like my noble friend Lord Conesford, I am not sure that I like the suggestion for "Admiralty Board" better than "Navy Board". But if your Lordships insist upon this Amendment, why should not the other two Services ask that their previous titles be reinstated? If that were to happen I think that there would be a danger that the purpose of this reorganisation would be forgotten and that once again the Services would tend to revert to their old independence.
I remember that Lord Fisher, who has already been mentioned by the First Lord, once described the Board of Admiralty in the following terms:
"That mysterious body, the Board of Admiralty, without a body to be kicked or a soul to be damned. Admirals and all are involuntarily compelled to an obedience to and a boundless faith in that mysterious force above them, so ubiquitous that while regulating the length of a shoelace at Portsmouth, it castigates the Admiral of a distant Fleet, reminding one of the elephant's trunk, which can as easily pick up a pin as tear up an oak tree by its roots."
I wonder whether the Board of Admiralty, with all its historic connections and its great associations with our history, when it ceases to exist, when it loses its power and becomes, to all intents and purposes, a shadow of its former self—I wonder whether we should not rather see it disappear and start again, with a new, yet ancient and honourable title.
Those are the arguments on the other side. But I think, having listened to what your Lordships have said, there is

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no doubt that the majority of the Committee feel that the word "Admiralty" should be retained in some way or another. I think, as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said, that if we went to a Division the Government would be beaten. I know that my noble friend the First Lord would be happy to have conversations with the Minister of Defence between now and the next stage of the Bill to see whether anything can be done to meet the point of view which your Lordships have expressed, and I wonder whether my noble friend who moved this Amendment would consider withdrawing it on the Committee stage. I cannot say that anything can be done, because I have not the authority or power to do so. But I can represent, as I will, and as I know my noble friend the First Lord will, the sense of opinion of your Lordships in Committee about this matter. If my noble friend will withdraw this Amendment, I will most certainly do that.
LORD SILKIN: I hope that the Amendment will not be withdrawn. I think the noble Earl will be strengthened in his representations, when he makes them, if he has the feeling of this Committee behind him. At present, all he can say is that he has heard a number of speeches. I think he ought to have the decision of the Committee, and then he can go back and will be in a much stronger position to make representations to his right honourable friend.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I hope that my noble friend will accede to what the Leader of the House has suggested. I have seldom known an appeal of that kind made by any Leader of the House to be rejected by the Mover of an Amendment of any Party. When the appeal is made by a Leader in whom we have such confidence and for whom we have such affection, I think it would be very odd for this Committee not to accede to it. I would just add this. I am not going to argue the merits of this for one moment (I said a few things on the last occasion), but I think that the argument is pretty nicely balanced. I feel—and I appeal to Members opposite, and those who have been Ministers—that it is really an impossible position for a Minister who is not the Minister in supreme charge of a particular
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measure to take a critical decision immediately in Committee. We have always recognised that where the leading Minister is here, then the thing is put to him, and, in my experience, on both sides no Minister in that position has ever failed to give a firm decision. But neither the First Lord nor, as he said, the Leader of the House is in that position in regard to this Bill. We know that there will be perfectly sincere representations made. After all, we all turn up here, and it is just as easy for us to vote next week as it is to vote to-day. I think it would be a reasonable thing for my noble friend to withdraw the Amendment now and to let it come back to us on the next stage of the Bill.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Before any decision is taken in this matter, I may say that I appreciate the spirit in which the noble Lord, the Leader of the House, has put up his proposition that he would have his Government reconsider this matter in the light of the debate to-day, but it is the province of the mover of the Amendment to say whether or not he will withdraw. I do not think I have ever been in a debate in your Lordships' House where the majority feeling has been more adequately expressed than it has been this afternoon. We have no guarantee at the moment from the Leader of the House that the will of the Committee as expressed this afternoon will be accepted. I think the noble and gallant Lord who moved the Amendment will have to consider this. I hope, too, that before withdrawing the Amendment he will consider that, in any case, we should be notified beforehand that the Amendment will be put down again on Report, so that those who have supported it today may reassemble and vote on it at that stage I think it would have been much better and wiser for the Leader of the House to accept the view of the Committee and then take the case to his Government.
LORD SILKIN: Can we have an assurance that there will be a Report stage?
THE EARL OF SWINTON: It can be done on Third Reading.
LORD CARRINGTON: As the noble Earl says, it can be done on Third

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Reading. I may say that, in saying what I have said, I have no intention of trying to outsmart noble Lords on the other side. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is not suggesting that.
LORD SILKIN: No.
LORD CARRINGTON: Of course, there will be the opportunity to divide. I should have thought, from the point of view of the noble Lord who moved the Amendment, that if the Government were prepared to accept the Amendment (I can make no promise, but I will ask my right honourable friend to reconsider it) there would perhaps be more chance of his getting his way.
LORD TEYNHAM: I appreciate very much the views which have been put by the First Lord and by the noble Lord the Leader of the House, but I feel that I must have a strong recommendation from the Leader of the House to the Minister of Defence that this word "Admiralty" will be kept: otherwise I feel I must reserve the right to move the same Amendment on the Report stage. On that condition, I am quite willing to withdraw.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Consequential and transitional]:
4.27 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON LORD SHACKLETON moved, in subsection (6), after paragraph (a) to insert:
"(b) 'future service authority' means the Secretary of State charged with general responsibility for defence, the Defence Council, the Navy Board, the Army Board or the Air Force Board, if Her Majesty is pleased to make the arrangements described in section 1(1) of this Act."
The noble Lord said: I rise to move the Amendment standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Alexander of Hillsborough. The purpose of this Amendment is to find out what really are the Government's intentions (perhaps I might have the attention of the First Lord on this) in regard to the Joint Staff that are going to exist in the new Ministry of Defence. On this we have found it difficult to establish exactly what the Government are hoping to do. There is a great suspicion—and, indeed,
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it has been pressed strongly by noble Lords who have been critical of this particular Bill—that one of the chief results will be the establishment of an enormous machine, a Pentapod, filled with tens of thousands of staff officers, and that there will also be a duplication of some of these Services in the old War Office, Air Ministry and Board of Admiralty buildings.
The noble Earl the First Lord knows that, on the whole, I am in favour of the proposals in this Bill, and I am not debating the entire question which we dealt with on Second Reading. However, we have very little information, and I should like to draw the attention of the First Lord to what was said by Mr. Thorneycroft when this question was debated on a Motion on the White Paper. He then said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 682 (No. 159), col. 571]:
"The numbers will, I admit, be about 25,000 in the future"—
this is in regard to the headquarters—
"if we take all the Service Departments together. We shall have to study whether we can reduce staff, but the number will start at about the same. I attach importance to reductions of staff where they can be achieved."
Then he went on to say something which is not relevant to my main argument, but in fairness, I will quote it:
"But the savings there are nothing like as big as savings which could be secured if we get the operational requirements right and get real control over cost effectiveness studies, estimates and the rest."
I grant the force of that argument. It might be worth while seeing an increase in the size of the staffs if a gain in efficiency was going to result. But the Minister of Defence at that time indicated that he was hoping to get reductions of staff.
Let us now look at what has happened. We have to-day—and it is only a few minutes ago that I was able to get it—the Defence Estimates. I did not know they were published. I tried to get them in another place, but they did not have them. Obviously we are more efficient down here. We find that there is going to be a very big increase. The amount of money that will be spent under the Ministry of Defence's Central Vote on Headquarters and Outstations, goes up by £2 million. When we look at the

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actual numbers of headquarters organisation, we see that the Central Defence Staffs go up from 757 to 1,484, and the Defence Secretariat from 282 to 534. The Central Defence Scientific Staff goes up, and the Common Services go up from 39 to 445, making quite a considerable increase in the total salaries and wages. In the absence of all the Votes, it is not possible to make a direct comparison, but when we look at Vote 3 in the Army Vote on the Army Department Headquarters, where we should reasonably expect, as a result of these transfers, to see a reduction (and I would especially draw the First Lord's attention to this point) we see an increase. We find the same thing in regard to Air Force Department Headquarters.
I do not know whether these figures are as a result of increased pay, because I have not been able to break down the numbers, but the fact remains that, at a time when the Minister of Defence had initially said that he hoped he would see a reduction or, at least, that it would remain about the same, we see quite a big increase. It is possible to argue that there will be a big increase for a period of years, and that it will be subsequently reduced. But I would ask the Government to "come clean" on this, and not to start talking about possible savings when in fact there are going to be considerable increases.
The purpose of this Amendment is to establish what is going to result in regard to this matter. The Government may not have been able to answer these questions at an earlier stage, but the new Bill will be coming into force within a few weeks and it must now be possible to see the sort of pattern of organisation. Concern was expressed that when the joint operations centre was set up, there would be duplication in the Service Departments, and I would instance particularly the operational Departments. In fact, is the Air Ministry still going to retain its War Room? How would it operate? I think we ought to hear from the Government on this subject, and I hope we shall be able to get a satisfactory explanation of the increase which is already apparent from the Defence Estimates 1964–65. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 35, at end insert the said paragraph.—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD SHEPHERD: May I, in a few words, support my noble friend in this Amendment? He spoke of the figures which are now available in the Defence Estimates, and about the obvious increases there may be in Whitehall. Many of us have had experience in the Services. The noble Earl opposite well knows that headquarters over the years tend to grow. The noble Earl had service in the Middle East, during the War, and he may well remember that when the Eighth Army, as it then became, was desperately short of officers in the field, there was never any question of a reduction of the headquarters in Cairo.
When I was in Singapore last year, where we have a new set-up, an integrated headquarters, I expected to see a proper form of co-ordinated headquarters, with the various headquarters staffs of the three Services integrated. What in fact has happened? The noble Earl will know this to be true, because it is an Admiral who is Commander-in-Chief. The headquarters side of each of the Services has remained exactly as it was before we had this combined headquarters; they have remained basically the same. What has happened is that you have superimposed a new set-up over these three Services, with more officers, more men, more signals equipment and more transport.
We all support the bringing of the Services together, because we believe that this will, or should, bring efficiency. But I do not believe it is right that the numbers of our headquarters should grow, as we know they have grown, unless there is a very special reason for them to do so. If this Amendment were accepted, or at least the principle behind it, then where the numbers at headquarters grew above the figure which is suggested in the Amendment, the Secretary of State would have to make a case for it. I believe that in many instances within the Services these headquarters have grown without a case having to be made to the Minister responsible for that Service. They have grown little by little, without anybody appreciating it. We anticipate that this may be so.
This Amendment relates merely to the first two years. The first two years of the life of this headquarters will be

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important, because it is during that period that the principle (shall we call it?) will be established. The figures which the Ministry of Defence consider adequate for those two years I think will become the permanent establishment. I hope the Minister can give us some assurance on this matter.
LORD SHACKLETON: I should have made clear that I was speaking, with your Lordships' permission, to the whole of this group of Amendments, and not merely to the one that I moved.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAKRIDGE: Might I briefly support in principle what the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has said: namely, that the numbers we are likely to see in the new Defence Staff appear to be very great and are clearly due to the fact that the Government have chosen to work upon what one might call the principle of cohabitation rather than integration. As an immediate step, that may be a necessary or a tolerable thing to do. I myself have some doubt whether it is good to deal with this matter by an Amendment to this Bill. This is an enabling Bill and does not go into detail of what is to happen. That will be explained later, and it may be that a formal Amendment to this Bill on this subject is a rather heavy way of dealing with the point. But I think there is a case for asking the Government to tell us in which way they are proposing to go, and what steps they are going to take to reduce these swollen staffs to something that is more in tune with the revolution in organisation for which we are looking.
EARL JELLICOE: I feel that I should make it clear straight away that I am not at all opposed to what I think to be the principal objective behind this Amendment. The new Ministry of Defence will inevitably be a very large Ministry, and we all wish to prevent the leviathan from swelling still further, save for some very good reason. We are all too perfectly familiar with the operation of Parkinson's Law, and any of us who has any Service experience, as the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, pointed out, knows how quickly these things can grow unless one is quite determined from the start to keep the thing down to size.
That said, I should like to add that I tried to make it clear at Second Reading that it was wrong to assume that, by some
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mysterious process of growth, the number of staff in the new Ministry as at April 1 this year would be larger than the numbers of the four Ministries combined a year ago, at April 1, 1963. There is some very complicated arithmetic here and I think I should get into very great difficulty if I tried to explain it across the Floor of the House, but I should very much like the opportunity between now and Third Reading to explain what is in the Estimates by letter, if I may, to the noble Lords who have just spoken. But the position is this. I can renew the assurance that there is, in fact, going to be no overall increase over the 1963–64 figures, despite the appearances of the Estimates. What has happened is that the 1963–64 figures for each Service Department have been adjusted in order to simplify the comparison between the two years for each Department separately, and this gives the misleading impression that there has been an overall increase.
EARI ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Either there has or there has not.
EARL JELLICOE: In fact, there has not. I should like to explain this point in more detail. It is excessively complicated and one needs to be something of a senior wrangler to digest these particular figures. That is why they are not in the Estimates, despite the appearances.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Surely Government figures for Parliament ought not to be presented in a form that only a senior wrangler can understand? Why should they not be presented in the Paper in a form which speaks for itself?
EARL JELLICOE: I think the noble Earl, the Leader of the Opposition has a point there, if I may say so. That is for the present, but I can renew the assurance that there is not an overall increase. As for the future, I would merely wish to remind your Lordships that my right honourable friend made it clear in another place that, once the new Department is going, it will certainly be his aim to reduce staff and not to allow increases; and he believes this will be possible as a result of the greater efficiency due to improved business methods and also to some rationalisation. As your Lordships know, there is going to

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be some rationalisation—and it is written into the White Paper—across-the-board in certain areas. This has already been decided on. Headquarters Signals, Intelligence and Public Relations are three, and there are other possible areas. I would not wish to be tied down, but the kind of things concerned are lands and operations of motor transport of the various Services. There will be fields for economies which may be won here. That at least is the aim of my right honourable friend, and I can certainly confirm—and am glad to do so—that this is his very firm aim.
That said, I wonder whether I could briefly address myself to the Amendment itself. I know that it is in something of the nature of a probing Amendment, or I take it to be so, but I should like to say why it would be difficult to accept if it were more than a probing Amendment. In the first place, there is no precedent, so far as I know, for limiting in this way by Statute the numbers employed by specific Government Departments, and I do not believe that the fact that there is no precedent for this is a fluke. There is, in fact, a very good reason for this lack of a precedent: that it is surely right for the Government of the day to have freedom to adjust the size and shape of Government Departments to match changing circumstances.
I would have thought that principle applied with particular force to this particular Ministry which is likely to be faced with sudden emergencies. I do not think I need elaborate on what sort of sudden emergency, but I might merely say that I do not believe it to be a remote possibility, in the troubled circumstances of the world to-day, that we might be faced with a grave and sudden emergency abroad which necessitates an urgent increase in the number of our Central Defence Staff. Surely, in such an emergency your Lordships would not wish the freedom of action of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence to be fettered in the way proposed by the machinery in subsection (2) of the new clause. That emergency could take place in the first two years which this clause covers.
I would feel differently if there were not plenty of controls already. As your Lordships know, numbers of staff are
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controlled, in another place, through Estimates; that is, of course, a money control. Nevertheless, the Estimates show the related staff proposed in some detail and the scope for variation as a result is really pretty limited. Then there are the Departmental controls, and, last but not least, the Treasury control; and those of your Lordships who have tried to get staff increases through the eye of the Treasury needle know how effective that Treasury control can be. I do not wish to labour this particular point, but there are of course technical deficiencies in the particular Amendment; I would not wish to rest heavily on these deficiencies. I hope I have made it clear that I am certainly at one with noble Lords opposite in their desire to ensure that this new leviathan is kept down to size. More important, my right honourable friend is at one with them in that very firm objective. But I am not able to advise your Lordships to accept this particular technique of achieving that objective.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I am much obliged to the noble Earl for his reply to this Amendment. I am quite prepared to accept the charge that this may have been a probing Amendment, but I am quite sure that he understands the difficulty, in going into a Committee on a Bill of this nature, of getting an Amendment which could really secure the provisions you want. This is an enabling Bill and we are placed in a very difficult position if we want to put into words our exact objective. We felt that we were completely justified in putting down this Amendment in its three sections because of the nature of the statement originally justifying the Bill—the White Paper that explained to us what is going to happen in actual organisation and the distribution of powers and of accommodation. It was quite clear, for example, that instead of a Ministry of Defence being one of real co-ordination, it was to be turned into a unitary power of defence, housed in a special building, and was going to have at least about 25,000 people of one sort or another on its staff. It was also clear that in certain respects duplication was bound to take place.
I have always argued myself, as the first Minister of Defence in peace time, that it was never necessary to have a separate Chief of Staff advising the

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Minister. I did not need it, and the Secretary of State does not need it any more than I did then. You have your three Chiefs of Staff; they are there, they meet together and they decide who, for the particular year, is to be their chairman. I found no difficulty at all in doing the business in that way and, of course, of having the opportunity myself, whenever I desired, of taking the chair at the Chiefs of Staff Committee. There is no need for this extra work. I wonder how many are on the staff of the Chief of Staff. I have not the slightest idea at the present moment; I have not been able to look it up in detail. But when you come to the reorganisation of the civil as well as the military side, then the thing grows.
The noble Earl says: "Think of the difficulty; all those who have been in power in the past know how difficult it is; it is like getting it through the eye of a needle to get something through the Treasury". Is it? Did they not hear about Ferranti? Have they not heard about the enormous expenditure of £251 million in one certain Department, partly civil and partly war, air navigation. Wasted! This Government has been able to put money through the Treasury like a flowing millrace. And the Budget now is—I will not say double, but getting on for nearly double what it was twelve years ago. And this Defence Department comes along now with an Estimate this year of over £2,000 million. Is it difficult to get money through the Treasury? The record of the Government as a whole makes it appear that is quite a wrong assumption.
When you come to look at the detailed analysis as to how it would work, you will have in the Ministry of Defence not only a separate Chief Staff Officer, with his military and civil staff serving him, but in respect of every Department covered—that is, the Defence Science Department, and each of the three Service Departments—a duplication in the central office. That will include the three opposite numbers to the Permanent Secretary of the Department he is going to serve in the Central Ministry; Admiralty, War Ministry, Air Ministry—all three will have to have duplications of staff, at the very highest salaries, to do the job that still has to be done for them at the base in the Service Departments. Who is going to
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take the place in the actual central department of the present Accounts Officer? And you are going to duplicate him in the Ministry of Defence. Why? And you may rest assured that this experience, which I say will be expected to happen under the White Paper, will be repeated in other Departments as well. Therefore, we had to fall back upon this method, in which I was greatly assisted by my noble friend.
We talked over the difficulty of bringing it up on this Bill—how we could have a probing Amendment on an enabling Bill, to make sure that this was properly discussed, and that there should be some check in the Houses of Parliament upon how money is unnecessarily wasted by the duplication of work. And it would not be the first time that a so-called amalgamation had merely become the building of an empire: you need only look at big business for that. There seems to be no special reason for the Government, which has to go to the taxpayer for all its money, to be put in the position of the take-over bidder. You should have a very much better idea of things like that. There will not be any chance for the Government to have resources like some take-over bidders, who will perhaps sell out buildings and land they take over and then lease them back to the shareholders. You cannot do that in Government finance, but you can go on building an empire of people you have to pay for. And you create it and push it up until you have a cost account with the actual amount of defence rendered out of all proportion to common sense.
Here we are now, with the three Services very much reduced. This was the settled pattern under the Ministry of Defence in 1957; it was going to show an immediate economy a year afterwards of £100 million, merely by wiping out National Service and by substituting for our general defence in the main nuclear power. You would be able, we were told, to get along nicely on a voluntary basis in the three Services. What has happened? Can the Government explain it to us to-night? What was the Budget in 1957? Ask your secretaries to tell you now. And ask what the Budget is going to be in the current year—£2,000 million-

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plus. And we are asked to approve an organisation now which would undoubtedly unnecessarily increase the personnel, especially at the top, in dealing with management of the new system. I hope that, unless we get a better explanation than we have had yet from the noble Earl, we may persuade enough Members of the Committee to show their opprobrium in the Division Lobby. I do not want to divide, but unless we get something better, I think we ought to do that.
LORD SHACKLETON: May I press the noble Earl the First Lord to overcome these mathematical difficulties? It is, of course, always possible in a Defence Estimate or any similar document to put simple notes to explain figures which are difficult to understand. But I cannot understand how it is that the Ministry of Defence, the central part, has increased in terms of senior staff by, say, 40 people, and yet for the senior staff at Air Force Department headquarters we still find exactly the same number of Air Commodores—or, rather, there is one Air Commodore less, one Air Vice-Marshal less; but there are still five Air Marshals and two Air Chief Marshals. Surely some have moved over; and if they have not, where does the Defence Staff of the new headquarters come from? Have they been taken from other units, from Service units, or have they had to create new posts of Air or Flag rank to fill these posts? This is why one is so concerned about this set-up. We should have no desire to press this Amendment to a Division if we felt that the Government could explain this point. It may be necessary. Let them say, "Yes, there is going to be an increase, for the following reasons". But here we have figures which suggest that there is an increase, and I should have thought it was possible to explain the reason.
What worries us is that the Air Ministry (and they may have very understandable reasons) maintain a war room, Assistant Chief of Staff of Air Operations with all his directorates; and, in addition, there is to be a new central headquarters doing the same sort of thing. This is where we get very technical again. Is the line of communication going to be through the Service
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Department headquarters, or will it go straight to Command? It does suggest that this particular reorganisation—and I am grateful for the views of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Oakridge—is a bit of a paper tiger. They have produced something which is going to produce greater efficiency, and we hope economies, and all that is happening is that we are getting the principle of cohabitation instead of real integration. I think the Government ought to tell us clearly how they are doing it.
5.0 p.m.
EARL JELLICOE: I should like again to compliment noble Lords opposite on the ingenuity with which they have framed their probing Amendment and also the persistence with which they have probed. On the question of the total staffs I trust that the noble Lord will accept the assurance I have given him, that there is not going to be a net increase. I have made it perfectly clear that I should be willing to go over the figures with him and noble Lords opposite in detail. If they are not satisfied, there is no reason at all, so far as I know, why they should not put this Amendment down again at our next stage. I assure them that I will communicate with them in advance of that, although there will be only a short time.
That said, I should like to speak on a couple of points which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has just mentioned. I was not certain of the precise part of the Estimates which he was quoting, but I think the explanation for what he was saying lies in the first sentence of paragraph 32 of the White Paper:
"The Naval, General and Air Staffs, with the joint Service staffs of the present Ministry of Defence, will together constitute the Defence Staff."
Thus, for instance (transferring it to the Navy), the present Vice-Chief of the Naval staff, or the present First Sea Lord, will be a member of the joint Service unified staff, but he will also be the single Service channel and will retain that single Service responsibility. Therefore, to answer the second specific question which the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, put to me, so far as operational control is concerned (I speak subject to correction, but I am virtually certain that what I am saying is right), on single Service matters, when they

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affect merely one Service, the operational chain of command will be from that Service to the field. Where it is a joint Service matter, then it will go out through the joint Staff, but the single Service chain of command will still remain for single Service matters.
With regard to the points which the noble Earl the Leader of the Opposition has made, may I just take up one or two which are in my mind at present? He has criticised the retention of the Chief of the Defence Staff in the new set-up. I have, in fact, written to him to-day to explain the Government's intentions in this particular field. I would say merely that, if that is a criticism, it is of course a criticism of the existing set-up. There is at the present time, alongside and over the three Chiefs of Staff, an existing Chief of Defence Staff. This is not an augmentation or increase in staff.
The noble Earl also referred to, and slightly pulled my leg on what I have said about, difficulties of getting increases through the Treasury. There I was talking about staff increases. I am sure that, as Minister responsible in his time for so many Departments, he will agree with me how difficult it is to get the Treasury to assent to staff increases. I was limiting myself quite specifically to staff increases when I was replying to that question.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I think that if I totted up the increase in the staff in the Ministry of Defence since 1950 the figure would be quite astonishing.
EARL JELLICOE: I shall be glad to look into that. The noble Earl also asked me who I thought would exercise the financial control—who would take the place of the present accounting officer in the present Service Ministries. As is pointed out in the White Paper, it is clear that there will be a separate Vote for each particular Department. The Navy Department of the Ministry of Defence will have a Vote, and the accounting officer for that Vote will be the Second Permanent Under-Secretary for the Royal Navy. He will be the successor to the present Secretary to the Admiralty. That is the position. So far as the particular Service is concerned. I do not think that this will
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make a vast change from the present position.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: Do I understand, taking the Admiralty as an example, that all the accounts every year will have to be gone through primarily in the Ministry of Defence as such, and not in the Service Department, whatever that service may be called in the Naval sphere? Is the basic work of the accounting officer to be within the Service Department? How otherwise will the accounting officer in the Ministry of Defence be able to deal with the whole of the accounts? As I understand it, there is a duplication there which has not so far been explained in the speech of the noble Earl.
EARL JELLICOE: I think these would be brought together in the Defence Secretariat; but in the preparation of the Vote for the particular Service and the particular Department, the Second Permanent Under-Secretary concerned will be responsible, as I understand it, ab initio.
I appreciate the reasons why noble Lords have put down this particular Amendment, but I would ask them, whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the answer which I have given, not to press it, because if they do, I feel bound to say that I shall have to rehearse to your Lordships all the technical limitations which attach to it. I would assure noble Lords opposite that, whatever they may feel on this question of staff economy, I have sought to explain that there is not going to be a net increase. I hope that they will not press this particular Amendment, which is, technically, highly deficient.
5.7 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: I do not want to prolong this debate. I am as well aware as is the noble Earl of the technical deficiencies of this Amendment. It is, however, not unusual to have an Amendment of this kind in order to raise a particular matter. I reckon now that our case is a good deal better than I thought it was when we started. I think it is quite unforgivable to have a matter of this kind in such a state of obscurity that it is not possible to put it before Parliament. It is a mere coincidence that the Defence Estimates

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came out to-day and that I was able to find evidence of what I suspected. I admit that there are various explanations (such as "deduct ten officers by March, 1965"), but there is no attempt to pull the facts together in the statement on Defence.
I do not want to go into a defence debate, because we shall be coming to the Defence Estimates. Unless the Government can give us more information we are going to be in grave difficulties. Parliamentary control will slide away completely—we know that Treasury control works only in a certain way, and then, in two years' time, the Public Accounts Committee will have something nasty to say and it will be another Government who will get the blame for it. In the circumstances, I do not feel inclined to withdraw the Amendment.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: We will not withdraw at the moment. What I am perturbed about is that I am not getting clear answers. May I start again on the question of the Accounting Officer? Is it to be understood from what the noble Earl said that each present Permanent Under-Secretary to the Service departments will personally be transferred to the Ministry of Defence in order to act as the principal Accounting Officer for the Service he has left as a Permanent Under-Secretary? Is that the position? Otherwise, who is, what will his rank be, and what will his duties cover? Will they include his being an Accounting Officer, and will he in each of the Service departments take the place of the officer who has left? I am bound to come to the conclusion from the White Paper that there will be duplication. I have had no clear answer on this. If I do net get a clear answer, then we ought
to divide the Committee, not on the merits of the Amendment before us, but on the fact that we have not got this matter cleared up.
EARL JELLICOE: I find myself in some difficulty here, because it seems to me that the general framework is perfectly clearly explained in the White Paper.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: I have read it.
EARL JELLICOE: I am sure the noble Earl has read it, but I would assure your Lordships that paragraph 59 says:
"The Permanent Under-Secretary of State will be responsible for co-ordinating the views of military, scientific, and civil administrative staffs. In this he will be assisted by the Second Permanent Under-Secretary of State (Defence Secretariat) and by the appointment of a Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Programmes and Budget). The latter will control a part of the Defence Secretariat which will be responsible for the full scope and content of the defence programme and the Defence Budget."
The Second Permanent Under-Secretary for each of the three Services will work closely with the Deputy Under-Secretary of State (Programmes and Budget) in drawing up that part which specifically concerns him and will be the Accounting Officer for that specific Service. It does not seem to me that this involves a duplication.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: It does.
EARL JELLICOE: I find it difficult to follow the noble Earl here.
5.13 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 4) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents 26; Not-Contents 60.

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Hobson, L.

Shepherd, L.

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Inman, L.

Silkin, L.

Burden, L. [Teller.]

Kennet, L.

Summerskill, B.

Champion, L. [Teller.]

Latham, L.

Taylor, L.

Chorley, L.

Lindgren, L.

Walston, L.

Douglas of Barloch, L.

Morrison, L.

Williams, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Rusholme, L.

Williamson, L.

Gardiner, L.

St. Davids, V.

Willis, L.

Henderson, L.

Shackleton, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Albemarle, E.

Derwent, L.

Jellicoe, E.

Allerton, L.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Lansdowne, M.

Ampthill, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Lothian, M.

Atholl, D.

Dundee, E.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Auckland, L.

Ebbisham, L.

Merrivale, L.

Bessborough, E.

Falkland, V.

Molson, L.

Blakenham, V.

Ferrers, E.

Newton, L.

Bossom, L.

Forbes, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Boston, L.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Sandford, L.

Braye, L.

Fortescue, E.

Sandwich, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Selkirk, E.

Buccleuch and Queensberry, D.

Gosford, E.

Somers, L.

Carrington, L.

Greenway, L.

Spens, L.

Chesham, L.

Grenfell, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Hanworth, V.

Suffield, L.

Conesford, L.

Hastings, L.

Swinton, E.

Craigton, L.

Hawke, L.

Teynham, L.

Crathorne, L.

Hereford, V.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Daventry, V.

Horsbrugh, B.

Vestey, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Ingleby, V.

Wynford, L.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.

BRITISH NATIONALITY BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
SALMON AND FRESHWATER FISHERIES ACT, 1923, AMENDMENT BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
FIREWORKS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read la, and to be printed.

DIVORCE (SCOTLAND) BILL [H.L.]
5.25 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, this Bill deals with some rather fine points of divorce law and, I am afraid, is a very different matter from the subject that has just been before your Lordships. As is probably known to the House, the law of divorce in Scotland has always proceeded upon rather different lines from that in England and has been dealt with by
812
separate legislation. For the same reason, the Report of the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce, which is contained in the White Paper Cmd. 9678, presented in March, 1956, contains separate recommendations for Scotland from those which it made for England.
The Bill to which I am asking your Lordships to give a Second Reading this afternoon puts into effect some of the most important recommendations which the Royal Commission made for the reform of the law in Scotland—that is to say, the most important that have not already found their way into law by one means or another. The Bill contains a number of instances where the law in Scotland is being brought into line with that already existing South of the Border. There are two or three reforms which are peculiar to Scots law, dealing with matters which do not arise under English law but which, nevertheless, will bring Scots law very much into line with that of England; and there is one innovation which was recommended by the Royal Commission both for Scotland and for England but has not yet arrived in this country. I think, however, that it is merely an extension of a principle which is already accepted on both sides of the Border, and I hope, therefore, that it will not be objectionable from that point of view. As this Bill is being introduced into your Lordships' House and the matter is technical and complicated, I think I should be doing wrong if I did not explain as quickly as I can, but nevertheless, I hope, with a sufficient amount of detail, the provisions of this Bill.

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My Lords, Clause 1 is the equivalent of Section 1 of the Matrimonial Causes Act of last year which your Lordships passed; and, in fact, as the drafting of the clause shows, in Scotland it is really more a matter for the removal of doubt than a substantive change in the law. The law at the moment is that if a spouse commits a matrimonial offence and the other party to the marriage, knowing of the offence, later has sexual intercourse with the offending spouse, then there is a presumption raised in law that the innocent spouse has condoned the offence; and condonation is a bar to divorce. But as the law stands at present, the strength of the presumption is thought to be different according to whether it is the husband or the wife who is concerned. If it is the husband who resumes intercourse in this way with an offending wife, the presumption that he has condoned the offence is at the moment irrebuttable. If, however, it is the wife who is condoning or might be condoning the husband, she can rebut this presumption by saying that the act did not in all the circumstances amount to the full forgiveness and reinstatement which condonation involves. I think that this is an unjust and out-of-date distinction. It has been removed in England, and Clause 1 allows to the husband the same privilege as the wife at present has, to rebut the presumption of condonation, if he can, by evidence before a court.
Clause 2 is the equivalent of Section 2 of the same Matrimonial Causes Act of last year. Fourteen members of the Royal Commission, and your Lordships' House and Parliament in the English Act last year, thought that there should be a trial period of the two parties to a marriage living together after an innocent spouse has discovered that her partner has committed a matrimonial offence, and that this trial period might have the effect of saving the marriage. The difficulty of such a trial period at the moment is that if it takes place it might very well make subsequent divorce impossible, because of the same doctrine of condonation about which I have already spoken; that is, in the case of cruelty or adultery. In a case where desertion might be pleaded later a trial resumption of marriage would, of course, start the
814
three-year period of desertion running all over again.
This clause gets out of these difficulties by allowing one genuine period of three months—not one month as the Royal Commission recommended, but three months, as occurs in the English Act—during which the spouses may try to salvage their marriage, and this trial period will be without prejudice to any subsequent divorce for adultery, cruelty or desertion if the experiment fails. There is one addition that I think ought to be made to this clause of the Bill, because if your Lordships approve the new ground of divorce which occurs in Clause 4(1)(b)—that is to say, intolerable conduct—then I think that a trial period in these cases ought also to be allowed. It is my intention, if this Bill is given a Second Reading, to move the necessary Amendment at the next stage to allow for that.
My Lords, Clause 3 raises a purely Scottish point, but if the clause is passed into law it will bring the Scottish law into line with that in England. In Scotland, in order to get a divorce for desertion, a pursuer (that is the petitioner, in English terms) has to show that he or she has been willing to have the defender (the respondent) back throughout the whole period of the three years upon which he or she is relying as constituting the period of desertion. This is an historical legacy, but I think that not only is it now unfair but it leads in many cases to what might technically be perjury—and I shall give your Lordships an example of each of those instances.
It is unfair in the sort of case, which I believe is one on record, where a wife deserted her husband and within the three years of the desertion period went to America, where she got a divorce and remarried. The husband, who for some reason sued in desertion, was asked whether he was prepared to have his wife back throughout that three-year period, and he said, honestly, that he was not; that when she remarried that was the end of his intention to have her back. In that case the court had no alternative but to refuse his decree. The case where something very near perjury arises is the sort of case where the wife is asked by her counsel for what period she was prepared to have her husband back, and she replies, "Until

815
my lawyer told me that the three years was up". My Lords, neither of those can be good public policy, and I think that it is right that the opportunity for that sort of situation should be removed from the law. But your Lordships will note that the clause does provide that a pursuer will not succeed in getting a divorce, even now, if a genuine and reasonable offer by the defender to return has been refused.
Clause 4 deals with two new grounds for divorce. The first is wilful refusal to consummate the marriage, and the second is a doctrine which is almost equivalent to the English doctrine of constructive desertion. The first introduces for the first time in Scotland wilful refusal to consummate the marriage as a ground for divorce, and I think very little need be said about this. It is a ground for nullity in England, but I think it is more logical that it should be a ground for divorce, if we are tidying up the law, because, of course, it does depend upon an active course of conduct by the defender in such cases.
My Lords, the second part of this clause—subsection (1)(b) and subsections (2) and (3)—introduces intolerable conduct as a new ground for divorce. As I said, I think the effect will be very much the same as the present Ground in England of constructive desertion, but the machinery is a little different. I am not quite certain that the wording here is quite right, and it may be that here too some Amendments will have to be put down at the Committee stage. But the elements of this new ground for divorce, as your Lordships will see, are in the clause itself. First of all, the intolerable conduct—this is subsection (3)—is
"… conduct of a grave and weighty nature on the part of one spouse, which is such that the other spouse cannot in the face of it reasonably be expected to continue to adhere"—
which is the Scottish term for "live together". There is a ground for divorce if there has been such intolerable conduct on the part of the defender in consequence of which the pursuer has refused to adhere to the defender, and has persisted in that refusal for a period of not less than three years.
It is intended to read this clause with Clause 7(2), which provides that mental
816
disorder or lack of malicious intent on the part of the spouse guilty of the intolerable conduct shall not be a defence. I shall come on to that clause later, because it is a very important one. Your Lordships will see that there is a further provision in subsection (2) which is a safeguard in cases where a genuine offer to amend the offending conduct has been made, because, if this has been unreasonably refused, it can be a defence to an action raised under this particular subsection.
There are two criticisms that I think might be made of this provision. The first is that it is not right to exclude as a defence the whole of the mental disorder or unusual temperament on the part of the defender in quite the general way that it has been in Clause 7(2), and that this might be rather more narrowly defined in the Bill, for reasons which I think I can explain to your Lordships later. The second criticism possible is that the definition in subsection (3), where the word "reasonably" occurs, does not altogether make it clear that where the intolerable conduct upon which the pursuer relies has been provoked by the pursuer himself, then he should not be able to rely on his own provocation to found a divorce. It is intended that the drafting should cover this by the use of the word "reasonably" in subsection (3), but it may be that it ought to be made more explicit.
Equally, my Lords, there is the corollary that in subsection (2) there does not appear to be very clear mention that, in the case of the pursuer who is in receipt of an offer by the defender to amend his ways, there is the need that he, too, should be under a requirement to amend any provocation of which he himself has been guilty. It is covered, I think, by the word "unreasonably" in subsection (2), but if this is not altogether clear I intend to put it right at the Committee stage. It is rather a difficult point, and if your Lordships can assist in getting this drafting correct I should be extremely grateful.
Subsection (4) of Clause 4 brings in the ordinary property and aliment provisions which occur in all the other grounds for divorce under the Divorce (Scotland) Act, 1938. Clause 5 is the innovation of which I told your Lordships, and it provides another new ground for divorce—that is to say, where

817
"the defender is a person suffering from mental deficiency of such a nature that he has violent or dangerous propensities, and … there is no reasonable likelihood of his recovery from those propensities".
The rest of the clause contains safeguards for the defender, to see that he is not unjustly put upon in these circumstances, and also a substantial machinery provision.
I think, my Lords, that the exceptional hardship that this type of violent and permanent mental deficiency brings is so analogous to that arising from incurable insanity that the relief granted already in the latter case ought to be extended also as the Royal Commission recommended to cases of mental deficiency. I believe that very small numbers would be involved, in any event, although that is not necessarily a criterion. But I further think, my Lords, that this is very largely necessary only because of the greater accuracy in diagnosis of mental illness which exists nowadays, and it might well be that not long ago some of these people would have been considered insane rather than mentally deficient. My Lords, if there are questions on this clause I shall be very glad to answer them, but I think it is all quite clearly set out how the change is to work, and I hope that your Lordships will agree that it is a good innovation.
Clause 6 is also an attempt to bring Scottish law into line with the law South of the Border. The existing law in Scotland is that in a cruelty case the pursuer has to satisfy the court that at the time when the action is raised he or she needs protection from the defender. This view is inherent in the present law, because it was an essential element in the decree of separation á mensa et thoro which in turn, under Section 1(1)(c) of the Divorce (Scotland) Act, 1938, was made the foundation for divorce on the ground of cruelty; and therefore this doctrine has sifted through into the law of cruelty to-day. I think that in England, since the judgment of my noble and learned friend Lord Hodson in the case of Swan v. Swan in 1953, which is reported in the Law Reports, Probate Division, at page 258, the protection element in English law has now been so disapproved of that it will not be raised again.
818
It is true that that case has, I believe, been recently overruled on its substantive decision, but I do not think anybody doubts that in England the protective element at the time the action is raised is no longer a matter that is going to be taken into account. But, in Scotland this is not so; and as I understand it, the requirement for protection at the time that the action is raised is still something to which the law has regard. The reason for the change is, I think, one of policy. Where the defender has injured the pursuer's mental or physical health or has adopted conduct that has caused real apprehension of such injury, the pursuer should be able to rely on the past occurrence and not also show the need for present protection; particularly in cases where there is no need for present protection—in cases where the defender is under some form of restraint. In those cases, as the law at present stands, it is impossible to give a divorce on the grounds of cruelty because there is no need to do so for the present protection of the pursuer.
I think the protection doctrine may very properly remain as a cause for judicial separation in Scotland, as now; but the idea of bringing it in in cases of cruelty seems to me to be an instance of mixed thinking. I think cruelty grounds of divorce in Scotland should be shorn of this complication, as they have been South of the Border. I am not sure that this is not the most important of the aspects of the Bill, when one comes to look at Clause 7(2), because here, too, there is a further complication in the law of cruelty for divorce; and your Lordships will hear about that in a moment. If I have oversimplified this matter in some way it may be again that there is room for improvement; and your Lordships may be able to suggest a way in which I should define this simple idea in clearer and simpler terms. If so, I shall be glad to listen to them.
Clause 7(1) deals with another purely Scottish point. In Scotland, hitherto, desertion has been treated as a refusal by the deserting spouse to adhere to the innocent spouse. Your Lordships will remember that Clause 3 dealt with the innocent spouse's duty equally to adhere to the defending one, but this is the other way round. If, however, as the

819
law at present stands, the innocent spouse commits adultery during the period of desertion (three years) that ends the deserting spouse's duty of adherence to the innocent one. Thereafter, there is no possibility for the innocent one to get a decree on the grounds of further desertion. This bar operates, whether or not the deserting spouse knew of the innocent one's adultery, and, indeed, whether or not it affected his decision either to desert in the first place or to continue his desertion.
Subsection (1) of Clause 7 proposes to abolish this technical and, I think, obsolete rule; and it will make adultery a defence in future only where the defender can show that it was a cause of his original desertion or a cause of his continuance in desertion. I hope, therefore, that that will bring the matter up to date. I think the only other word I should say on that is that, when considering this matter, it should be borne in mind that in Scotland there is no such thing as a discretion statement. Consequently, the deserting spouse would not be likely to rely on the innocent one's adultery, about which he would, of course, not know unless he had been influenced by it; and I think it would be a satisfactory outcome if this subsection is passed into the Bill.
I have already said several things about Clause 7(2). This is also an implementation of the Royal Commission's Report and recommendation. Perhaps I ought to start with its application to cruelty. Your Lordships will see that it abolishes, in the case of cruelty and intolerable conduct, for the new grounds I have introduced, the defence of mental disorder or lack of malicious intent towards the pursuer. I think there are two grounds why this should be done. One of them is the ground of policy and the other is because the same thing has now happened, so I understand it, in English law. On the grounds of policy, to start with, if it is not so much the future protection of the innocent spouse that should be the criterion, but rather the actual or apprehended injury in the past, then I think it must be the right approach to rule out as a defence, really as a subordinate and not so important fact, the consideration that the defender
820
was at the time under some mental aberration; because the fact that he was so does not in any way destroy the pure fact of the injury or apprehended injury to the pursuer that took place in the past.
The same applies in the case of intolerable conduct. In that regard there was never any question of future protection to muddle the issue at all. I very much agree with the policy that the Royal Commission preferred in paragraph 256 of their Report, when they said:
"On the one hand, where the wife (say) is still fearful of further injury were married life to be resumed, and all affection for her husband has been destroyed by the cruelty suffered, ought the remedy of an immediate divorce to be denied to her? On the other hand, where acts, though cruel, have been done by a man who was insane, ought he to be penalised by an immediate divorce without any waiting period to allow for the possibility of his recovering from the mental illness which alone has been responsible for the cruelty complained of? In our view, preference should be given to the interests of the injured spouse. We recommend, therefore, that insanity"—
as a defence should be done away with.
There is also the English law; and two very recent decisions which have been made by your Lordships' House in the case of Gollins v. Gollins and Williams v. Williams which were decided last year. I see that my noble and learned friends Lord Reid and Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest are in their places. They both took part in those decisions. As I understand it, what has now happened is that the English law has been clarified, overruling past cases on two points. First, it has been laid down—and on this my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest dissented—that in future in a case of cruelty insanity shall not be a defence; and the other case, the one of Gollins, it has been decided that it is no particular matter that the offending spouse had no malicious intent, and was not aiming his cruel conduct at the other, but that cruelty could none the less still be held to have taken place. I think there has been adopted a much more objective test with special regard to the circumstances of the case in both these matters.
There are other grounds which might be put forward as relevant: unusual temperament on the part of the offending spouse; some mental disorder not reach-

821
ing a degree of insanity, but nevertheless having an effect on the subject. These matters, as I see it, are not a defence in England, or in Scotland, and it is the intention of this subsection of Clause 7 to assimilate the whole of this field with those existing subjects. In other words, it shall be open to the court to decide—upon the circumstances of the case, including insanity or including lack or presence of malicious intent—whether or not cruelty has taken place. I hope, therefore, I have sufficiently clearly drafted this subsection to bring the Scottish law into line with the English in the two decisions I have mentioned; and I hope also that the policy behind it will have your Lordships' approval. Clause 8 deals with a technical consideration. It empowers the court to award interim aliment—alimony—in cases of desertion or intolerable conduct, in circumstances where there is a technical complication due to the court's insistence on adherence. This insistence is now being removed, and consequently the court will have a power which it is thought it might very well not have had before. Clause 9 defines some of the matters which occur in the Bill.
I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for having taken up so much time in explaining this Bill; but as your Lordships will have seen, it is not a straightforward matter. If I can clear up any questions that noble Lords may have upon it, I will willingly try to do so, but I hope that on the principle, at any rate, I have satisfied your Lordships that this is a desirable Bill which should be given a Second Reading. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a. —(Viscount Colville of Culross.)
5.51 p.m.
LORD REID: My Lords, I think that we should congratulate my noble friend on his enterprise in tackling this rather thorny subject, and I am sure that we are all very much indebted to him for the clear way in which he has expounded the provisions of the Bill. It introduces a number of changes, and some of them are much more important than others. For my own part, I would accept them all in principle. Some I am not very enthusiastic about. Some, I think,
822
certainly ought to be introduced. But I would not oppose any of them, subject to certain drafting alterations, to which I shall refer in a moment.
Clauses 1, 2 and 3, and the first part of Clause 4, seem to me to be unexceptionable, subject to the Amendment to Clause 2, to which my noble friend referred; but the second part of Clause 4 is a much more important matter. I must say that I had some doubt about it, when I read the clause first, because, in my view, the drafting is much too rigid. I do not think that one would oppose the principle—which is the introducing into Scotland of the English idea of constructive desertion.
After all, what happens when two spouses fall out? One of them is generally guilty of intolerable conduct. It may be that the guilty spouse leaves and deserts the other; but perhaps more often the guilty spouse stays and, in effect, drives the other out of the house. On the face of it, the innocent spouse is the deserted spouse; but, of course, that is not the reality of the situation. The reality is that the fact that the spouse guilty of intolerable conduct has broken off the marriage and has, on the face of it, deserted the other is a mere accident. The availability of a remedy ought not to depend on that accident. But what the clause does not sufficiently allow for, I think, is the fact that very often the blame is distributed. You cannot say that one of the spouses is solely to blame. Indeed, the one who is apparently mostly to blame in the later stages may have a very good excuse. Provocation is by no means unknown. And it would be quite wrong that a spouse who has provoked the other, so that the other has behaved in an intolerable way, should then be able to turn round and say, "You have behaved badly. I want a remedy against you". That would be refused in England, but I do not think it would be refused under the drafting of the clause as it stands at present.
Then there are the very difficult cases where you find that the spouse who has been behaving badly has temperamental or other excuses, or perhaps may be ill for a period, and you have to make some allowances. It is always a difficult question how much allowance you are going to make for the spouse who has some

823
excuse for his or her conduct. Here, again, I do not think that the Bill is sufficiently flexible to deal with that point. But my noble friend has indicated that he is very willing to consider Amendments, and if it would assist him in any way, I should be very willing to collaborate with him, and I hope, looking at the way in which he has presented his case, that it would not be difficult to find an Amendment for the Committee stage which would be acceptable to everybody. On that basis, I think that Clause 4 is a good amendment to the law of Scotland.
Clause 5 I do not object to. It looks, and it is, very complicated; and I think that some day we shall probably have to look again at all the provisions with regard to divorce for insanity. They are very complicated, and I think that they need tidying up. But I would not suggest that this is the right Bill in which to try to do that, and I think that my noble friend is well advised in retaining the present rather unsatisfactory arrangement for divorce for insanity and merely adding on mental deficiency as an alternative.
Clause 6, I am bound to say, puzzled me very much, when I first read it; but having listened to my noble friend, I think that his object in putting it down is a good one, though I am sure that the clause as it stands is liable to misconception. It is much too elaborate for the object which he has in mind, and I think that a much simpler clause would meet the whole point and would not be subject to the misconceptions which I feel sure would arise if the clause were passed in its present form.
What my noble friend is not seeking to do—and rightly—is to alter the nature of the acts which are required to constitute desertion; nor is he seeking to remove the present very necessary limitation that you cannot get a divorce for desertion unless you can show that your health either has been injured or is in danger of being injured. I think that experience shows that what may seem a rather illogical limitation is, in fact, a very necessary one; and what this clause seeks to do is to take away, if it exists at present (I am not sure), the necessity that the pursuer shall have to
824
show that he, or generally she, requires protection when the matter comes before the court.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My noble and learned friend did say desertion. I am sure it was a slip, and that he meant "cruelty".
LORD REID: Of course, my Lords, this clause is dealing with cruelty. I am much obliged to my noble friend. The point is that the pursuer may have to show that he or she requires protection when it comes before the court. Logically, again, that is sensible. Because why give a person a divorce for cruelty, if it is clear that that cruelty is not going to be repeated? After all, divorces are to protect the pursuer. But there is this to be said. Some defenders are not merely cruel; they are also rather plausible rogues, and if you give them a chance of saying, when the case comes to the court, that they are now reformed characters, that may be believed. I think that if they have been guilty of cruelty, it is well to weigh the scales the other way; and what my noble friend is doing in this clause, although again it might appear a little bit odd, is, in fact, removing what can be a substantial source of injustice. Therefore, I would agree that this should be passed, if we can find a better and simpler form for the clause.
I do not think Clause 7 is necessary, but I see no objection to its inclusion; and there may be one or two other small, points, but only small points, which require examination. I hope my noble friend does not think that in criticising the drafting of the Bill I am criticising him in any way, because I have some suspicion that perhaps the drafting may not be his own personal work. I think he will probably be able to pass on the suggestions which I have made to someone who can assist us both when it comes to settling the new form of these clauses. Subject to satisfactory Amendments being devised, as I feel sure they can be, I would warmly recommend this Bill to the House.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD CRAIGTON): My Lords, I think your Lordships would wish me to intervene quite briefly at this stage. It is now a well-established tradition

825
in Parliament that divorce legislation is a field in which private enterprise flourishes. Your Lordships will remember that the first major change in modern times resulted from the efforts of a very Private Member in another place, Sir Alan Herbert. A year later, in the Divorce (Scotland) Act, 1938, there was similarly a private effort. So I would like most warmly to welcome this new upholder of this sensible tradition, and to add my congratulations to my noble friend, both on his enterprise and for the way in which he has spoken to-day.
The Government would be duty bound to intervene, if that were necessary. But, as with previous Bills, this one is concerned with adjustments within the established framework, and in such matters a Private Member's Bill provides a convenient opportunity to test the view of your Lordships' House.
The Government also have a responsibility for ensuring that what Parliament wishes to enact is in workable form. The Bill seems to us to be in such a form. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, has made some proposals, and no doubt my noble friend will give them careful consideration. I am sure that he is grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his offer of assistance. I can offer, in the spirit in which he mentioned the matter, that we, too, will be very glad indeed to give any assistance we can in framing Amendments.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I am grateful for the support the House has given to this Bill. I am well aware that there are probably defects in the drafting, but with the assistance both of my noble and learned friend Lord Reid and of my noble friend Lord Craigton I feel there should be no difficulty in getting them straightened out. Since all the variety of matters in the Bill seem to be acceptable in principle, I think I need say no more at this stage, except to thank the House for its reception of the Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

EXPORT GUARANTEES BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
SHIPBUILDING CREDIT BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

FAMILY ALLOWANCES AND NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL
6.5 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee. — (Lord Drumalbyn.)
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRANG in the Chair.]
Clauses 1 to 3 agreed to.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL BARONESS SUMMERSKILL moved, after Clause 3, to insert the following new clause:
Repeal of earnings rule for widow's benefit
". Section 17(3) of the National Insurance Act 1946 (earnings rule for widow's benefit) is hereby repealed."
The noble Baroness said: If the Committee will permit me, I will take the three Amendments which stand in my name and the names of my noble friends together, as the second and third are consequential on the first. The purpose of this Amendment is to abolish the earnings rule for widow's benefit. The noble Lord will recall that on the Second Reading of the Bill I devoted myself to this matter, and to-day I will be as brief as possible. I was very critical of the continued application of the earnings rule to certain grades of insured workers. Although I said that, having regard to changed circumstances since the introduction of the National Health scheme, the earnings rule should be omitted altogether, nevertheless, I am prepared to limit my argument on this occasion to the need to abolish the earnings rule in regard to widows.
It seems to me, on reading the Bill again, that the case has been almost conceded. Each time the Government come here I think their conscience compels them to increase the amount of disregards that the widow can earn. Because the Government have been compelled to

827
recognise the injustice of penalising the widow by increasing the amount of her earnings which is disregarded. I hope your Lordships will be sympathetic to this Amendment. Indeed, public opinion is so alive to this injustice that the fourth Private Member's Bill on precisely this point is now on the Order Paper in another place.
I do not want to be guilty of tedious repetition, but I would remind your Lordships of the special case of the widow. She is called upon to carry the burden of the wage earner and the home-maker. Surely, the whole trend of our social legislation has been to help the least well off. Yet the widow, suddenly bereft of a husband, a prey to anxiety and loneliness, fearful of the future and completely insecure, is at that time subject to an earnings rule calculated, in my opinion, to obstruct and harass her. I say that this particular woman, the widow, should have our special sympathy. The Government should say, "We will make every effort to make her path a little easier." But, nevertheless, they produce a Bill of this kind and introduce the earnings rule.
Surely the position of the widowed mother demands our utmost sympathy, and to penalise her by applying the earnings rule is to discriminate against the fatherless child. On Second Reading I described the position of a fatherless child in this country and reminded your Lordships that there are nearly 1 million fatherless children. I will not develop that, because no doubt in your own lives your Lordships know of widows who have children to support. I also emphasised on the Second Reading of the Bill the sheer shortsightedness of this policy when women's labour, and particularly of women of this kind, is needed in a variety of ways. I say "women of this kind" because they have a great deal of free time, their husbands having gone, and indeed they want to fill up that time. The need for these women is so urgent in the social services and in the homes of our country that no obstacle should be put in the way of their offering their services.
The noble Lord may say, "It is no job for the Ministry of National Insurance to do this". But I would remind him that on more than one occasion in the Social Service departments I have heard the case argued by
828
a Minister for taking some step because it would ease the needs of another Ministry, it would help another Ministry. In this case, I say these women are wanted in the institutions, the hospitals and the homes. They are wanted for the aged, and to introduce a provision which will obstruct these widows from taking jobs seems to me utterly short-sighted.
The noble Lord did not reply to a point—and I would repeat it again—that I made on the Second Reading of the Bill. I would recall to noble Lords that the Minority Report of the National insurance Advisory Committee—and that, of course, is the Committee which advises the Minister—said:
"Elderly women refuse urgently needed work so as to be on the safe side. Their attitude is if we do not earn anything, they cannot get us'".
The Report also said:
"There is evidence to suggest that the present system of rules is accompanied by widespread deceit and evasion".
This was said by Professor Titmuss, a professor in London University, who chooses his words carefully. I do not want to elaborate this point, but I would remind noble Lords that there is no doubt that a widow with children, perhaps very hard up, is tempted to evade the law. This is known by the family, and there are children who know that mother is tempted to evade the law in order to make a little more money. I do not regard this situation as very helpful.
To abolish the earnings rule for widows would cost £6 million. But the Minister did not object to it on those grounds. He argued that, if we abolish the earnings rule, it would create anomalies among retirement pensioners. I think it is significant that his objections were not related to the creation of anomalies among widows. After all, if there were objections on that point, he should object to anomalies among widows. Of course, an argument on that basis would have been absolutely absurd, for the scheme is riddled with anomalies, and I think the noble Lord would agree with that. I mentioned this on Second Reading, and said that the basic assumptions must be examined. The scheme is riddled with anomalies, and if this causes

829
another it would make very little difference.
The Minister contended that to abolish the earnings rule now for widows would create ill-feeling between widows and spinsters later on. If ill-feeling does exist between women, ill feeling must certainly exist between widows, because a widow whose husband died at work is treated differently from the widow whose husband died on his way to work. If a widow goes to work to help her children, she is subject to the earnings rule, but if she remains at home and receives the same amount out of investments, she is not subject to any rule. Then there are widows whose husbands died in the Armed Forces, or as a result of an industrial injury. These widows are exempt from the rule. As I have said before, I am only too pleased that they should be. But here are the anomalies. Why single out those widows whose husbands have died from natural causes? Because, surely, the needs of their children are precisely the same as the needs of the children of other widows. Then there is the case of the widow part of whose income comes from her own earnings, and part from unearned income. The part from unearned income is not taken into account.
I have given your Lordships five or six kinds of widows, and shown that anomalies certainly exist. As I said before, there are nine categories of widows. When he wound up, the noble Lord said he thought there were three categories, but with three sub-divisions in each. So I think your Lordships will agree with me that there are nine categories of widow. I can quite understand why the Minister has been compelled to relate his argument, in opposing the Amendment asking for the earnings rule to be abolished, to the hypothetical anomalies which might occur years hence. I would ask your Lordships to consider the justice and humanity of this case. Surely, the earnings rule should no longer be applied to widows. This is not only in their own interests or the interests of their children, but in the interests of the community, which needs these women quite desperately in some place.
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Therefore, I hope your Lordships will support the Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 3, insert the said new clause.—(Baroness Summerskill.)
LORD SOMERS: I am afraid I shall be considered rather a rebel against my own side this afternoon, but I should like to support this Amendment very strongly. In this country we have pretty well achieved equality between the two sexes, but not absolutely, and this is one of the outstanding examples where we have not done so. One must remember that, although the word "widow" implies an elderly person, it is possible to be a widow at only 25 or some such age. A young widow with, perhaps, three or four young children, who must all be educated, has a very heavy burden upon her shoulders. She may be a professional woman who wants to pursue her career, but she may not, as the Bill stands at present, earn more than a certain amount. Or, of course, she may be an elderly person who is not capable of earning very much, who has not got very much money and, therefore, is in a bad position so far as support of any kind is concerned. I think that in all justice we should consider people who are unable to earn their own living, and consequently unable to be of use to the nation.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, BOARD OF TRADE (LORD DRUMALBYN): I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, for the kindly way in which she has moved this Amendment. She showed her very deep interest in the widows, and I think it is an interest which we all share. However, I think we ought to consider exactly what the effect of the Amendment would be. It would exempt women receiving widows' or widowed mothers' pensions from the earnings rule, and about one in seven of these widows have their pensions so adjusted. It does not mean they all lose all their pension, but one in seven have them adjusted. It would not exempt all widows from the earnings rule. The widows exempted would be widows who have children under 19 living with them and, secondly, widows who were over 50 and under 60 at the time when their husbands died or when they ceased to be

831
entitled to widowed mothers' allowance. The widows not exempted would be widows drawing the retirement pension and earning more than the earnings limit. These would include women widowed after reaching 60. Others of these widows not exempted would previously have been drawing widow's pension and would have transferred to retirement pension when they retired from full-time work. They then become retirement pensioners and cease to draw widow's pensions.
So among the effects of the Amendment would be, first of all, that if, when a widow retired from her job, she then continued to do part-time work, she would be subject to the earnings rule. That is, if this Amendment went through, so long as she drew the widow's pension she would be exempt from the earnings rule and if, when she retired from her job, she continued to do part-time work, she would be subject to the earnings rule. Secondly, a widow over 60—and I think this is a point worth considering—still earning £50 a week in her business or profession and receiving a widow's pension would be free from the earnings rule, whereas a widow over 60 when her late husband died would get practically no pension if she went out to work and earned over £10 a week. That would certainly be an anomaly.
Thirdly, a widow whose husband died when she was just over 50 would get full pension no matter how much she earned and would not have to pay National Insurance contributions. This would be the effect. She would not be subject to the earnings rule and she does not have to pay National Insurance contributions, whereas the widow whose husband died when she was just under 50 would get no pension and would have to pay National Insurance contributions until she was 60. In my view, the contrast there would be so harsh that it would be impossible to keep the age 50 qualification. Indeed, wherever you fixed the qualification age, the contrast would obviously be exceedingly harsh and it would seem almost impossible to have an age qualification at all. I am talking at the moment of widows, and not widowed mothers, who obviously get widowed mother's allowance, no matter when they are widowed, if they have children dependent upon them.
832
The contrast, as I say, would be very harsh and, indeed, might make it necessary to revert to the old unconditional widow's pension payable irrespective of age.
At the present levels of benefit, if they were still to remain in force, the cost of allowing a widow's pension to all widows, no matter when their husbands died, would be of the order of £30 million a year. When such a pension, an unconditional pension, available to all widows irrespective of when their husbands died, was paid before 1948, the level was 10s. The present equivalent of that is under 19s. in terms of modern purchasing power. But the Act last year provides that widowed mothers who are subject to the earnings rule shall retain at least 26s.
This Bill is designed primarily and principally to assist widowed mothers. The Amendment shows that noble Lords opposite, and my noble friend, too, believe that it would not be possible to exempt widowed mothers from the earnings rule without also exempting the widows t and there is good reason for their thinking so. For when a widowed mother ceases to be entitled to widowed mother's allowance, most of these widowed mothers being then over 50, and ceasing to be widowed mothers, they at once receive widow's pension. If widowed mother's allowance was exempt from the earnings rule and widow's pension was subject to it, the widows who from one day to the next become subject to the earnings rule would certainly feel perplexed and probably aggrieved. So the noble Lady seeks to exempt both widowed mothers and widows. But much the same thing will still happen, if this Amendment is carried, when the widow passes from widow's pension to retirement pension. She will then become subject to the earnings rule, and the result will certainly be a demand for the abolition of the earnings rule in time.
The noble Lady, when she spoke earlier, wanted to see the abolition of the earnings rule entirely. But this Amendment concentrates on the abolition of the earnings rule for widowed mothers and widows. While to abolish the earnings rule for widows only would cost £6 million a year, to abolish it altogether would cost over £100 million a year.
BARONESS SUMMERSKILL: That is for retirement pensioners. I am not asking for that, I am asking only for widows. So I hope the noble Lord will not feel that the £100 million has any relevance to this debate.
LORD DRUMALBYN: I am afraid that I must insist that it has, because what I am arguing is that it is not possible to retain this concession only for widows and widowed mothers; it is bound to be extended also to the wider field. In that event the cost would be very substantially increased. It would be over £100 million. The reason for that is because the earnings rule is the essential support of the retirement condition. If people could earn as much as they liked without its having any effect on their retirement pension, it would be impossible to avoid paying the pension in full as soon as a person reached pensionable age—that is, 65 for men and 60 for women. In other words, the pension which is paid as of right to men at 70 and to women at 65 would become payable as of right five years sooner, no matter what they earn.
I think that one is bound to observe that that is obviously not particularly selective. Moreover, it would be very costly. For these 400,000 people who go on working after reaching pensionable age and have postponed their retirement would then become eligible for the pension at what is called the "minimum pensionable age". What is more, these people earned increments to their pensions, and there would be no point in paying increments to people who postponed their retirement if they were already receiving full pension. So increments could no longer be earned, and 1½ million people are receiving increments at the present time. I am not saying that it would not be possible to make adjustments of one kind or another. I am arguing the consequences of this Amendment The cost of the Amendment in itself, as the noble Lady said, would be in the order of £6 million a year, which is as much as the cost of the Bill as it is, and so it would practically double the cost of the provisions in the Bill. The Amendment is indiscriminate. The noble Lady said (I took down her words): "The trend of our
834
social legislation is to help the least well-off". But this Amendment is indiscriminate. It does not select those widows who are most in need, and we believe that in general it is the widow with dependent children who is most in need. We believe that the best way of helping them is through the child allowances, as has been maintained by the Advisory Committee.
I would again remind your Lordships—because this is a point about which there is a good deal of misconception—that the child allowances are not subject to the earnings rule. That is why we have in the Bill raised the child allowance to 37s. 6d., so that a widowed mother who has three children and works part-time earning £4 a week will have £9 benefit, or £13 in all. This is a fairly typical wage, I should think, for a woman who is working part-time; and there are many, of course, who believe that in many circumstances a woman with a family should not work more than part-time. If she does work full-time and has to employ somebody else to look after the children (I pointed this out on Second Reading), then the amount paid to the person for looking after the children is deductible from her earnings before her allowance is subjected to the earnings rule. If this same woman with three children works full-time and earns £8 a week she will have £16 10s. in all. If she earns £11 or more, she will still get £6 18s. 6d. benefit if she has three children and £5 1s. in addition to what she earns if she has two. Those are very great advances, of course, on what has ever been available before.
The noble Baroness suggested that the earnings rule was an obstacle to women offering their services. It is, of course, undeniable that many women, if they are within a particular bracket of earnings which is just going to make them subject to the earnings rule, will obviously think twice about whether they want to earn more and so become subject to the earnings rule. A widowed mother would be left with 26s. That is to say, she may lose a maximum of 41s. 6d. out of her allowance. As for the widow herself, apart from the widowed mother, I should have thought that this possibility would not act as an obstacle, except within a comparatively

835
small bracket; and I should think there is some deterrent effect. This was all looked into by the Advisory Committee, when they made their Report in 1956; nevertheless, the majority maintained the view that widows should not be exempted from the earnings rule so long as this was a general condition of the scheme.
The noble Baroness says that there is widespread deceit and evasion, and that women are tempted to evade the earnings rule. I have no great experience in these matters, but to judge by the number of inspectors one has whenever one has any kind of insurance, I would say that in any matter of insurance there is always danger of evasion and deceit. It seems to be almost inherent in the idea of claims; it is, I am afraid, part of human nature. And that is why one has inspectors and the like. I do not think this is an argument that can in any way be convincing.
The noble Baroness talked about anomalies, and referred to the fact that there are two entirely separate schemes, apart from the National Insurance Scheme—that is the War Pension Scheme and the Industrial Injuries Scheme. Both of these schemes, of course, have an entirely different history and an entirely different background. The noble Baroness says that it seems strange to separate out one kind of widow whose husband has died from natural causes. But the War Pension Scheme is not a contributory scheme; it is a totally different kind of scheme. It is one where we all recognise that very special conditions apply—the men themselves under discipline, particular kinds of service and a particular background. This is quite different from the kind of conditions which exist in the National Insurance Scheme. Then again, the Industrial Injuries Scheme has its own entirely separate background. That represents compensation for injury suffered, or for death, in the course of and arising out of employment. There are many parts of the schemes that are totally different from the National Insurance Scheme, and what I said on Second Reading still applies: that there is no logic in picking out simply one item from those Schemes and saying that in that item—namely, the absence of the application of an earnings rule the third scheme, the National Insurance
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Scheme, which is totally different, should be brought into line. Why on that item alone? The Schemes are different; the background is different; and the Schemes are not all contributory. In the Industrial Injuries Scheme no contribution record such as is required under the National Insurance Scheme is needed before a person is entitled to the benefits.
The noble Baroness accused the Government of "tinkering with" the National Insurance Act. What we are doing is to increase the benefits for a particular section of the community which is universally recognised as among the most deserving. This is the principal purpose of the Bill. That is a straightforward action. We are taking it in ways for which there are highly respectable precedents. But it is she, I submit to your Lordships, who is seeking by this Amendment to tinker with the Act, for not only would the Amendment make a change which is at variance with the principle on which the Act is based, but it would create further anomalies and, in practice, would not work out fairly between one widow and another.
I believe that in the Bill as it is drafted we have gone a very long way to help those who we believe most need help. I believe that we have done it in a balanced way, and one that is well in keeping with the terms of the Scheme. The day may come when we shall revise fundamentally the whole National Insurance Scheme. But here I would make a word of caution: that we are dealing with pensions, and we have always to remember that we are dealing with something which is essentially of long-term. People have been paying out this money and they expect in the long run to get certain benefits for themselves. But in this Scheme nobody is being denied a benefit to which he is entitled. The earnings rule does not deny anybody a benefit for which he has paid, because the terms of the policy—and this should by now be well understood—are that the benefits are payable in the absence of earnings. This is the fundamental point of it. It is for these reasons that we have provided in this Bill something that we believe to be much better than the abolition of the earnings rule; and because this proposal is at variance with the principles and

837
would, as I say, create further anomalies, and would not work out fairly between one widow and another, I ask your Lordships to reject this Amendment.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL
House in Committee (according to Order).
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

CUMBERLAND COUNTY COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
6.51 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR LORD TAYLOR rose to move, That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they should not pass Clause 69 without special attention, and, in particular, should have regard to whether it is in the public interest that non-infectious diseases should be made notifiable. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the first of the Instructions standing in my name on the Order Paper. I had intended to initiate a small debate on both Instructions together, but it so happens that
On Question, Whether the said new clause shall be there inserted?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 18; Not-Contents, 44.

CONTENTS

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Gardiner, L.

Shepherd, L.

Attlee, E.

Hobson, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Burden, L. [Teller.]

Iddesleigh, E.

Summerskill, B.

Champion, L. [Teller.]

Latham, L.

Taylor, L.

Crook, L.

Lawson, L.

Williamson, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Shackleton, L.

Willis, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailwyn, L.

Craigton, L.

Hanworth, V.

Albemarle, E.

Crathorne, L.

Hastings, L.

Amherst of Hackney, L.

Daventry, V.

Hawke, L.

Ampthill, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Hereford, V.

Atholl, D.

Derwent, L.

Horsbrugh, B.

Audley, B.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Lothian, M.

Bessborough, E.

Drumalbyn, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Blakenham, V.

Falkland, V.

Molson, L.

Boston, L.

Ferrers, E.

Newton, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Remnant, L.

Carrington, L.

Fortescue, E.

Suffield, L.

Chesham, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Swansea, L.

Cholmondeley, M.

Gosford, E.

Teynham, L.

Conesford, L.

Greenway, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Cowley, E.

Grenfell, L.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.

the first relates to an opposed Bill and therefore will go to an appropriate Committee for examination in a different way from the second, which is not opposed. Therefore, I propose to move the first one and to discuss it, and then later the second Instruction, so that we can deal with them separately.
I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the terms of the Instruction and to the method by which it has been drawn. I have tried to avoid giving a categorical instruction to the Committee, in the sense of asking them to take any action without first examining the Bill. I am asking them in fact only to examine a clause very carefully to see that it is right and proper and appropriate to the particular Bill in which it is inserted. I shall do the same with the second one. I hope the Committee will examine the clause very carefully, and I hope that they will examine the Promoters of the Bill to see why they have drafted the clause as it is now drafted. As it stands, I must confess that I think the clause is a mistake. I also think that, as it stands, it raises a matter of some national importance.
The clause is designed to make certain non-infectious diseases notifiable in the county of Cumberland. The effect

839
on registered medical practitioners will be that when they see these diseases they will be required to notify the medical officer of health that they have encountered such cases and where the diseases have happened. As your Lordships are aware, certain diseases are already notifiable, and have been for many years. These are the ordinary infectious diseases and the diseases due to industry. They are notifiable for obvious public health reasons. In the first case, they are liable to spread to other people; in the second case, they are notifiable because their causes are associated with work, and because other people may suffer in a similar way unless the matter is corrected. From time to time new diseases have been added to the schedule of infectious diseases which are notifiable, but before this was done there has always been strong positive evidence that it was desirable.
Clause 69 of the Cumberland Bill seeks to do three things. First, it seeks to make leukæmia a notifiable disease. Secondly, it seeks to make coronary thrombosis a notifiable disease. Thirdly, it seeks to allow the Cumberland County Council to proclaim any other disease notifiable after approval by the Ministry of Health. This, so far as I know, is something that no other local authority in the country has sought to do. I ask the House to ask the Committee to find out why Cumberland wishes to have these very special provisions, and, unless there are very strong reasons in favour of them, I hope the Committee will reject the clause and strike it out.
First of all in regard to leukaemia—and your Lordships are all too familiar with this disease, which has recently been much in the Press—I can think of only one conceivable reason why Cumberland is seeking to make leukæmia notifiable. There is in Cumberland the atomic energy station at Windscale, and it may have been thought that there was some connection between this and an increased risk of leukæmia. But what a strang thing to do! In fact, all cases of leukemia that occur are very quickly known to the authorities. They are, I think without exception, admitted straight away by doctors to hospital, for the purpose of treatment, and they at once get on to the cancer register. The cancer register is a nationally maintained list of
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all cancer cases, which, of course, includes all leukemia cases, so that these cases are in fact already effectively notified—not merely for Cumberland but for the country as a whole. Even if this were not the case, they would still be notified, since they are all fatal, and on death are automatically notified on the death certificate; and the results of the analyses of death certificates appear in the annual reports of every medical officer of health throughout the country.
As a statistical exercise—and this is the only reason I can conceive for Cumberland wanting to have leukæmia made notifiable—it is meaningless to suggest that this should be done. Cumberland is a very large county with a relatively small population of 220,000, so that the total number of cases of lcukæmia occurring is very small indeed. In consequence, a single extra case of leukemia in the course of the year will produce a surprisingly large percentage fluctuation in the picture. Therefore, no trends will be visible from a statistical study of such a group. I am at a complete loss to understand why Cumberland wishes to make leukemia notifiable. Moreover, there are certain technical difficulties about this, though they are so technical that I do not propose to go into them. They involve the accurate definition of leukæmia—which does not appear to have troubled the Cumberland County Council when they invite doctors to make these notifications.
On the question of social reasons, is it conceivable that there are some special social reasons why doctors should notify leukemia in Cumberland? I cannot think that there are, and I can only imagine, if this were so, that every kind of fatal disease should be notified to the Medical Officer of Health, because leukemia differs in no very great respect, socially, from other noninfectious fatal diseases. Therefore, I can see no justification for this from the point of view of social considerations. So I think that it is up to the Cumberland County Council to present a very strong case indeed for making leukæmia a notifiable disease, before the nation should depart from its well-established practice of not making noninfectious diseases notifiable.
The second disease that they seek to make notifiable is coronary thrombosis.

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I am again at a loss to know why they should have picked on coronary thrombosis in Cumberland, except for one possible conceivable reason, and that is that it has been suggested by some medical statisticians that where the water is very soft there is an increased incidence of coronary thrombosis. If this be so, I can only again suggest that this is a very poor way of trying to study it. The notification of coronary thrombosis presents incredible difficulties. With an ordinary infectious disease it is pretty easy, as a general rule, to decide if the patient has got it and the doctor can take the necessary steps. The diagnosis of mild attacks of coronary thrombosis presents very great difficulty indeed, and sometimes fatal attacks are wrongly diagnosed before death and only after death on autopsy is the correct diagnosis made. Moreover, many people have recurrent attacks. They have an attack of coronary thrombosis one year, then go for a few years, have another attack and then a further attack; and the Bill does not say whether each attack is to be notified or whether when a person has had it once, subsequent attacks should not be notified. So I venture to suggest it is a pretty meaningless piece of work.
The third thing for which Cumberland asks is power to extend this notification to other diseases. If, in fact, Parliament grants this power to Cumberland we may be quite sure that other local authorities will ask for similar powers in respect of other diseases. So we shall have the extraordinary picture of many different diseases being notifiable by doctors in each of the counties which has brought in a Private Bill and has had some special reason, or thought it had some special reason—because if there is a good special reason then it is a very different matter. We should have a chaotic situation if this practice were to spread.
Notification is a very valuable public health tool. It is one of the ways by which we have prevented the spread of infectious disease, and it must not be blunted by being used foolishly, for purposes whose value is in doubt, or just for pure medical curiosity. Its effectiveness depends entirely on the co-operation of the general practitioners, because unless they can see a good, common-sense reason
842
why they should notify a particular disease they will not do it. It is true that there is a 40s. penalty if they do not notify, and a 2s. 6d. fee if they do notify, but so far as I know no doctor in the history of Britain has ever been charged with failing to notify a case of infectious disease and been punished under this section. Incidentally, the Cumberland clause repeats this 40s. penalty and 2s. 6d. fee in the case of leukaemia and coronary thrombosis, and, indeed, for any other diseases that are added to the list.
That is the case, my Lords. My attention was drawn to this clause almost by chance. I was very surprised, indeed, when I saw it and I felt it was my duty to bring it to your Lordships' attention. I could have raised the matter on the Second Reading of this Bill but, as your Lordships know, Second Readings of Private Bills are taken before Public Business and it seemed much better to move an Instruction to the Committee asking them to pay special attention to the clause. I hope they will pay special attention to the clause and that your Lordships will agree to my Instruction, bearing in mind that we are not telling the Committee what to do; we are merely asking the Committee to examine the clause very carefully. If we did not do this, of course, it would not be examined at all because this particular clause is not opposed. We are asking, therefore, that it shall be very carefully studied and that the proposers of the Private Bill will have to make a very strong case indeed for adding this burden to the general practitioners of Cumberland when the information is already available in some cases, or will have no meaning in others. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they should not pass Clause 69 without special attention, and, in particular, should have regard to whether it is in the public interest that non-infectious diseases should be made notifiable.—(Lord Taylor.)
7.7 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD MERTHYR): My Lords, the Cumberland County Council Bill is what is known as a general powers Bill—that is, it deals with a number of different subjects—and this Bill is an opposed Bill, in the sense that there are Petitions

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against it. There are actually four Petitions against this Bill, but none of those Petitions deals with this Clause 69. Therefore one can say that Clause 69 is an unopposed clause, and for the purposes of this evening's debate let us treat it as such. But, my Lords, that does not mean that this clause will necessarily be allowed in any event, as I shall explain in a moment. That does not follow because—and I should like to make this perfectly clear to the House, especially in view of what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said a moment ago—every clause in every Private Bill is scrutinised, whether or not it is opposed. It is scrutinised by somebody, and if it is not scrutinised by a Committee at least it is scrutinised by learned counsel who advises me on these matters.
LORD TAYLOR: I am so sorry, my Lords. I should like at once to withdraw the misleading remark I made. I did not intend to mislead the House.
LORD MERTHYR: I am much obliged to the noble Lord, who I am quite certain did not intend to mislead the House. But I was going to say this in any event, and I should like the House to appreciate, that although clauses of Private Bills may not be heard of very much by your Lordships, they are in fact, behind the scenes, always looked at, and are always read very carefully by at least one individual acting in an official capacity, and if need be they are scrutinised by a Committee. It is therefore true to say that every clause comes before some Committee of your Lordships' House—which Committee is another matter.
I should just like to say very briefly, because I want to help the House if I can, what would happen, first, if this Motion were not passed and, secondly, what will happen if it is passed. If I can do that, I hope that I have done my duty on this Motion.
My Lords, if this Instruction were not to be passed to-night, Clause 69, since it is unopposed, would not go to any Committee upstairs, as we say, but would be dealt with downstairs by me in what is called an interview. An interview takes place on every opposed Bill. No matter how many clauses are opposed, there is always an interview unless, of course, the whole Bill is opposed upstairs. But where there are
844
some unopposed clauses there is always an interview, and that takes place after the Select Committee have dealt with the opposed clauses. At the interview, there are the Parliamentary agents for the Promoters of the Bill and, where necessary and where appropriate, representatives of the Government Departments concerned with the Bill. There are also available written reports on the Bill by the Government Departments concerned—that is, those Departments which are interested; and in a general purposes Bill such as this which has 132 clauses, a number of Government Departments would no doubt be present and would make reports, and might oppose some of the clauses.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord—because this is extremely interesting—if he can indicate whether, at this interview, when the agents of the Promoters are present and when there may be a dispute (say, in this case, on this particular clause), the Promoters, through their agents, can produce witnesses to substantiate the reasons why the clause has been included?
LORD MERTHYR: Yes, my Lords, they can. The Promoters can ask to call witnesses for their side at the interview. For example, in this case the county medical officer of health would probably he there, and would be called and heard, if appropriate and if necessary. Undoubtedly, yes.
Now, my Lords, there is no precedent for this clause, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, rightly said, and in all cases where clauses are unprecedented then, at the interview, I am particularly careful to inquire into the clause concerned. There is machinery in your Lordships' House, with which I will not trouble you to-night, by which we know exactly how many precedents there are for every clause in every Private Bill. I could produce whole tables of figures if I wanted to; but for this clause there is no precedent, and the mere fact that it is unprecedented switches on the red light, if I may use that expression, and I would in any event—and I would emphasise "in any event"—ask the Promoters to justify (that is the magic word) this clause, and would then see whether they could justify it. Argument would then follow,

845
and most likely the Promoters would show cause why this clause should be passed into law.
There would then be further argument, probably, and if the representative of the appropriate Government Department (in this case, I think it would be the Ministry of Health) had reported against the Bill—I do not know what the Department are going to say in this case; I have no idea; I have not seen any report yet; it is too early—then he also would be heard, and, of course, the written report on the clause would be available at the interview. So the noble Lord need have no fear, and the House need have none, either, but that even if this Motion were not passed to-night, this clause would certainly be examined.
Now, if the Instruction is passed, what difference will there be? Clause 69 would then go upstairs merely because this Bill is opposed; and therefore there would be a Select Committee—unless, of course, the other Petitions were withdrawn. The mere fact that there would be a Select Committee indicates that the appropriate Committee to deal with this clause would be that Committee. So there is a change in the procedure which would be effected by the passing of this Motion; but that is, I think, the only change that it would effect. The Committee upstairs, having dealt with the clauses which were opposed by the four Petitioners, would then proceed to look at this clause.
One difficulty is that they would be obliged to do so ex parte, by which I mean that there would be counsel for one side but no counsel for the other. In that respect, the procedure would be different from what it is on the opposed clauses, where there are counsel for the Promoters and counsel for the Petitioners. Here, there would be counsel for the Promoters but no counsel for the Petitioners, because there are not any. Incidentally, may I just remind the House that this clause could have been opposed, but has not been? I suppose there are bodies or persons in the country who could have opposed this clause had they wished to, because all the proper notices are sent to every possible interested party. So the Committee upstairs would examine this
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clause, but would have to do so ex parte.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one question on this? In doing so, would the Committee have regard to the remarks which are made here in the Chamber? Because that is the vital question so far as we are concerned: that the Promoters should be examined on the points which we have raised, or are raising, this evening.
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, I do not think there is anything to compel the Committee to read the Hansard report of to-night's debate, but I apprehend that they probably would do so. One must bear in mind, however, as I have said already, that one side are represented by counsel and the other are not. But I should think that very likely—of course, we do not even know who the Committee are going to be yet—they would bear in mind what has been said. Possibly, some of them are here listening at this very moment.
I might be asked: what about the Government Departments concerned? How would they fare upstairs? A Government Department cannot petition against a Bill, but they can report either for it or against it, or in a neutral way: they can "report upon it" is the correct expression, I think. A representative of a Government Department can be heard by the Select Committee if the Select Committee so require it. It is a much more formal procedure upstairs than it is downstairs; but I can tell your Lordships that if the Select Committee wanted to hear the representative of a Department they could do so, but they cannot hear any other evidence. There is no power in a Select Committee to call witnesses. Upstairs, witnesses can be called only by a party to the proceedings, either the Promoters or the Petitioners, as the case may be. But there is a Standing Order which allows a Select Committee to hear the representative of a Department.
My Lords, there it is. There is nothing else that I can usefully say, but I am at your Lordships' disposal if there are any other questions you wish to ask. I would end by saying that no great difference will be made whether this Motion is passed or not passed. I

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would add that I have no objection to it in form, and that, with the exception which I have already mentioned, it will make very little difference. The only difference will be that the argument will be upstairs in the one case and downstairs in another.
7.20 p.m.
LORD BRAIN: My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has drawn attention to this clause, and I can entirely support what he has said. He dealt with the matter so adequately that there is little I need add. But I should like to deal briefly with two points, the first a scientific one and the other more general.
The noble Lord has pointed out the difficulty arising from attempting to notify coronary thrombosis. Coronary thrombosis is a state in which there is a clot of blood in one of the coronary arteries supplying the heart; and it leads to symptoms because it damages the heart muscle by cutting off the blood supply from part of it. Exactly the same effect can be produced by disease of the coronary arteries without any clot forming at all; the cardiologists say that they often find it impossible to determine in any particular case whether or not in fact there is a clot; and they regard it as of no practical importance in dealing with the patient. So to ask that coronary thrombosis should be notified is really to select arbitrarily a pathological diagnosis which covers only a part of the field of coronary heart disease; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said, it may be impossible to establish it with any certainty. It would lead to the greatest practical difficulties for doctors to have imposed on them the obligation to notify coronary thrombosis.
The next point, the more general one, is that this clause does, of course, infringe the principle to which the medical profession attach a great deal of importance: that the doctor shall not divulge without the patient's consent anything he learns about his patient. As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has said, the public interest may have to over-ride that consideration—for example, in the case of infectious diseases or industrial intoxication. But I can think of no reason of public interest why it should be necessary to notify coronary thrombosis. The same applies, as the noble Lord has said,
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to leukæmia. I feel sure that the medical profession would be extremely disturbed by the suggestion that they should infringe this fundamental principle of the medical profession without there being any clear public reason why this should be done. I hope that these points will be given careful consideration by the Committee. Unless some other reasons are brought forward in support of this provision, I hope that the Committee will reject the clause.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I ask a question of the noble Lord, the Chairman of Committees, in this matter in the light of the speech that has just been made? As I understand it, this Bill will go to his office, and it will be part of his duty to examine it. In reply to an earlier question, he said that the Promoters of the Bill would have the right to produce witnesses and call evidence. The difficulty that I see here is that there may be two disputes: first, whether a doctor should divulge the information; and, secondly, whether the particular diseases would be known to the doctor, at least in the case of thrombosis.
When the noble Lord considers this clause, obviously he will have to consider whether there is a precedent to it. If there is a precedent, it will be easier to judge; if there is no precedent he must obviously make up his mind whether, for the national or local good, this clause should be allowed to go through. Would the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees be able, as Chairman of Committees, to call in expert advice to see whether the evidence of the case that has been made this evening in regard to the practical difficulties of thrombosis diagnosis is valid? I am not disputing the evidence of the two previous speakers; but in fairness to the local authority who are promoting this it would be interesting to know to what extent the noble Lord, as Chairman of Committees, could go to examine the practicability of their proposal. On what grounds would he make his decision?
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, if I may say so, that is a very difficult question to answer. So far as I am aware, I have no power to call in outside expert evidence. I have already said that the Promoters would no doubt have with

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them at the hearing their own witnesses, in the shape of the medical officer of health and so on. But I would mention that I have the power to refer any Private Bill to a Select Committee, and it might be possible in that way—possibly even if it be a roundabout route—somehow to procure expert evidence; although I think there is a Standing Order which says that a Select Committee cannot call evidence on their own account. As your Lordships know, a judge in a court of law can summon witnesses without either side calling them; but that cannot be done by a Select Committee. I am afraid that I have not answered the noble Lord fully; but I take the point. I should like to look it up and perhaps answer him later, if I can.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, would it be open to the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees to invite noble Lords who are eminent members of the medical profession to sit with him and assist him, in the case of the unopposed Bill, to determine this matter?
LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, it is not the practice to do that. Whether there is a power to do it, I cannot say, offhand. I will look it up. It is not the practice; in fact I have never known a case of that happening.
7.26 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (LORD NEWTON): My Lords, I do not think it will be necessary for me this evening to express any opinion on the merits of Clause 69. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that it ought to be given special attention. I do not mind, from the point of view of my Department, whether that special attention is given in Committee upstairs or at the interview as described by the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees. I am certainly not opposing Lord Taylor's Motion for this Instruction. No doubt he will make up his mind, having listened to what has been said here, whether he wishes to continue with his Motion. We have noted and are considering this clause; and we are considering whether or not to submit a report on it. If the noble Lord's Motion is carried and if the clause then is considered in Committee upstairs, we shall
850
of course be very glad to produce evidence to the Committee if that proves to be the wish of the Committee.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I am fairly sure in my mind that I should like the clause to go to a Committee upstairs. It is not that I think for one moment that the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, would not arrive at the right conclusion; but I should like to feel that three or four heads had a look at this rather difficult problem, and not just one head, wise though that head be—particularly because we may feel that we do not want to return to this matter and we should like to leave it. Therefore I hope very much that my Motion will be acceptable to your Lordships and that the Bill will go to a Committee.
There is one other point that I should like to make to the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees, who has been very helpful in explaining this rather difficult matter. Is there a verbatim report of the evidence given to a Committee upstairs on clauses such as this; and is it available to your Lordships? I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, is nodding his head—so I gather we may take it that such a report would be available. If it were to go to him in Chambers downstairs, as it were, would there then be a verbatim report? —the noble Lord indicates that there will be no verbatim report. That is an additional, strong reason why we should ask that this Motion should be accepted so that we, as well as the noble Lord, may study the evidence.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
7.30 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR LORD TAYLOR rose to move, That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they should not pass Clause 36 without special attention, and, in particular, should consider whether it is desirable that medical practitioners should be compelled, with a penalty in case of non-compliance, to report to the local authority all cases of housebound handicapped persons living alone. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the second of my Instructions. I

851
understand that this is not an opposed Bill. Newcastle upon Tyne, in the course of their Bill, have inserted Clause 36, which introduces something quite new, but on similar lines to the matter we have just been discussing. They wish to make certain social conditions compulsorily notifiable.
Newcastle upon Tyne are asking that doctors should have regard to four things when they visit their patients and when all four stars are in conjunction (as it were), then the condition shall be notified. They say that the first thing is that persons must be residing alone in a dwellinghouse in the city; secondly, that they must be substantially handicapped by age, illness or injury or congenital deformity; thirdly, that they must be permanently handicapped—it is not enough to be substantially handicapped for a time; and, fourthly, that they must be unable to leave the dwellinghouse without physical assistance. Given these four conditions, the doctor is compelled to notify the Medical Officer of Health of the existence of such people, whether or not such people wish the matter to be notified.
This, again, is an entirely new principle in British public health and in British laws, so far as I know. One can see at once what the Promoters are after and I have a good deal of sympathy with their objective, though not with their proposed method. A number of local authorities keep registers on a voluntary basis of house-bound elderly people and this is an excellent thing to do. They ask the doctors and other social agencies in the town to let them know of housebound elderly people. They collect the list together and, as the names come in, the health visitors can visit these people in their homes to deal with any problems that arise. I have no objection to this. I think that it is an admirable arrangement and something that we should do everything we can to encourage. But the situation proposed for Newcastle is quite different.
With compulsory notification, the patient does not have to give permission to the doctor. The doctor does not have to say to the patient, "Do you mind my letting the medical officer of health know you are housebound and
852
disabled permanently, living alone and without physical assistance?" No, the doctor is bound by law, once this goes through, to notify the Medical Officer of Health, even though the patient strongly objects. And there are a number of elderly people living alone and housebound who nevertheless get on perfectly all right and who strongly object to the compulsory notification of their condition to the Medical Officer of Health.
Yet there is an enormous number of cases where notification can be very helpful, indeed. My suggestion is that this is something which really ought to be done by voluntary organisation between the Medical Officer of Health of the city of Newcastle and the general practitioners of the town. I cannot believe that if the general practitioner approaches them in a proper way and helps them, they will not help him in every case where he in turn is able to help these housebound elderly people. But to make housebound disability a compulsorily notifiable condition, with the usual rewards and penalties—a 2s. 6d. reward to the doctor when he notifies and a penalty of 40s. if he defaults—is really nonsense. For one thing, it is quite unenforceable. Doctors in Newcastle, unless they wished to, simply would not take any notice of it.
It so happens that I know the conditions of general practice in Newcastle upon Tyne very well, and very tough they are. There is an enormous amount of ill-health in working-class areas, many of which are under-doctored. In other words, doctors are working very hard indeed, and if they are called upon compulsorily to notify old people who are housebound, I am afraid that they might react rather badly and not co-operate, whereas, if they are asked nicely by the Medical Officer of Health I cannot believe that they will not be willing to help. So I hope very much that the Newcastle upon Tyne Corporation may think again about this clause and may not press it, but may try to achieve what they are seeking by taking administrative action. And the best administrative action they could take is that recommended in the Gillie Report—to attach a health visitor to every group of three or four general practitioners to

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work with them. This, I am pleased to say, is something that local authorities are increasingly doing, and wherever they are doing it it has been working successfully. It enables the local authority to know every case of housebound elderly or handicapped people who are not getting help, and it certainly avoids a lot of unpleasantness which may arise through health visitors calling on people who have neither the need nor the desire to be called upon.
I hope, subject to any advice that the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, may give us, that your Lordships will accept my second Motion and will instruct the Committee to pay special attention to this clause, to see whether the Promoters have in mind something which I have not thought of. If they have an overwhelming case, well and good, but unless they have an overwhelming case, I hope very much that this clause may be omitted.
Moved, That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they should not pass Clause 36 without special attention, and, in particular, should consider whether it is desirable that medical practitioners should be compelled, with a penalty in case of non-compliance, to report to the local authority all cases of housebound handicapped persons living alone.—(Lord Taylor.)
7.38 p.m.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEESMy Lords, there is just a little more that I should like to say on the Newcastle Bill, because it has at least one difference, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has already said. This is merely a general purposes Bill, like the Cumberland one. The bulk of the Bill deals with the Town Moor at Newcastle, but there are some clauses of general interest and added for different purposes. The Bill, unlike the Cumberland Bill, is an unopposed Bill, by which I mean that there are no Petitions at all against it.
Again, may I say that medical organisations, had they been so minded, could have petitioned against this Bill. May I say here, on the point raised this evening about expert evidence, that the best way of putting expert evidence before your Lordships' House is by calling it before a Select Committee, and the way
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it is done is for expert witnesses, of whom a great many frequent your Lordships' House upstairs, to be called by the Promoters of the Bill, or by the Petitioners who oppose the Bill. The absence of expert evidence on this Bill is due simply to the fact that it is an unopposed Bill. Had it been opposed, it would have been different and expert evidence could have been given on both sides.
Although I said that it would be difficult to call expert evidence in the absence of a Petition against the Bill, I am reminded that after hearing the debate or argument downstairs, I could adjourn it for witnesses to be asked to come from outside. But much the best way of hearing expert evidence is to have a quasi-judicial hearing, which a hearing upstairs undoubtedly is.
May I say quite shortly that, if this Motion is not passed, this clause would be considered by the Unopposed Bills Committee of this House; and there is no doubt that, there being no precedent for this clause, the Committee would require the Promoters to justify it. The same procedure would then be followed as I have outlined for Cumberland. If this Motion is passed what happens then? Two things could happen. Either the clause would be considered by the Unopposed Bills Committee, being the Committee to which the Bill is referred, or, if I exercised my powers under the Standing Orders, which allow me to do so, I could send the clause upstairs to a Select Committee, in which case the clause, though unopposed, would be treated as if it were opposed. I have power to do that under Standing Order No. 92. Your Lordships may ask which I would do. I would say that my intention has been to consider everything that has been said to-night before deciding that question. I will certainly undertake to do that and then to decide what would be the best course in the interests of all concerned. I think that is all I can add. I am sorry to have addressed the House twice, but as there is a difference between the two Bills I thought I was justified in doing so.
7.42 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think I should first make it clear that I am not speaking in any official capacity within my Party. Some time ago I was

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asked by the Newcastle upon Tyne Corporation, in view of the original Instruction that my noble friend placed on the Order Paper, to explain their point of view. I think, in some ways, it is a good thing that my noble friend has drawn our attention to this particular matter, and I would thank him very much for the terms of the Motion that is now before the House. It draws our attention to what I think is one of the greatest evils that we have in our social system to-day—namely, the results of old age.
For some, old age is a period in which they can enjoy with satisfaction the experiences and achievements of their lives. Some can sit with their children and grandchildren around them, spending the last few years of their life in the best of all circumstances. But there is another side to the coin: those many thousands of old people who live very close to subsistence level, and short of the money which gives them the opportunity of buying the few things that are creature comforts, such as coal and the like. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Taylor is as well aware of them as I am, or any other Member of your Lordships' House is. It is that side of the coin that I should like to have in mind in considering the provisions that the Newcastle Corporation seek within this Bill.
If we just take statistics alone, in 1961 there were in this country 5½ million people over 65; 30 per cent. of them—or 1,650,000—were over the age of 75; and I do not think there is any doubt that this number continues to grow. However, I should like to think, in particular, of Newcastle. Newcastle, as my noble friend Lord Lawson will agree, is not part of the affluent South-East of England. It is condemned with a large amount of slum property; and I think your Lordships will find that many of the old people for whom this provision has been inserted will be found in these old premises of Newcastle, most of them with outside lavatories, certainly no bathroom, and no doubt all with a form of slippery stone step which is very dangerous to an old person. In Newcastle there are 31,000 persons over 65, of whom 10,000 are over 75. In the city alone there are nearly 7,000 women over the age of 60 who live alone. Those figures are taken from the 1961 Census,
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and I have no doubt that they have increased since that time.
My noble friend Lord Taylor said that doctors co-operate in notifying the authorities when it comes to their knowledge that old people are in need of attention. But in the case of Newcastle (and I would not put this as any reflection on the doctors of the neighbourhood; because, as my noble friend said, they are understaffed in that area), every winter many old people enter hospital, ill-nourished, cold and unkempt, quite apart from their medical ailment; and in many cases the position of these old people has been unknown to the local authority. I had a personal experience not long ago—not dealing with Newcastle, but it rather illustrates the problem—of an old lady of 83 who had lost her husband and her son during the war, and who was living at home and suffering from a severe heart ailment. The doctor sought to get her into hospital, but I understood at the time that she was not exactly a medical case, in the sense of requiring hospital treatment. This old lady lived in a house all by herself, right through the long night, without attention. I do not know why the local authority was not notified, but, as I shall show, under the National Assistance Act, 1948, the local authority have a duty to act when they have been notified. This illustrates the type of case to which the Newcastle Corporation are directing their attention.
In Newcastle, apart from the local authority, there are many welfare organisations that co-operate, and are willing to co-operate. But what the authority and the voluntary bodies want to know is the vital information about those persons who are in need of attention. My noble friend Lord Taylor spoke of the voluntary basis. I should much prefer it to be on a voluntary basis. I cannot help but reflect that, in the case of National Assistance, we know that many old people who are in need of National Assistance do not go to the National Assistance Board, because of their pride. They feel that they are asking for charity, although we well know that this is not a charity, but their right. I suggest that they would be willing to take National Assistance if somebody from the local authority or the Board responsible, when they knew that the person was in difficulties, went to the

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home and said, "This is your right". But it is quite a different thing for the old person to knock at the door and say, "I am in need of attention".
Take the case of loneliness. I think it would be even harder for an old person to go to the local authority and say, "I am lonely; I am unable to look after myself." I believe that that is something the old person would resist to the last. This is one of the reasons why I think that the voluntary appeal does not meet the case. It is true that neighbours and relations could do it. But even relations have a feeling of pride: they would not like to think that they had to go to the authority and say that their mother or father was in need of care and attention. It would be quite different, however, if the local authority came and said, "We know; we have heard; we are sorry. This is what we can do." I think we want a change of emphasis in this relation.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for a moment? What I was suggesting was that notification by the doctor should be a voluntary act. Is my noble friend objecting to that, or not? It seems to me that the doctor could very properly persuade the patient to allow notification, and the patient would probably not object. It is much better for the doctor to do it as a voluntary act as between willing customer and willing doctor, rather than that both parties should be compelled to do it.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I will reply to that, because I think it is a very serious point. But may I deal with the case of this voluntary registration so far as Newcastle is concerned? They had approximately 32,000 people over 65 at the 1961 census, and at present 11,000 are registered. Not all those 11,000 are persons who are in need of care and attention. They have been registered because of their age, and no doubt visits are made by the local authority through its officers. But there is undoubted evidence of the fact that there are many of whom we are not aware, and who are in need of attention.
My noble friend asked me whether I should not prefer the voluntary system by which the doctor would notify. Certainly I should. I think I would have
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advised the local authority concerned here to amend their provision, because I agree with my noble friend 100 per cent. that if a person refuses and tells his doctor that in no circumstances is he to be notified, then it is right that no notification should be made. But the power of the doctor is considerable. The doctor does not say to an individual, "I think you ought to go to hospital. Will you please go to hospital?" He does not put it in that way. He puts it in such a way that the person must have very strong objection to going to hospital to refuse. In the same way, if the doctor were to say, "I think you are an individual who is in need of attention", he could put it in such a way that the resistance, unless it was something of very great principle, would not apply.
The local authority do not ask for this provision in any sort of bureaucratic attitude. They do not wish to see wholesale registration. What they would like to know are the names of the persons who are in special need of care. They believe that if this information were available to them, they could use their existing health services far more economically. They could obtain better co-ordination, and perhaps make far greater use of the system and the welfare organisations which are in existence. I do not think the local authority are asking for greater powers, except, of course, that this lays the duty upon the doctor rather than as it is laid under the National Assistance Act, 1948. That Act, if I may refresh your Lordships' memory, in Section 47, lays a duty upon the medical officer of health, where a person is in need of care and attention and is not prepared to go to hospital or to a home, and if he is satisfied that the person requires treatment he goes to the Ministry and gets an order. Therefore, I suggest that here there is a duty laid upon a local authority to see that persons who are in need of care and attention have the services available for their care and attention. Parliament, in its wisdom, has given a power that where a person so objects he may give evidence in front of the magistrates, but the magistrates may make an order. Further, in the same section, if a person wilfully disobeys or obstructs an order, he shall be guilty of an offence and liable on

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summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £10.
Parliament of the day felt that some compulsion was necessary in the interests of the individual. I have endeavoured to make the case that in the case of Newcastle there may be a need for some compulsion on the doctors to notify the authority when people need care and attention. I must say that I should much prefer the voluntary system, but obviously the local authority feel that this is not sufficient. In the case of Newcastle, I understand that consultations have taken place with the local medical committee, and that it has been discussed and approved by them. This will indicate—and I would not put it higher than that—that there have been discussions with the local doctors, and that they have approved this provision. I may go further and say that the consultant physician in charge of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne geriatric department is also in favour.
It would seem, therefore, that the Corporation, when they decided to bring in this provision, carried out some consultation with the local medical service and that they have agreed to it, or approved it. When this clause goes to the office of the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, or upstairs, I hope the full problem will be understood and examined by the Committee. It may be that the Instruction which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has placed on the Order Paper may place this particular provision in jeopardy. We shall have to see. But I am quite sure of this: that if this provision goes, we shall not be as we are to-day. Our attention has been drawn to a serious social evil. Here is a local authority that has tried to find some way of improving its social service. If Parliament rejects it as being the wrong way of doing it, then a direct responsibility will lie upon the medical profession, not only in Newcastle but in the country as a whole, and upon Her Majesty's Government. Therefore, if the noble Lord's Motion for an Instruction has served no other purpose, it has served a most useful purpose in that respect.
8.2 p.m.
LORD BRAIN: My Lords, once more I should like to support what the
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noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has said. I have listened with great attention to the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and I can see the attractiveness of the point of view which he has put forward. It is the attractiveness of administrative efficiency. But one can pay too high a price even for administrative efficiency. I think it would be too high a price if it led to the undermining of confidence which one should expect between patients and doctors. Either the thing is compulsory or it is not, and if it is compulsory it is no good representing it as a doctor persuading the patient that he should go and that it is in his interest to go. The confidence in professional secrecy has more than one root, but one obvious root I think is illustrated by this point: that the provision of this clause might well be self-defeating.
As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has said many of these old people are very independent-minded and they may get it into their heads, quite wrongly, that they do not want a compulsory visit from a representative of the local authority. That might lead such patients not to call in a doctor, when it gets about that if they have the doctor he will notify their position to the local authority. I think that is a practical point of great importance. I feel quite sure that the right way to approach this problem is, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has said, by the method of voluntary co-operation. If the authority have services to offer which are to the advantage of the patients, and if they make this known to the doctors, I am quite sure that doctors will be only too glad to avail themselves of those services. I hope that when the Committee consider this clause, they will appreciate these difficulties to which I have drawn attention and will not take a step which I am sure would be regarded by the medical profession generally as the thin end of the wedge and as violating this very important principle of confidence between doctor and patient.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, I was not quite clear whether the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, was opposing the Motion of his noble friend Lord Taylor and, therefore, saying, in effect, that Clause 36

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of the Bill should not receive special attention. But, for my part, I will agree with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that it ought to receive special attention. But here again I express no preference as to exactly what form that special attention should take.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, may I make it clear that I do not oppose the Instruction? I think it should go forward. The purpose of my speaking, I fear at considerable length for this time of the evening, was to endeavour to put the Newcastle Corporation's point of view and the reasons for their provision.
8.5 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I should like to thank all your Lordships who have taken part in these two little debates, particularly my noble friend Lord Brain and my noble friend Lord Shepherd. I think he very fairly put the point of view of the Newcastle Corporation. I should like to reiterate that I think this is the wrong way of trying to do the right thing, because I know perfectly well that the easy way out of a situation is to try to put it into an Act instead of providing a service. If the Newcastle Corporation provides enough health visitors and can get those health visitors and general practitioners co-operating, this problem does not arise. It has not arisen—at least this solution has not been suggested previously—and the much better solution is the co-operation between the G.Ps and health visitors. What the noble Lord, Lord Brain, said is absolutely right: if there is a service available to the people and the general practitioners know it is there, they will not be slow in coming forward, because all they want to do is to see their people healthy. I think that what the people in Newcastle desire can and should be achieved, and it should be Newcastle's pride that this is achieved by voluntary effort and voluntary co-operation and not by introducing this compulsory principle.
I have argued my case. I think, on the whole, that you will feel that you would like to accept this Instruction and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, will, when he has considered all things, decide that this clause should go to a Committee, my concern being that it should be very
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carefully examined and, as will have emerged, that this is perhaps a more difficult one than the previous one. There are more obviously two sides to the problem and my concern is that we should have a report from the Committee of their solution. I am not quite sure which of the methods of the noble Lord, Lord Merthyr, will achieve that desired result, but I hope he will bear it in mind. I hope very much that your Lordships will accept my Instruction and that we shall be able to get the matter very carefully and objectively considered in Committee.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

SURGICAL BELTS
8.7 p.m.
LORD CROOK LORD CROOK rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in order to help the sick and aged, and in the interest of economy of administration, they will take effective steps to secure that arrangements are made for the cleaning of the surgical belts supplied to patients by the hospitals. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am sorry to detain your Lordships for a few more minutes to ask this Question which is on the Order Paper in my name, again a Question dealing with the aged and the sick. In the course of moving among people in my own home area I discovered that first one firm and then another had ceased to cause any work to be accepted in their shops for the cleaning of surgical belts, and I wrote to the Sutton and Cheam Hospital, Sutton, which is mainly responsible for the patients whom I knew, to point out that after months of attempting to secure service from any other dry cleaners than the one which was first referred to by that hospital, I was in the situation that I could find no other cleaning firm to provide it. Indeed, in an area from Kingston to Croydon it was impossible to find a shop of one of the cleaning firms to do so.
I believe this is due to some fear on their part about faulty cleaning, but that I do not know. This is no help to the patient, who is given a belt and told to have it cleaned from time to time, and that it must be cleaned only by dry cleaning; but who then in fact causes the belt to be subjected to washing powders and detergents and to be put into a

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washer or spin-drier. This deteriorates the belt and, as I pointed out, causes a replacement of the belt to be necessary at a very much earlier date. It probably causes the belt to be unfit to be worn either by reason of the deterioration in the washing, or even because the detergents themselves might cause a skin irritation.
I suggested that this was a position which the hospital authorities might put to the Ministry of Health. It was not for me to judge whether the hospital authorities or the Ministry should take steps to do something about it. The hospital authorities sent a copy of my letter to the Ministry, saying it was true that patients were finding it impossible to get firms to clean their belts, and that a surgical fitter who attended the hospital had told the officials there that he knew that the same difficulties were being experienced in other hospitals. The almoner of the hospital, writing to the Ministry of Health at Blackpool, pointed out that
"… makers do not recommend that belts should be washed at home, because unless they are dried very quickly the steels are liable to stain the material. Moreover some of our patients live in old people's homes, bedsitting rooms or small flats and have not the facilities to wash and dry their belts. Removable steels are not considered satisfactory, as patients can remove them at will and may not wear them."
The reply came back from the Assistant Director of Supply at the Ministry of Health, and I am bound to say, as one who has had long experience of the Civil Service and the excellent service it gives and its great co-operation, I have never in my life seen a more unhelpful or useless letter sent out by an officer of a Department. He says:
"There is no provision in the National Health Service for the cleaning of these supports but some contractors will undertake this work by private arrangement if patients request them to do so.
"Patients who do their own cleaning, either of choice or because they are unable to get any cleaning firms to do it for them, are not advised to put their belts in a washing machine or a spin drier, nor should they use a strong detergent.
"A recognised method of cleaning is to lay the garment flat and gently scrub it with a soft nail brush, using hot soapy water. This can be done with the steels, etc., in position, but where practicable it is advisable to remove them."
I do not know whether to call that a case of telling grandmother to go and suck eggs, or a complete and utter failure to recognise what had been said in the letter he had received. He says that some contractors will do this work, but the whole point of the letter sent to him was that there were large numbers of patients wanting help from someone in the Ministry because they could not get firms to clean them. He says they are not advised to put belts in washing machines. He was told that that was the reason it was being raised, in order to stop their doing that. Then he says:
"A recognised method … is to lay the garment flat and gently scrub it with a soft nail brush …"
Who recognised it? Recognised by the doctors who forbade it, or by the firm who made them, who forbade it and who put it in writing? Or recognised only by the gentleman sitting in Blackpool, who, without any consideration, thought he would give his own good advice?
He had been told the makers did not recommend that belts should be washed at home because the steels were liable to stain. He ignored some of the people in old people's homes, bedsitting rooms and flats who had not any facilities at all. Similarly, he went on to suggest that steels should be removed, where practicable. If he knew anything about the subject he would know that most of these steels are completely fixed and sewn in, with all the corners capped in leather; it is done deliberately to stop patients from taking steels out. The one thing doctors and physiotherapists are afraid of is that belts are such painful and annoying things that people will think of taking the steels out. He had been told that removable steels are not satisfactory, but he was good enough to suggest that they should be taken out.
I hope I am going to get, as I normally do from the noble Lord who is to reply, a much more helpful attitude than was shown by this reply, divorced as it was from any knowledge of the problem, not even recognising the facts that were put in the letter sent to the Ministry, making no attempt to solve the problem of the aged and sick, people who have great appeal to your Lordships and in whom I know the noble Lord

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the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health has great interest. It is not for me to say whether the solution should be one or the other, whether it should be some attempt to make arrangements for some firm to take the belts to be cleaned or whether the hospital authorities throughout the country should themselves undertake it. I say it is no good doctors prescribing the belts and saying that they should be cleaned and how they should be cleaned, with the steels left in, and then to get an unhelpful attitude such as is revealed in this letter.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I want to add only one word, and that is to support my noble friend Lord Crook heartily in everything he said and to ask the Minister whether there is not some sort of service for washing colostomy belts and how far such a service could be available for washing ordinary surgical belts. These people are very often arthritic and find the greatest difficulty in scrubbing and cleaning the belts themselves, and if the facility could be generalised in that way it would be a help.
8.16 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, the noble Lord's Question asks the Government to assume the responsibility of arranging for the cleaning of surgical belts supplied by the National Health Service. This is obviously not a matter which lends itself to very lengthy debate, at any time of the day or night, but it is no bad thing that it has been raised in your Lordships' House, since the fact that it has been raised is evidence—if evidence is needed—that we who sit here are not as out of touch with stark reality as our detractors would sometimes have the world believe.
The noble Lord's request could be met in either of two ways. The first way would be to compel all laundries and dry cleaners to undertake the task (at present some refuse to do so) and make noncompliance a punishable offence. I suggest that would be an intolerable limitation of commercial freedom, and I am quite certain that Parliament would not countenance it. Moreover, having examined a number of these belts I accept unhesitatingly the recommendation of the manufacturers that they
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should not be washed or cleaned by mechanical means. The second way would be for the National Health Service to do the cleaning. I have studied my Minister's duties under the National Health Services Acts, and I am quite certain that he has no duty to be responsible for the ordinary routine care of any appliance supplied by the National Health Service, though he does accept responsibility for repairs. But repairs are not ordinary routine care. The only exception is the cleaning of wigs, because that requires a special process which cannot be undertaken in the ordinary way.
If the National Health Service were to be responsible for the cleaning of surgical belts the annual cost to the taxpayers would be more than a quarter of a million pounds, and there would be a further bill, which we could not avoid, for cleaning other appliances, such as colostomy and ileostomy belts, to which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor referred, elastic hosiery and brassieres. With great respect, the cleaning of a surgical belt is a perfectly simple operation, provided that it is done before the belt gets too dirty, as it obviously ought to be, and as the manufacturers recommend. And the evidence we have in my Department is that most wearers do their own cleaning or, if they are sick or elderly, have it done at home by those who look after them.
I must admit that I had never seen a surgical belt until the noble Lord's Question appeared on the Order Paper. But as soon as it did I sent for samples, including a dirty one—the technical description is "soiled". I washed it, following the instructions of the manufacturers; that is to say, I squeezed it thoroughly in warm soapy water, rubbed it lightly with a nail brush where most soiled, carefully rinsed it in clean tepid water and avoided intense heat in drying it. I should think that this is a very easy operation to perform in one's own home; but I had to perform it at the Ministry of Health at the Elephant and Castle. I found a cubby-hole with a sink and water, but there was no table or draining board. However, my resourceful Private Secretary produced a tea tray, and he held the tray while I washed the belt upon it. I have the result here. With all due modesty. I

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do not think it is a bad effort for a beginner. The creation of iron mould through the rusting of the steel supports is a slight nuisance, though I found I could get rid of most of it by rubbing with half a lemon dipped in salt. However, this nuisance does not often arise, because most of the manufacturers already produce belts with removable steels, contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Crook, evidently believes. Moreover, we in the Department are considering amending the specifications of all surgical garments to provide that all steel supports must be removable. We are also considering with the manufacturers the use of materials other than steel.
Finally, I consulted my wife. She says that all women, whether or not they send most of their washing to a laundry or dry cleaner, always wash certain articles of apparel themselves. After fifteen years' experience of married life I was not surprised to receive that information.
Until the noble Lord raised this matter we did not know that any problem existed. Indeed, my Department have
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been unable to find any record of a complaint by a wearer. I am told that the manufacturers receive comparatively few dirty belts for repair. This seems to suggest that the great majority of wearers have little difficulty in arranging for their belts to be cleaned or washed or in doing the job themselves and, as I said earlier, our information is that most people do the job at home or have it done at home for them. I am further advised that it is probably better for the belts to wash them at home than to send them to a dry cleaner.
LORD CROOK: My Lords, I have no right of reply.

HAVEN MARINE TERMINAL COMPANY BILL [H.L.] LIFE ASSOCIATION OF SCOTLAND LIMITED [H.L.]
Committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes past eight o'clock.