Lords Sitting of 29 June 1964

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Coventry

PREVENTIVE DETENTION AND AGED DETAINEES
2.35 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: 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 how many men now serving sentences of preventive detention were, when sentenced, above "the maximum qualifying age for preventive detention, as stated in the practice direction" of the Lord Chief Justice; and of this number how many are at present aged 70 years and over.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD DERWENT): My Lords, I do not know of any practice direction which states a maximum qualifying age for a sentence of preventive detention. There are at the present time sixteen male prisoners undergoing preventive detention who are more than 70 years old.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, when the Lord Chief Justice referred the other day to the case of a man of 62, I understood that he must be referring to a maximum age for preventive detention. That is how I took it. Can I ask the noble Lord, with regard to the fourteen men over 70 years of age—
LORD DERWENT: Sixteen.
LORD STONHAM: I am sorry—the sixteen men now over 70 years of age, what has happened to them, in view of the fact that Parkhurst is no longer being used as a P.D. prison, that these men can therefore no longer be in the geriatric ward there, and there is no other provision of a similar character in any other prison?
LORD DERWENT: I am afraid I have not got the details of each of these sixteen men. I do not know where they are at the present moment. If the noble Lord would like to put down another Question, I could probably answer it.
LORD STONHAM: Will the noble Lord then ask his right honourable friend to inquire into the sentences of these sixteen men?—because it does seem absurd and unnecessary to imprison men of that age in a secure prison.
LORD DERWENT: The noble Lord will know, of course, that the length of sentences is nothing to do with the Home Secretary.

MOVEMENT OF ABNORMAL LOADS FOR EXPORT
2.37 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the difficulty experienced in moving heavy indivisible loads is a serious barrier to the expansion of our export trade in electrical gear, boilers, chemical and engineering equipment; and whether they have any plans for dealing with the problem on a national scale, including greater use of the major inland waterways and the provision at main ports of heavy lift cranes of up to 300 tons capacity.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, my right honourable friend is aware of the difficulties experienced in moving heavy indivisible loads, and has been in touch with representatives of industry, who have undertaken to let him have particulars of their needs. The investigation of certain additional road routes for very heavy loads is already in hand, and as soon as the information is received from industry he will consider what further steps should be taken to deal with the problem.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask him whether he is aware that responsible representatives of some of the largest industries in the country have said

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that the lack of these facilities is holding back our export drive? Is he aware, too, that there is a demand for indivisible loads of some 300 tons for export; and can he say anything about that part of my Question which refers to the use of the waterways, in view of the fact that A.E.I. propose to build barges to carry loads of 500 tons if the facilities are there?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, as I tried to indicate in. my Answer—and I had hoped I had succeeded—my right honourable friend is aware of these problems. In fact, he has been in touch with the Abnormal Loads Committee of the Conference of Heavy Engineering Industries, and it is that body which has undertaken to give him a comprehensive and detailed picture of the needs that they have. When my right honourable friend receives that, which I understand will be in the quite near future, he will consider what are the best plans to make, and I certainly would not rule out the use of any form of transport which might be useful in the circumstances.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, would the noble Lord suggest to his right honourable friend that he might approach industry, especially those industries which make equipment of the kind mentioned in the Question, with the suggestion that they should so fabricate this equipment that it can be carried upon the transport facilities that are at present available? The noble Lord will be aware, I have no doubt, that the more the size of the roads is increased to accommodate abnormal loads, the greater the abnormal loads will become; and the greater the roads will have to become to carry them. Would it not be a sensible thing to start at the other end and suggest to industry that they use their brains to prefabricate these loads into different sizes?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, that, I am happy to tell your Lordships, my right honourable friend has already done, and, I am even happier to say, with certainly some success. But the industrial requirements of these manufacturers are such that it is not always possible.
VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that it is becoming a custom for a number of importers to send their goods packaged in enormous parcels, weighing, in some cases,
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hundreds of tons, and that particularly is this the case now in the timber trade? Is the noble Lord also aware that this stuff which ought to be travelling by water and by rail is being put on to the roads? In particular, is the noble Lord aware that Brentford Dock, which still has a cargo handling of 100,000 tons a year, is being closed; that all this cargo is being put on to the roads, and that the only crane capable of handling such cargo at the dock has already been scrapped?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, without notice I cannot answer to-day the second part of the noble Viscount's question. If he cares to put down another Question, I shall be delighted to go into it. I should have thought that if timber was moving about this country in packages weighing several hundred tons there would be severe physical difficulties in moving it by rail, by waterway or even by road.

RECOMMENDED ABOLITION OF PREVENTIVE DETENTION
2.42 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: 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 when they intend to announce their decision on the report of the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders, which, in January 1963, recommended the abolition of preventive detention.]
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, the Government hope to make a statement shortly.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, may I ask whether that means before the House rises for the holidays?
LORD DERWENT: I am afraid I cannot give the noble Earl a date, but the Government will make every attempt to make a statement before the Recess.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: Perhaps I might just ask whether the noble Lord is aware that preventive detention has no friends anywhere, and that almost everybody concerned with these ques-

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tions is utterly disgusted at the long delay involved.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I cannot agree that the delay is unduly long. The noble Earl will remember that it was a Labour Government which brought in preventive detention in order to deal with the very difficult problems of recidivism. Before doing away with it, as I have already said three times in your Lordships' House, this Government are determined that whatever takes its place shall be satisfactory.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, a lot of water has flowed under the bridges since the last Labour Government, but may I ask the Minister this: Is he aware that there is to be an important debate held in your Lordships' House on a Motion introduced by my noble friend Lord Gardiner? Will the Minister use his best endeavours to see that we have a statement before that debate, because I think it would be very useful not only to your Lordships' House but to all people who are interested in this very important matter?
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot add anything to my original Answer. As soon as we are ready to make a statement we will do so.
LORD SHEPHERD: But, my Lords, the noble Lord can use his best endeavours. Can he at least give me an assurance as to that?
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, "the noble Lord", as a matter of fact, does not actually decide what is going to happen. Until that is decided no statement can be made.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that an answer precisely similar to the one he gave my noble friend Lord Longford was given me by his predecessor, Lord Jellicoe, in July of last year, when he then expressed the hope that an announcement would be made before the Summer Recess of that year? Can the noble Lord be a little more definite and assure us that he will get a statement of the Government's intentions before the end of this July?
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I am afraid I can only repeat my original
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Answer that a statement will be made shortly.
LORD GARDINER: My Lords, does the noble Lord not think it rather hard on the courts, and perhaps the other persons concerned, to have this prolonged uncertainty over seventeen months with the courts not knowing what the position is going to be? Perhaps prisoners would have been dealt with quite differently if the Government had made up their minds within a reasonable time.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, it may be that the original decision to introduce preventive detention was introduced too quickly and without adequate thought. We are not going to make the same mistake again.

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS OF POLICE RECRUITS
2.46 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, in the light of the finding of the Royal Commission that the Police Service was not attracting its proper share of young men with higher educational qualifications, what remedial measures they are taking.]
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, in the last two years, with the full concurrence and support of the police authorities and of the representatives of the Service associations, a new system has been introduced into the Police Service for the selection and training of young men of exceptional promise, and under a new regulation made by my right honourable friend, which comes into force on July 1, constables of as little as three years' service will be able to compete for selection for the new special course at the national Police College at Bramshill. Successful completion of this course carries with it automatic promotion. Taken with the generally improved conditions of service, these new arrangements should substantially improve the attractiveness of the Police Service to young men of good education.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer. Can he say whether headmasters and appointments officers in our universities are fully informed of the prospects in the Police Service, since they may be in a good position to help both the Service and suitable applicants?
LORD DERWENT: Yes, my Lords: my right honourable friend the Home Secretary addressed an experimental meeting between police officers, university appointments officers and headmasters which was held at the Police College. The meeting was a success. There was a frank exchange of views, and a number of suggestions which were made are being followed up. It is hoped to arrange other meetings at the College of a similar character.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, while not being entirely out of sympathy with the purpose of the noble Lord who put the Question, may I ask the Minister of State whether he can assure us that products of the primary schools will not, in due course, be excluded from the police force or denied the opportunity of promotion within the police force? Is it not a fact that many products of elementary schools in many walks of life, inducing the police force, have done good work for the community?
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, I fully agree with the noble Lord. In that respect ex-primary schoolboys will have just as much chance as anyone else. These new arrangements for what I may call higher education in the police are to make certain that those police officers who already show promise on the beat and are rather unusually intelligent will be able to have some accelerated promotion because of their intelligence.

PORT ORGANISATION
EARL ST. ALDYN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend Lord Chesham will be making a statement on port organisation.

HOUSING BILL
2.48 p.m.
Report of Amendments received (according to Order).
Clause 2 [Power of Corporation to make loans to housing societies]:
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, during the Committee stage I promised noble Lords opposite that we would have another look at Clause 2 and at subsection (1) in order to see whether we could find a form of words to make it clear beyond doubt that the Housing Corporation could make loans to a housing society of up to 100 per cent. without prejudicing the Minister's powers to give directions under Clause 1. This Amendment and the second one have been devised for that purpose. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 34, after ("make") insert ("loans")—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I beg to move this Amendment formally.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 35, leave out ("loans to meet") and insert ("for the purpose of enabling the housing society to meet the whole or any part of any").—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 19 [Dwellings outside improvement areas]:
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, Clause 19 provides for the giving of notices for work to be done on premises which fall within Part II of the Bill, and that the notice to the owner shall be of twelve months. During Committee stage it was pointed out that in some cases twelve months was unnecessarily long, particularly where the full works contemplated in the Bill would not be required to bring dwellings up to the requisite standard—it might be necessary to provide only cooking facilities in a kitchen or water or something of that kind—and in that case it should be within the discretion of the local authority to give notice of a period shorter than twelve months. That is the purpose of this Amendment and I hope it will be acceptable. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 23, line 23, at end insert—
("(c) If the works are to a lower standard than full improvement, the improvement notice may. at the discretion of the local authority, specify a period shorter than twelve months.") —(Lord Silkin.)
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, in respect of Clause 19 certainly the Government would think it right to advise local authorities to exercise care when specifying a shorter period than twelve months, and in any case not to go below six months; but subject to that, I have pleasure in accepting this Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HASTINGS LORD HASTINGS moved, after Clause 34, to insert the following new clause:
Rent limit in Rent Act 1957: increase for improvement under Part II
" .—(1) In the case of an improvement effected in compliance with an immediate improvement notice or final improvement notice or an undertaking accepted under this Part of this Act, section 5 of the Rent Act 1957 (increase for improvements) shall have effect subject to the provisions of this section.
(2) If—

(a) the landlord, or a predecessor in title of the landlord, is the person who expended money on the improvement, and

(b) a standard grant under section 4 of the Act of 1959 in respect of the improvement, although obtainable, has not been obtained,

the said section 5(4) (under which, as amended by section 27 of the Act of 1959, the making of a standard grant reduces the increase of rent authorised by that section) shall apply as if that standard grant had been obtained.
(3) In any proceedings relating to the increase authorised by the said section 5 in respect of the improvement it shall be assumed, until the contrary is proved, that a standard grant was obtainable in respect of the improvement.
(4) The local authority shall, at the request in writing of the landlord or the tenant, give to him an estimate in writing of what the amount of the standard grant would have been if it had been obtained, and for the purposes of any such proceedings that estimate shall be sufficient evidence of what that amount would have been.
(5) Section 25 of the Rent Act 1957 shall apply for the interpretation of this section."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this new clause has been put down by Her Majesty's Government in order to achieve the object of the Opposition's new clause which was moved in Committee and which I accepted in principle. Your Lordships will remember that I suggested
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then that it would be better to achieve this object by reference to the Rent Act, 1957, and that has been followed out. The substance of the new clause is in subsection (2), which provides that the amount spent on the improvement, on which the rent increase is calculated, shall be the cost less the grant, as if the grant had been taken, whether it has been taken or not. Subsection (3) puts the onus on the landlord of proving that the grant was not obtainable, and subsection (4) obliges the local authority to supply an estimate of what the grant would have been if a grant had been asked for and given. I think that this will meet the requirements which noble Lords want to put into the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 34, insert the said new clause. —(Lord Hastings.)
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, this is certainly an improvement on what was in the Bill before. It gives us some of the things we asked for, and I am very glad indeed to support it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HEALTH (THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN): My Lords, this Amendment is the Scottish counterpart of the Amendment to which your Lordships have just agreed. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 34, insert the following new clause:
Increase in controlled rent in respect of improvement under Part II
".—(1) In the case of an improvement effected in compliance with an immediate improvement notice or a final improvement notice or an undertaking accepted under this Part of this Act, section 2(1)(a) of the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act 1920 (increase for improvements) shall have effect subject to the provisions of this section.
(2) If a standard grant under section 19 of the Act of 1959 in respect of the improvement, although obtainable, has not been obtained, the said section 2(1)(a) (under which the amount of the permitted increase in rent in respect of expenditure incurred by the landlord on the improvement of a dwellinghouse to which the said Act of 1920 applies is limited to an amount calculated at a rate per annum not exceeding twelve and one half per cent of the amount so expended) shall apply as if for the reference therein to the amount

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expended on the improvement there were substituted a reference to that amount diminished by a sum equal to what the amount of the said standard grant would have been if it had been obtained.
(3) In any proceedings relating to the increase permitted by the said section 2(1)(a) in respect of the improvement it shall be assumed, until the contrary is proved, that a standard grant was obtainable in respect of the improvement.
(4) The local authority shall, at the request in writing of the landlord or the tenant, give to him an estimate in writing of what the amount of the standard grant would have been if it had been obtained, and for the purposes of any such proceedings that estimate shall be sufficient evidence of what that amount would have been.
(5) In this section 'landlord' and 'tenant' have the same meanings respectively as in the said Act of 1920."—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 39 [Exclusion of dwellings controlled by Crown or a public authority]:
LORD TAYLOR LORD TAYLOR moved, in subsection (2), to add to paragraph (c):
"Provided that the housing association is recognised by the Corporation as a bona fide association, formed for the benefit of the tenants,".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment tries to make sure that premises controlled by housing associations formed for something other than a bona fide purpose do not escape being dealt with by control orders. When we were dealing with this matter in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, promised to look into it. He said that, in a sense, it was a possible gap in housing association law, rather than something which ought to be dealt with here, but his final words were that he would look into the question and report to us again, to see whether anything could or should be done. May I say that we are grateful for the kindness which the noble Lord has shown to our proposals so far? Long may it continue! I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 45, line 21, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Taylor.)
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I did look into this matter carefully and, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is no doubt aware, I wrote to his noble friend Lord Silkin, to say I regretted that we should
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not be able to accept his suggestion. My reason for saying that was that this would really be taking a large mallet in order to crush a very small gnat. This Amendment would exclude many hundreds of provident and non-profit-making housing societies from the exemption made in this clause, and we should hardly be justified in doing that. We feel, moreover, that housing associations, like local authorities and development corporations, can be relied upon to act responsibly in regard to the improvement of their dwellings—and in this Part of the Act we are dealing with improvements and not with other matters. I think that it would be derogatory to the housing associations not to treat them in a responsible manner, particularly at a moment when we hope to get many more housing associations started.
As regards the Amendment itself, there are other objections, apart from that of principle. First, there is the question of recognition. This cannot be a function or purpose of the Housing Corporation, whose primary function is to lend money to housing societies. Before it does so, the Corporation will go thoroughly into the background of a society, its formation, its stability and reputability. It is not likely that it would lend money to a housing society which has not been formed with the view to helping people who want to build houses for themselves at cost-rents or who want to share in cost-rent schemes. Apart from that, by the Industrial and Provident Societies Act, 1893, recognition is really vested in the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies. That is where the test comes. The societies must not be trading for a profit, and it is difficult to see where these other societies would creep in or be any sort of danger.
Secondly, the Amendment is rather vague, because it does not make provision for machinery of recognition, if the bona fide of the association has to be decided by the Housing Corporation. Therefore, I do not think that the Amendment would stand in its present form. But our main objection is to the principle that, in order to catch one or two potentially unsatisfactory housing associations, we should put into Part II of the Bill a proviso which would limit the exemption of housing societies from the liability to compulsory improvement

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orders. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will not wish to press his Amendment.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I see the objections which the noble Lord has raised, that we are introducing a new function for the Housing Corporation, in making it, as it were, the registrar of bona fide housing societies. Our concern is with people who would form a housing society in order to avoid the effects of the application of a control order, as a sort of crooked operation—and that could be done. But let us hope it will be seldom done; and if it is done, we must try to expose it in due course and deal with it in some other way. I realise that to try to do it in the way we have suggested may be impracticable, and we do not wish to press the Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 46 [Standard grants excluded for certain houses and other buildings in multiple occupation]:
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this Amendment is also put down to meet an objection raised by noble Lords opposite on the Committee stage. They wished to enable a standard grant to be paid for the improvement of a house in multiple occupation to the level of the full range of standard amenities. This Amendment restores the availability of grant for improvements to that full standard in the sort of case noble Lords opposite had in mind. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 54, line 28, after ("1959") insert ("so far as it relates to applications made by virtue of section 43 of this Act").—(Lord Hastings.)
LORD LATHAM: My Lords, this Amendment and the next one substantially redeem the assurance the Minister was good enough to give on the Committee stage. It strengthens the clause substantially and meets the point the local authorities had in mind. We are grateful.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this is a consequential Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 54, line 29, leave out from ("made") to ("in").—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 54 [Conditions attaching to improvement grants and standard grants in England and Wales: rent limit]:
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this is a minor Amendment repairing an omission. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 61, line 23, after ("Sections") insert ("2,").—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 58:
Amount of improvement grant for dwellings provided by conversion of houses of three or more storeys in England and Wales
58.—(1) Section 32(1)(b) of the Act of 1958 (which limits the amount of an improvement grant under Part II of that Act for each dwelling provided by the improvement works to four hundred pounds or such other amount as may be prescribed) shall have effect in relation to a dwelling provided by a conversion of a house which consists of three or more storeys as if for the words "four hundred pounds" there were substituted the words "five hundred pounds".
(2) The reference in the foregoing subsection to the number of storeys shall, if any of the dwellings provided by the improvement works is a dwelling all or part of which is in the basement, include the basement as one of the number of storeys of the house.
(3) The Minister's power under the said section 32(1)(b) to vary the amount specified in that paragraph shall be exercisable separately as respects the amount of four hundred pounds mentioned in that section and as respects the amount of five hundred pounds substituted by this section in the cases specified in this section.
3.8 p.m.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out all words after "effect", and to leave out subsections (2) and (3), and insert:
"as if for the words 'four hundred pounds' there were substituted the words 'six hundred pounds'."
The noble Viscount said: My noble friend Lord Colville of Culross is unable to be here to-day and has asked me to move this Amendment for him. I must apologise for a mere Scotsman moving an English Amendment, but if it is for the convenience of your Lordships I will speak to this Amendment and the next one, which is a Scottish Amendment, at the same time, and then I will move them separately.
I have been supplied with a lot of figures relating to England, and I am sure that Her Majesty's Government have these

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figures. Therefore I will only summarise them, because I do not wish to bore your Lordships with too many statistics. The Country Landowners' Association in England approached 46 rural district councils, who replied. Of those 40 rural district councils, 6 said that, as a matter of policy, they did not pay the maximum grant in any case. Eleven sent in detailed figures for 1961, 1962 and 1963 which show that, out of 973 approved cases, the approved cost of 453 of the houses was over £800; and out of 941 cases, the approved cost of 245 was over £1,000. The discrepancy in the total numbers arises through Malton, which I understand is in Yorkshire, who give their figures as averages, and their average cost over those three years was £1,273 per house, £942 per house, £1,081 per house, and for a part period, £1,249.
Her Majesty's Government on the Committee stage rested their case, I thought, on average figures of grant paid. I should like to nail the fallacy and danger of this argument, I hope once and for all, by three quite simple examples. Ten houses costing £800 each, which is a total of £8,000, rank for an average grant of £400. Five houses at £1,000, and five houses at £600, total average cost £800, would rank for an average grant of £350—the same cost for the same number of houses, but a totally different figure, because you are playing with averages. I will give one last example. Five houses at £900, five houses at £700, a total of £8,000, would rank for an average grant each of £375. The total cost is exactly the same, the total number of houses is the same, but, on the average figure for grant, you have three completely different answers. I think tint proves the fallacy of trying to get at this through averages. That is the general theme for England and Scotland, although the figures vary.
Converted houses, of course, mean better living conditions for workers and—an important point—for retired folk and people who find it difficult to be housed other than by local authorities. In other words, conversion will relieve the pressure on local authorities, and it is a cheap way of getting this done. Nevertheless, the conversion or improvement of a house results in an increased rateable value, and often in the particular district an increased poundage on the rates. Therefore, quite a "cut" comes back to the local authority.
Conversion also, theoretically, results in increased allowable rent. But this is, in country districts, largely a theoretical exercise, because the rent you may charge is governed, certainly for agricultural workers, by the Agricultural Wages Act, which limits the rent at the present moment to 11s. a week. You can appeal to the Board and possibly get it put up, but if you did that, you would not get a farm worker, and I think that is why nobody ever does it. On the other hand, the bigger the grant you receive, the less increase in rent you are allowed to pass on, which is very just and proper. Private enterprise housing in the country seldom passes on the rent or rate increase to the agricultural worker, because the rent and rates is payable by the farmer and owner. Local authorities, on the other hand, have to pass on the whole.
There are some factors in cost of construction which to some degree affect England and parts of Scotland. Cost of materials in remoter places includes cost of transport. As an example of that, I will quote the cost of cement in the London area, which is of the order of £5 to £6 a ton, as compared with a not very remote part of the world, Stonehaven, near where I live, where it is over £9 a ton. And all other materials include a fairly heavy delivery charge. Also, workers' travelling time has to be allowed for. When the workers have to go into the country you have to pay both for the travelling time and the transport to get them there. There is more bad weather in some parts of the country than in others, which again has to be paid for; and, in particular, in the country districts, there is the cost of drainage, electricity and water (this is not so in every case, but in a large number of cases) which is bound to put up the cost.
Another factor which does not seem to be accounted for is the size of accommodation which is often necessary in country districts to prevent overcrowding, no other accommodation being available. Costs of new houses vary largely from house to house and district to district. The cost of land is not always shown in the cost of the scheme; very often it is shown differently. Also the costs of roadworks, drainage and sewerage are often in a separate scheme, and, therefore, these figures are very difficult to compare. By the time all the loans have

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been paid off on a house originally costing about £2,000 the cost of that house is probably much nearer £5,000. The cost of converting a house, which the Government and the ratepayers would find between them, even if the cost of building or converting the house is in the order of £1,800, would be a figure of not much more than that, so it is a very good bargain however you look at it.
I have given the noble Lord the totals of the costs of actual housing in Kincardineshire, my own county—I will not quote them all to your Lordships—which I took from the housing factor's files from 1950 to 1963–64. The total is for 835 houses. At the beginning the average cost of a house—and I am again using averages—was £479. In 1963–64 the average figure was £1,186, which shows the rate at which the costs have been going up. The first nine houses in 1964–65 cost an average of £1,254, and they all received the maximum grant. With regard to local authority conversions, my own local authority converted some houses. In 1960–61 they converted eight houses at an average cost of £1,240. In 1963, they converted three others at a place called Auchinblae, two of them at a cost of £1,460, and one at £1,336. So their costs are comparable to private enterprise costs.
I should like to draw attention to the houses in Cove Bay because the local authority applied to the Secretary of State, and because they said that they had architecturally to fit them into the rest of the village they got an increased grant. Last year a private individual improved another house in the same village and had to comply with exactly the same conditions. His costs for doing that were £1,031, as against the local authority's costs of £1,240, and he did not get an increased grant. The Inverness-shire totals, which I have also with me, are really rather shattering. Inverness, of course, is very remote, as one knows; and again I will try to keep the figures to the absolute minimum. In 1961, they converted 21 houses, 15 of which were above the cost of £800. The average price was £1,028. In 1962, they converted 29 houses, 24 of which were above £800, and the average cost was £1,214. In 1963, they converted 37 houses, 26 of which were above the £800 mark. The average grants they received on these houses were,
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in 1963 £381; in 1962 £387, and in 1961 £376, which again brings out the point of the danger of averaging these things. It just does not fit the bill at all.
I have a rough knowledge of the Scottish conditions because I have myself converted and re-conditioned about 2 per cent. of the total number of houses which have been converted in that county, which amounts, I think, to 18 to date. I have done the surveying, I have made up the bills of quantities, the specifications and the drawing myself, and obtained prices. The fact that there are two yet to do is one of the reasons why I am keen on this subject. Nevertheless, I claim that the fact that costs of building have gone up—this is nothing to do with averages at all—proves that what I am saying is true; and, so far as I know, it applies to England and Scotland. It appears to me that the Secretary of State has inadequate figures on this question, because when I sent these figures to him after a little bit of shuffling, St. Andrew's House rang up the housing factor in Stonehaven and asked him what it was all about. Therefore, I think the liaison is not quite what it might have been.
So far as individual application to the Secretary of State for an increase in grant is concerned, by and large it takes somewhere between nine months and a year to get through the paraphernalia before you can carry out a renovation. If after that you have to go to the Secretary of State before you can do a job, it is going to take another five or six weeks, at the very least, and my experience is that any approach to the Scottish Office takes considerably longer than that. Therefore, I do not think that that answers any of these problems.
The Association of County Councils were approached, and I believe they recommended this Scottish figure of £500, which at this month of this year I do not quarrel with. I am looking to what will be happening in the general rise of building costs in the future. The Association of County Councils are an interested party, and therefore it would be a good thing to discuss it with the other parties interested in this bargain. I would suggest that a way out might be that in the quarterly housing returns (which go into minute detail of the appliances fitted to each house, and where and why, and all the rest of it) could be added the number of houses

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ranking for grant above the 50 per cent. figure. That would give us a clear indication, without any averages at all, of just how many people were having to pay a large sum above the 50 per cent. grant. I do not think this would cause any real difficulty, because all the machinery appears to exist. I think it would give us a feeling of confidence that if the Secretary of State and the Minister of Housing did not review these grants, and if evidence was laid that it was necessary to put them up, we could then have the normal opportunity of asking questions or, at any rate, of putting on a little pressure. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 67, line 18, leave out from ("effect") to the end of line 32, and insert the said new words.—(Viscount Stonehaven.)
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, I should like to support my noble friend in this exercise, because presumably these limits were right when they were set, and during the several years that have passed since then there has been an almost unprecedented rise in the cost of building, particularly of the smaller items such as repairs. If the Minister values this form of providing proper up-to-date housing —and I believe he does—I should have thought it was a good thing to keep this grant figure constantly moving to keep in touch with the rising cost of building. We all know that this increase has been going on. I know, particularly from a church point of view, that repairs are very much more expensive to-day than they were a few years ago. Indeed, the Minister has said himself that the industry is heavily overloaded, and we believe that there is very strong bidding between the contractors for labour, so that a great deal of building labour is costing far more than the trade union rates for any particular job. I do not know sufficiently about the background of the Bill to know precisely when these particular limits were set, but certainly I would suggest that the grants should be kept in line with the cost of building.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, I rise to support this Amendment, because I believe that one of the most important things we have to do, if we are to have really good housing in this country, is to go further and more speedily with conversions. We have
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talked for a great many years of the benefits of conversion. I remember being on two Housing Committees, one to deal with English housing and the other with Scottish housing, before the war, and in both Reports which were issued it was recommended that more effort should be made to convert houses for the use for which they were then, and are now, really wanted. We have done a certain amount, but I am perfectly certain that we have not gone sufficiently far and with sufficient speed in this matter. I feel that if we do not do something further now, those who come after us, in ten, twenty, thirty or forty years' time will be making the same type of speeches and will still be imploring the authorities for more houses; and we shall have had an enormous waste of housing in this country.
We can build new houses, but there is a great deal more which can be done by further conversion. I quite agree with my noble friend about the difficulties of averages; but, after all, he himself had to fall back on averages. We all know that the average cost is one which applies to no specific house at all. I would ask Her Majesty's Government whether there has been a detailed examination of the costs. As my noble friend has pointed out, he has gone into the question of improvements in his own area and has given us some of the details, and it is quite extraordinary what the variations are. I suggest that we should be able to have a clearer statement of costs as they are to-day. As the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, has said, they are going up. I believe that the greatest effort should be made to get on with this job of conversion. Yet I think I am right in saying that in some areas less has been done in the last few years than was done, say, about five years ago. I would ask Her Majesty's Government to consider this question of conversion very seriously, as one of the ways, as we have known for many years, that can make an enormous difference to the housing problem—in other words, make available good and comfortable housing for the people of this country.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, I, too, should like to support this Amendment and, more especially, the next one —for I gather that we are discussing the two together. In Scotland this particular

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clause applies only to houses of three or four storeys, and this often means, when improvements are undertaken, that it is necessary to add a room to the house in order to create a bathroom; otherwise, the house becomes so small that economically it is not worth improving. The trouble is that in these days of high building costs it is quite impossible to do so for as little as £1,000. The cost is nearly always between £1,200 and £1,400, as I know only too well from experience. I feel that if the limit were raised from £400 to £600, instead of £500, as provided in the Bill, it would encourage more landlords to undertake these improvements. After all, they are so ly needed, and the longer they are delayed, the greater the cost will be, both to the landlord and to the country. I hope, therefore, that the Government will be able to see their way to accepting both Amendments No. 11 and No. 12.
3.25 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL NAVY (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, having been exposed to something of a barrage, I rise, very diffidently, to reply to these two Amendments, which, as my noble friend suggested, I think it would be useful to take together. First of all, I should like to repeat one main point which I made at Committee stage: that I am at one with my noble friend who has moved this Amendment and those of my noble friends who have supported him; and, more important, the Government are at one with them in agreeing on the importance of doing what we can to encourage house improvements either by standard grants or by discretionary grants. And that, of course, is why we are taking steps, in both Part II and Part III of this Bill, in various ways to encourage more rapid and more comprehensive improvements of houses.
Having said that, I should like to try to clear away what I think is a common misconception here, and one which, to a certain extent, I have heard reflected in some of the things which have been said this afternoon. The discretionary grant—the one we are dealing with here —is not intended to cover half the cost of the works of improvement, whatever that figure may be. Strictly speaking, a discretionary grant is a contribution based on a percentage of up to 50 per cent. towards the first £800 of the cost
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of improvements. For this reason, it is not enough simply to point to the substantial rise in building costs since 1954. I would agree entirely with my noble friend that building costs have risen substantially since then. I cannot quite recall the precise figure which my noble friend quoted, but I think they have risen by anything from 45 to 50 per cent. in the period with which we are dealing—that is, since 1954, when the £800 limit was fixed.
But the acid test is whether the works of improvement required to bring the house up to the 12-point standard, as it is known, can reasonably be carried out within a maximum figure of £800. That is the point. During Committee stage I promised my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, Who then moved the Amendment that my right honourable friend and his Ministry would continue with their examination of the evidence that was being collected on the cost of grantaided schemes of improvement, and that I would say anything more I could at Report stage in the light of that reexamination. We have looked at this matter, and the Ministry have reexamined the evidence, and I come back now to give the results of it.
We have taken a random sample of the schemes approved in rural areas in the United Kingdom during the first quarter of 1964, and we have given very detailed examination (for which I think my noble friend Baroness Horsbrugh was asking) to it. I have called it a random sample, but it was not quite a random sample, because the schemes we were looking at were those selected by the Rural District Councils' Association—and I should like to pay tribute to the co-operation which they have given over this—and related to the cases that had been brought to my right honourable friend's attention by the mover of a smilar Amendment, Mr. Ridley, in another place. They were the specific cases which the proponents of this scheme had brought to the Minister's attention.
We looked at 170 cases. In 54 of these the cost of the improvements came to over £800, which is the crucial figure here. However, after applying the necessary three tests which are laid down in the practice notes (and I will remind your Lordships in a moment of what those

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three tests are), there were only 7, or 4 per cent. of the 170, where the works need have cost more than £800. What are these three tests? They are, first, that the cost should not be above or near the cost of providing comparable new accommodation; secondly, that the grant-attracting element of the cost should exclude all items not necessary to bring a house up to the 12-point standard; and thirdly, that the local authority should calculate the cost-attracting element of the grant by reference to the standards used for the improvement of their own houses. So far as I know, my noble friends have not queried those tests. When those tests were applied, only 7 of the 170 cases—4 per cent. of the cases —need have cost more than £800.
LORD HAWKE: Could my noble friend say why he has chosen 170 cases for rural areas? I should have thought that the greater need for modernisation was in the towns.
EARL JELLICOE: I do not think that is the case. I think it is precisely in the rural areas where this is most likely to hit. But we have looked carefully with the Association of Municipal Corporations at the town cases. There was no pressure for any increase from them. I think the pressure for this increase, both in this House and another place, has been mainly in respect of rural areas, save in Scotland for the tenements. But because of that—and I would ask your Lordships to believe that the Ministry have looked at this very carefully—we still take the view that there is, as yet, insufficient evidence to warrant a general increase in the maximum amount of the discretionary grants. Nevertheless, as I also endeavoured to point out at Committee, the Government do not wish to be inflexible on this matter, if for no other reason than that they, like my noble friends, wish to get this improvement going forward and going forward more rapidly.
I should like to apprise your Lordships of two developments that we have in mind. First, it has seemed significant to us that in each of the 7 cases where the reasonable cost of improvement would have exceeded £800 a substantial item of the cost was that for providing a new floor to replace the existing brick, earth floor or stone flag floor. Your
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Lordships know (I mentioned this point, also, at Committee stage) that in particular cases, provided that my right honourable friend agrees, local authorities may pay grant above the normal maximum. My right honourable friend therefore proposes to advise local authorities that they may seek his concurrence to pay more than the normal maximum of discretionary grant where they consider that the need for this arises from the provision of new floors in the circumstances I have mentioned. That is the first assurance.
The second is perhaps more substantial. My right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government feels that it would be right from now on to conduct a continuous running review of the cost of grant-aided schemes. I think this is the sort of thing my noble friend Lady Horsbrugh had in mind. This will be carried out by a small special technical staff who are being recruited over the next few months specifically to supervise this work of improvement. This will, we believe, provide my right honourable friend with the eyes and ears he needs, the information he needs on which he can act, if necessary, to alter the present statutory maximum of grants. As your Lordships know, the Minister already has power to vary by order, at any time, the amount of grant, and it would certainly be his intention to do so should he find it necessary in the light of this continuous running review he proposes to institute. I would only add that in Scotland my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland proposes to do precisely the same thing: to institute a continuous running review. If that review shows that the cost of improvement is rising substantially above £1,000 (it is £1,000 in the case of Scotland), he will take precisely the same action as the Minister of Housing and Local Government proposes to take in England and Wales. I hope that, with those two assurances, my noble friends will not press these two Amendments this afternoon.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that the very fact that these 170 cases were taken in the first quarter of this year—when it was well known that this Bill was coming forward; in fact I think

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it had already been published, raising the maximum grant receivable from £400 to £500—would mean that nobody would be likely to come forward with cases costing more than £800? This, I feel, may have biased the figures in some way towards the cheaper schemes during this particular period, and I feel he might have got a completely different result if he had taken schemes coming forward before there was any wind of what was in this Bill.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am not quite certain that I follow the argument. In fact the schemes are in respect of England and Wales, where the increase does not apply. This information was furnished by proponents of an increase themselves, and presumably they would not have furnished evidence, as it were, against themselves.
3.36 p.m.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, this is a worrying debate, and I do not find it easy to come down flat one way or the other on the merits of the case. What does worry me a little is that the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy—who is just as good at defending the Ministry of Housing and Local Government as the Navy—has intimated that, if this additional work on floors and indeed the whole business has to take place, then this great Ministry of Housing and Local Government, which is a pretty extraordinarily big show, must have some additional specialist staff in order to handle it. The Government have lost control over their establishment altogether. They expand the Civil Service staff on the slightest provocation, and this is a slight provocation; and every expansion of staff means an expansion of accommodation and so on, and this Bill in itself is somewhat inflationary in character. But the other interesting thing about the discussion is that the whole debate has been in favour of inflation. Every speaker on the other side, every noble Lord and the noble Lady, has been making an inflationary case to put up public expenditure and put up grants. They may have a case. They say that wages have gone up; indeed one noble Lord has said that in the competition for labour employers are
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in some cases paying well above trade union rates, so that the whole thing is inflationary.
What we come back to every time is that everybody has a case for something or another, and they make it, and all of them have their spokesmen in Parliament; it may be wages, salaries, technicians, professionals, the higher Civil Service and so on, and they all make a case. And what is the case based on? That the cost of living has gone up. That prices have gone up. And this is, of course, the fundamental point to which the Government ought to give their minds with greater energy and determination than they have done so far. It is this steady increase in prices for one reason or another, some of them understandable and some of them not understandable, that leads to these claims for increased wages, salaries and public expenditure of one sort and another. But if this were not a debate about grants to aid property owners to improve their property—which in itself is a desirable thing in principle, as long as it is not unduly taken advantage of; if this were a debate about the claims of work people or even lower ranks of the Public Service to increased money, we should have heard from the Minister and from the spokesmen opposite warnings about inflationary influences. But as this is a debate about grants to enable property owners to improve their property nobody on the other side has mentioned inflation and it has been left to this common or garden Socialist to mention the possibilities of inflation. It is funny, but it is also serious. So noble Lords opposite are in favour of inflation where their own friends' money is concerned; they are against it when the pockets of humble people are concerned. However, the lesson for all of us is that the sooner the Government can somehow keep prices level, keep them down, the better it will be, and the less we shall have of these inflationary arguments which have entirely monopolised noble Lords opposite this afternoon.
BARONESS HORSBRUGH: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to ask him: Does he not agree that it is better to convert and repair houses, if it can be done well, than to have to build all new houses?
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: I concede that that may well be true; but it does not invalidate my argument in the least.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, I think I should have replied before. I am so sorry: I was asleep.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am afraid that I have now put the Question and collected the voices; the noble Viscount is too late.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I can make my speech on the next Amendment.

PORT ORGANISATION
3.41 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, may I ask your Lordships' leave to interrupt the proceedings for a moment because, with your Lordships' permission, I will now repeat a statement on Port Organisation which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport:
"I asked the National Ports Council last year to advise me on the future of the Ports in the Forth Estuary and the Bristol Channel. I hope they will be able to let me have their reports on these particular questions shortly. In the meantime, they have told me that they have found it impracticable to consider organisation in these two areas without at the same time coming to a provisional conclusion about estuarial organisation generally, with particular reference to the future of the British Transport Docks Board.
"The Council have now reported to me their conclusions on these questions of principle—
First, the Council are satisfied that in general their national plan should be based on a limited number of major port authorities, in most cases on an estuarial basis, on the lines proposed by the Rochdale Committee. The organisation and ownership of these new authorities may well follow varying patterns depending on what is best suited to the area. But they recognise that there will continue to be a number of independent medium-sized and smaller ports with important functions to fulfil.
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Second, certain of these major groupings should be under the control of the British Transport Docks Board. In these cases methods will be worked out to secure full consultation and co-operation between the Board and local interests.
"I told the House on July 10 last year that the Government accepted in principle the general idea of estuarial or regional groupings wherever likely to promote greater efficiency. In most cases these groupings will be brought about by harbour reorganisation schemes in accordance with the Harbours Act. Detailed proposals will of course have to be considered on their merits in accordance with the procedures laid down in the Act. I have asked the Council to go ahead on the lines they propose. But I have made it clear, in view of my responsibilities as Minister under the Harbours Act, that I am not forming any opinion in advance about any particular amalgamation scheme.
"I welcome the Council's proposal that the Docks Board should continue as a permanent feature of the ports industry. The Board has achieved a major success since its establishment under the Transport Act of 1962. In some areas the Council's proposals for estuarial reorganisation may mean the loss by the Board of certain ports. In other areas, where the Board is already the predominant dock authority, the proposals may involve the assumption of wider responsibilities.
"So much for general principles. To-day I can only speak about one particular case, that of the ports of Bristol and Newport. The Council have told me that they see no advantage in proceeding with any amalgamation of these two ports. I accept this conclusion."
My Lords, that is the statement.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, for giving us this statement. I listened to it—I had the advantage of looking at it beforehand—with rather mixed feelings. I think there is a little contradiction here and there. However, having got over the first organisational difficulties, this Committee which the

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Minister has set up has now come to a conclusion on how it is going to consider the matter and it is to go on looking at the question of estuarial as well as other types of organisation. Then, at the end of the Statement, it transpires that it has made a decision at any rate about the Bristol Channel which is final and decisive—namely, that there is to be no amalgamation on an estuarial basis between Newport and Bristol.
Having been brought up in Bristol for many years in my youth—something like eighteen years—I personally think that is a wise decision. I know Bristol. Bristol has a municipally owned dock organisation. It is the only one of its kind in the country owned in that way. It has been extraordinarily successful. I would have hesitated long at any time to want to see it placed under some estuarial organisation which would not know half so much about the matter as the Bristol City Corporation do, with decades of experience. So I greatly welcome the last part of the Statement. But I just cannot yet understand how the other wanderings to be conducted through these inquiries are going on; and how far the example of the decision for the Bristol Channel is likely to be effective elsewhere.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, for repeating this statement to us to-day. I, too, should like to welcome the decision, which the Minister has taken on the recommendation of the Council, not to proceed with the amalgamation of Newport and Bristol. From what I know of the situation, I am quite sure that that is the right decision to take, and I am quite certain that it will be warmly received in South Wales. So far as the future is concerned, may I ask the Minister whether he will recommend to his right honourable friend that, before taking any decision about future amalgamations affecting South Wales, he will have regard to the fact that in the next year or so there are to be fast motor roads between South Wales and London and the Midlands, and that this may affect the ports in South Wales to a great extent?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, on the whole, I must be grateful to the noble Earl and to the noble Lord for what they have said about this statement. Of
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course, when schemes are proposed to my right honourable friend he will take into consideration just the kind of factor that the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has put forward, as well as other factors which may bear upon them. Although, of necessity, I have had to speak in terms of principle only with regard to the estuarial and regional groupings—they can be spoken of only in principle—it is a fact, which I do not think has really been inconsistent, that this negative information, if I may call it that, about Bristol and Newport should be taken at this stage because of the great interest, and to some extent anxiety, that the matter of Bristol, in particular, and also Newport has caused locally. In fact, the noble Earl stressed to us the importance of this, and I thought it only proper that this piece of information, negative though it may be, should be put before the House as soon as possible.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am much obliged. This gives me the opportunity to say that I also welcome the decision to continue the National Docks Board.

HOUSING BILL
3.50 p.m.
Report stage resumed.
VISCOUNT STONEHAVENmoved in subsection (1) to leave out "five" and insert "six". The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I now reply on both these Amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, has roused me slightly. I was not going to bring out these facts, but while I agree with him that this Bill is, in a way, inflationary, I would point out that the proposal for collecting these figures is not necessarily inflationary. Our own local authorities have all these figures at their finger-tips. It is merely that they are not being used properly by central Government. Therefore, I do not think that that will add very much to the cost.
I must revert to one of the real reasons why it is so necessary to give all the encouragement one can to the carrying out of these improvements. In the area of St. Clement's in Aberdeen—Aberdeen, as your Lordships know, has been run by a Socialist Council for a long time —there live to-day some 3,200

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families. Among those 3,200 families—this is something I am not proud of—there are 280 baths; only 65 of those 3,200 families have the luxury of a separate w.c.; 388 of those families have no separate piped water, and only 153 of those families have all "mod. cons." I am not proud of these facts. These are the people I want to help. A Socialist town council for years has not managed to do so.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, it is all very nice for the noble Viscount to say that. He has referred to the disgraceful state of affairs and has taken a side-swipe at the Socialist town council. But who built these properties without these amenities? Conservative private enterprise developers, whom the Government are now encouraging again.
LORD HAWKE: Was the noble Lord brought up with all "mod. cons."?
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: My Lords, Lord Morrison of Lambeth will remember that the w.c. was a Scottish invention, but it was not invented until fairly recent times. The buildings and properties to which I am referring have been there for a very long time indeed; and furthermore, as an alleviating fact —not one I am proud of—the rent of this accommodation is only 11s. a week. Therefore, while admittedly I perhaps took a side-swipe at the Socialist town council—I would not deny it—I thought also that the noble Lord took a sideswipe, or rather made a frontal attack, at the suggested "inflation" from this side of the House. I thought "fair do's for all", and I hope he does not mind, because there is no malice in this at all.
I am delighted to hear the remarks of my noble friend the Minister, for this review is just the thing that is wanted. Obviously, a Back Bencher can produce only limited figures and cannot possibly see the whole picture, and while we feel strongly and always think that we are right, we know that we cannot possibly be right overall. I ask the Minister to urge upon his noble friends not to hide their light under a bushel and to let somebody else see these figures, too. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 67, line 41, leave out ("five") and insert ("six").—(Viscount Stonehaven.)
VISCOUNT STONEHAVEN: I beg leave to
withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD TAYLORmoved, after Clause 66, to insert the following new clause:
Inspection of houses by local authority.
.—(1) On the request in writing by a person who is or has been within the last three months a tenant or lodger in a house to which Part II of the Act of 1961 applies, the local authority shall as soon as practicable cause the house to be inspected, and shall take any appropriate action under the Act of 1961 which the condition of the house or the circumstances of its ocupation make desirable.
(2) The local authority shall within three months inform the person making the request of the action it has taken.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I shall move this Amendment briefly. I just want to say that I think it was Sir Charles Harrington who invented the water closet. Whether he was a Scot or not, I do not know. He was a courtier at Queen Elizabeth's Court and he described it in a book called Ajax, but I did not know he was a Scot.
Amendment No. 13 seeks to do something we tried to do at much greater length at Committee stage, namely to enable ordinary individuals to make a complaint about the conditions under which they live and to get an answer from the local authority. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, was very conciliatory, because we proposed that action should automatically follow. He pointed out that this might be folly. We agreed with him, and we struck out the third and fourth portions of our Amendment. We also took out the word "forthwith" to describe the action of a local authority on receiving a complaint, and put in its place "as soon as practicable", which seemed to make the proposal very moderate indeed. Lord Hastings said that he was willing to consider our subsections (1) and (2) about inspection and report of information, and the question of the local authority's letting the tenant or lodger know the result of the inspection. I very much hope that the Government will look with sympathy on this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 66, insert the said new clause. —(Lord Taylor.)
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I am grateful to Lord Taylor for recapitulating so briefly what happened on the previous occasion. He made some complimentary remarks about my being conciliatory and helpful. If I may say so, he and his friends were helpful, too, in withdrawing the two last subsections, (3) and (4), in the previous Amendment, and Riving us an opportunity to discuss the first two subsections of it in a rather different form. I have gone into this matter thoroughly and have written to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, about it. Noble Lords opposite realise that they still have not got over two difficulties in the drafting of their clause: that is, to prevent frivolous and repetitive requests, and also to avoid the situation in which, unknown to the applicant, a recent inspection has been made and thus the local authority would be required to make another which would be quite unnecessary.
After discussing these matters at great length within the Department, we have come to the conclusion—and this is something upon which I was not fully briefed on the last occasion—that it would be setting a precedent which it would be desirable to avoid. The general pattern of housing and public health legislation, going right back to the Public Health Act, 1875, in Disraeli's time, has been based on the supposition that local authorities will act responsibly in the exercise of the general powers vested in them; and, indeed, in the case of many of the provisions of Part IV of this Bill, new powers have been actively sought by the local authorities on the ground that they will use them responsibly, a situation in which we acquiesce.
It is normal, however, to provide certain default powers in extreme cases where a local authority fail in their duty. The pattern is repeated in the Housing Act, 1957, which, noble Lords will remember, is to be read together with this Bill. Therefore it is difficult to put in this Bill something entirely new which does not conform with the general powers in the Housing Act, 1957, and which constitutes a precedent compared to all previous legislation in housing and public health affairs. These default powers provide machinery whereby any four local government electors or other people acting on their behalf may complain, either to the
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county council or to the Minister as the case may be, that the authority
"have failed to exercise their powers under the Act … where those powers ought to have been exercised".
This power of complaint is, of course, associated with the power of the Minister to hold public inquiries and to make directions as to the remedy for the authority's default. But noble Lords opposite will not seriously suggest that this is precisely the same as enabling just one person to requisition, positively to enforce, one inspection. That, surely, is a very different thing.
I am again forced back upon the argument that the local authority departments are already hard pressed and they are going to be very much more hard pressed as a result of this Bill, particularly their public health and surveyor's departments. They will be having a lot of extra work as a result of this Bill and they will hardly be able to cope with it, particularly those aspects which touch upon slum clearance and improvement and compulsory improvement areas, without making a programme for their work and covering their whole area systematically. Therefore we really think that it is asking too much for them to be diverted from their plans by one person, in conditions which sometimes might not be at all justifiable.
To anticipate objections which may be made from noble Lords opposite and which have, I think, been made on a previous occasion, I would say that I really do not think we are depriving the private citizen of any inherent right. As I have said, he has not had this right in previous legislation on these matters and, after all, people are not slow in these days to write to their local authorities to complain, nor, indeed, to write to the Minister or their Member of Parliament; and it is certainly not our general impression in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government that local authorities disregard these complaints when they get them.
It may be said that some housing authorities are so big that they cannot possibly know what is going on in every part of their area, but as a matter of fact our experience again teaches us that it is very often the largest authorities who know the most, because they are very well organised with a specialist staff, having the funds to tackle this

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matter in a more systematic and highly specialised manner than smaller authorities. Therefore, in spite of the fact that noble Lords are merely trying to do something which seems to them eminently fair and reasonable, I think they are really making a bit too much out of this, and that the private citizen will not be at a disadvantage. The local authorities, on the other hand, would have very great difficulty in working this sort of provision, and I feel that we can have complete faith in their responsibility and in their ability to tackle these problems conscientiously and systematically, so that people will not be left very long before their problems are dealt with. Obviously, the local authorities will have a sense of priorities and will tackle the worst areas first. I hope therefore that noble Lords will feel they need not press this Amendment.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. Part of his reply was similar to the reply he made when we moved the former Amendment—namely, that it would force the local authorities out of their planned order of campaign for dealing with these areas. We accepted that, and we said that we were not going to push that point at all. All we want to make sure is that an ordinary member of the public who is in a situation where the landlord is really doing something which he ought not to be doing knows that he can get an inspector along, that the inspector will look, and that he will hear the result of the inspection.
I would accept at once that if there has been a recent inspection, that is a fair reason for not immediately re-inspecting; and, also, that there might be frivolous people who would abuse this right. But I cannot, for the life of me, see that it is wrong to put this provision in here, and I am sorry the noble Lord has not felt that the Government could accept it. But it is a small matter, and I have no doubt that most local authorities will do as we want them to do and will, in fact, act in exactly this way. But there will be some who do not, and for their failure to act the Government must be responsible. We certainly do not propose to press this Amendment, but we are sorry that the Government are not accepting it.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
4.6 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved, after Clause 68, to insert the following new clause:
Security of tenure during the operation of notices under Part II of Act of 1961
".—(1) Where any notice under section 15 or section 1 of the Act of 1961 is in operation in respect of a house possession of that house or of any part of it shall not be obtained by means of a notice to quit until the works listed in the notice or in the notice as varied by a court under section 17 of the Act of 1961 have been executed or the notice has been revoked under that section:
Provided that the person who has served the notice to quit may apply to the court for possession if the local authority certifies that that is necessary for the proper execution of the works and that alternative accommodation is available for those dispossessed.
(2) On the application of the local authority or of any person to whom the notice to quit applies and after considering any representations by the person who served the notice to quit, the court may suspend its operation for a period of three months from the date when it would have come into effect under the foregoing subsection."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is an Amendment which was moved in another place. It received a considerable amount of discussion there, and I believe that at the end of the day the Minister promised to look into the points that had been raised. Very briefly, this new clause provides that where a notice has been given under Section 15 or Section 16 of the 1961 Act—that is, a notice requiring certain work to be done in a house which is in multi-family occupation—the tenants shall be protected against eviction until the work has been finally completed.
This Amendment arises mainly from the experience of the City of Sheffield. They found that in a large number of cases where valid notices had been given under Section 15 of the 1961 Act, because the house was over-occupied in relation to the amenities provided, landlords had got rid of some of their tenants, with the result that the house was no longer over-occupied, so that the notice was no longer valid, and the landlord was not obliged to comply with it. Once that position obtained the landlord was free to re-let, and the local authority were compelled to go through the same process all over again. That would have sounded fanciful, but for the fact that the Sheffield Corporation say that they have had a great deal of

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experience of this very thing—of landlords turning people out in order that the house should not be over-occupied. Then, with the notice becoming invalid and the landlord re-letting, the local authority have been compelled to serve a fresh notice and the same thing has happened.
Very briefly, what the Amendment provides is that the landlord may give a notice to quit, but that he shall not be given possession until the work has been completed. When the work is complete, of course, then the ordinary law obtains. If the landlord desires to get possession he should be free to do so, and the tenant has the normal defences open to him. But the landlord should not be given possession merely on the ground that a notice has been served and the work is required to be done. The Amendment provides, also, that where it is essential for the landlord to have possession in order to carry out the work, and the authority so certify, and so long as alternative accommodation is provided for the tenant, that will be a ground for getting possession.
During the discussions in another place a number of objections were raised by the Minister. One was the well-worn objection that in cases of this kind the compulsory purchase order proceedings are available. I want to say a little about that in connection with an Amendment which I am moving later, so I will not dwell on it now, except to say that in many of these cases a compulsory purchase order is not available. But I will leave that to one side, and not try to argue the merits of this simple Amendment that I am moving, deferring possession, as against the heavy hand of the compulsory purchase order.
There were two other grounds which the Minister mentioned, from one of which I thought he rather ran away because he referred on a number of occasions to the fact that the Milner Holland Report would be forthcoming at some time in the future, and gave the impression that that was a ground for not taking action at the present time. I must admit that he did not put that very strongly: it was not in the forefront of his argument. His real case was that it would be possible for a landlord to take action for possession, and that, if this
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Amendment were incorporated in the present Bill, he would do so all the more readily as soon as an inspector came along to view the premises, even though nothing might come out of the inspector's inspection; that landlords would anticipate the possibility of their being served with a notice, and would straight away take steps to get rid of a tenant. That argument, however, strikes me as being quite unrealistic.
The serving of a notice has to be followed by steps to get possession, and anyone with experience of these matters will know that it takes some months before a case is heard in the county court and before an order for possession is made. During that time, obviously, the inspector will have reported on the premises, and the local authority will have decided whether or not they will serve the notice. If they decide not to serve the notice, then the position remains as it is at the present time. If the local authority decide to serve the notice, then under my Amendment the tenant would be protected until the work had been completed. I therefore do not think that the objection is very serious or realistic. I thought that, apart from the compulsory purchase order suggestion, they were the only real answers to this Amendment. I hope, therefore, that the result of the consideration by the Minister of the points raised in Committee and on Report in another place will be favourable to this Amendment; and if I have said anything which may help to turn the scale, I shall be very glad. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 68, insert the said new clause.—(Lord Silkin.)
4.14 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, it is true that this Amendment was discussed in another place, but I think not by your Lordships during the Committee stage. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has raised an interesting point, and it is one that we have been considering. But the truth of the matter is that this point was not overlooked when we were drafting the Bill. We considered it very carefully, even before the Bill was printed in its final form. The noble Lord opposite has anticipated one or two arguments which I should have made, and which were made in another place by my right honourable

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friend. Apparently, the noble Lord does not think very much of the argument that if this sort of protection were given to tenants—the prevention of their eviction during the period of operation of a works notice—a landlord would tend to give notice previous to receiving the works notice, as soon as he got wind of anything like that in the air and of the inspector coming round.
LORD SILKIN: What I said was that the landlord possibly would, but that the notice would not be effective if the local authority acted speedily and made up their mind as a result of the inspector's visit.
LORD HASTINGS: Yes; I was just coming to that point. The noble Lord thought it would not be effective, and he was relying very greatly, of course, on the time factor. I do not think that I can argue about that in detail at the moment. That is not in fact the advice I have received about the matter, but I should not care to enter into an argument on what is, we might say, a quibble one way or the other. The real point here, I think, is that the protection which the noble Lord wishes to afford the tenant in these circumstances is very limited in any case. It is only for a short time, between the coming into force of a works notice and the completion of the works; and either before or after that time the landlord can get rid of that tenant. It was when we studied this matter and found that it was so extremely difficult to overcome all the difficulties that we decided, almost in the last resort, that the compulsory purchase order procedure for cases of this nature offers, in the long run, the best remedy. Again, I shall follow the example of the noble Lord opposite and I will not go into all the procedures, including the possibility of a compulsory purchase order. We shall be arguing them again in a few minutes, on another Amendment. But I have one or two more things to say about this which I hope will make the noble Lords opposite feel that this power, this protection, is not quite so necessary as they thought.
Those who support the Amendment base their case on the experience of Sheffield, which is rather alone in this field in the extent to which it has suffered from this sort of behaviour on the part of landlords. Now things have been made a good deal easier during the course
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of this Bill. Noble Lords will remember that under the 1961 Act local authorities have always had default powers. They could, in fact, undertake these works themselves if landlords refused to do it, were not doing it properly or were too slow. They could go in and get the job done and then charge the landlord with the expense. That, of course, was the great difficulty: they could not always get hold of the right man, and they could not always be sure of recovering their expenses; because there were holding companies, subsidiaries, leases, subleases and so on—all sorts of troubles and difficulties.
But now, under Clauses 62 and 63 of this Bill, a local authority can use their default powers, carry out the works and make a legal charge against all the interests in the premises. So they cannot possibly fail to recover their expenses. That, therefore, is a great inducement for them to use their default powers; and I am bound to say, in this connection, that Sheffield never did use its default powers. It was not willing to do so. Now, under the Bill, there will be no difficulty in any local authority's doing so, because they know that they will be able to get their money back.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, as I understand it the local authority will now be able to recover only where the expenditure has been reasonably incurred. In the case of a house which had, say, ten tenants, five of whom had been dispossessed in anticipation of the work actually taking place, I think it would be held by the court that, in those circumstances, if the work had been done for the purpose of making the house fit for ten tenants, the expense was not reasonably incurred in view of the fact that there were only five tenants actually in the dwelling when the work was commenced. That is a difficulty, as I see it, of the procedure which the noble Lord has outlined to us.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this is a very ingenious point that the noble Lord has put, and possibly a legalistic one, but I should rather doubt whether the noble Lord would be right, because under the powers of Part II of the 1961 Act a local authority can lay down the standards to which a house should be

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improved in relation to the number of people it is capable of housing or ought to house. Those provisions are in Sections 12 to 17 of Part II. If the house is overcrowded, for example, the local authority, as the noble Lord knows, can say that it should be put into proper repair for a lesser number of tenants than the existing number. The existing ones are not turned out, but the landlord is not allowed to replace them as they leave of their own accord. I think, therefore, the reverse must be true also: that if it is necessary to exercise a works order or use the default power it must be based on the number of occupants of the house which that house is capable of accommodating, based on reasonable standards, set out in Section 15 of the Act which refers to all matters such as ventilation, heating and plumbing. I think the noble Lord, if I may say so, is wrong on that particular matter.
LORD SILKIN: I do not know whether it is convenient to thresh out this matter now, but I think that the noble Lord is, with respect, "taking a chance" on it because that is not the wording of Section 15. That section says:
"… having regard to the number of individuals or households, or both, accommodated for the time being on the premises, as not to be reasonably suitable for occupation by those individuals or households,"
Now, that is "for the time being". If it turns out that for the time being a number of families have been dispossessed by the landlord, it may well be that it would not be reasonable to have this work done. That is the difficulty that Sheffield has experienced. "At the time they give the notice" is one thing; but if the people have been dispossessed, then it is no longer reasonably necessary to carry out the work of which they gave notice. Therefore, they could not recover.
LORD HASTINGS: We are getting into a technical argument; but my advice is that if the work is done to comply with the notice, then reasonable expenditure is reasonably incurred. It cannot be circumvented by reducing the number of people, and the default power is to do the work required to be done by the notice under Section 18(1). So I think that the difference in the Bill as a result of Clauses 62 and 63 is as I said, and it will put the local
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authorities in this very much stronger position. An authority which has had difficulties as Sheffield has had need not have them in the future, because there would be no reason why they should not operate that sort of power. Again, in their particular case, they have not been willing to use the power of compulsory purchase, which is, and always has been, available for them to use.
It is true that in this discussion the Sheffield Corporation received some support from other local authorities, but I think it is fair to make it clear that they have not the backing of the local authority association mainly concerned, that is, the Association of Municipal Corporations, who, although naturally sympathetic to the argument, do not feel that it is sufficiently powerful to ask for an Amendment on this particular point; they are, in fact, willing to work the Bill as it stands. I say this, because the noble Lord brought up the particular case of Sheffield. But, for the various reasons given, I think the powers now in the Bill are sufficient for the local authorities not to be worried during the limited period when the works notice will be in operation. I hope, therefore, that noble Lords will not feel it is necessary to press this Amendment.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I must say that on this occasion I am not satisfied with the reply; but I would ask the noble Lord whether he would be willing to go back and have another word with his right honourable friend on the subject. I am not asking him to commit himself; but if he feels able to do something about the arguments which I have put forward—and I think they are sound and based on the actual experience of Sheffield—I will, in the meantime, be willing to withdraw this Amendment and hope that on Third Reading it will be possible to do something.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 70 [Restriction on recovery of possession after making of compulsory purchase order]:
4.29 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS LORD HASTINGS moved, after subsection (1), to insert:
"(1A) Subject to this section, in proceedings

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in the county court instituted during the relevant period to enforce against the former lessee the right to recover possession of the premises the court may if it thinks fit—

(a) suspend the execution of any order for possession of the premises made in the proceedings for such period, not exceeding the period of twelve months beginning with the making of the said compulsory purchase order, and subject to such conditions, if any, as the court thinks fit, and

(b) from time to time vary the period of suspension (but not so as to enlarge that period beyond the end of the said period of twelve months), or terminuate it, and vary the terms of the order in other respects.

If at any time the Minister notifies the local authority that he declines to confirm the said compulsory purchase order, or that order is quashed by a court, or, whether before or after that order has been submitted to the Minister for confirmation. the local authority decide not to proceed with it, it shall be the duty of the local authority to notify the person entitled to the benefit of the order for possession of the premises, and that person shall be entitled, on applying to the court, to obtain an order terminating the period of suspension, but subject to the exercise of such discretion in fixing the date on which possession is to be given as the court might exercise apart from this subsection if it were then making an order for possession for the first time."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment is to make an improvement upon Clause 70. The general effect of that clause is that if the local authority make a compulsory purchase order in respect of a multi-occupied house, then for the "relevant period"—which has been laid down as twelve months—it is an offence to recover possession against the tenant who has been given notice to quit expiring after an order is made, otherwise than by order of a county court. Though the clause was welcomed in general it was pointed out in another place, and it has since been represented to us by the municipal corporations, that a more explicit power to stay possession should be given to the county court because its powers are limited under Common Law.
Although a landlord cannot give notice to quit during the relevant period except by applying to the court, the county court can give a stay of possession for only a month or so. It would actually work out a little longer, since there must be twenty-eight days' notice as well. Therefore, it was obviously necessary to give the court the power to extend the period up to the maximum length of the relevant period, which is twelve months. That
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is what this Amendment does. Nevertheless, since the relevant period may come to an end before the period of suspension allowed by the court, by the withdrawal, the non-confirmation or the quashing of a compulsory purchase order, then the landlord would be in a position to apply for the period of suspension also to be terminated. So the closing words of the Amendment provide that the court can still have recourse to its discretion if it thinks it desirable, under Common Law, to grant a more limited breathing space. Those are the two things that this Amendment does to strengthen Clause 70 and to meet the objectives of noble Lords in all quarters of the House. I hope it will be acceptable to noble Lords opposite. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 76, line 38, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Hastings.)
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, this Amendment, I think, satisfies the criticisms that were made earlier as to the possible ineffectiveness of the clause, and we are much obliged to the Government for introducing it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential on Amendment No. 15. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 76, line 39, at beginning insert ("'Subject to this section,'").—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this Amendment is also consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 76, leave out line 44 and insert—
("(2A) Subsections (1A) and (2) of this section shall not apply—").—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 15, at end insert—
("(a) for any reference to the Minister there shall be substituted a reference to the Secretary of State;").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 17, after ("1946") insert ("and").—(The Marquess of Lothian).
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 18, leave out ("and to the Minister").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 20, after ("1947") insert ("and").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 21, leave out ("and to the Secretary of State").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 21, at end insert—
("(b) in subsection (1A), for any reference to the county court there shall be substituted a reference to a court of competent jurisdiction;").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 22, after ("(2)") insert ("(2A)").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 23, leave out ("subsection") and insert ("subsections").—(The Marquess of Lothian)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, line 24, after ("(2)") insert ("Subject to this section,").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE MARQUESS OF LOTHIAN: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 77, leave out line 35 and insert—
("(3) Subsections (1A) and (2) of this section shall not apply").—(The Marquess of Lothian.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 71:
Control orders
Making of control order
71.—(1) A local authority may make an order under this section (in this Part of this Act referred to as a "control order") as respects a house in their district which, or a part of which, is let in lodgings, or which is occupied by members of more than one family—
4.34 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved, in subsection (1), at end of paragraph (b) to insert:
"or
(c) if it appears to the local authority that, by reason of the action of the landlord, the safety, health, welfare or security of tenure of the persons living in the house are in need of protection as a result of intimidation, noise, offensive smells, the behaviour of other residents or other social conditions."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is what I described on Committee stage as a rather important Amendment. It is somewhat different from the Amendment which I moved on the earlier occasion. I think it meets at least one of the criticisms which the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, made, possibly with some force. Clause 71 provides for an unprecedented procedure: for the making of a control order by a local authority where a house is in multi-family occupation and where it falls short of certain standards and certain other conditions obtain, as set out in paragraphs (a) and (b), on which I need not spend any time. The effect of this is that the local authority can enter into possession and take the place of the landlord, and can do so for a period up to five years.

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As I say, I do not propose to deal with the two grounds mentioned in the Bill, on which a control order can be made. The purpose of my Amendment is to introduce a third ground, which is that the landlord is guilty of conduct which amounts to intimidation of tenants, in consequence of which it becomes unbearable for a tenant to remain in possession. When we discussed this subject before, certain examples were given, such as setting a savage dog on a tenant, the creating of unbearable noise, making offensive smells, and all sorts of things like that, in such a way as to cause the tenant to give up possession. We know that that sort of thing has been taking place. There are many examples of it in a number of London boroughs —Paddington, for one. It has become known by the tern of "Rachmanism". And the purpose of this Amendment is to enable a control order to be made where these conditions exist in a house.
I would refer to some of the arguments that were put forward last time by the Government against the inclusion of this provision in the Bill. In the first place, they said that, as the Amendment was then drawn, it was out of keeping with the general purpose of the Bill and in particular of this clause, which relates to houses which are let in lodgings or occupied by more than one family. My previous Amendment, as drafted, was much wider, and no doubt the noble Earl was right in saying that it was out of keeping with the general structure of the Bill.
Then, our friend Sir Milner Holland was trotted out. We were expecting a report from him at some time which would give the ex tent of the difficulties that were encountered in this way and enable the Government more easily to deal with the problem. It was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, that as this power was only for five years, at the end of that time the landlord could repeat his conduct and get rid of the tenants whom he wished to dispossess. We have an Amendment down to increase the period to seven years. Perhaps that will make the noble Lord happier about this proposal. At any rate, it will give the tenant security for two years longer.
The two main objections to the
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Amendment—and I think that in a way they were contradictory—were, first, that local authorities were not suitable bodies for dealing with problems of this kind: they were qualified to look at the physical condition of premises and make decisions on that basis, but they were not suitable bodies for making decisions on the conduct of landlords, such as intimidation. At the same time, both the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said that in any case a compulsory purchase order was more suitable for dealing with a problem of this kind—omitting to state that, in order to make a compulsory purchase order, they would still have to form a judgment on exactly the same set of facts. The question would still be: was the conduct of the landlord such that a compulsory purchase order would be suitable in the circumstances?
I should like to say a word about compulsory purchase orders. For the purpose of my argument, I am going to assume that a compulsory purchase order would be available for this purpose, but I am not at all sure that it would be. A compulsory purchase order is a very drastic procedure. It involves expenditure on the part of a local authority, expenditure here which is not primarily in order to deal with unsatisfactory premises but because there is an unsatisfactory landlord. I should have thought that was not primarily the function of a compulsory purchase order. Moreover, it is recognised—at least, the Minister said so in another place—that it takes an average of eight months to get a decision as to whether or not the Minister will confirm a compulsory purchase order.
Although it is quite true that provisions have been incorporated in this Bill which protect the tenant from a landlord getting possession while waiting for the result of a compulsory purchase order, it does not protect the tenant against such conduct of the landlord, which we are discussing, as forces the tenant out. What is wanted here is not summonses which will bite in eight or ten months' time, but something which will operate at once. The control order is something that operates immediately. If a tenant is being harassed with savage dogs or offensive smells or noises and the rest of the paraphernalia, that tenant cannot afford to sit there and

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wait until the Minister confirms a compulsory purchase order. What is wanted is the local authority to use the control order procedure and step in and take the place of the landlord, and to take the place of the landlord for the next five or seven years.
It is for this reason, among others, that I feel the compulsory purchase order will not satisfactorily deal with the problem. I know it is drastic, but it does not necessarily penalise the landlord, because under the 1959 Act compensation has to be paid to the landlord for the value of the premises, presumably on the basis of the rents he is receiving or could receive. Therefore, it is not necessarily penalising him to acquire his premises compulsorily. But my point is that it does not protect the tenant. The landlord can carry on with this course of conduct and, if he so desires, get rid of the tenant while he is waiting for the result of the compulsory purchase order.
Throughout the earlier proceedings on the Bill the Government expressed themselves as being anxious to deal with the problem of Rachmanism. They have admitted that there is the problem, and. in fact, at one time the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, gave me the impression that the Bill as it stood, without amendment, was capable of dealing with that problem. I accept the noble Lord's explanation that that is not what he meant to say, although he certainly gave me that impression. But, even accepting the noble Lord's explanation, he recognised that this is an evil which has to be dealt with. Therefore, I would ask the Government why they are not prepared to deal with it in this Bill.
Now that I have, as I hope, put the Amendment in a form which is acceptable, or nearly acceptable—that is, it does not interfere with the general structure of the BillI— trust that it will be possible, if not to accept the exact words, to accept the general idea that Rachmanism has to be dealt with in this Bill, and broadly in the way that I have put forward in the Amendment. We have had a long argument about this before, and I do not want to enlarge on it. However, I feel that no other method of dealing with the matter is satisfactory, and I hope the Government will take the view that this can now be incorporated in the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 78, line 6, at end insert the said word and paragraph.—(Lord Silkin.)
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I think it may be for the convenience of the House if I speak at this early stage in our discussion on the Amendment, because, in the first place, the Amendment is, as the noble Lord said, drawn in somewhat different terms from a similar Amendment that we debated on two previous occasions, and it will enable me to express the Government's view; and, secondly, it will give me the opportunity of clearing up one or two possible misunderstandings which seem to have arisen in our previous discussions, on a matter which is very complicated. I think, even from the few words the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has spoken to-day, it is clear that some of these misunderstandings still exist. So during the course of what I have to say I hope we shall be able to examine just what the problem is; whether the problem, as put to your Lordships by the noble Lord, exists, and to what extent; and whether, if it exists, it is or is not dealt with in this part of the Bill.
It is true that the Amendment as drawn is in rather narrower terms on this occasion, and that it leaves in the Bill the words in lines 7 to 10 concerning the living conditions in the house, to which the Government attach such importance. It was proposed to take out these words in the previous Amendment. Nevertheless, if I may say so without disrespect to noble Lords opposite, the greater part of the proposed paragraph which they wish to insert adds little or nothing to what is already there. Indeed, by introducing the necessity to establish a link between bad conditions and positive action by the landlord, which is referred to in the Amendment, it tends, if anything, to have an unduly limiting effect. What the proposed words really amount to, when sifted, is an alternative ground for making a control order (whether or not subsection (1)(a) or (b) of this clause referring to the 1961 Act can be made to apply) if security of tenure is threatened by intimidation. That is what it comes down to; and I see the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, agrees. Although the words are different, the principle about which we are arguing is the same as before.
The living conditions referred to in the clause as drafted would cover, as I

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explained before, events observable by way of living conditions, such as deliberate rowdyism and flagrant prostitution. These words are therefore adequate to cover any case where it is also possible to take action under Part II of the 1961 Housing Act. This is laid down in subsection (l)(a) and (b) of the clause, and that has hitherto been the bone of contention.
A house may attract action under Sections 12, 14, 15 or 16 of the 1961 Act, but it may suffice if I refer now, by way of example, to the words to be found in Section 15. It refers to power to require execution of works in multi-occupied houses which are defective in respect of the following matters:
"Natural and artificial lighting, ventilation, water supply, personal washing facilities, drainage and sanitary conveniences, facilities for the storage and cooking of food and for the disposal of waste water, installations for space heating or for the use of space heating appliances",
and, in each and every case,
"having regard to the number of individuals or householders."
The very essence of Rachmanism is the exploitation of tenants by means of exorbitant rents in relation to the living conditions. The profit comes from the fact that the physical conditions are bad, and that the house is defective in the way or ways alluded to in Section 15 of the 1961 Act. The defects which I have enumerated do not have to be very serious for action to be taken by the local authority in order to enforce the necessary improvements—that is, under the 1961 Act as it stands; nor do they have to be very serious in order to put on a control order under this Bill if the living conditions should at the same time be bad enough to necessitate a control order for the protection of the safety, welfare or health of the persons living in the house. For the application of this clause, it is the living conditions upon which emphasis should be put.
If the multi-occupied house is not thoroughly well-equipped—in relation to the numbers of householders living there—with sanitary facilities, or with lighting, ventilation, heating and the other relevant amenities, or if the multi-occupied house is not thoroughly well-managed in terms of maintenance, lighting, cleanliness of common parts, disposal of refuse, fire escape arrangements,
478
and so on, then the 1961 Act could be applied. In any such property any observable pressure upon the tenants—that is, observable by the eye, the ear, or the nose—would be the ground for a control order if in the view of the local authority it threatened their safety, health or welfare.
There has not been brought to our attention any single case where pressure has been alleged to have been brought to bear on tenants when the equipment and management of the property was of such a standard that the 1961 Act would not bite. My right honourable friend in another place specifically challenged the Opposition there to produce such cases, with no result at all. We can, I think, regard it as almost axiomatic that barbarities of the sort we have in mind are not practised in well-equipped, well-managed properties.
Assuming, therefore, that the condition requiring that the property should be subject to the 1961 Act treatment is a very low hurdle to jump, I now turn to the requirement that the pressure should be observable in the living conditions. Again, every example quoted—systematic rowdyism, offensive smells, flagrant prostitution, overt intimidation —is observable; and if the local authority think that the welfare, safety and health of the tenants are endangered, then the control order power operates. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in connection with compulsory purchase orders, envisaged a situation where a tenant had to wait for six months before the order was confirmed, and might have his life made intolerable. But not by savage dogs; that, surely to goodness! is observable. That comes under one of the observable living conditions which enables the local authority immediately to impose a control order. So that will immediately spring off the procedure for a control order.
It is only if there were surreptitious, furtive, unobservable intimidation or pressure that the control order power would not be available. I must repeat that we have no evidence of such a case. In such circumstances then, and then only, the compulsory purchase order procedure would be there for the local authority to use. It is therefore absolutely right to say—as I have said

479
all along in spite of the misunderstandings that we have had—that Rachmanism is dealt with, and dealt with severely, in respect of multi-occupied houses, in Part IV of this Bill. I never said that it was not dealt with. All I have said is that it was not dealt with in the wider field to which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, was referring in previous speeches. Rachmanism is dealt with in multi-occupied houses in this Bill.
Now a word on the compulsory purchase order. If an authority did wish to step in where the rights and wrongs were by no means clear, and where there was no observable evidence of bad living conditions for tenants, then the compulsory purchase order procedure would be available. The tenants' security would be safeguarded for twelve months by Clause 70 of the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, realised, and the Minister, through a public inquiry, could sort out whether it was right to hand the property over to the local authority because the landlord had, by his bad behaviour, threatened homelessness to his tenants.
I think it was at this point that we fell into a state of some confusion during the Committee stage, and I am only too willing to take the blame for that. There had been a good deal of questioning to and fro and, in particular, a number of noble Lords, notably my noble friend Lord Molson, wanted to know why one should use the more drastic powers of a compulsory purchase order to deal with cases of intimidation alone, rather than have it dealt with by means of a control order under this Bill. The relevance of this question loomed larger in the minds of noble Lords, in view of the fact that it was generally understood that in both cases there would be an appeal to the court.
My Lords, I am afraid that this is where I went wrong, even though I am sure that other noble Lords with great experience in the field of housing must, on reflection, have realised that I, and, indeed, all of us, went wrong at that point. The appeals under this Bill are to the county court, which is basically a court of civil jurisdiction and does not normally have the job of considering matters which arise under criminal
480
law. Where a c.p.o. is concerned, the Minister decides the case after the public inquiry, and the only appeal from his decision is to the High Court on the ground that an order has been improperly made or may be ultra vires. The appeal does not, and may not, deal with the merits of the case.
It will be seen from what I have said that the essential difference in dealing with cases of alleged intimidation by means of the control order procedure, on the one hand, or by the compulsory purchase order, on the other, is as follows. The control order takes immediate effect and penalises the landlord before he has even been heard, thereafter remitting his case to a county court, whose discretion must necessarily be circumscribed by a justiciable formula, enunciated in the Bill; whereas the procedure followed once a compulsory purchase order has been made not only ensures that the case will be thoroughly investigated at a public inquiry before the landlord is penalised, but also enables the Minister to consider the whole matter from the standpoint of the general public welfare—and that is a very wide standpoint indeed.
Therefore, I hope your Lordships will appreciate that the procedure of a c.p.o. is preferable when dealing with a threat of homelessness not linked with observable bad living conditions, both on the grounds of equity and justice, and on the grounds of public policy. It should be remembered that the effect upon the occupants of a multi-occupied house is as immediate in the case of a c.p.o. as it is in that of a control order. As I say, under Clause 70 of the Bill it is made clear that a tenant cannot be evicted for twelve months, except by order of the county court, once a c.p.o. has been made by the local authority. The protection to the tenant is thus afforded immediately, and does not have to wait for the confirmation of the c.p.o. by the Minister.
I hope that I have now persuaded the noble Lord opposite that this question of savage dogs and any observable intimidation can be, and would be, dealt with under the control order procedure. To sum up, I hope that I have been able to convince your Lordships that this Amendment is both unnecessary and undesirable. I hope that the reasons I

481
have given are now perfectly clear, and I hope, furthermore, that it will be realised that, should this Amendment be passed, the whole purpose of the clause will be altered. It would not be possible to allow the references to Part II of the 1961 Act to stand on their own in the clause as a sufficient reason for the exercising of a control order without reference to the living conditions as an additional reason.
As it stands, the Bill deals with squalid conditions and with Rachmanism in all the manifestations which have come to light in multi-occupied houses. If there were to be cases when, against all our experience, either the management and the equipment of the property was first-class, and/or the pressure on the tenant was unobservable, then the c.p.o. procedure, with full protection for the tenants during its course, is available. I hope now that the whole matter will be clearer to your Lordships, and that you will see fit to reject this Amendment, should the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, press it to a Division.
LORD SILKIN: I do propose to press this Amendment to a Division, because I am in no way satisfied with the reply of the noble Lord. I do not think that anything would be gained by prolonging the debate. He has not really replied to many of the points I made as regards the unsatisfactory nature of the compulsory purchase order for protecting the tenant who requires immediate protection against eviction. It is true that he does not require protection against a court order, but the very essence of this is that a tenant's life is being made hell and that he is being forced to go. He is not protected at all by a compulsory purchase order. However, I see no point in going on with the argument. We have discussed this on several occasions and I hope the House will now decide.
5.1 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD DILHORNE): My Lords, before the House does proceed to a Division I should like, even at this late stage, to say a few words to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, as mover of the Amendment, I have the right of reply, and I thought that I had exercised it. But if the noble and learned Lord
482
is now going to continue the debate, I hope that I shall be still permitted to exercise my right of reply.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I myself shall have no objection to that course. The noble Lord rose very quickly; I was waiting to see if any other noble Lord wished to speak, because there are a few things I wish to say to your Lordships on this particular Amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, began his speech by saying that the local authorities were just as suitable bodies to determine whether a control order should be made as to determine whether a compulsory purchase order should be initiated. I am not seeking to challenge that proposition at all, but I should like your Lordships to bear in mind that the noble Lord's Amendment does not seek to alter the preliminary words and first two conditions of Clause 71—namely subsections (1)(a) and (b); it is merely to insert the new paragraph (c).
If Rachmanism (using the word in the same sense as the noble Lord has described it) does affect the living conditions in the house, the noble Lord cannot seriously suggest that the clause as it is now drafted does not cover that. I do not think there can be any doubt at all that it would enable a control order to be made. There is, indeed, a very considerable overlap between the noble Lord's Amendment and what is already in the Bill. The Amendment refers to the noise, smells, and the behaviour of other residents or other social conditions. If noise or smells or behaviour of other residents affects the living conditions of the people living in the house then Clause 71 bites.
But there are two significant differences. One is that the new proposal, this Amendment, only applies where it can be shown that the situation arises "by reason of the action of the landlord,". That is a limiting factor. I do not see how this new paragraph (c) could stand alongside paragraph (b). As the Bill now stands, all that is necessary is to show that the living conditions are affected in the way described by the Bill; it is not necessary to establish that that is due to the action of the landlord. In that context I must say that the Bill is better without the Amendment.

483
When you examine it, the only direct difference between the Bill as it now stands, apart from that particular point, is the inclusion in the Amendment of the word "intimidation". What is meant by "intimidation" in this context? We were teased the other day, in our discussions on the Resale Prices Bill, about "imprecise" language. I must say that I think the word "intimidation" in this context requires some definition. It has been said that one form of the tort of intimidation is intentionally to compel a person by means of an illegal threat to do some act whereby loss accrues to him. Presumably the word in this Amendment is intended to cover the same thing. This brings me to an important point, on which my noble friend Lord Hastings touched, but I hope your Lordships will not mind if I say a little bit more about it.
Your Lordships will see that Clause 71 gives the local authority power to act when certain conditions appear to them to exist. I want to remind your Lordships what those conditions are. There is no trial, no inquiry, before the control order is made. I am sure your Lordships will agree that the making of a control order on a landlord, on the grounds contained in this Bill, does constitute a very grave reflection upon the landlord. Where the control order is made on certain conditions appearing to the local authority to exist, the landlord has to submit to the control order—he can only appeal against it, ex post facto to the county court. It would probably take four months before that case could be heard. I think this machinery is acceptable when the living conditions are observable. The public health inspector can visit the premises and see for himself what the living conditions are. If, for instance, it is said that there is so much noise that a man cannot get any sleep, the public health inspector can satisfy himself of that and report to his local authority. But if a control order is made on the ground of intimidation, an illegal threat to do some act, the public health inspector is not likely to be a witness to that.
My Lords, just suppose for one moment that some ill-disposed tenants—and not all tenants are well-disposed—
484
make a series of allegations of intimidation; and suppose that the local authority believe them and make a control order in consequence. If this Amendment were accepted, then the landlord would be condemned unheard—and I am sure your Lordships would never accede to the proposition that a man should be condemned unheard and then just be allowed to appeal. Yet this is what this Amendment proposes: that the local authority shall be able to make a control order if it appears to them, without any inquiry and without the landlord having any opportunity of showing that the allegations made against him are false, that the landlord has been guilty of intimidation. I suggest that this really will not do; and on this ground alone I ask your Lordships to reject this Amendment.
Where the local authority think that there has been intimidation likely to affect health, safety or welfare or, indeed, the security of tenure, I do support what my noble friend has said: that the right course would be for the local authority to seek to exercise their powers of compulsory purchase. If the landlord wishes to challenge what is said against him, he can object to the order and there must be an inquiry before the order is confirmed. The landlord thus has an opportunity of showing, before the order is confirmed, that the allegations are false. It has been said that the sanction of a compulsory purchase order is heavier than that of a control order. I am not sure that that is the case, but if it is, I am not myself opposed to the sanction being heavier, bearing in mind that this procedure has the advantage of allowing the landlord to secure a public inquiry before he loses his property, whereas under Section 71 he has no right to an inquiry before being dispossessed.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said that a compulsory purchase order would mean compensation based upon the sweated rents charged. There was a suggestion that he might be entitled to that. I am advised that that is not the case. It has been held by the Lands Tribunal that they disregard any element of value that derives from a use that could be restrained by any court or is contrary to law or detrimental to the health of the occupants of the premises or to the public health.
I have intervened at this late stage merely to put these points to your Lord-

485
ships. I make this point finally. I find it very difficult to believe that if a landlord is engaging in Rachmanism he is going to rely upon intimidation alone. If there is anything in the kind of intimidation that affects the living conditions, then I reiterate the tenant is fully protected by Section 71. The only thing that this Amendment really adds—while it is limited in the sense I indicated to being restricted to having to establish action by the landlord—is inclusion of the word "intimidation", and if there is a case of intimidation standing entirely by itself, things said or done or written by the landlord or his agent to the tenant, I believe, for the reasons I have given, a compulsory purchase order is much the better machinery for dealing with it.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am sure we are very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for intervening. He has made, I think, two main points: one, that the Amendment is really unnecessary because it is possible to deal with a question, other than intimidation which is not observable, by the earlier provisions of this clause. I world only say that this is an additional ground. It does not prevent a local authority from making a control order under paragraph (a) or (b) if it is applicable, if the conditions of the dwellings permit it. But this is an additional ground which has been deliberately inserted as applying to actions
for which the landlord is responsible. In addition to the grounds to which the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, and the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, referred, giving a right to a local authority to make a control order, we want to give them this further ground so that they can deal with actions by the landlord designed to get the tenant out without the legal machinery. We know that this is happening, and I still fail to understand why the Government—whether they like the particular words or not—are not prepared to accept the further strengthening of the powers of the local authority in addition to what is already in the Bill for dealing with this particular evil.
In my view, these provisions in paragraphs (a) and (b) to Clause 71(1) are not sufficient to deal with this particular problem. I do not think I need enlarge on the matter. I hope that the House will be prepared to incorporate in the Bill express powers for dealing with this specific problem which everyone knows exists, whether accompanied by the problem of the condition of the premises or not. I hope, therefore, I shall be supported in this Amendment.
5.23 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 28) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 36; Not-Contents, 57.

CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Gardiner, L.

Samuel, V.

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Henderson, L.

Shackleton, L.

Amwell, L.

Hobson, L.

Shepherd, L.

Archibald, L.

Latham, L.

Silkin, L.

Attlee, E.

Lawson, L.

Summerskill, B.

Burden, L. [Teller.]

Lindsay of Birker, L.

Taylor, L.

Champion, L. [Teller.]

Listowel, E.

Uvedale of North End, L.

Chorley, L.

Longford, E.

Walston, L.

Colwyn, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Williams, L.

Crook, L.

Morrison of Lambeth, L.

Williams of Barnburgh, L.

Faringdon, L.

Mottistone, L.

Wilmot of Selmeston, L.

Gaitskell, B.

St. Davids, V.

Wise, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailwyn, L.

Denham, L.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Alport, L.

Derwent, L.

Hanworth, V.

Ampthill, L.

Devonshire, D.

Hastings, L.

Atholl, D.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Hawke, L.

Auckland, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Horsburgh, B.

Blakenham, V.

Ferrers, E.

Iddesleigh, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Ilford, L.

Carrington, L.

Fortescue, E.

Jellicoe, E.

Chesham, L.

Fraser of Lonsdale, L.

Lansdowne, M.

Conesford, L.

Fraser of North Cape, L.

Long, V.

Coutanche, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Lothian, M.

Crathorne, L.

Grenfell, L.

Mabane, L.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Monsell, V.

Spens, L.

Mancroft, L.

Newton, L.

Stonehaven, V.

Margesson, V.

St. Aldwyn, E. [Teller.]

Stang, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

St. Oswald, L.

Stuart of Findhorn, V.

Merrivale, L.

Sandford, L.

Thurlow, L.

Meston, L.

Sinha, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Milverton, L.

Soulbury, V.

Waleran, L.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 80 [Appeal against control order]:
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I apologise for having made the longest speech during the Report stage. I shall now make the shortest. This is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 89, line 22, leave out ("is") and insert ("was").—(Lord Hastings.)
Clause 84 [Termination of control order]:
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, this is an Amendment which the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, said that he would not mind seeing and did not feel strongly about. He did not mind if the period was seven instead of five years. Therefore, I thought I would put it down and give him an opportunity of saying that he agreed. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 94, line 27, leave out ("five") and insert ("seven").—(Lord Silkin.)
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, the noble Lord has moved his Amendment most winningly. If I remember correctly, he said at Committee stage that he did not wish to put too high the case for seven years as opposed to five years. I thought it right to return the compliment and say I did not feel passionately about five as opposed to seven, although I preferred the former. I think, from the point of view of strict historical accuracy, that is the position. But I did say that the Government preferred five years, and that is, in fact, still my position.
We have in fact looked at this again—that is not just a phrase—and we should still prefer five years for the control order, and that for the two reasons which I mentioned at Committee stage which I shall rehearse briefly now on Report.
The first is that we feel that five years is really a sufficient period for the local
488
authority to get the conditions which they are worried about put right. The first control orders will presumably be made this year, and therefore any local authority making them will have until 1969 to put the conditions right. Surely that is a sufficient period of time. As I mentioned on the Committee stage, it is as long a period as the First World War, and perhaps I might mention now, on the Report stage, that it is only one year less than the period of the Second World War. I would have thought it was sufficient time.
The second point which I made on Committee was that, if the land or property was really beyond redemption, then quite possibly a control order is not the right instrument in any case. It may well have been better for the local authority to go for a c.p.o. in the first instance. But if the local authority have not gone for a c.p.o. but have opted for a control order, then that does not preclude them during the period of the control order from going back to the c.p.o. procedure if they so desire. That is expressly provided for in Clause 72(5) of the Bill. We feel that five years is really a sufficient time. I do not wish to claim any particular merit for it. The noble Lord has not claimed any particular merit for seven, other than, presumably, that it is a luckier number than five. He has not argued the merits of it, and I feel that five is a sufficient period. I would suggest, again without expressing passionate feelings about it, that we should rest on five.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, it has to be remembered that, if the control order is made for the reasons set out in the earlier clause, there will be a lot to do to put things right and it may well take time. There may be difficulties of construction of one sort or another, or legal proceedings. Therefore, it is desirable that they should have adequate time. Moreover, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, said earlier that what we were asking for in the previous Amendment was all in the Bill; that you

489
could deal with Rachmanism fully under the Bill as it was. Therefore, this period is a matter of some importance. I must say, incidentally, that the Lord Chancellor said it would be wrong to deal with Rachmanism in the way that we want under the Bill. However, he overthrew the argument of Lord Hastings. But this is tied up, at any rate, with the existing paragraphs (a) and (b) in the earlier clause which contemplates a pretty serious state of affairs.
Indeed, this problem of housing and bad conditions, and so on, aroused the protests and public manifestations of two right reverend Prelates in London, the Lord Bishops of London and of Southwark, who led a procession from St. Paul's to Southwark Cathedral. I sympathise with them in doing so, even though it was a little inconvenient to the London County Council. Therefore, it is to be much regretted that, when we are dealing with Rachmanism and some aspects of homelessness this afternoon, neither the Bishop of London nor the Bishop of Southwark, nor any other Bishop, is here either to speak, or to vote. I have mentioned this before. I really do think that, so long as they remain Members of your Lordships' House, they ought to be here on matters of this sort.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I would just say to the noble Earl that I did not put forward any argument for the Amendment because I was under the impression, no doubt wrongly, from what he had said previously, that it would be accepted. I thought that there was no point in wasting words if it was going to be accepted. One of the arguments put forward against the previous Amendment was that at the end of five years the same conditions will apply—that the landowner will once more indulge in intimidation, and so on. The answer to that is to extend the period. Once such a drastic step as a control order is made, it should be made for a sufficient period to enable the house to be put into proper order, not only from the structural point of view but from every other point of view, to get the tenants living happily together and to ensure that thereafter the place will be properly conducted. This is not one of those Amendments one would fight to the death about, but it is an important Amendment, and I think that once a control order is made it is right that it should be made for a longer period.
5.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 30) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 29; Not-Contents, 52.

CONTENTS

Alexander of Hillsborough, E.

Hobson, L.

Silkin, L.

Archibald, L.

Listowel, E.

Summerskill, B.

Burden, L. [Teller.]

Longford, E.

Taylor, L.

Champion, L. [Teller.]

Milner of Leeds, L.

Walston, L.

Colwyn, L.

Morrison of Lambeth, L.

Williams, L.

Crook, L.

Mottistone, L.

Williams of Barnburgh, L.

Faringdon, L.

St. Davids, V.

Wilmot of Selmeston, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Samuel, V.

Wise, L.

Gardiner, L.

Shackleton, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

Henderson, L.

Shepherd, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailwyn, L.

Fraser of Lonsdale, L.

Merrivale, L.

Ampthill, L.

Fraser of North Cape, L.

Milverton, L.

Auckland, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Molson, L.

Blakenham, V.

Granfell, L.

Monsell, V.

Bridgeman, V.

Hamilton of Dalzell, L.

Newton, L.

Chesham, L.

Hanworth, V.

Poole, L.

Conesford, L.

Hastings, L.

St. Aldwyn E. [Teller.]

Coutanche, L.

Hawke, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Crathorne, L.

Horsbrugh, B.

Sandford, L.

Denham, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Sinha, L.

Derwent, L.

Ilford, L.

Soulbury, V.

Devonshire, D.

Jellicoe, E.

Stonehaven, V.

Dilhorne, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Lansdowne, M.

Stuart of Findhorn, V.

Drumalbyn, L.

Long, V.

Thurlow, L.

Ferrers, E.

McCorquodale of Newton, L.

Tweedsmuir, L.

Forster of Harraby, L.

Margesson, V.

Waleran, L.

Lothian, M.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Wolverton, L.

Fortescue, E.

Resolved in the negative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.

Clause 101 [Other minor amendments of Housing Acts]:
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, this is a drafting Amendment. I beg to move.
Page 112, line 13, leave out ("a house") and insert ("any premises").—Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
5.40 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS LORD HASTINGS moved, after subsection (2), to insert:
"(3) In section 69(3) of the Act of 1957 (under which a local authority may issue a certificate that a house is fit for human habitation and will remain so fit for a specified period, not being less than five nor more than ten years) for the word 'ten' there shall be substituted the word fifteen'".
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment requires lust a brief explanation. Section 69 of the Housing Act, 1957, enables the owner of a house who proposes to improve it to obtain a certificate from the local authority that the house is fit, and will with reasonable care and maintenance remain fit for a period of not less than five years nor more than ten years. During that period the local authority is debarred from taking action to secure the demolition of the house as unfit for human habitation, either by means of including it in a clearance area or by means of a demolition order under the Act of 1957. The situation is that the local authority must be satisfied before making a standard grant that the house will remain fit for not less than fifteen years, and it is the same for a discretionary grant; and the same period again is also the test in the case of compulsory improvements. Therefore, it seems to the Government that it would be right to amend Section 69 of the Act of 1957 to remove this discrepancy.
As this is the last Amendment, and in anticipation that it will not be very controversial, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have contributed so much both to the Committee stage and to the Report stage of this Bill. We have had quite a number of Amendments to-day which have been agreed between us, meeting points on one side or the other. I should like also to thank my noble friend beside me, not for actually abandoning the defence of the Navy, but for coming to the assistance of the defence of his old Department. I hope we shall feel that we have done good work on
492
this Bill and improved it. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 112, line 28, at end insert the said subsection—(Lord Hastings.)
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, since the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, in the latter part of his remarks in support of this Amendment, was entirely out of order, I shall be out of order in supporting the Amendment and saying that, while we recognise that this Bill is a much better Bill than it was before, we should have been completely satisfied if only the last Amendment on which we divided, and the one before, had been accepted by the Government. I still regret very much that they have not been accepted. There is still time; there is another stage of the Bill, and I do hope—not with very great confidence—that the Government will have another look at this matter to see whether it is possible to provide in this measure for the fears which so many of us have. This practice of Rachmanism is still continuing, a great many people are suffering as a result of it, and this Bill gives us an opportunity of dealing with this matter. If only that can be done, then my satisfaction with this Bill will be almost complete.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.

FILMS BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
EMERGENCY LAWS (RE-ENACTMENTS AND REPEALS) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
BETTING, GAMING AND LOTTERIES (AMUSEMENTS WITH PRIZES) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a and to be printed.
PROTECTION OF BIRDS ACT 1954 (AMENDMENT) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
NEW TOWNS (No. 2) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT (DEVELOPMENT AND FINANCE) (SCOTLAND) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT (PECUNIARY INTERESTS) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a and to be printed.
HAIRDRESSERS (REGISTRATION) BILL
Brought from thee Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
YOUNG PERSONS (EMPLOYMENT) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

ANIMALS (RESTRICTION OF IMPORTATION) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask whether all these nine new measures which have now been given a First Reading all emanate from the Government, or are they all Private Members' Bills?
VISCOUNT GOSCHEN: They are Private Members' Bills, my Lords.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: It seems a pity that the Government have not been a bit more busy with their own legislation

BRITISH NATIONALITY (No. 2) BILL
5.47 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This is not a very long Bill. Its main object is primarily to fulfil some of the conditions which this country agreed to in the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which was agreed to in New York at the United Nations on August 30, 1961; and, also,
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at the same time, to remove a certain number of anomalies that exist with regard to British nationality. It is a Bill of six clauses, none of them of any great length, though possibly at first reading not quite so clearly understandable as one might hope some Bills to be. Therefore, I will very briefly, to the best of my ability, describe to your Lordships what the actual provisions of the clauses are.
Clause 1 sets out the additional grounds on which British citizenship can be claimed by registration. There are in fact three classes of people who can claim. The first and the most important class of person, perhaps, is the person whose mother was at the date of his birth a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, but who in fact was born in a foreign country, if such a person would otherwise be stateless. In other words, should some English girl or woman find herself in a foreign country giving birth to an illegitimate child, where there is no father acknowleged as in certain countries, such a child would be stateless. But by reason of his mother's nationality being. British, he is under this Bill entitled to claim British nationality.
The second class of person is a child who is actually born in the United Kingdom and Colonies, but who nevertheless would be stateless. That seems to be an unlikely thing to happen, though it can in fact happen from time to time if an illegitimate child is born in the United Kingdom or Colonies and does not acquire citizenship by birth, if his father, who is not himself a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, possesses diplomatic immunity, or if his father is an enemy alien and the birth occurs in a part of the United Kingdom and Colonies under enemy occupation. Some such children may be stateless at birth; and, if so, this Bill enables them to acquire citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies.
The third part of subsection (1) refers primarily to certain transitional classes defined in detail in the Schedule to the Bill. Broadly speaking, a person is qualified under this provision by reason of parentage if he was born before one of his parents automatically acquired citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, or, by reason of residence and

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parentage, if he is the child of a British subject without citizenship and has resided in this country. As I said, the particular objects set out in paragraphs (a) and (c) of this clause are necessary in order for us to conform with Article 4 of the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
Subsection (2) of Clause 1 provides that subsection (1) shall apply to persons born before, as well as to those born on or after, the date on which the Bill comes into force. Subsection (3) provides that a minor aged 16 or over may apply on his own behalf, and that a parent or guardian may apply on behalf of a minor whatever his age may be. Subsection (4) applies Section 8 and, in certain cases, Section 9 of the British Nationality Act, 1948. The effect of applying Section 8 is that Governors of Colonies and Protectorates will automatically have authority to exercise the Secretary of State's functions in relation to persons living in their territories; and, in the Commonwealth, that the Secretary of State may make arrangements for British High Commissioners to exercise his functions.
There is further provision for the purposes of the transmission of citizenship. A male person in category (b) above will he in the same position as any other citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies who is actually born in the United Kingdom and Colonies. He can transmit his citizenship to his children automatically, wherever they are born. But as to the male persons referred to in categories (a) and (c), they, like other United Kingdom citizens born outside the United Kingdom and Colonies, will be regarded as citizens by descent. Unless, therefore, such a person is in Crown service, his children born in an independent Commonwealth country will not, if they acquire the citizenship of that country, acquire citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, while his children born in a foreign country will do so only if their births are registered at a British consulate.
Clause 2 refers to the same class of persons as is referred to in Clause 1(1)(b)—that is, those who, though born in the United Kingdom and Colonies, are nevertheless stateless; in other words,
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certain children of diplomats and enemy aliens. The subsection there provides that where such a person is born after the Bill comes into force of a mother who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies, that person should acquire citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies automatically. Subsection (2) refers to a foundling found in the United Kingdom and Colonies after the commencement of the Bill, who, until the contrary is shown, shall be deemed to have been born in this country. I cannot state from any personal experience that there are a large number of foundlings still deposited on the doorsteps of certain great houses in Grosvenor Square and elsewhere, but, in case that should happen, their future is now assured. Clause 3 deals with the late registration of birth for the avoidance of statelessness, and provides that the Secretary of State shall not withhold his approval to such late registration if the child is, and always has been, stateless. Subsection (2) makes a similar modification to Section 17 of the Act of 1948, which deals with the registration, after January 1, 1949, of births occurring before that date.
Clause 4 deals with the restriction on the deprivation of citizenship. Subsection (1) provides that the Secretary of State shall not deprive a naturalised person of his citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies on the grounds specified in a certain section of the earlier Act if such deprivation would render him stateless. In other words, it makes it impossible that anybody, by being deprived of United Kingdom citizenship, should then become stateless. Subsection (2) repeals two other provisions relating to deprivation. One of these provides for deprivation if a naturalised person has lived abroad continuously for seven years and has neither been in Crown Service nor has registered annually his intention to retain citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies; and the second provides for deprivation if a person has been deprived of the citizenship of another Commonwealth country. Both those two, it is proposed by Clause 4, should be repealed.
Clause 5, the last of the substantive clauses, deals with British protected persons, enabling certain classes of persons to be declared by Order in Council to be

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British protected persons by reason of their connection with a former Protectorate, Protected State or United Kingdom Trust Territory. Its purpose is to enable the Order in Council which gives effect to the Statelessness Convention to cover the children of persons who have retained the status of British protected persons under any of the recent independence Acts.
My Lords, I cannot pretend that this Bill will affect the lives of a very large number of people; but, for all that, I commend it to your Lordships, not only because it brings us into line now with the United Nations Convention on Statelessness to which we have subscribed but which, as the law stands at the moment, we are in certain respects unable to implement, but also because, when such cases as I have described do take place—and from time to time they do, particularly with regard to the illegitimate children of British mothers, who would be otherwise stateless; it is not a completely unknown thing to happen—it will avoid a very large amount of personal suffering and unhappiness. For that reason, if for no other, I think this Bill is well worthy of your Lordships' thought, and is one which I hope will become the law of this country with the smallest possible delay or argument. My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Walston.)
5.58 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I should like to add a word in support of the argument which my noble friend has addressed to the House in introducing this Bill. I had the interesting—indeed, valuable—experience of working for a time in the Nationality Division of the Home Office during the war, and that brought home to me the fact that there are quite a number of anomalies in our law relating to British status and citizenship. I am therefore glad to see that, to some extent, at any rate, the Bill which is before us this afternoon removes some of these, particularly those which are concerned with the very anomalous and tragic position of statelessness.
During this particular period—and, indeed, during the years immediately prior to the war. when refugees from Hitler were coming to this country—time and
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again the terrible tragedy of statelessness was brought before those of us who worked in trying to help these people. The tragedy of that situation led to this Convention, which it is the main object of this Bill to implement. It is a very tragic position to be stateless; and while one hopes and prays that the sort of situation through which we went in this period may never be repeated, certainly, if it were, this Bill would prove of the greatest value in preventing the kind of tragic desolation which came home to very many of us during that time. That is the main reason why I want to support this Bill.
There are, perhaps, one or two points in the Bill which at first sight might appear open to objection. It is a very valuable part of the law that a person who has, so to speak, abused, his citizenship should be deprived of it from time to time. But I am quite sure that if the consequence is to make him stateless, then the result is out of all proportion to his offence—if offence it be—not only from the point of view of the man himself but also from the point of view of the general administration of the law and of the authorities in the Home Office. it would be of great value to prevent that sort of situation arising. I am not quite sure whether Clause 4 (2) makes it as clear as it might that it will apply only in a situation which will result in statelessness. I suppose that one can say that is the implication, but it is not absolutely clear; and it might be just as well at the Committee stage to make it quite clear.
It is also not over-clear that there is a certain amount of overlapping between Clause 2 and the earlier part of Clause 1. Perhaps that point also could be looked at by the Government draftsmen. No doubt the Government, if they accept this Bill, will see to it that any necessary tidying-up of this kind is carried through, since it is important that the law in relation to citizenship should be very clear. During the experience to which I have referred many difficulties were caused as the result of lack of clarity in the law. I therefore hope that great care will be taken in this Bill by the draftsmen, who are so competent to deal with these problems, before it finally reaches the Statute Book.
6.3 p.m.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, may I say a word on behalf of the Government? It gives me a great pleasure to welcome the action of the noble Lord, Lord Walston, in sponsoring this Bill, which makes a small but significant contribution to the reduction of statelessness—an object which will I am sure command the sympathy of your Lordships' House.
For many years there has been much concern over the problems arising from statelessness. This concern is shared by Her Majesty's Government, and the United Kingdom took an active part in the two Conferences held under the auspices of the United Nations, in 1959 and 1961, on the reduction or elimination of future statelessness. As a result of these Conferences the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness came into being in August, 1961, and was signed on behalf of the United Kingdom Government immediately it was open for signature. This Bill results directly from our signature of that Convention. Noble Lords will not expect me to comment in detail upon the ways in which the Bill seeks to change our nationality law; these have already been explained by the noble Lord. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, that the Government draftsmen are satisfied about the points he raised on Clause 4; but I will look at it again to make quite certain. I should, however, like to assure your Lordships that if the Bill is passed, the, Government will be prepared, as soon as the necessary consultations with the overseas territories for which we are responsible have been completed, to deposit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation the United Kingdom's instrument of ratification of the Convention. It may well be that the United Kingdom will be the first country to ratify the Convention, and I should
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like to express my sincere hope that this will encourage other nations to accede to it.
In conclusion, may I repeat my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, for taking upon himself the care of this Bill through your Lordships' House. The Bill has the Government's full support and I trust that your Lordships will feel able to give it a Second Reading.
6.5 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, for his remarks and, more particularly, for his support of the Bill on behalf of the Government, and for the help his Department has given in its preparation. I would also thank my noble friend Lord Chorley for his comments, and I should like to reiterate what he so well brought out: the sad plight of these people—few though they may be in number—who find themselves stateless. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Derwent, that it will be a considerable triumph for this country to be the first to take positive action to endorse the fine words which are so often spoken by international bodies when so often the action needed to implement them is delayed. I hope, with him, that we shall be the first to do this, and set a good example which others may follow.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL
The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEESinformed the House that the opposition to the Bill was withdrawn: the Order made on June 3 last, discharged, and Bill committed to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.