Lords Sitting of 10 March 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 Liverpool

MEDICAL SCHOOL PLACES: PERSONAL STATEMENT BY LORD TAYLOR
2.35 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I wish to make a short personal statement. In Hansard last Thursday there appeared a Written Question by the noble Baroness, Lady Horsbrugh [Col. 317.] It read as follows: To ask Her Majesty's Government
"Whether it is correct that as stated by Lord Taylor on January 22, 1964, there were 30 male applicants and 200 female applicants, properly qualified for each place in our medical schools in 1963."
To this Question the noble Earl, Lord Bessborouc4h, replied:
"No."
The noble Earl went on to give a calculation to support his contention. I am sure that this calculation is accurate, but it is irrelevant, for a reason which will appear in a moment. The noble Lady, no doubt inadvertently, omitted a qualification I made to the figures she quoted. I said: [OFFICIAL REPORT, VOL 254 (No. 26), col. 948.]
"There is some overlap:"
in the applications, that is—
"but the demand for places certainly enormously outruns the available number of places."
The overlap arises because, owing to the pressure, young men and women now habitually apply to more than one medical school. It is for this reason that the noble Earl's calculation is irrelevant to my figures.
There is no official source for the figures I quoted. I have therefore made personal inquiries at six of the London medical schools, and I will, with permission, circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the detailed results of these
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inquiries.* The totals are, however, as follows: 7,625 applications were received at the six medical schools from men, and 344 were admitted; 3,360 applications were received from women, and 90 were admitted. It follows that one man was admitted for every 22 applications received, and one woman was admitted for every 37 applications received.
These are the most accurate figures I can obtain, but I must again emphasise the point about applications to more than one medical school. I must apologise for having misled your Lordships in the earlier figures which I gave, and I should like to thank the noble Lady for having forced me to re-do my homework.

MALTA
2.40 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they still intend Malta to be independent by May 31, and if so, what proposals they have for a new Constitution.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE): My Lords, as was announced on the 28th February, the constitutional talks between my right honourable friend the Colonial Secretary and the Prime Minister of Malta were temporarily suspended pending my right honourable friend's return from Africa. He intends to resume the talks as soon as possible, and I must therefore ask the noble Earl to wait until then for a statement.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Marquess. Can he say whether it is still the intention, as I asked in my Question, that Malta shall be independent by the end of May? Can he further say whether, when the Constitution has been decided on by Her Majesty's Government, in consultation, of course, with
* We are unable, by rule of the House, to publish the Table.

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the leaders of the Malta parties, there will be a referendum in Malta on the Constitution before it is put into effect?
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, as regards the first part of the noble Lord's Question, the answer is, Yes. As regards the second part, I should be obliged if he would not press me, in view of the fact that the conversations will be resumed very shortly.

OLD PALACE YARD AND WESTMINSTER REDEVELOPMENT
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, when considering the plans for the redevelopment of the Palace of Westminster/ Bridge Street area, they will give attention to the possibility of restoring to Old Palace Yard its character of a precinct by converting the existing road into an underpass.]
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (EARL JELLICOE): My Lords, as I informed your Lordships last week, in reply to another Question, my right honourable friend the Minister of Public Building and Works is proposing to appoint a planning consultant to look at the various proposals which are under consideration for redevelopment in the Whitehall area. The consultant will be asked to confer with the planning authority and the highway authorities on road traffic arrangements in the whole area, including Old Palace Yard.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for his reply. May I ask him one further question; namely, whether he has ever seen the picture which is hanging in the Liberal Whips' room on the Second Floor showing what the precinct was like before the main road was built on to the Embankment?
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I am looking forward to the opportunity, which I am sure the noble Lord will extend to me, of doing so.
LORD REA: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the Government will
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bear in mind a scheme which was proposed, I think, between ten and fifteen years ago by an authoritative body (I think the Architectural Association), which envisaged a precinct all the way from Parliament Square to Lambeth Bridge? As my noble friend's Question seems to bring this to the forefront and make it less impossible than we were told it was at the time, I should be grateful if they would bear that in mind with a view to having space, with no roads at all—only paving, grass, trees—all around the area of Henry VII Chapel, your Lordships' House and Palace Yard.
EARL JELLICOE: My Lords, I was not aware of the precise scheme, though I was aware that the Abercrombie Report proposed some very large precinct in this general area. But I will certainly ask my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport whether he will bring this sort of possibility to the attention of the London County Council when they are considering the longer-term road pattern for London.
LORD REA: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Earl.

THE LAW OF CONTRACT
2.43 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the light of the judgments delivered in McCutcheon v. David MacBrayne Ltd., they propose to introduce general legislation to secure that when contracts are made in circumstances in which there is no scope for free negotiation of the terms, they are made upon terms that are clear, fair and reasonable and settled independently as such.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, the noble Lord has made an extremely wide proposal, which Her Majesty's Government would not consider suitable for general legislation. I might add that the present law of contract requires that the terms

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are sufficiently brought to the notice of both parties.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord for his reply, but is it not rather unfair that a large organisation, enjoying monopolistic conditions, can present its customers with a printed document headed "Conditions", containing 3,000 to 4,000 words of small print, divided into 27 paragraphs, of which Paragraph 19, in the opinion of one of the noble and learned Law Lords, is enough to absolve the respondents several times over of all negligence?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, if, as I gather, the noble Lord wishes to refer to a particular industry, from which this case arose, I cannot say more than what my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said on January 23—namely, that this is a matter which is under consideration at the present time.

ATOMIC ENERGY AUTHORITY AND BELGONUCLEAIRE
2.45 p.m.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will publish the terms of agreement between the Atomic Energy Authority and Belgonucleaire, what financial contribution has already been made and what is the total commitment.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTER FOR SCIENCE (THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH): My Lords, in broad terms, the work and any substantial commercial rights are shared equally between the parties. The United Kingdom contribution up to the present has been in terms of manpower and work done solely in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom will bear a half share of the cost of testing the fuel in the Belgian reactor B.R.3. However, as I said last Tuesday, Belgonucleaire is a commercial undertaking and its agreement with the
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Atomic Energy Authority is necessarily cast on commercial lines. In these circumstances, it is not possible to publish the terms of the agreement between the two organisations, nor the expenditure which will be incurred. So far, work on this joint project has proceeded satisfactorily.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for dying me an Answer, but I am lost in amazement that such an Answer could come from Her Majesty's Government. This is taxpayers' money that is being handled. I understand that already £3 million voted for three years' work has been absorbed in two years' work, and the noble Earl himself announced that for the current year there will be an additional £2 million. I suppose that we can understand, therefore, that all other objectives are being ruled out and that, if we are putting all our reliance on the Vulcain project, the whole of the £2 million will be spent on tests going on this year. May we assume, therefore, that eventually we shall have to contribute between £3½ and £4 million to the examining and testing of Vulcain?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I think that the figure given by the noble Earl is roughly correct and, as I say, work is proceeding satisfactorily. I am sorry that it is not possible to make public further details but, as the noble Earl will be aware, the Atomic Energy Authority is itself in some respects a commercial organisation, and the Public Accounts Committee have accepted that its commercial agreements should remain confidential.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, may I ask one other question upon these terms, then? Is the agreement on the basis of a tender or on the basis of an order given for testing work to be done over there at cost plus profit? If the latter, has the noble Earl had time to examine what happened to expenditure of this sort when we were producing armaments before the last World War at cost plus 10 per cent.? That was the condition I found when I went into office and I had to go into the matter and get it reduced. I am amazed to think that Parliament should he excluded from information of this kind on this basis.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am sorry that, for the reasons given, I cannot give any further information, but I will certainly represent the noble Earl's views to my right honourable friend.
LORD HOBSON: My Lords, can the noble Earl give an undertaking that the amount of money paid to Belgonucleaire will appear in the published accounts of A.E.A., when they lay their report before Parliament?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I cannot give any undertaking on the part of A.E.A. in this connection.
LORD HOBSON: My Lords, can the noble Earl state what reason he has for making that statement, in view of the fact that all accounts are normally published in the annual report of the Authority laid before Parliament. Why this difference in this case? What is the reason and what is the authority for departing from practice?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, the general accounts are published, but in this case it is a commercial undertaking between the two organisations.
LORD WILMOT OF SELMESTON: My Lords, while thanking the noble Earl for his courteous replies, may I ask him whether this information is being withheld for defence reasons or for some other reason, because normally the published accounts contain the results, if not all the details, of commercial transactions?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, there is no defence consideration in this matter.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, is it not a fact that the monies to which the noble Earl drew our attention in the debate are definite grants made by Her Majesty's Government to A.E.A., and therefore this is not a strictly commercial operation between A.E.A. and Belgonucleaire? This is the use and expenditure of Government money. Would not the noble Earl agree that there are many occasions, particularly in the aircraft industry, when the Government announce what they have placed for the development of a particular aircraft or other weapon? Why
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are we faced with this situation? Is it a question of the Government having something to hide, as many of us suspect?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, the Government have nothing to hide in this matter. I regret that I can give no further information, but I shall certainly transmit the noble Lord's views to my right honourable friend.
EARL ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH: My Lords, this is the third time that I have to say I am wholly dissatisfied with the answers. It is a shocking state of affairs, and now it is beginning to be understood by the Press. The Press also seem to be in great criticism of the Government. The Financial Times wants to know what is the answer to the question: "What is the time for decision?" It is time for decision now, as to what you are going to do. Reports come to us that the Government are not concerned yet whether they will he able to regard the Vulcain as satisfactory—and the expenditure goes on. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the answers, I shall put an Unstarred Question down for Monday.
LORD HOBSON: My Lords, will the noble Earl draw the attention of his right honourable friend to the fact that, when the Bloodhound contract was being discussed, the price was revealed, and also the amount paid to Ferranti's who were the contractors? Is not this on all fours with that business arrangement?
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, if there is to be an Unstarred Question, perhaps we may continue this discussion later.

CHAPEL STREET CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH (SOUTHPORT) BURIAL GROUND BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
LEGAL AID BILL
Read 3a, (according to Order), with the Amendment, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

WAR DAMAGE BILL
2.52 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF DUNDEE): My Lords, when the Battle of Britain was going on in the Autumn of 1940, Sir Winston Churchill announced that a comprehensive scheme would be introduced to compensate the owners of property which had been damaged by enemy action, and Sir Kingsley Wood before the end of the year brought in the first War Damage Bill. The Chairman of the War Damage Commission which was set up in 1941 was the noble Lord, Lord Silsoe, whose maiden speech this afternoon we look forward to hearing. The noble Lord continued to be Chairman of the War Damage Commission until 1949. I think that the smooth and successful accomplishment of the Commission's work, which included the establishment of sixteen regional offices, and the assessment and classification of 3½ million claims, is a fine tribute to the administrative skill and energy of the noble Lord.
A sum of £1,300 million has been paid out by the War Damage Commission, and to that must be added another £230 million paid by the Board of Trade in respect of business goods and chattels. The figures of £1,300 million and £230 million are a measure of the importance of the War Damage Scheme in our post-war reconstruction. These payments have been of two kinds: payments on a cost-of-works basis for rebuilding and repairs when the rebuilding or repairs have been done, and payments for loss of value in respect of damage when rebuilding or repair is not practicable. Your Lordships may perhaps wonder why any claims should still be outstanding now, so long after the war has come to an end. The delay has sometimes been due to uncertainty as to whether rebuilding will be consistent with town and country planning developments, whose future has not yet been clearly determined. But the proportion of possible remaining claims is very small, and it has long been agreed that the War Damage Commission
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and the War Damage Scheme ought to be wound up soon.
When the Government's proposals for winding it up were published in the White Paper of 1961, it was estimated that remaining claims still to be made or paid out might be as much as £40 million. But since then, possibly owing to the knowledge that time was running out, very rapid progress has been made, and it is now estimated, at the beginning of 1964, that the residue of claims cannot be more than £20 million. Our proposals in the Bill are simpler than those in the White Paper. We do not require, as the White Paper did, that claims should be registered, but only that they should be presented within specified limits of time.
Clause 1 of the Bill provides that claims either for rebuilding or repair on a cost-of-works basis or, if that is not practicable, claims for loss of value, must be presented within four years after the date of the commencement of this Act, which is October 1, 1964. That means that the last date on which claims can be entered will be September 30, 1968. Clause 7 allows a further period of six years for claims which, although they have been presented within the appropriate time, have not yet been pursued and finally settled. They do not finally lapse until 1974. After that, they will no longer be valid unless the fault for the delay is shown to be the fault of the Inland Revenue and not the fault of the claimant.
Clause 2 transfers the functions of the War Damage Commission to the Inland Revenue, who will take over its staff so that continuity of experience and knowledge may he preserved. As for any future claims which cannot be foreseen at all, such as damage done by unexploded mines or unexploded bombs going off, we propose that those should be dealt with by the War Office on the same basis as they deal with damage arising from tactical exercises.
Clause 4 applies to the Church War Damage Scheme, and it was represented by the Church Commissioners that there might be a few cases in which it would not be possible to decide by the end of 1968 whether a church destroyed in the war should be rebuilt on the same site or somewhere else. But there has now been an exchange of letters between

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the main Committee of the Church Commissioners and the War Damage Commission in which it has been agreed that when uncertainty may prevent the necessary work from being carried out within the four-year time limit, the Commission would agree that the appropriate amount of the Church payment may be allowed in respect of the cost of a new church elsewhere.
My Lords, this Bill has been through all its stages in another place without opposition and without amendment, and I hope that it may be similarly approved by your Lordships. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Dundee.)
3.0 p.m.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I must confess that when this Bill first came to my notice, before I actually read it I was somewhat at a loss to know why there was any need at this stage to have a War Damage Bill at all. I must confess also that it passed through my mind to wonder whether the Government were looking forward to some future unpleasant event and showing extraordinary foresight. But it soon became clear that it was a very reasonable tidying-up operation of what was, and still is, a highly important piece of legislation.
Some people, I know, have felt that the War Damage Commission has been perhaps unduly slow in carrying out its work and that it is a matter of surprise to some that there should still be any claims outstanding even now, very nearly nineteen years after the end of the war. But I was reminded by a friend that we are not by any means alone in dealing with these matters in what, at first sight, appears to be a rather slow fashion. In fact, I believe in Paris in the early part of this century there was a serious flood which caused widespread damage and the Commission which was set up to deal with this was not, in fact, wound up till 1952 or 1953. Undoubtedly the problems with which the War Damage Commission of this country had to deal were infinitely greater than anything that has ever taken place before. So I do not think it would be right for anybody to criticise the Government or the War Damage Commission for slowness in their work.
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I think they have been extremely reasonable to people who have very frequently had good reasons for delaying their claims. And, as the noble Earl has suggested, there are even now from time to time claims which arise from acts of the late war, which could not have been noticed until the present time. So I would not only entirely dissociate myself from anybody who grumbles at the slowness of this work, but would associate myself, as we on this side do, with the noble Earl's remarks concerning the noble Lord, Lord Silsoe, and the admirable work he and his colleagues have done in carrying out this very great work indeed. We look forward very much to hearing from the noble Lord in his maiden speech, and to some of his reflections upon this admirable operation which has been carried out.
It is, I think, something that we can all look back on with a certain amount of pride that this country decided during the war itself that damage which arose to individuals and to groups of people through an act of the war should not be borne by them personally but should be shared by the whole country. That was manifestly the right idea and it has been carried out in an admirable fashion. Not only has a great deal of considerable hardship which otherwise would have arisen been avoided, but, as the result of the actual damage from the war and in return for the vast amount of money that has been spent, and ungrudgingly spent—£1,300 million, to which the noble Earl referred, and the £230 million for chattels in addition to the other sums for buildings—we have some very great cities and portions of cities that have arisen; and I think we should look with pride on the bright side of this rather sombre picture. I would single out in particular the magnificent rebuilding in Plymouth and in Coventry which would have been impossible had it not been for the work of the War Damage Commission and for the provisions of the Act we are now seeking to supersede.
It is clearly right, however, that the time should come when an end should be brought to this Commission. It cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely, and it is clear, too, that there will be no hardship to any individual by the provisions of this

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Bill. They will now be given four years in which to lodge claims and then be given an additional six years in which to carry out the work. It seems that in that way the balance between the community at large, the taxpayer and the individual sufferer from war damage has been very fairly held.
I think a very important provision of this Bill, which the noble Earl mentioned, was that if after that period any future damage should arise through such things as unexploded bombs and mines, the sufferer will not be precluded from receiving compensation even though this takes place after the four years has expired. That has been taken care of in this Bill. In that way we can rest assured that there will be no suffering by individuals themselves. Although the £20 million outstanding appears to to be a rather large sum, if it is taken as a proportion of the £1,500 million which has already been paid out, it is clear that only a very small proportion still remains. So, as far as we are concerned, the noble Earl need have no fear but that we welcome the Bill and shall assist its passage in any way we can.
3.7 p.m.
LORD SILSOE: My Lords, the controlling words of this Bill appear in Clause 2:
"The War Damage Commission is hereby dissolved".
In speaking, therefore, on this Bill I must formally declare an interest, since I was appointed some 23 years ago now to be an original member of the team who formed that Commission. I use the word "formally" because there should be few of your Lordships who would not need to declare an interest in war damage, either as beneficiaries from the Fund or as having played some part in administering this great experiment. No fewer than one in every four of the rateable units of property throughout the United Kingdom received greater or less degrees of damage.
My Lords, I am indeed grateful that I shall receive the usual understanding accorded to one who speaks for the first time in this House. I shall need it, and shall need it more than others who on arrival in your Lordships' House have had previous experience of speaking
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in another place. I am a complete tyro in making such speeches, though I had been fortunate, as a member of the Parliamentary Bar, to address your Lordships in Committees in this House. I am not sure whether or not some of those speeches would be considered controversial, but in speaking on this Bill about war damage it would be difficult indeed to trespass against the custom that a maiden speech must never be controversial.
There is one other aspect of this matter that I ought to mention. I am well aware of the practice of the House that a Peer who has been a member of a public body appointed by the Government must in no circumstance appear to speak for or against the policy of the Government of the day in relation to that body. There is no danger that I might be accused of transgressing that rule this afternoon. May I make a personal interlude and thank the noble Earl who moved this Second Reading and the noble Lord who spoke for the Opposition for the kind remarks that were made about myself?
I wish to speak for a short time on three aspects of war damage: one, the general scheme of the Act; two, what I hope and suggest will live after these rather frightening words "The War Damage Commission is … dissolved;" and, third, to express a few words of thanks to the thousands of people who have played a part in this scheme. In a sentence, or two sentences, to be exact, the scheme of this Act was that all worthwhile buildings should be repaired out of the Fund at the price or cost existing on the day of the repair. Secondly, non-worthwhile buildings were to receive some compensation, based on value, but the Government of the day was invited to increase that value (a process which became known as "escalation") at a later date if values changed. It turned out that 19 out of 20 properties which were damaged came in the first class and only one out of 20 in the second class. As the noble Lord who spoke from the Opposition stated, this was a tremendously important part of the scheme, but it was a very near-run thing that it did not happen at all.
Before the war, insurance companies had for years refused to underwrite any

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insurances against war damage. In 1936, that great institution, Lloyd's, said that they would not underwrite any loss. In May, 1937, if I may be allowed to quote the words, the Government of the day stated:
"No scheme of insurance of property against war risks would be appropriate to the conditions of a future war."
The most effective form, the Government said, of protection against air raids lay in the effective prosecution of rearmament. In January, 1939—a great step forward—the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after agreeing that no insurance scheme was possible, said:
"Compensation for war damage ought not to be treated as merely the concern of those who suffer. It must be regarded as falling on the community as a whole and as a proper subject for public funds."
The Government, it was stated, proposed to make such contribution as circumstances made possible when the extent of the damage was known; in other words, a statement that they would contribute a part of the cost, but only after the war.
There was a great deal of pressure against that statement, and a Committee of five important people was set up in July, 1939, who confirmed the Government's view and said that no payments could conceivably be made until after the war. The war started. A Committee of experts was then set up, under Mr. Justice Uthwatt (one of his many Committees), to recommend a method of assessing compensation. They were unanimous that the compensation could be based only on pre-war levels (and they fixed March, 1939, as the relevant date), and could be paid only after the war. The war continued. Bombing started in August, 1940, and it was not until one year after the war had been going that this great decision was made, by a Coalition Government of all Parties, that compensation should be paid on the basis mentioned, and there was a definite promise that for good buildings, at least, payment should be made in full as and when the properties were mended.
The second subject I should like to raise, quite briefly, is which of the various things that had to be done in War Damage Commission days will live after their death. Your Lordships may not remember that in 1941 a statutory
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body without a Minister at its head did not exist. There are a good many of them now, but in those days there was none that had important relations with either House of Parliament. The relations between a Commission of that sort and Parliament had to be worked out gradually. This was done by Members of both Houses. For example, it was unheard of in 1941 for a Member of this House or the other place ever to write a letter direct to the Chairman of a Commission. At the end of the war, over 90 per cent. of such letters were written: it was thought to be a better "drill," because, if I may be allowed to say so, it was quicker, and because the letter was better. In those days it was unheard of that a member of the Commission, or the Chairman, should be invited to the Committee Rooms of either House to speak and be questioned by Members of Parliament, of both Houses. Such a procedure started gradually. In the first place, meetings took place with a Party in one House, then with both Parties in one House, and finally with both Parties in both Houses. I hope that this drill, which necessarily had to be worked out, will continue long beyond the death of the War Damage Commission.
Had the Bill been as was proposed for the first year of the war, what would have happened? Mention has been made of £1,300 million paid out. The present staff of the War Damage Commission have been kind enough to supply me with figures relating that sum to pre-war figures of cost, and it is almost exactly one half, or about £650 million. On average, therefore, all war damage sufferers would have received about one half of the cost. But averages are highly dangerous in this matter, because when you could mend your property did not depend upon your own will but depended upon building licences, upon planning consents and the like. Some came early, some came late. Those who came early got much nearer to the figure which would have been paid on pre-war levels; for by the end of the war building costs had not gone up tremendously. Some people, however, had to wait a long time.

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Your Lordships will forgive me a short story about an old member of the Bar. When he retired he was talking to a lad, and he said, "During the early years of my life I lost a lot of cases I should have won, but during the later years of my life, fortunately, I won a great many cases I should have lost. So justice has been done." My Lords, justice would not have been done had we had pre-war figures. We should not have been able to say, as the Prime Minister did, that, "We all stand in together". Those who came last would have suffered. Of those may I mention (perhaps to declare yet another interest) the four Inns of Court? I believe that, of all people in the country who owe a debt of Gratitude to the War Damage Act, it is the four Inns of Court, perhaps in even greater proportion than the Churches. In fact, £4 million has been paid to the four Inns of Court. What would have happened if, instead of £4 million, £⅓ million or £1¼ million or even £1 million, depending on the levels, had been paid? Coventry Cathedral received £1 million. What would have happened if they received one-third of £1 million? And what of the City halls, churches, and, if I may mention it, Lambeth Palace, which received £200,000? I was proud to be present at a service which the late Archbishop of Canterbury held in Lambeth Palace immediately after its reconse ration, in which he told us from the pulpit that this, he thought, was the first service thanking Almighty God for an Act of Parliament.
Two other things which stem from the War Damage Commission will form an important part of our life: the first is a committee which was formed in the war in order collectively to ask the Commission for money for churches of all denominations and all religions. That is now called the Churches Main Committee. It is not statutory. We all meet together and we discuss various claims from the Government. I venture to suggest that that is a most useful thing which will never die.
Finally, there is a body, which some of your Lordships may know well, called the Lands Tribunal, a court of record of this country which stemmed entirely from the Appeals Tribunal of the War Damage Commission, which, for the first time, arranged for a statutory court consisting partly of lawyers and partly of surveyors.
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A third matter I wish to discuss is the question of thanks. I want to mention one person who I believe has not been mentioned before publicly, the draftsman of this Bill. It was a really magnificent effort to produce from a brief, which I have read, on one side of one sheet of notepaper, the whole of this complicated system, and it was found later that few Amendments had to be made by Parliament to put it right. His name is Sir Alan Ellis. He lived long enough to see the success of his work; and I wish, I believe for the first time, to mention a name to whom I personally, at any rate, and I think the public, owe a great deal.
Then, of course, there is the staff of the Commission. First of all, there was the administrative and executive staff, headed of course by a few permanent civil servants who formed and guided policy. Most of the staff and all of the Commission were amateurs. They were collected together in 1941, not an easy time to find a staff; they were either much over age or much under age. They included a lot of boys and girls waiting to be called up and the like, and many people who had passed their working life a long time ago. I remember a curious statistic, that the eldest was 85 and the youngest 14½. It is an unusual feature. They totalled at one time 2,500 people, and they performed most extremely valuable work.
The technical staff also was difficult to find. They came from private practice where they had been used to making valuations professionally, but biased in favour of their clients. Almost at once they were able to become impartial and to give a decision which was in favour of neither one side nor the other. Then there were the valuers of the Inland Revenue, known to all of us, who worked in such a colossal way for this War Damage Scheme. Statistics I think show their worth. They had 200,000 value-payments decisions to make. All of them were appealable to a court; only 300 were in fact appealed against, and only 100 appeals succeeded.
Then, the most extraordinary agents of the War Damage Commission were local authorities. I believe that they played as important a part in this huge scheme as anybody else. Out of that figure of £1,300 million no less than £300 million was expended by local

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authorities on repayment by the Commission. May I also say a special word of praise to the London local authorities who had to face the V.1 and V.2 bombs. The chairman of the Commission of the time was asked to co-ordinate this work. He was given no staff and he obtained from places which did not suffer war damage ten good people from local government to supervise. We all—the chairman and the staff—are delighted that they were nicknamed "eavesdroppers". Those of you who remember my other name will see the point. Then, architects, surveyors, solicitors, and other professional men—a huge force of labour—all concerned with sending in claims to the War Damage Commission and all really acting broadly in a fair way, all deserve thanks. Also, I am sure your Lordships will allow me to mention those wonderful voluntary workers of the Women's Voluntary Services, the Citizen's Advice Bureaux, poor man's valuers and the people of that kind who all worked this big scheme.
Lastly, a very important part indeed in the success of the scheme was played by the Press, both the general Press and the technical Press. It was absolutely vital that it should be got over to these 3½, million claimants, first, what the scheme was, what the dates were, and what should be done about late claims. Only once did the Commission have to pay a penny piece by way of paid advertisement to get information in. No fewer than 200 Press statements went in in full for the public. All these many thousands of people, some paid, many not, were working in one way or another to help the 3½ million claimants, and helped to form this large war damage team. Speaking, if your Lordships will permit me, as an ex-Chairman, I think thanks should be given both by the Commissioners and by their customers to all these many people.
The war damage task has, it is generally thought, succeeded. Probably the finest part of it was the grand concept that we would win the war, that the full repair cost could be promised with certainty, and could be promised at a time when we were out of Europe; we were winning, but had not won, the Battle of Britain, and we were without Allies outside the Commonwealth. Although the Commission will soon be
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dissolved, its members and staff are grateful for this great decision made by all Parties in Parliament in 1941; and they are grateful, too, that they were allowed, by using this huge sum of money, to play a part in rebuilding destroyed and damaged buildings and, in so doing, to build a much better Britain.
3.29 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, it is with a great sense of pleasure that I speak immediately after the noble Lord, Lord Silsoe, and so have an opportunity to congratulate him on the excellence and clarity of his maiden speech. His modesty and the way he has presented the facts have prevented him from revealing how much he himself has played in this great enterprise. But I can assure your Lordships that we owe almost everything to his leadership in one of the greatest enterprises of the war. We are intensely grateful to him. I venture to hope that the noble Lord will frequently be here, speaking in your Lordships' House, in the future.
On behalf of the Church of England and the other Churches represented in the Churches Main Committee, I should like to express our entire satisfaction with the way in which this War Damage Scheme has been operated. Under the War Damage Act, 1943, properties used for ecclesiastical purposes were wholly or partially relieved from the payment of war-damage contributions. The amount of any payment in respect of war damage was left to the discretion of the Commission after suitable consultations, but a pledge was given that the Churches would be treated no worse because they had not paid contribution or had paid only a reduced contribution.
The principles on which what is known as the Church Scheme was to be operated were settled in an exchange of letters between the then Bishop of London (later Archbishop and now Lord Fisher of Lambeth) and the Chairman of the War Damage Commission, whom we so heartily welcome in your Lordships' House as the noble Lord, Lord Silsoe. This exchange of letters took place on the advice of a Committee composed of almost all denominations of the Christian Churches in this country, and was presided over by the Bishop of London. This Committee has become

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known as the Churches Main Committee. It is a matter of great satisfaction to all concerned that the denominations were thus able to agree among themselves the principles on which the payments should be based; and in the twenty years which have now elapsed since that time the Churches Main Committee has established itself as an important and valuable piece of Government machinery.
I believe I am right in saying that the total number of churches damaged in the United Kingdom was about 12,000, and in the administration of the Church Scheme the Commission paid out, up to 1962, a sum exceeding £40 million. Among the Churches assisted are, of course, many of the most famous in the country. I myself, first in Plymouth and later in Liverpool, have been very conscious of the devastation of war damage. I was vicar of the mother church of Plymouth, St. Andrew's, which was very badly damaged but has been beautifully restored. And when I went up to Liverpool I found the two main churches of the City, St. Mary, Woolton-on-the-Hill, and the parish church of Liverpool, Our Lady and St. Nicholas, both extensively damaged. Both have been beautifully restored. I therefore know first hand of the devastation of war damage, and I am also conscious of the invaluable help which we have received from the Commission.
Her Majesty's Government have now decided, reasonably enough, that steps must be taken to bring the Scheme to an end. The principles of the Bill before us are quite clear. There is to be a four-year time limit from the appointed day, namely, October 1, 1964, during which claims have to be made and the work carried out. The Churches Main Committee has collected particulars of outstanding cases, and the War Damage Commission have reviewed all existing applications. I understand that applications amounting to about £2 million are still outstanding, of which the great majority are in the Church of England and, to a lesser degree, in the Methodist Church. I am advised that, in general, there will be no difficulty whatever in complying with the four-year time limit, though it is important that Church authorities should take steps at once to see that
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their applications are in order and that the work is in train.
The particular clause with which the Churches are concerned is Clause 4, which deals with the special conditions operated under the exchange of letters in 1943 and known as the Church Scheme. Provided that the repairs to existing churches or the erection of new churches in substitution for war-damaged buildings is carried out within the terms of the Bill, there should be no difficulty whatsoever. But it is possible that there may be some exceptional cases where, owing to factors largely beyond the control of the churches, work cannot be completed within the time limit. The Churches Main Committee have been in correspondence with the War Damage Commission, and it appears that there should be no difficulty in meeting these few difficult cases. It is good to know that, in the best traditions of the Scheme, complete understanding and agreement have been reached between the Commission and the Churches Main Committee. It should be noted in passing, however, that under Clause 7 of the Bill there can normally be no right, after the end of the period of ten years from the appointed day, to receive payments from the Commission in respect of any war damage. It only remains for me to express again, on behalf of the Churches, our appreciation of the generous and understanding way in which this Scheme has been worked and to congratulate all those concerned in its operation.
3.37 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I do not think there is anything left for me to say, except to convey the congratulations of all your Lordships to the noble Lord, Lord Silsoe, on a maiden speech which I found to be of absorbing interest in every way. I hope that we shall often hear him again. I thought he was historically interesting in describing to us the history of insurance against war damage. It was also of some constitutional interest, because I did not know that the War Damage Commission had had so much influence on the relationship between Members of Parliament and non-Parliamentary Commissions. It was also of some religious interest, for he told us that it had resulted in the first religious service in which

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thanksgiving had been offered for an Act of Parliament.
And, finally, even in the demise of the War Damage Commission it seems to have conferred yet a further blessing, according to the noble Lord, in enabling this Bill to be brought in—which is the first example the noble Lord has seen of a Bill which is fairly comprehensible. I thought the noble Lord spoke with some little feeling on this point. No doubt this may be due to the fact that he is much more familiar than most of your Lordships with the previous Act, the Act of 1943, which I happen to have with me, and which I see contains, in Section 13, the following gem of English language:
"In the case of a value payment made in exercise of the power conferred by this section in respect of war damage in respect of which a payment of cost of works would have been payable if the kind of payment to be made in respect thereof had fallen to be determined under section seven of this Act apart from any other provision, the material time shall, subject to the provisions of paragraph 2 of the Seventh Schedule to this Act, be the date of the determination of the Commission to exercise that power."
I am glad to think that the language of the Bill which I am now commending to your Lordships for approval is perhaps a little easier to understand and I should like to thank those of your Lordships who have supported it.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

UGANDA BILL
3.40 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Perhaps I might begin with a brief account of its origin and purpose. On October 9, 1963, Uganda ceased to be a part of the Queen's Dominions, though remaining within the Commonwealth. The Bill before your Lordships' House is consequential upon the Uganda legislation which enacted this and certain other changes in the Constitution which Uganda had enjoyed since Independence, exactly a year before. Our own legislation is necessary in order to make it
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legally possible to treat Uganda in British law as if she were still for practical purposes a part of the Queen's Dominions.
Your Lordships may wonder why there has been a delay in bringing forward the Bill and why its application is retrospective. First, I would say in this connection that the Uganda legislation which has necessitated this Bill was not of our making. Furthermore, we received short notice of the intention of the Uganda Government to take this step. Thirdly, some features of the Uganda legislation in its possible effects upon British law, and the drafting of the Bill, required a good deal of technical discussion. There has also been a very considerable amount of consultation with the Government of Uganda. The time schedule was further prolonged by the incidence of the Parliamentary Recess and, more recently, by the events in East Africa which inevitably and rightly have been a first charge on our attention.
The Bill is drafted to have retrospective effect to the date when Uganda modified her Constitution, because there would otherwise be an awkward hiatus in the operation of certain enactments in our own law as they might affect Uganda—just to give one example, the law governing maintenance orders. As my honourable friend the Under-Secretary of State said when commending the Bill in another place—and I do assure your Lordships of this—there is nothing in any way sinister about the retrospection.
Perhaps I should preface my exposition of the Bill's provisions by some reference to the nature of the main changes brought about in the Constitution of Uganda by the legislation passed last October by the Uganda Parliament. As I have said, Uganda then ceased to be a part of the Queen's Dominions. The office of Governor General was abolished and a President was elected. As Your Lordships will know, the first President is the Kabaka of Buganda, the largest of the four Ugandan Kingdoms, which still survive as monarchical elements in the State of Uganda. It may possibly be of some interest, also, to some of your Lordships to know that the first President of Uganda served for some time with the Grenadier Guards

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during the war, and that regiment has seen fit on the occasion of his becoming President of Uganda to make him an Honorary Colonel of the regiment.
This constitutional peculiarity of these monarchical Constitutions within the main State of Uganda is invoked by the Government of Uganda as the reason for denying the title of "Republic" to the new Constitution. Dr. Obote, the Prime Minister, has in fact repudiated the title of "Republic", preferring that his country should be known as "the Sovereign State of Uganda".
The Bill itself is fundamentally a technical one. It follows broadly the provisions of similar enactments passed when India, Pakistan, Cyprus, Ghana, Tanganyika and, most recently, Nigeria became republics. With your Lordships' permission, I will now run through the clauses with one or two comments on each. Clause 1(1) provides that, as regards the places named in Clause 1(2), all existing laws and, as regards other places to which any Act of Parliament or Order in Council extends, the operation of any such Act or Order shall not be affected as a result of Uganda's change of status. Clause 1(3) gives the whole of Clause 1 retrospective effect to October 9, 1963, which is the date on which Uganda's constitutional changes took effect.
Clause 2 gives power to make such adaptations to any Act of Parliament, by Order in Council, as appear necessary as a consequence of Uganda's change of status, and provides that such Orders or any other Orders varying or revoking previous Orders may be made retrospective to the same date, October 9. Clause 3 generally relates to appeals to the Privy Council that are pending. This clause does not follow the recent Nigeria Republic Act, but returns to the form of similar sections in the Ghana and Tanganyika Republic Acts. This is because Uganda chose to deal with appeals to the Privy Council in a way similar to Ghana and Tanganyika. The clause provides for pending appeals to continue to be heard by the Judicial Committee as the result of arrangements made with Uganda.
Clause 3(5) is, however, a departure from the two precedents which I have given to the House. In those cases, the subsection provides expressly for the
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termination of all appeals to the Judicial Committee save those dealt with in the subsection—namely, those appeals which are pending (of which, I understand, there is only one case). But Clause 3(5) prevents this Bill from affecting any right of appeal which may continue to subsist under Uganda law. This provision is necessary as we understand that the legislation in Uganda providing for the recent constitutional changes did not have the effect of expressly abolishing the right of appeal in all cases. We understand that it has been abolished in civil and criminal cases, but it is possible that appeals in constitutional cases under Section 96 of the Uganda Constitution may continue to lie to the Privy Council. This can be clarified only if and when such an appeal comes before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council when that Committee will decide whether or not it may hear the case, or further legislation is enacted in Uganda. Our object is simply to leave the matter open.
Clause 4 is self-explanatory. This is a slight departure from the Tanganyika and Nigeria precedents in order to avoid the use of the term "Republic" which, for the reasons which I have given to your Lordships, would not in this case be appropriate.
To conclude, I should like to recall that the Prime Minister of Uganda, Dr. Obote, on the occasion of the change of constitutional status from which the need for this Bill arises, paid graceful tribute to Her Majesty the Queen as
"the head and symbol of unity of the free and independent Commonwealth nations"
and went on to express his appreciation of the Commonwealth. It was my good fortune to be the guest of the Uganda Government on this occasion, and I should like to pay a personal tribute to the warmth with which I was received and to the hospitality which I received from their Government. I was made to feel a very, very welcome guest. I know that we for our part—your Lordships on both sides of the House will, I know, join me in this—will wish Uganda well under her revised Constitution, and continue to value her participation in the Commonwealth. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Duke of Devonshire.)
3.48 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I think we are all very grateful to the noble Duke for his extremely interesting explanation of the background of this Bill, and for his very lucid and accurate account of its contents. I shall not myself complain about the delay in introducing the Bill because, although it is perfectly true that there has been a delay, I do not think it has caused any serious inconvenience to anyone. Of course, Bills of this kind have now become common form when a Commonwealth country ceases to be part of Her Majesty's Dominions. But as the noble Duke pointed out—and I think this is an extremely important matter—there is one important difference between the constitutional change in Uganda and the constitutional changes in other African countries such as Tanganyika, Ghana and Nigeria, when the Queen ceased to be Head of State in those countries.
The latter—the three countries to which I have just referred—became Republics, whereas Uganda has become a sovereign State with a Presidential Head; and, as the noble Duke rightly said, the Prime Minister of Uganda attaches very great importance to the recognition of this new status of Uganda. Of course the difference between a Republic and a State with a Presidential Head is much more than verbal. Republicanism is, after all, regarded by most people as incompatible with monarchy, and this view would certainly be taken in Uganda. But as your Lordships are aware, Uganda has a number of ancient monarchies which, before the British came, were the established system of government, and they have therefore played a much longer part than we have in the history of that country. The people of Uganda still feel a justifiable pride in their ancient monarchies, and intense loyalty towards their traditional rulers.
It was therefore most desirable—and, indeed, an admirable achievement in the Constitution of Uganda—to preserve these monarchies in this new, independent and united country. By framing the Constitution so that a President, elected for a limited period of time, becomes Head of State, each of the traditional rulers becomes eligible for this post, and I am sure nothing will
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do more for the unity of this new country than this wise association between loyalty to the State, loyalty to Uganda as a whole, and loyalty to a traditional ruler.
I am sure we are all delighted, as the noble Duke has said, that the Kabaka of Buganda has become the first President of Uganda, and we wish him the utmost success in his great office. Those who have the good fortune to know him will realise his devotion to his own people and the affection which he still has for this country which goes back to the time that he spent with fellow members of his regiment here in this country, and which has survived, in spite of the years of exile which he has shared with many other leaders of the new Commonwealth.
We are also delighted that Uganda, under its new Constitution, has elected to stay a member of the Commonwealth. Of course, one of the many advantages of Commonwealth membership is the unwritten obligation of mutual aid in times of difficulty, and Uganda was in a position to realise the advantages of Commonwealth membership very soon after it chose to remain one of us, for this made it possible for Mr. Obote to ask for our help when faced by mutiny among his armed forces. He knew that not only should we send our troops immediately, as we did, but that we should withdraw them the moment we were asked to do so—and I understand that the Secretary of State has already agreed to withdraw these troops very shortly from Uganda. This is surely a striking illustration of the value of the Commonwealth relationship. I hope that the Secretary of State, from whom we hope to have a report on his return from East Africa, will have taken advantage of his visit to Uganda to find out what further assistance we may be in a position to offer in relation to the training of the armed forces.
There is one unsolved problem in Uganda which I hope your Lordships will allow me to mention, because of the fact that I and my colleagues, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Molson, where unable to solve it when we were in Uganda in 1962 and because of the importance of a solution of this problem for the future peace and stability of the country. I am referring

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to what is commonly known as the problem of the lost counties of Bunyoro. It does credit to both Uganda and Bunyoro that since independence there has been no serious violence over the lost counties, but whether this can be avoided later on will depend on the willingness of both tribes to accept the referendum in the lost counties as the means of a final settlement. I am speaking in an entirely personal capacity, and I trust that no one will think that I am interfering in the domestic affairs of another country. I am merely taking the opportunity of expressing an opinion because I and other noble Lords had occasion to be associated with this problem so recently.
There is the possibility, I think, of a final settlement; but the outcome of the referendum will depend on whether the referendum itself is conducted with scrupulous fairness, and I have no doubt that the central Government will take every care to see that this is the case. If this is done, if the referendum itself is conducted with impartiality, then it only remains for both tribes to accept the popular verdict; and no one can doubt, I think, that the peace and stability of Uganda will depend on whether a reasonable settlement of this longstanding dispute is arrived at.
There is only one question I should like to address to the noble Duke, and it is on the subject of Clause 3, subsection (5), to which he referred in his opening remarks. This, I believe—and I think the noble Duke said this himself—is the only respect in which the provisions in this Bill about appeals to the Privy Council differ from the provisions in other, similar Acts, such as the Ghana and Tanganyika Acts. This subsection will allow appeals in constitutional cases, though appeals in civil and criminal cases will no longer be permitted.
I think we are all delighted when any Commonwealth country wishes to retain any element of the right of appeal to the Privy Council, but it was certainly not made clear in another place—and I do not think the noble Duke, if I may say so with respect, made it clear this afternoon—whether this retention of the right of appeal in constitutional cases was in fact the wish of the Uganda
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Government or whether it was just a slip, such as occurs very often in legislation both here and elsewhere, in Uganda legislation dealing with this matter. Of course, if it was a slip, then clearly it will be corrected later on by the Uganda Legislature; but I should be very much obliged, and I think that many people who have followed the discussion on this Bill, both here and in another place, would be grateful, if it were possible to provide an answer to that question. My Lords, I support the Bill, and I sincerely hope it will receive a speedy passage through your Lordships' House.
THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I ask him whether there is any other Constitution in which an hereditary monarch has been described as ruler of a "tribe"? I noticed that the noble Earl twice said "tribes". These hereditary monarchies are of some age.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, in Africa, as the noble Earl will no doubt be aware, the hereditary system prevails, and many of the tribal chiefs are in fact known as kings. They are, therefore, monarchs.
3.58 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends and myself, I should like to support this Bill. We think a very interesting constitutional situation has been created by the position in Uganda, with an elected President in a monarchy. Taking the Commonwealth as a whole, I think we have in it almost every type of Constitution possible, and this is another one—an instance of how wide-ranging and all-embracing the Commonwealth is. Of course, its nature is changing the whole time, but, so far as I am concerned, I welcome the change because I believe the Commonwealth is adapting itself to an ever-changing world, particularly an ever-changing Asia and Africa, and this is a good thing.
The strength of the Commonwealth, I feel, can be shown in a hundred ways, but I will instance only two. One is the one instanced by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, when he said that three territories, in fact—Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya—came to us for military assistance when difficulties arose recently in East Africa. To my mind, that is one of the finest tributes that

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could be paid to us in this country. We are all very glad indeed to have been able to give this assistance; and we commend our own troops on the fine performance they put up in these various countries.
The second instance is the instance of our own people. We have in Kensington a place the noble Duke knows very well, the Commonwealth Institute; a new institute which has been put up. It is a very attractive building and no fewer than 13,000 visitors go to it every week. In permanent exhibition terms, this is quite a lot; and, apart from that, a large number of activities are carried on by the Commonwealth Institute throughout the country: travelling exhibitions, schools advisory services, film strips, lectures, conferences, and, of course, at the Institute itself there is a reference library, a first-class art gallery, a theatre, and so on. All these are being more and more utilised; people, and especially young people, are ever more interested in the Commonwealth. There is a branch in Scotland as well. The only failure—and this is a failure not of the Institute, but of the Treasury—is that we have not yet been able to get a very modest branch in Wales. I do not know whether the Treasury thinks that Wales is not interested in the Commonwealth, but we hope next year to be able to start in Wales as well.
This is just an instance of the sort of feeling existing in this country about the Commonwealth. I would say that there is apparent in this country a warmer feeling towards the Commonwealth at the present moment than I have ever known in my time, and I have been connected for many years with both the Commonwealth and the Empire. I am not talking about the few people who were, shall I say, 110 per cent. Empireminded; I am talking about the average schoolchild, particularly, and the average men and women in this country. They are very anxious to know all about developments in the Commonwealth.
I was going to say that this is not the place to discuss the question of the intended merger of the Commonwealth Relations service with the Foreign Service and the retention of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and his Department, with the noble Duke—if he is still at that time
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in office—and his colleague Lord Lansdowne; but, instead, I will say that this is not the debate in which to discuss these things. However, I would say—and this is the place to say this—that I hope that, when the arrangements are carried out, great care will be taken in the beginning in Africa, and in States such as Uganda, because we have a very special relationship there. I hope that some of the old Commonwealth Relations people will be retained in this sort of country, which has a long history of association with us and great feelings of friendship to us, as, indeed, we have to them.
I would particularly stress to-day the economic advances that have taken place in Uganda in the past ten or eleven years. These have been achieved largely by the Uganda Development Corporation—though not entirely so; there was a great deal of other development as well. But the Corporation has made an immense contribution to the development of Uganda. It was set up by the Uganda Government to assist, in association with private enterprise, in development in finance, property, industry, mining, commerce, hotels and tourism; and its work has been greatly appreciated. And I am sure that the man who has been responsible for this more than anyone else is the present Chairman, Mr. J. T. Simpson, who is retiring before the end of the year as Chairman, but who is to stay on as a Director. I should like to pay a tribute to him now, as this is possibly the last chance we shall have to do so. He has assisted in building up this quite remarkable corporation.
My Lords, I should now like to say a word on the question of military assistance. I gather from reports in the Press, and particularly those in The Times, which I have read in the last few days, that we are soon to withdraw our officers and N.C.O.s from the Uganda forces, and that in their place will be sent out a military mission to the Uganda Army. I gather that flying training for Ugandans will be carried out under the scheme established in Kenya. I believe this is the right course to take. I feel that the practice of having European officers or N.C.O.s in armies in Africa is probably coming to an end; and this military mission is far more appropriate in the I circumstances.

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I have only one regret that I must convey to the noble Duke on this Bill. He will expect it, for I have voiced it on every Bill of this kind in the last six or seven years—and perhaps longer—though without the slightest effect. That is that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is no longer to receive appeals, except those which are already pending. There is one doubt in this case, to which I will refer in a moment; but I have felt for years past that we in this country have shown a singular lack of imagination, a singular lack of initiative and a good deal of parochialism in not being prepared, and in not taking the necessary steps—and this is the point, that we have not taken the necessary steps—to fit the Judicial Committee for its new role, so that it could become a real Court for the Commonwealth as it had been for the Empire. Those steps have not been taken; we are faced with independent country after independent country going out from within the ægis of the Judicial Committee; and hence there is no body of law being built up, as there used to be under the old set-up. We now have Supreme Courts or Courts of Appeal in large numbers of territories, with possibly very differing judgments on the same issues. This is a serious matter, and attention has been called to it by university law teachers, among others. This is, to me, one of the important points, though not the most important: the most important is that here is another Commonwealth link being unnecessarily severed, and due to our own fault. We cannot take any pride in this.
I gather from the noble Duke to-day that the Judicial Committee, although it will not be able to hear appeals in civil and criminal matters, may be able to hear appeals on constitutional questions. I am surprised that there is any doubt on this. I should have thought that in this Bill, when we are dealing with the whole matter, it should be possible not only for us but for everybody else to be clear as to what the position is. To have doubt at this stage seems to me extraordinary. The Judicial Committee either can or cannot hear appeals in the future. There is nothing against making the situation quite clear in this Bill. Why some unfortunate litigant will have to
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go to the enormous expense of coming from Uganda, taking an appeal to the Privy Council here, in order to ascertain something that we should now be doing for him by putting it in the Bill, I cannot understand. There may be a reason for it; but the noble Duke has not given us any. No doubt he knows the reason—perhaps he does not want to give it: in which case I will not press him too hard. I am certain that if he could give the reason, he would do so. But I feel that we should register surprise that at this stage in the proceedings a matter of this kind should be left in tile air, so to speak. That is all I have to say on this Bill, my Lords. My noble friends and myself wish the sovereign. State of Uganda well, and we shall look forward to steady progress in that part of Africa in the future, as in the past.
4.10 p.m.
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl and to the noble Lord for the way in which they have welcomed this Bill and for their most helpful and constructive speeches. The convention of the House forbids me from alluding to them as "my noble friends"; but they both are that; and I am grateful to them on this occasion, as on many occasions in the past, for their support on a measure such as this.
The main question that both noble Lords raised was of appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. I must apologise to the noble Earl, because I am afraid I misled him. I had intended to say that on constitutional matters appeals "may be heard", rather than "will be heard". I think the noble Earl understood that. I should like, if I can, to try to throw some light on this point. It is a highly technical matter, and I am afraid that, by trying to throw light on it, I may only add to the confusion.
The position is this. Appeals come under Section 96 of the Uganda Constitution and this is an entrenched clause. The Uganda Government, for reasons of their own, did not see fit to propose the necessary measures to amend this entrenched clause; therefore it remains in their Constitution. We have had considerable discussions with the Uganda Government on this subject. At the risk of being probably

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too frank, I would say that they made it quite clear that, for their own reasons, they did not want to go through the procedure necessary to amend their Constitution. The position is obscure, but we are not in a position to force the Uganda Government to take the necessary measures to amend this entrenched clause in their Constitution. For that reason, it will be put to the test only if a case comes before the Judicial Committee to decide whether or not an appeal does lie before that Committee. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore: we did all that we could, but there was nothing that we could do to force them to amend this clause.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I thought I had made it clear that I appreciate that this is only permissive. It leaves the Uganda Government merely with power to appeal in con-constitutional cases. But what I want to know is whether it was the deliberate intention of the Uganda Government to leave this section of the Constitution unamended or whether they are likely to amend it and therefore this right of appeal will disappear.
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, I find myself in some difficulty, because I do not wish to put the intention of the Uganda Government, which may not be ours. Perhaps it will be sufficient if I say that I think it remained unamended due to the complications of the existing Uganda Constitution, containing all these monarchies, and that they preferred to leave the matter unresolved rather than take a final decision. But I would make it clear that this is not something we are imposing upon them. The decision is entirely theirs.
The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, will not expect me to follow him in his interesting remarks on the Commonwealth Institute. I know he has done a great deal of work in the Commonwealth Institute and I think it is only a matter of time before Wales becomes a member of the Institute. Perhaps I was anticipating his remarks about the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and came armed with some evidence from the debate when this Bill was before another place, when something was said which might have given him
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some hope; but unfortunately my noble friend Lord Dundee removed my copy of Hansard when he left the House, and I have been disarmed. But if the noble Lord will look at that, I think that he will be interested. He will also know that there is to be a conference of the Commonwealth Law Society, and we may hope that something on the lines of what he has long been advocating may be proposed. If so, a great deal of the credit will have to go to the noble Lord. I will not detain the House any longer and again thank the noble Lords for the co-operation I have received.
On Question, Bill read 2a: Committee negatived.

RATING (INTERIM RELIEF) BILL
4.15 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Hastings.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AILWYN in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Grants by reference to proportion of elderly persons in population
1.—(1) If in the year 1964–65 or any subsequent year not being later than the year 1967–68 the number of persons over the age of sixty-five estimated to be included in the population of any rating authority's area exceeds one-tenth of the estimated total of that population, the Minister shall pay to that authority a grant in respect of that year at a rate of five pounds per head of the excess.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "over the age of sixty-five" and to insert "under the age of sixteen". The noble Lord said: In moving this Amendment, I should like to make two preliminary remarks. The first is that I hope that this Amendment will not be regarded as hostile to the Bill. We approved the Bill on Second Reading—I hope we were not too devastating in our approval—and certainly have no desire to sabotage the Bill in Committee. The Amendment is an attempt to be helpful and to provide what we regard as a more helpful

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criterion for hardship in Clause 1 than the criterion which is contained in the Bill as it stands.
Secondly, I want to apologise for the form of the Amendment. I quite realise that we have not gone far enough, because the clause provides that there is to be a grant of £5 "for each such person in excess of that population". We are substituting a different criterion and it may be that £5 per person may not be the appropriate figure but some other figure—probably a smaller one. Therefore I hope that, in discussing this Amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, will not make too great play with the fact that the Amendment is not perfect as it stands. I should be happy if he were to say to me that he accepts the idea in principle and that he would bring forward at a later stage of the Bill an Amendment which would make the necessary provisions in the proper manner.
The case for the Amendment is that under Clause 1 we are seeking to give grants to local authorities in respect of a number of years for each person over 65 years of age who goes to make up more than one-tenth of the population. It is assumed, and I think it has been clearly stated, that although the local authorities which receive the grant in respect of these old people are under no obligation to use it for the purpose of relief, nevertheless it is a criterion and will be taken into account in the relief which is given generally to deal with hardship under the rating provisions.
We criticised Clause 1 on Second Reading. We pointed out that local authorities receiving grant were under no obligation to use it for the specific purpose. But I am not making that point to-day. I am simply making the point that in deciding whether grants should be made we think that the grant would be more appropriately made and it would be a better test of hardship if it were on the basis of the number of children under the age of 16 in a given community than the number of old people over 65.
I have not in the time avalable been able to get many figures to support this, but I have been able to obtain a few from the Census. Among the local
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authorities who have the highest proportion of children under the age of 16 are Leeds, Leicester and Oldham. These are typical industrial towns which one would assume would have a high proportion of people who would suffer hardship under the revaluation provisions. In each of these cases the proportion of children under the age of 16 is of the order of 24 per cent. On the other hand, in Worthing, which I am told is typical of a large number of seaside resorts, the figure is 15·8 per cent. So that whereas under the Bill as it stands Worthing, Bournemouth and other such places would get relief, because they are towns with a high proportion of old people, if the Amendment I am moving were accepted the relief would be given instead to places like Leeds, Leicester, Oldham and other of the industrial towns, because they have a higher proportion of children under the age of 16.
I do not want to impute evil motives—I never do—but I understand that the seaside resorts are very much looking forward to the benefits of this Bill; and I have had a considerable number of abusive letters—some of them very abusive—from people in seaside resorts because I am seeking to substitute the criterion of children under 16 for the criterion of people over 65. I would say to the noble Lord: do not worry about Bournemouth, Worthing, Eastbourne and so on. They are all right for the Conservative Party, and will always be loyal. If you are really thinking of the Election, think of Leeds, Leicester and Oldham, which are much more marginal, and where you stand a chance if you do justice.
However, I am not suggesting that this Bill is an electioneering. Bill, although, if I take the Prime Minister at his word, I might assume that it was, because he has said that everything the Government now do is directed to one purpose, and one purpose only, and that is the coming Election. From a purely electioneering point of view I would give the noble Lord a piece of friendly advice and ask him to accept this Amendment, because it would do him good in those quarters where he needs good, and it would not harm him in those quarters where he has it already. To be more serious, I suggest that, if the Government really want to do justice

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and help local authorities who have a considerable number of people suffering hardship, the test that I put forward, of the number of children under the age of 16, is a far more reliable and satisfactory test than that in the Bill. For that reason, I beg to move the Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 7, leave out ("over the age of sixty-five") and insert ("under the age of sixteen").—(Lord Silkin.)
LORD LINDGREN: I do not want to insinuate that there is a split on this side of the Committee, abut I am not inclined to be quite so generous towards the Government as my noble friend Lord Silkin is—perhaps because I have not been here long enough to mellow. In the Second Reading debate I described the Bill as a phoney Bill, for political purposes, because, as my noble friend has said, it does nothing to ameliorate what is an undoubted hardship, from one end of the country to the other, arising from the heavy increased rate burden placed upon ratepayers. That burden has been placed upon them, rightly or wrongly from the Government's point of view, by their own deliberate action in transferring the costs of local government services from the Treasury to the local rates—in other words, from the taxpayer to the ratepayer—to say nothing of increased interest charges due to their forcing of local authorities on to the open market to borrow money, and the added cost that comes to local authorities because of the debt burden they have to bear.
This Amendment is really a test of sincerity, so far as the Government are concerned. Are they concerned with the burden of rates on the ratepayers throughout the country, or are they concerned, for political purposes, in regard to certain of the seaside towns? The proportion of persons over 65, as my noble friend has said, is no test of the hardship or burdens falling upon local authorities or individual ratepayers. The greatest cost on a local authority's budget to-day is education. I have no quarrel with this: it is all to the good and something of which we can be proud. The local education authority has to make provision for children of school age; for those under school age
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but coming up to it, for those above the statutory age in further education—for day release (as we were discussing a few weeks ago on the Industrial Training Bill), university awards and that sort of thing.
We have had recently in this House excellent debates on the Newsom Report and the Robbins Report. The Government have indicated that under Newsom the school-leaving age is to be raised to 16 by 1970; and even between now and then certain aspects of the Newsom Report are to be adopted by local education authorities. All this will cost money. Equally, university awards are, quite rightly, a heavy charge on a local authority's finances, and if the Robbins Report is implemented, that will be a still further heavy charge on the costs of local authorities. I hope that the Minister will not say that to accept this Amendment would mean further legislation, because I submit that it could be done under the general grant—and this might perhaps be part of the Government's argument for not accepting the Amendment.
The general grant is in two parts, one the basic and the other the supplementary. Under part II of the basic there is a grant of £0·77 per child for the estimated number of children under 15, and under part II of the supplementary a grant of £0·87 for children of school age, per 1,000 of the population. A variation in either of those sections can be made without legislation, and I would submit that we can do it if there is real good will on the part of the Government to relieve the rate burden on ratepayers.
I want to point out, too, that while the general grant covers the children under 15 and those of school age, there is no provision within the general grant for further education, day release or university awards. Those costs are very considerable, and will rise if we treat the educational system of this country on a real basis of making it effective for the population. I want to point out, too, as I said in the Second Reading debate—and it is worth repeating—that the Government are talking about wage increases of 3½ to 4 per cent., and yet rates this year throughout the whole country have gone up on average 8 per cent.

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May I say as a trade unionist, and one who has had to take part in negotiations, that rates, together with other costs of living, are part of the basis of a wage demand. If the Government want to reduce the wage demands that trade unions are bound to put forward, then they ought to take some action to reduce the incidence of rates on the householder. I am going to admit straight away that this will mean an added charge, and it was intended, so far as I was concerned, to be an added charge, and a transfer of benefits from the Treasury to the ratepayer.
As the Bill stands, £6,500,000 is going to local authorities. If the Bill were implemented—and I can give only what I hope is an intelligent guess—it would cost some £37 million if we took it on the £5 and 10 per cent. of the population, as specified in the Bill. As my noble friend has said, if either the poundage or percentage needs to be altered, that is a matter for consideration. But I suggest that if it is intended to be an interim relief Bill, then it can be made a real interim relief Bill only if some method such as this, dealing with the basic and highest charge to the local authority on its rate burden, is dealt with. I hope we are not going to be told again that the Allen Committee and the Working Party are looking into the financial relationship between central and local government in the rating system generally. What is required is some relief now, and to do that I think this Amendment, or a slight variation of it, is a valid contribution to the local authorities of this country.
4.33 p.m.
LORD AUCKLAND: When I read this Amendment, I must say that I was a little puzzled as to what was meant. While I am certain that it has been put down in all sincerity to improve what is admittedly a not particularly convincing Bill, I feel that this is a rather expensive way of doing it, even though, as the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, fairly said, it would give more relief. But this is an interim measure, and whether one considers it a good measure or not is a matter of opinion. The number of children under the age of 16 is very large, and if it is to be calculated on that basis it would be very costly.
LORD SILKIN: Perhaps I did not make myself clear. It is my fault, and due to my incapacity to use the English language adequately. I thought I said in my introductory remarks that the percentage would have to be altered. I am not asking for more money. I was asking only that it should be distributed in a more satisfactory way on the basis of the number of children under 16, rather than on the basis of people over 65. I am not asking for more money under Clause 1.
LORD AUCKLAND: I take the noble Lord's point, and I apologise if I in any way misrepresented him. The fact is, of course, that places like Leeds, Leicester and Oldham are industrial centres. Under the 1961 Act industries are now fully rated, which should to some extent help householders, although that is not always the case. For example, at Purfleet, which is an industrial centre, the rates for householders still continue to rise, despite the large amount of industry, pulp mills, and so on, in that area. But I feel that under this interim measure it is the seaside resorts which deserve some benefit. I quarrel with the point that they are necessarily bastions of Conservatism. Particularly in local government there have been a number of radical changes recently. Eastbourne was mentioned. I know Eastbourne well, and recently the council there has taken on a somewhat different political complexion, even though the Conservatives still retain control.
There is a scheme in many of these resorts to alleviate the unemployment which often occurs out of season. I feel that the Bill, as at present drafted, may well be of advantage to these resorts who are trying to relieve unemployment. However, if it is put to the vote, I shall remain neutral, because although I do not support this measure for the reason I have given, nevertheless I do not believe that the Government's own remedy at present is the right one, because the relief, as I understand it, is going to the local authority as a whole and not to those who really need it, as I said on Second Reading. Although, as I say, I believe that the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is a genuine attempt to improve the Bill administratively, I believe there will be difficulties, and I hope that the Allen Committee will report and that the Report will be

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acted on soon so that hardship can really be discussed and action taken in a more practical manner.
4.38 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD HASTINGS): I appreciate very much the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, saying right at the beginning that this Amendment was not designed to ruin the Bill but to help the Government, and that he thought that as a criterion of directing payments towards the relief of hardship it was a better provision than the one taken, or partly taken, by the Government under Clause 1. Also, of course, I took his point absolutely about the question of the sum of money per head of population. He made this perfectly clear, and he need not apologise at all for his use of the English language.
Of course, the result of this Amendment would be that the areas in which the elderly, retired people were most numerous, and where the Government believe the incidence of hardship seems likely to be greatest, would get a smaller share of the grant. Areas where children were more numerous would get the larger share. I immediately dispatch this point about the money: in point of fact, if we allowed £5 on the basis of the noble Lord's Amendment, it would mean the Government's spending about five times as much as we envisage spending under the present Bill. So the figure would have to be £1 and not £5. But that is not important in the context of the general argument, in view of the noble Lord's explanation. The number of children under 16 in each rating area is not readily available but, of course, the number of children under 15 is one of the factors in the distribution of the general grant, and figures up to that age are available from all county boroughs. The three with the highest number of children per population, in descending order, are Bootle, Middlesbrough and West Hartlepool. In none of these areas does the rate payment of the average householder amount to the national average of £30 12s.
LORD LINDGREN: I am sorry to interrupt, but I do so because this use of the average is very misleading. It is true that the average, so far as an industrial town is concerned, is lower,
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but the incidence on the individual is no lower because industrial rating is included within the domestic hereditament to arrive at the average; whereas, if you have a town such as Bournemouth, where there is little industry, of course it is a straight one, but the incidence so far as the individual is concerned is just as high.
LORD HASTINGS: I should appreciate it if I were allowed to make my argument. I am perfectly capable of understanding the fallacy inherent in all averages. There are extremes, of course. There is above and below the average, otherwise you could not have an average. But an average does give an indication, at any rate, of where hardship exists in considerable proportion, and if noble Lords will bear with me for a moment, I think they will see how this operates.
I was going to say that in these three places I have mentioned it is well below the national average, and nor does the average increase in that payment since 1962–63 amount to the national average of just over £3. The noble Lord will remember that there has to be a minimum increase of £5 before any refund becomes payable, yet the Amendment would give proportionately the most grant to those areas. West Hartlepool, for instance, where the average rate payment per house is still only £21 6s. per year, would get a 7d. rate relief, equivalent to about 30s. off the rates on the average house.
The three county boroughs with the fewest children per 100 population are Blackpool, Eastbourne and Bournemouth, and in all three the average rate payment and the average increase per house are far above the national average. The average Bournemouth rate payment is nearly £47, and the increase since last year is £15. So I think these figures give an indication, if nothing more, of where the hardship lies and the numbers in which it is likely to be found.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, mentioned other cities and I have been given a few figures here which illuminate the same sort of point. In Leeds, the average rate payment in 1963–64 was £24 8s., but the average increase since 1962–63 in rates was only £1 4s. In Leicester, the figures were £32 5s. and

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£2 12s. respectively; Oldham, £20 14s. average rate payment, £2 18s. average increase; Worthing (which the noble Lord mentioned as at the other end of the scale) average rate payment is £53 2s., average increase £6 14s. So I think the same sort of picture evolves out of consideration of all those places, whether the ones I have taken or those which the noble Lord opposite has brought forward as examples. Given that the object of Clause 1 is to put proportionately more grant into the areas where householders' rate increases following revaluation have been most severe and the incidence of hardship in those increases is likely to be highest, there seems to me to be no question but that the proportion of elderly—imperfect though it is, and we have admitted that—is a better criterion than the proportion of children.
To come to another aspect of the result of the noble Lord's Amendment if it were accepted, in counties, for example, we must remember that the grant under Clause 1 is, in any case, payable to county district councils and not to county councils; and, of course, it is the county councils who bear the burden of expenditure for education. Another point is, that if we take the three places I mentioned, Bootle, Middlesbrough and West Hartlepool, all three already have about three-quarters of their expenditure on education—I think one can tie this with the Amendment because it is based on children under 16—and the other big general grant services met by general grant and rate deficiency grant, while Blackpool, Eastbourne and Bournemouth, at the other extreme, have well below half their expenditure on these services met by grant.
I would turn to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lindgren, who said that this is an interim relief Bill, but he wanted to direct his relief really towards the general ratepayer. We want to direct it towards a particular class of ratepayer who is hit by hardship arising, not out of the general incidence of rate burden, but out of the specific increase due to revaluation, and only revaluation. Therefore, if one considers that is the purpose of the Bill, I am quite sure from the figures I have given noble Lords—and I hope they will be sure, too—that Clause 1 will be more
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effective and will produce the effect we require much better if we stick to the payment based on the numbers of elderly people over 65 and do not switch to the grant based on the number of children under 16. Since this is, I think, the proven fact, and since the purpose of the Bill is, as I have said, not to deal with the general rate burden and deficiency of payments made by the Exchequer, on the one hand, towards local authority expenditure and by the rates, on the other—it has nothing to do with that but is entirely directed towards the question of hardship on a temporary basis due to revaluation—then I must say that I think it would be quite impossible for the Government, with the best will in the world, and even with gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for having put this forward as a better idea, to advise the Committee to accept this Amendment, which really would make a completely different sort of Bill, which we do not want at all, and would defeat the Bill's main object.
LORD SILKIN: I do not want to press this, but I must say that, with all the logic that the noble Lord has produced, his results were extraordinary. You can, if you are skilful enough, always manage to produce the best possible reasons for getting the most illogical result. That is what the noble Lord has done. He has demonstrated to his own satisfaction that places like Eastbourne, Worthing and Bournemouth ought to get relief from the Government, but that places such as he described in the North of England, where unemployment is high and rateable value is low, should not. In these circumstances I am unable to accept his contention. I will not go to a Division, but I think we ought to let the Amendment be negatived.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
4.50 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall be agreed to?
LORD LINDGREN: Perhaps I may say a word at this point. Before I do so, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, will not start quibbling in debates like this. Just now he said that district councils under Clause 1 get the grant, whereas county councils bear the cost of education. That was a little naughty, because he must give us some

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credit for knowing something about local government. I would ask him where the county councils get their money from. Is he not aware, being in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, that a county council precepts on the district councils, and that it is the district councils that pay the education rate, which is still the highest part of the rate which the district council has to levy on its ratepayers?
Dealing with that point here, under Clause 1, the district councils and the county boroughs get the grant, but nowhere in the Bill is there any requirement on the local authority to use that money for any purposes other than the general rate relief. And yet the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, resisting the Amendment, criticised it because it was a general rate relief. Under the Bill a local authority can take its grant and make no grant to anybody, and the shopkeepers of Bournemouth, of Blackpool or of Eastbourne are the only persons who are going to benefit. What steps will the Government take to see that the grant made under Clause 1 is in fact used for the relief of the hard-pressed ratepayer, the ratepayer who is suffering hardship? Because, with the greatest respect, I have seen far more hardship in Middlesbrough and Bolton than I have ever seen in Bournemouth or Eastbourne.
LORD HASTINGS: The noble Lord was not here, I am bound to remind him, at the end of the Second Reading. The noble Lord has just made two Second Reading speeches during Committee stage, and the points he has made were put and answered fully when I replied on Second Reading. Briefly, although this is in the form of a general grant under Clause 1 it is designed specifically to offset the likely payments to be made by the local authorities for hardship under Clause 2; and that is really the purpose. But the grant is not tied; there is no compulsion to use it in that way, because that would he taking away from the local authorities a degree of their responsibility to their own ratepayers as to how they operate Clause 2, for which they get only half in Exchequer grant, and in some cases two-thirds, under Clause 5. That, very briefly, recapitulates the argument which I expounded at greater length at
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the end of the Second Reading. This point has been threshed out in both Houses.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment; Report received.

TRADE UNION (AMALGAMATIONS, ETC.) BILL
4.53 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD McCORQUODALE OF NEWTON: My Lords, I have been asked to introduce to your Lordships the Second Reading of this Private Member's Bill which went through another place almost "on the nod". It so happened that it was introduced on a very busy Private Member's Bill day, Friday, and it was reached only at 3.57 in the afternoon, which allowed only three minutes for its consideration. Such was the bustle that the Parliamentary Secretary actually talked the measure out at 4 o'clock, but by some neat rearrangement on the part of my honourable friend it was taken again the following week and passed through all its stages without further debate. I therefore think that, as it is a Bill of some complexity and some importance, something should be said in your Lordships' House about it, even if in another place it passed without much comment.
I would start my remarks by saying that the Bill, although a Private Member's Bill, has the full support of Her Majesty's Government, the British Employers' Confederation, and, I believe, of the Trades Union Congress, too; I am hoping to hear more of that from the noble Lord, Lord Williamson. Some people might say that if that formidable combination all approved of this Bill, there must be some catch in it somewhere; but I would assure your Lordships that, in this case at any rate, I do not think there is any catch at all.
The Bill endeavours to deal in a small, modest way with the present effort that is being made in many quarters to streamline our industrial organisation. The British Employers' Confederation,

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the Federation of British Industries and other employers' organisations are all working to see whether some form of merger would not be more acceptable to the modern age. This Bill endeavours to help trade unions—and the British Employers' Confederation is a trade union—to modernise themselves if they so wish. But, of course, if we wish to make easier the course of modernisation and the merger of trade unions and the like, we must see to it that the proper safeguards for the individual union member are there and that they are maintained, and I hope to show in my few remarks on this Bill that we do maintain those safeguards.
The present structure of the trade union movement I suppose owes its existence almost entirely to historical accident. Like Topsy, it has grown up. And although efforts have been made from time to time to make amalgamations and mergers when they seemed desirable, yet they were not easy. There are hybrid unions, craft and non-craft alike; there are craft unions, there are general unions and various types of what are known as white-collar unions; and although this diversity is not a bad thing in itself, it can make for overlapping and difficulties and lead to demarcation disputes and arguments. From the employers' point of view, industrial relations may be made unnecessarily complex if the employer has to negotiate with a multiplicity of unions in his one trade; and everybody, I believe—employer, trade union and the general public—deplores demarcation disputes. Yet I regret to say we have them with us. The T.U.C., as I am sure Lord Williamson will remind us, themselves acknowledge that it is necessary to take stock. I believe that in 1961 or 1962 a motion was passed through Congress to that effect. As was widely reported at the time, the T.U.C. approached Lord Blakenham, who was then the Minister of Labour, to see whether something could be done to relax the existing laws governing trade union mergers and changes of name. I believe that the Minister on that occasion welcomed the T.U.C. approach and promised to examine the proposal sympathetically.
Perhaps I might remind your Lordships that the existing law is rather trict: if two or more unions wish to
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amalgamate, each must hold a ballot in which at least 50 per cent. of its members take part, and there must then be a six to five majority in favour. It is not so much the point of the required majority to which people object, but that it is difficult to get such a high proportion of members to take part in the voting—50 per cent. for a merger or, if there is to be a transfer, 66⅔ per cent. In these days, everybody knows that it is extremely difficult to get a large number of people to vote on any important measure; indeed, from time to time we see criticisms of trade unions for not being able to get more than 10 per cent. of their members to vote on important subjects. So the reported proposal of the T.U.C. was that, provided that all members had an opportunity to vote, the law should not require that a certain proportion must vote, nor lay down how large a majority it should be. I must confess that in present-day circumstances that idea seems all right, and this Bill endeavours to follow it out. The Bill makes a simple majority of those voting sufficient to approve an amalgamation or a transfer of engagements between two trade unions. This is a considerable relaxation of the present law, and therefore, as I have said, safeguards must be added. First, the Bill seeks to ensure that members are fully informed about the effects of a merger before a vote is taken. Secondly, members will have a right of complaint to the Registrar of Friendly Societies against voting irregularities.
To come to the Bill itself, Clause 1 lays down conditions and requirements which are to govern the holding of a vote on an amalgamation or transfer. It will be seen that at least a week before the vote members are to receive a notice about the merger, and this notice must contain sufficient information about the proposed merger so that members can make a reasoned judgment on the matter. To ensure that the notice gives sufficient information it has to be approved, before it goes out, by the Registrar. Clause 2 seeks to give the union executive a fairly free hand in making arrangements for voting. Unless it did, there could easily be confusion as to whether or not any rules existed. However, if a union so desires, it can say in its rules that this provision is not to apply, and can, again,

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tie its executive to a particular procedure for the future. When a union absorbs another, it may need to adapt its rules to those of the other union for this purpose. Clause 3 gives the executive power to make the necessary changes, unless the union's rules expressly say that they are not to do so.
Clause 4 deals, as I have already indicated, with the right of complaint to the Registrar. A member has six weeks after the application to register a complaint. The Registrar is given power to decide complaints, and his decisions are final. He may refer to the High Court any matters of law. I am informed that in Scotland the Court of Session takes the place of the High Court. Clause 5 reproduces the substance of existing law which enables the property of unions which are merging to be easily transferred. The T.U.C. also thought that the law with regard to changes of name was too strict. At present two-thirds of the members' votes are needed before a registered union changes its name. Under Clause 6 we have endeavoured to make that situation a little easier, so that a registered union will be able to change its name in accordance with its rules—as indeed an unregistered union already can—so long as the new name is not the same as, or is not calculated to be muddled up with, an existing name. Clause 7 gives the Minister of Labour the necessary powers to make regulations on detailed matters.
Clause 10 deals with Northern Ireland. This is rather complicated, because the Bill does not extend to that country, apart from ensuring that the Parliament of Northern Ireland has power to enact similar legislation, if that is thought fit. But mergers between unions based in Great Britain and unions based in Northern Ireland will be possible, and here Schedule 2 will apply. What will happen is that unions based in Great Britain will go through the procedure in this Bill, and those based in Northern Ireland will follow any procedure which the Northern Ireland Government lay down.
My Lords, I repeat that this little Bill has the support of the Government—indeed, Government drafting has been widely used in its preparation. It follows the principles which were suggested by
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the T.U.C. to the Minister of Labour, and in turn referred by him to the employers for their consideration. I think I have said enough to show that the Bill is widely welcomed by all those closely connected with industry. I am quite sure that the more we can streamline our industrial organisations the better it will be for all concerned. There are many unions which can easily, and with great advantage to their members, merge. There are some unions which may wish to transfer some of their members to other unions, with equal advantage to all. I hope that this little measure may assist to that end, and I beg to move that it be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord McCorquodale of Newton.)
5.8 p.m.
LORD WILLIAMSON: My Lords, first of all, I think we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton, for introducing this Bill into your Lordships' House and for explaining its provisions. I think that the Bill is to be welcomed, not because by itself it is going to create amalgamations or indeed cause amalgamations, but because it will facilitate the requirements of the law in trade union amalgamations and transfers and changes of name. In these days of tremendous change, it is not surprising that there should be such great interest in trade union structure which has been haphazardly built up over the last fifty, or so in some cases one hundred, years; or that there should be interest in some reorganisation in this field, which is long overdue.
One of the obstacles which have hampered unions who were desirous of coming together and creating more efficient units—particularly those unions where there is an identity of interest—is that it has not been possible to secure the requisite number of votes in accordance with the law. This Bill eases the legal requirements, and should go a long way towards ensuring, as time goes on, a more efficient and modern trade union structure.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton, that there is not any "catch" in this Bill. It is long overdue. Indeed, it is surprising and almost unbelievable that the laws govern-

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ing amalgamations of unions were passed so many years ago. One Statute dates from 1876, a time when unions were small local organisations. Because of some amalgamations and mergers which have taken place since, we now have very large national unions, some with a membership of several hundreds of thousands. Under present procedures unions wishing to merge or amalgamate must secure a vote in each union involved of at least 50 per cent. of the members, and very often these members are spread not only over a whole district but over the whole country, and in some cases even abroad.
Not only must there be not less than a 50 per cent. vote, but those voting in favour must exceed by 20 per cent. those voting against. This Bill provides for a simple majority. As matters are at present, it means, in effect, that nonvoters are counted as voting against any amalgamation; therefore a sufficient number of members who are indifferent or who may abstain can obstruct and prevent a well-thought-out amalgamation from taking place. Indifference on the part of trade union members to voting in these matters and in trade union elections generally is often subjected to severe criticism in the country. But this lack of responsibility—and lack of responsibility it is—is no worse than the indifference which is shown in our local government elections, where very often not more than 20 or 30 per cent. of the electorate take the trouble to vote.
This apathy is probably characteristic of our democratic system, but it ought not to prevent desirable changes, essential for the better and more efficient running and performance of our democratic institutions, from taking place. In the past many possible amalgamations of unions in identical fields have been prevented by the antiquated law governing these matters. The sensible amendments proposed under this Bill should be welcomed, and I am sure they will be welcomed by your Lordships' House.
The noble Lord who introduced the Bill did not make too much of a point of this, but it is the case that in many industries and in many firms the employers have to deal with such a large number of unions that this hampers the
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taking of decisions and creates a good deal of industrial unrest. I hope your Lordships will forgive me for giving a few figures. In engineering, shipbuilding and vehicle building there are 50 unions; in cotton, flax and man-made fibres, 30 unions; in other textile industries, 30 unions; in transport (outside railways), 23 unions; and in insurance, banking and finance, 23 unions. Indeed, on looking up the Chief Registrar's report for 1962 I discovered that there are 388 registered unions with a membership of 8½ million. Yet I calculate that 16 of those unions—16 out of 388—cater for 6¼ million; and the other 2¼ million are catered for by 372 unions.
Many of these unions are very small indeed; and of course there is nothing wrong with a small union as such. Many small unions are very good, and the members comprised in them are proud of their unions, proud of their membership and jealous of retaining their union's individuality. But in these days, for a trade union to play its proper part and to take its proper rôle it must be highly efficient and possess adequate financial resources to maintain professional and trained staff for research, education, negotiation and administration generally, including a legal department for the protection of its members. There is plenty of evidence that where the smaller unions have merged and made a more viable unit there has been greater efficiency and better services to the membership, with advantage all round.
In this country we have some of the most responsible and well-run unions in the world. Trade unions are an essential and vital part of the modern State, and it is important that the law governing them should not be restrictive. The shortcomings of the British trade union movement—and it is not by any means perfect—are no greater than those which democratic society accepts in other fields as the price for the maintenance of a free society. The British Trades Union Congress fully recognises the defects in its structure and organisation and displays a readiness to remedy these defects. Up till now, the law has hampered progress in this direction, and this Bill, which has received universal support outside and unanimous approval in another place. I feel sure will have the blessing and goodwill of your Lordships' House.
5.18 p.m.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM): My Lords, may I say a brief word on this Bill? The Government very much welcome the Bill. I regard it as a family affair, because, as the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton, pointed out, the Trades Union Congress came to talk to me last July about the possibility of getting some legislation of this sort on to the Statute Book. I very much welcomed their approach. It coincided with my own views at the time, because all sensible, thinking people realise that the law is rather out of date, is too ponderous, and is going to make more difficult a process which in many cases is desirable. Therefore, for those reasons, I promised at the time to give the help and support I could to any means of producing a Bill of this sort. As Lord McCorquodale of Newton is my brother-in-law and as the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, is an old friend of mine, I regard this occasion as a family occasion.
LORD McCORQUODALE OF NEWTON: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Blakenham for his remarks, and also the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, for his support of this Bill. I think I ought to explain why it is a Private Member's Bill. Government time is very difficult to come by, but an honourable friend of mine in the other place was fortunate in the ballot, and he selected this subject as his contribution to the Private Members' Bills. Thus, it has a possibility of getting on the Statute Book before Easter, and I hope that it will play its small part in the modernisation process which we have been discussing.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

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

BUILDINGS OF ARCHITECTURAL OR HISTORIC INTEREST
5.22 p.m.
LORD MOLSON LORD MOLSON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Acts for the protection of buildings of special architectural or historic interest are adequate for the purpose and that they are being implemented effectively. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Question is addressed to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. It does not relate to the grants made by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works on the advice of the Historic Buildings Council under the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Act, 1953. I was at one time desirous of bringing the whole matter of building preservation within one machine and under one Ministry, but I was convinced, at the time that the Bill of 1953 was being drafted, that that was probably impossible, and certainly undesirable. I understand that the matter has again been reviewed by Ministers subsequently, and they have come to the same conclusion.
Responsibility for the preservation of buildings of special architectural or historic interest rests, under Section 32 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, upon the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and under subsection (1) of that section the Minister is required to compile lists. As I understand it, when lists have been compiled under subsection (1) they become provisional, and when the provisions of subsections (2), (3) and (4) have been complied with they then become statutory. As I understand it, the general view is that decisions on proposed demolition are normally left to the local authorities. The Minister is often urged by amenity societies, and by other people interested, to intervene, but in the official report of the Ministry it is stated that he does so only in exceptional cases.
The first question that I should like to put to my noble friend is: how has this procedure of listing worked so far? How far has it proceeded? In the second place, I believe that there is a serious lag in time between the preparation of the provisional lists under subsection (1), and the time when they become statutory. I should have thought

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that that was a dangerous interval, because the owners would be put on their guard that when the whole procedure had been complied with they would not readily be able to demolish the houses, and they might seek to do so at once. So I would ask my noble friend: what is the time lag between the drawing up of provisional lists, and the time when they become statutory? As I understand it, the normal way in which listed buildings are preserved is by the refusal of the local authority to grant planning permission to redevelop. I would ask to what extent the Ministry have found that this has proved a satisfactory and adequate safeguard for buildings of special architectural or historic interest. Are these lists printed? I believe that it was originally stated that they would be printed, although a change was made under the Government of Sir Winston Churchill. I gather that the position today is that the lists are published, although they are not printed.
My Lords, I turn to Section 30 of the Act under which building preservation orders can be made either by a local planning authority or by the council of a county district. The Minister has reserve powers to make a building preservation order, if he feels that such an order should be made and the local authority has neglected to do so. I would ask my noble friend how far this general procedure has worked satisfactorily. Have an adequate number of building preservation orders been made by local authorities, and in how many cases has it been necessary for the Minister to use his reserve powers? But even when a building preservation order has been made, the powers of preservation are very limited. Although a building may not be demolished or substantially altered, there is nothing to prevent the owner from allowing it to fall into decay and to collapse. I fully understand the difficulty of compelling an owner to spend money upon a building on which he does not wish to spend money. Nevertheless, there can be real abuse if he deliberately allows such a building to fall into decay and then claims that, as it is a useless building, the preservation order should be removed. Is it, as I believe, not infrequently the case that the building preservation order is withdrawn after the owner has allowed a
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building to fall into a completely ruinous state? I should have thought that there was a case for preserving the building preservation order, in order that the owner should not obtain financial benefit from deliberately defeating the purpose of the building preservation order.
Under the 1962 Act the local authority has power to purchase a building upon which it has made a building preservation order, but in many cases that is the only positive action that can be taken to preserve the building. Is that frequently done? Perhaps my noble friend can tell us in how many cases it has happened. In 1962 Parliament passed the Local Authorities (Historic Buildings) Act, and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government subsequently issued Circular No. 68 giving guidance to the authorities about the loans and grants that could be made to the owners of buildings of historic interest and importance in order to help those owners who were unable themselves to find the money necessary to restore and preserve them. To what extent have local authorities acted in accordance with the powers provided for them by Parliament?
My Lords, I turn to the future, which I think in some respects is even more important than the past. In the debate last week, on March 4, my noble friend Lord Hastings, on behalf of the Government, held out prospects of large-scale work in the redevelopment of urban areas, and noble Lords on both sides of the House were very glad to know that the Government had these intentions. Of course, if there is going to be large-scale redevelopment in our towns, then it is extremely important that those areas which are of special beauty, interest and charm should be preserved. Indeed, that is specially referred to in the Buchanan Report. There, for the first time, as we nearly all of us agreed last week, the Buchanan Report talks about the environmental areas in which it will be a pleasure for pedestrians to walk and people to live. The Report emphasises that that can be done only if they are made into precincts, and if something is done to prevent large amounts of modern traffic from hurrying through. When we have this prospect before us—a prospect that we welcome—we do want to know what Her Majesty's Government are going to

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do to preserve these environmental areas of very special interest, beauty and charm which exist in so many of our old cities.
The Buchanan Report had a special paragraph dealing with Norwich, and pointed out that here was a very remarkable city of very great importance and that it would be possible, in accordance with its recommendations, to make provision for most traffic to by-pass the city and for there to be four environmental areas inside Norwich where, again, it would be a pleasure for people to live and to walk. I would congratulate my noble friend again on the production by his Department of Bulletins No. 1 and No. 4, dealing with this matter of environmental areas. But it really will be necessary for some guidance to be given from Whitehall. To take a case where I believe that, fortunately, at the last moment, things may yet be saved: the beautiful and interesting city of Salisbury. There, a land company called, I believe, Hammerton's, acquired some 2½ acres or more of land near the city, and had proposals for its complete redevelopment. The city council gave provisional planning approval to this scheme. Fortunately, as a result of public agitation, the county council called the matter in for their own determination, and they disapproved the plan. As a result, an extremely skilful town planning consultant was appointed, and new proposals have been made which are at any rate an immense improvement upon the original proposals and are, I believe, satisfactory.
There is a warning to the Government and to Parliament that, in the matter of these ancient cities, which are so vital a part of our national heritage, it would be quite wrong to leave these matters to be decided without any help or guidance by the local authorities. At present, there is no difference drawn between the authority of local authorities and planning authorities in areas of 19th century industrial sprawl and their authority in these priceless and irreplaceable historic cities of the past. I do beg Her Majesty's Government to realise the need for an initiative to be taken from the centre, in order to make certain that the redevelopment of these very beautiful places should not be left to the unguided discretion of the local
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authorities. I understand that in France this matter is being dealt with by quite revolutionary methods under the de Gaulle Government, and that Monsieur Malraux has been given special powers for making certain that the ancient cities which are the glory of France should not unwittingly and carelessly be destroyed and spoiled at a time when redevelopment is necessarily taking place, in order to bring them into harmony with the requirements of the 20th century.
My Lords, these are the questions which I would put to my noble friend. Some relate to what has been done in the past, but the more important part of my Question is asking for some assurance that Her Majesty's Government will take an initiative at the present time, rather on the lines adumbrated by the Buchanan Report and also by the two Bulletins which his Ministry has issued, and also for some assurance for the future.
5.36 p.m.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: My Lords, I think we would all agree these are critical times for our country because its whole future appearance is going to be determined by what happens in the next few years. I think that there is an awakening, an awareness, among people—particularly young people—which I have noticed. But, of course, the danger is that this awareness may not make itself felt until too late. Those who are doing very good work are, I think, the voluntary societies. Perhaps I should declare an interest here, as I am president of a voluntary society, not a society for preserving buildings but for preserving the countryside around the Solent area. The great difficulty of these societies is that they are not official, and very often do not get information until it is too late. I should like to suggest to Her Majesty's Government that these bodies might in some cases be given some sort of official standing, which would allow or enable them to get necessary information and study the subject. They are mostly reasonable and helpful societies, and they would then be in a position at least to examine the pros and cons of any future development.
We all know that there is tremendous pressure for building and development

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to-day. There is a trend in the North to come into the South-East of England, a trend which the Government are finding very difficult to control. So this is not a simple problem at all, particularly as, when it is a question of a new development, planners and developers find it much easier to pull down and begin again than to adapt what is good and try to organise new development around the adaptation. I would submit that this country is so rich in its private buildings, its villages, bridges and churches that it would be a thousand tragedies if we were to allow them to be nibbled away little by little. That is the danger—not so much a clean sweep, as a gradual eroding of this extremely beautiful architecture of the past. Of course, there is a strong school of thought behind modern development which looks on the television set, the car and the washing machine as the ultimate satisfactions of life; but I submit that the other view is equally important. The visual sense is a very real one, and when more of our population have been educated to enjoy their leisure, they must be given the advantages and the possibilities of doing so.
To go from the more general to the particular, I think one could divide this question into three categories. One is ecclesiastical, which does not really arise on this Motion, because the ecclesiastical buildings are outside the Acts. And I must say that the Church of England have, on the whole, been very good. They have done their best to preserve. But there is tremendous pressure at the moment to acquire some of the more valuable sites of churches in our big cities, for development. These sites have gone up in value a hundredfold, and there is a tremendous temptation and pressure to relinquish the church in the city and then to build a smaller church outside in the suburbs. In some cases that might be no loss, but in others it would be a great tragedy. I am sorry that we have no representative whom one could question on the policy of the Church to resist this pressure, but I hope they will go on doing so and continue to save some of our finest architectural buildings.
However, this Motion is really concerned with private buildings and houses, some of which are extremely
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interesting and beautiful, though I am not so much thinking of what are known as the stately homes of England that charge visitors 1s., 2s. 6d., 5s., or whatever it may be. The only way these lesser buildings can be safeguarded, so far as I understand it, is by a preservation order which the noble Lord, Lord Molson, talked about. I very much agree with him on what he said. This order must be confirmed by the Minister, as I understand it. When the order is given the building can be neither demolished nor altered to such an extent as to change its character. But there is one point which I should be grateful if the noble Lord who is to reply would make clear. Section 33(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962 says that a building cannot be demolished, nor can there be any
"alteration or extension in any manner which would seriously affect its character".
What I am not quite clear about is who is to judge. Is it the Minister, the local authority or the owner? If it is the owner then it is, of course, no safeguard whatever. It does not seem quite clear to me, but perhaps the noble Lord will tell us who is the final authority.
There is one example which I can give of the sort of procedure that goes on, which I think is happening all over England to-day. A good many people, and also the London County Council, have been interested in trying to preserve Tower House, Melbury Road, on the Ilchester Estate near Holland Park. I was very interested in that because it was a well-known artists' colony which, amongst others, had Lord Leighton's house in it. Tower House, built by Burges in 1870, has a unique interior. There is no other house in England quite like it. It may not be to everyone's taste, but it is absolutely unique. The London County Council applied for a preservation order; an inquiry was held in 1961; and, in spite of the Minister's representative being in favour of an order, the Minister finally decided he would not give it. I do not know on what grounds the refusal was based. As a result, this building is gradually becoming derelict, and if it is left long enough it will, I suppose, fall into disrepair and become a complete ruin. That would be sad.
This sort of situation is a problem for the private owner of houses, and, as the

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noble Lord who initiated this Motion has clearly put, the owner very often cannot, or in some cases will not, provide the money to support the house. I would suggest this as a step to help him. Would it not be possible to be more generous with interest-free loans for him? In many cases where an owner of a house like this could have a loan of money which he could advance for repairs he might take advantage of it and do something about it. Otherwise, as the noble Lord, Lord Molson, said, the trouble is that, in spite of the preservation order, all the owner need do is to leave the house to fall down. In the course of time it becomes useless, the preservation order may be removed, and the owner can sell the site at a considerable profit and England has lost another of her assets. I would much support the idea of more advantageous loans to help the owner.
I think we are beginning to appreciate the architecture of the last century, of Victorian times; and it would be a pity if some of the best examples of that very fast diminishing number of buildings were not preserved. I would ask the noble Lord who is to answer whether he could speed up the making of the statutory lists of buildings between, say, 1837 and 1914. This has been on the stocks for a very long time, and unless something can be done too many of these buildings will disappear.
The final category that I would bring up is the most important of all. It is the buildings controlled by Her Majesty's Government. Of these, the one that obviously leaps to mind is the Foreign Office which has been the subject of great debate and controversy. Personally, I think it would be a great pity if the particular character of the building and its skyline were not preserved. I know it would be an expensive undertaking, but I should have thought that the interior could be redesigned to make it workable, still keeping the essential facades and the outlines and the shape of the skyline.
In view of the immense responsibility which the Government have of looking after some of the finest of our buildings—and I have given the noble Lord notice of this question—would not the Government, before considering the demolition or reconstruction of some important
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building over which they have control, be prepared to publish or exhibit plans and elevations of the new building which is to take its place? And will they also take notice of the criticisms which might arise, and ensure so far as possible that the highest standards of design are used? It is very difficult for experts—and even more for the public—to give the final judgment unless they know what kind of building is going to replace one due for demolition. I think it would be a great advantage if in all these big controversial cases some kind of plan and design were shown before a decision were to be taken.
I do not wish to keep the House much longer, but I should like to say that I think we are entering into a transitional stage of architecture and it might well be that the new architect, with new ideas and new material, will develop something very fine indeed. We see a possible start abroad in the case of Brasilia. Up to date, we here have not gone very far in this direction. Indeed, it is a tradition in this island for our architects to be a little behind the times, and for movements from the Continent to arrive rather late. I would urge on Her Majesty's Government and on this House that it would be disastrous to let go what is already so good unless we can be very sure that what is going to take its place will be equally beautiful.
5.49 p.m.
LORD METHUEN: My Lords, I am sure we are very grateful to the noble Lord who introduced this subject, and we look forward to the Minister's reply in due course. My only reason for speaking is that I should like to raise one or two questions which I consider relevant. I think it is generally admitted that there are serious defects in the law as it stands, either through omission or through ambiguity.
May I take, in the first place, those buildings that have been or are likely to be listed under the Town and Country Planning Acts? There is always the question of the interior. It has never been made clear whether it was intended, under the original Act of 1944, to include the interior; and, if so, to what extent. Naturally, the main timbers, the roofs and walls are included, but what of historic fireplaces, panellings and stair-

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cases? In France they have the same difficulty, which I believe they have never overcome. The noble Lord who raised this question may remember the case a few years ago of a house in the Circus, Bath, having its fine fireplaces removed when it changed hands. I myself brought this matter to the notice of the Minister, without being given any definite assurance or satisfactory reply. A few years later, the same thing happened at Ston Easton, in Somerset, again with no satisfactory conclusion. In that case, an historic overmantel and fireplace were removed; they were part of the structure and could hardly be called a tenant's fixture.
I am quite aware of the difficulties of including the interiors of historic houses as part of the structure which should not be removed or altered. I remember being told by the noble Lord's Department of a house at Croydon which was considered of great interest and which the owner could not dipose of except to a purchaser who wished to have the interior gutted. Eventually, he came to terms with the Ministry, and it was agreed that the house would be preserved on condition that he would be allowed to change the interior. A similar case happened in Queen's Square, Bath, where again a house had to lose its interior, otherwise it would probably have been demolished.
Nevertheless, I think that it would be helpful if the noble Lord who is to reply to this debate would clarify the position, if he is able to do so. Is it really necessary, as I believe his Department consider, or used to consider up till recently, that the matter can be resolved only by Case Law?
My next point concerns the preservation of buildings schedule by the Ministry of Public Building and Works (which I know are excluded from this debate), and of buildings listed under the Town and Country Planning Acts of 1944, 1947 and 1962. As has already been mentioned by two previous speakers, there has been a studied practice by some owners, who wish to be rid of their historic houses but cannot sell them, except with a vacant site, and who cannot get a demolition order, just to allow them to deteriorate. In such circumstances, the Minister cannot very
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well refuse a demolition order eventually. In this way, we have lost many valuable buildings.
The serving by the local authority of what is called a "dangerous structure" order is not entirely the answer; nor, I imagine, is a preservation order. Am I right or wrong in suggesting that if a local authority issue a preservation order, they have to buy the house itself? That used to be the case, but it may well not be so any longer. In any case, I think that the Legislature should take notice of this fact, and make some attempt to meet the difficulty; that is, how can the Government compel an owner to do what it is presumably in the public interest he should do—namely, to restore his house—if he has not the cash to do it? Or he may turn round and say that he does not agree with the Minister; that restoration is not worth doing. There must be some solution to this problem. It has been suggested, as one way out of the difficulty, that the owner should receive a grant. The same difficulty arises in France. Your Lordships may be aware of the case of the famous Abbey of Jumièges. I happened to be there at the time when the negotiations were going on. The owner had been told by the Government to repair the Abbey, which is of enormous historic interest. He said that he had no cash. They eventually came to a very satisfactory solution. The owner gave the Abbey to the Government and sold the adjacent château to the Government for use as a rest house for decayed architects—a wonderful solution, and one that saved him a lot of money.
I now come to the question, a very important one, to my mind, of preserving the amenities and precincts of historic buildings. Your Lordships will remember that in April of last year in another place a Bill was introduced by Mr. Robert Cooke to amend the law relating to the granting of permission to develop land in the vicinity of historic buildings. That Bill failed to get a hearing. Does it not follow that the site and precincts on which an historic building are found are of great importance and must be respected? To put up an unsuitable structure near a historic building should be made illegal, as it has been in France for many years.

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I had some correspondence over this matter with the Minister about a garage that was being built in the vicinity—in fact, in the enclave—of an interesting fifteenth-century chapel, which in the old days had been used as a stopping place for pilgrims on their way to Glastonbury. An inquiry was held, and the Minister upheld our objections, but a compromise was reached with the local planning authority, who allowed the owner to erect a garage on the spot, but with stone and tiles that matched the chapel. He had been going to do it with concrete blocks, which did not look at all suitable. But before long, on Monday morning, out came the washing. That did not improve the scene, though I quite like to see the washing out. After all, we are told that cleanliness is next to Godliness; so why not washing next to the chapel? However, I do not think that is a good argument. Of course, the real answer should have been not to allow any structure in the precincts at all, even though, as in this case, the surrounding land did not belong to the Church. Whoever made over the chapel to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners did not make over the land surrounding it, and that is what he should have done.
Your Lordships may remember that at the time of the introduction of Mr. Cooke's Bill, the Minister of Housing and Local Government gave an undertaking to issue a circular to planning authorities, arising out of this Bill. That circular, No. 51/63, duly appeared on August 7 last. One can only hope that planning authorities will act on it far more than they have in the past. I think that interference on the part of the Ministry might be quite a good stimulus.
I now come to gardens of outstanding interest. Your Lordships may wonder why I introduce this subject. It is because gardens have not been introduced and I feel that it is time they were. Many of these gardens, as your Lordships know, are safely in the joint hands of the National Trust and the Royal Horticultural Society, but there are many which are not and, with the incidence of death duties, may well be lost to the nation as well as to their owners. We have a unique climate in Devon and Cornwall, where practically any temperate plant can grow in what the catalogue compilers usually call
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"favoured districts". It would be a thousand pities if, through the lack of any far-reaching national preservation measures, some of the best of these gardens failed to survive. I particularly draw the noble Lord's attention to this question, because it is something about which we should like to know more.
Next, I come to a matter where I feel that a grave blunder has been made, and I can only hope that it is not too late to repair the damage. I refer to the case of Westbury Court, in Gloucestershire, a charming water-garden with pavilion, dating from about 1690, and the only remaining garden in England conceived in the Dutch manner of that time, a fashion introduced no doubt by our Dutch Monarch. This property changed hands about four years ago and the new owner obtained planning permission to build a number of houses on it, in spite of the fact that the water table was only a few inches below the surface. It seems a strange idea to give planning permission for such a scheme. I am glad to say that recently a further application to renew planning permission was refused.
The gardens consist of rectangular stone-faced canals, with a remarkable pavilion at the far end, facing a brick wall with gazebo and various ornaments and an ornamental grille. The two buildings I have mentioned are listed under the Town and Country Planning Acts. Attached to the pavilion was an ugly Victorian house which the present owner demolished, pulling down at the same time one side of the pavilion and leaving it in a parlous state. The fine gazebo has fallen in, and the gardens look dilapidated. But it is not too late to save them, and I understand that real efforts are now being made to do this and to rehabilitate the canals and listed buildings.
At the moment, considerable interest is being awakened in the historic tie between Holland and England. An exhibition, of which your Lordships no doubt are aware, known as "The Orange and the Rose", is to take place next autumn, under the auspices of the Arts Council. I suggest that it would be an opportunity to show our enlightenment by restoring these historic gardens at Westbury Court to their original state. My Lords, I will end on that note, and

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trust that the debate will at any rate have allowed some of us to air our grievances.
6.2 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, this is the second debate in less than a week raising matters on which the beauty and indeed the reputation of this country may largely depend. The Question of my noble friend Lord Molson deals with action under the Town and Country Planning Acts. In fact, those Acts are now included in the consolidated Act of 1962, which therefore is the only one that we need consider in this connection. The relevant provisions of this Act, as has been mentioned by noble Lords who have already spoken, really fall into two parts. They are Sections 30 and 31, which deal with building preservation orders, and Sections 32 and 33, which deal with listed buildings—the statutory list of buildings of special architectural or historic interest which have to be compiled. This is the chief requirement imposed on their owner: that he must give to the local planning authority two months' notice of work of demolition, alteration or extension. The Act also contains Sections 52 to 55 dealing with enforcement, Section 69 dealing with compulsory acquisition and Section 71 dealing with acquisition by agreement.
Of these various provisions, the ones that particularly interest me are those for listed buildings. In fact, I can claim in part to be the inventor of that part of the law, because some twenty years ago, with some devoted civil servants in the then Ministry of Town and Country Planning, we devised Section 42 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1944, which was the first Statute providing for these lists of buildings. That provision, Section 42 of the 1944 Act, with improvements, constitutes the present law about listed buildings. If my noble friend, when he comes to reply, can say that those provisions have been extremely useful, nobody will be more delighted than I.
Since some amenity societies have from time to time complained that this listing of buildings gives very little protection, let me say that that was always known. If noble Lords like to refer to the debates of October and November, 1944, in the House of
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Commons, they will find that we were able to carry, without too much difficulty, this provision for listed buildings (we hoped the list would be capable of being made with reasonable speed, and, be it noticed, without any consultation of the owner and without the owner having any right to object) precisely because it conferred no disadvantage of any sort on the owner, apart from the small delay which I have mentioned. The advantage, from the point of view of the preservation of our heritage of good architecture, was this: that at least it provided a pause in the destruction or demolition of a good building during which the planning authority or the Minister might be able to make a building preservation order. It was the building preservation order, and that alone, which provided actual security against demolition.
In dealing with these lists and this whole subject, the Minister is now advised by an Advisory Committee of great distinction and knowledge, sitting under the chairmanship of my friend Sir William Holford, and meeting regularly. How has this machinery worked? We look forward to hearing what the Minister is going to say. My own knowledge is derived from three main sources. The first is from using my eyes and seeing what is happening in towns and villages, and in the capital itself, to buildings of great value. Secondly, from the year 1943 until this year I have been continuously a member of the National Buildings Record, with the exception of the years from 1951 to 1955, when, since I was in office as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, I severed my connection with that body. For the last few years I have served as its Vice-Chairman and, since the death of Sir James Mann in 1962, as its Chairman.
I am glad to say that a colleague on that body is the noble Lord who is to speak next, and I think he will bear me out when I say that the work we did over the years in securing photographic records and making measured drawings of important buildings was very good, so far as it went. But those who study the annual reports year by year will find nearly always on the outside the picture of some building of great value which, though we recorded it by photographs and permanently kept measured

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drawings, has gone; that part of our historic heritage has in fact been lost. That body, the National Buildings Records, has now been taken over under the new policy by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments.
My third source of information and knowledge is based on membership of and serving on the council or executive committee of such bodies as the National Trust, the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, the Georgian Group, and other societies. That, perhaps, gives one considerable experience, for this reason: that it is to those societies and to the enlightened local authorities that we must look for the initiation of the making of building preservation orders. Using those three sources of knowledge, I can only give my impression of how these provisions have worked in practice. Let me say at once that, whatever happened in the past, I think the machinery is now being fairly successful in preventing, or, at least, making unlikely, the destruction of buildings of the highest grade. To that extent the machinery is working, and working well. My impression is equally definite that it is being far less successful in protecting valuable buildings of the second grade, however important their preservation may be in securing the survival of some of the greatest beauties in our historic towns and villages, and even in the capital itself. I remember a phrase which I quoted long ago in another place, but I think is not inappropriate to describe some of these market towns, villages and historic cities, but particularly the villages and the smaller towns. Gilbert Chesterton called them "the Crown Jewels of England".
I do not think that this machinery has been or is being very successful in securing the survival of some of these second-grade buildings. Further, it seems to me, it is being even less effective sometimes in securing the survival of valuable groups of buildings, which are as important as any individual building that there is. What has been the Minister's attitude to the grade 2 building? I think it is not unfair to say that this attitude has been that the grade 2 buildings are, in effect, the primary responsibility of the local authority. That will not save a great many of these buildings in those cases where the local authority attaches no value whatsoever to these matters.
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But there is another difficulty. The Minister, having said that these grade 2 buildings are the responsibility of the local authority, does not always back up that local authority when it is wise enough to make a building preservation order. To take first the attitude, "This is a matter for the local authority", but, when the local authority acts, then not to back up that local authority, endangers our heritage. Let me say at once that the Minister, whose personal concern for these matters I do not doubt for one moment, often does take the right action. Of course, as a Londoner I am perhaps more familiar with the work of the L.C.C. than with the work of other local authorities, but I think the London County Council has made building preservation orders, which have been confirmed by the Minister, on 34 buildings and 24 groups of buildings. The noble Lord who is to follow me will speak with greater authority on this part of my speech. But I am not saying for one moment that good work is not being done. In a matter of this importance, I think I shall be serving the interests of this House if I give some examples of cases where I do not think it is working satisfactorily.
I mentioned groups of buildings. Think of the importance of that in such a town as Stamford. There are there 320 listed buildings, but there are innumerable others, seemly and neighbourly, that form part of important groups. If we preserve nothing that is not in itself first-rate, we shall lose a priceless part of such a gem as Stamford. I could say the same of York, Salisbury, Norwich and, indeed, of many other places. I remember, 20 years ago in the House of Commons, giving the example of the High Street of Lewes, in Sussex. But the examples that will occur to noble Lords are innumerable.
The point I want to impress upon the House is this. We shall lose something that is priceless if we preserve nothing that is not in the top class. My noble friend Lord Molson, quite rightly, drew attention to the bad results that could follow if a building preservation order were refused on the ground that so much damage had already been done, or that the house was coming into a state of disrepair. I wonder whether I might quote one example where, I am afraid, I do not know the house myself, though

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I have a photograph. It is the case of Great Clayne Farm House, on which the Gravesend Corporation desired the Minister to confirm a building preservation order. It was precisely that type of smaller, beautiful, 18th-century house which, when put in a proper state of repair, would be considered a highly desirable place in which to live.
The matter to which I wish to draw the attention of the House is what in fact happened. This was a case in which the house had been empty since 1960; the owner had done little to prevent deterioration, and was objecting to a building preservation order that would prevent the demolition of the property. The value of the house was not denied by the inspector or by the Minister. But the building preservation order was not confirmed because the repairs would have been very expensive, though they certainly would not have been so expensive that there would not have been a purchaser, had they been made. Indeed, perhaps I may just read one paragraph of what the Minister said in his letter giving the decision:
"The Minister sympathises with the council's reasons for wishing to retain the building and he regrets that it has been allowed to get into its present bad condition. He has concluded, however, that he would not be justified having regard to the amount required to repair and modernise the building in attempting to insist upon its preservation. Accordingly he has decided to accept his Inspector's recommendation not to confirm the preservation order. The Minister hopes, nevertheless, that before the owner reaches a final decision on the question of the demolition of this building she will re-consider the possibility of selling it to a purchaser who would be prepared to restore it for further use."
That is what the Minister wants, and that is what, in fact, would have happened if the Minister had confirmed the building preservation order. But I fear now that the owner will greatly prefer to demolish the building.
In conclusion, my Lords, I turn to the last case, which concerns a place in London, known already, I expect, to many noble Lords; but any of them can go and look at it to-morrow before worse has happened to it. I am referring to Ely Place, in Holborn. By a piece of irony it is actually illustrated on page 21 of Professor Buchanan's Traffic in Towns. He illustrates it in
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order, quite clearly, to show something valuable which is cluttered up with standing cars. The legend underneath the illustration is:
"… the crowding out of every available square yard of space with vehicles …"
But Professor Buchanan would not have chosen that illustration had not the houses been rather good. It is an oasis of architectural decency and good manners, and of the greatest interest and value to London. It is found as a delightful surprise in the place where it is.
My Lords, I do not know what other noble Lords will think, but my view is fairly clear. If this were in Paris or Rome, it would, quite certainly be preserved. Let me say at once that, of course, a great deal of damage has been done to many of these houses. In one there may be an insertion of an inappropriate window; many glazing bars have been removed; and other mistaken alterations have been made. But none of this damage is irreparable; indeed, some of it was being remedied gradually by the L.C.C. as opportunity arose. If I may give an example, the proper fenestration of No. 27 was to be reinstated when the house was altered, and this was the result of a condition imposed by the L.C.C. when planning permission was given for some alterations to the house. The Georgian Group were strongly in favour of preservation and one of their best-known experts gave evidence. So was the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. The London Society is very much shocked by the fact that the Minister has refused to confirm the building preservation order, as I have reason to know, since I have recently become President of that body in succession to my noble friend the late Lord Esher who, if he were alive, would so greatly have enriched this debate.
The L.C.C., who have possibly the greatest experience of all local authorities in applying for building preservation orders of this kind, know the law and the practice very well. They were both shocked and highly surprised by the Minister's decision. The architecture of these 18th century terraces, the character of the enclosure and the historic interest of the site all make preservation desirable. The Minister, I think, takes

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the view that under the terms of Section 30 of the Act the architectural interest must be of a special nature. Yet surely this architectural interest was of a special nature, because Ely Place is obviously outstanding as a survival of architectural good grace and manners in this part of our capital. But the letter giving the decision of the Minister had an alarming and puzzling phrase in it. Perhaps I might read the sentence:
"It was essential, however, under the terms of Section 30 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, that for the preservation of a building to be warranted its degree of architectural interest should be of a 'special' nature. If the buildings in the order were of special architectural interest, which was doubtful, he still found it impossible to recommend that their preservation was justified."
My Lords, all I can say is that I am as puzzled as the L.C.C. I am puzzled by the decision that these terraces were not considered special; and I am equally puzzled by the statement I have just quoted, that, even if the Minister had come to the other conclusion that they were special, he still would not have confirmed the building preservation order.
My Lords, if I may sum up, it is bad enough if all grade 2 buildings are to be left to the tender mercy of local authorities, some of whom take little or no interest in saving them. I know some who think nothing, for instance, of pulling down a priceless grade 2 building in order to provide for freer access to traffic into some ancient market place from which public policy would require that more traffic should be excluded. In other words, they would destroy the building to facilitate precisely the sort of traffic that Professor Buchanan has said ought to be avoided. It is bad enough, therefore, if the preservation of all these buildings is to be left to the tender mercies of local authorities, some of whom, but not all, are foolish or indifferent to our architectural heritage. But matters seem to be even worse. Even when a local authority is enlightened enough to list a building or group of buildings, and make a preservation order, the Minister refuses to confirm the order merely because some of the individual buildings are not sufficiently exceptional to justify, in his view, the word "special". My Lords, like others, I look forward to
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hearing what the Minister has to say, but my experience and my observation of what has happened prevent my viewing this matter with any complacency.
6.30 p.m.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I find myself in complete agreement with all the previous speakers, and, indeed, coming rather late in the debate, there seems to me to be comparatively little that I can add, particularly after the admirable speech we have just listened to from the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, with whom I share some experiences in this particular field. We have separated recently, and I have now for some years been chairman of the Historic Buildings Sub-committee of the Town Planning Committee of the London County Council. It is therefore with the deepest regret that I confirm the impression the noble Lord had, from the Reports of the National Buildings Record, of what was, in fact, happening; and now I, alas! have exactly the same experience almost every day of the week over at County Hall.
I was very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Molson, and the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, devoted so much, in fact the greater part, of their speeches to dealing either with the provincial city or with groups of buildings in London. Like them—and particularly like the noble Lord, Lord Conesford—I find myself unable to be quite sure what the Minister's policy is. Originally, it is perfectly true, this procedure was supposed to apply only to buildings of special architectural importance. We were then given to understand that the Minister would consider the listing and giving of building preservation orders in the case of buildings which, though in themselves not of immense importance, were none the less, as examples of town planning, or of good relationship between buildings, of immense importance—more important perhaps, in some ways, than a solitary building even of the best quality. These agglomerations of buildings are the backbone of our lives in a way which the bigger, more important buildings perhaps are not, and therefore it is with the deepest regret that we have had the experience that the Minister has not backed us up, has not shown himself willing even to do additional listing which we have wished to see done for this purpose.

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The noble Lord said, too, that he understood that it was the Minister's policy that grade 2 buildings should be the responsibility of the local planning authority. First of all, I would say that in fact there is no real line of demarcation between grade 1 and grade 2 buildings. You will find buildings whose charm and importance one finds it very hard to recognise in the grade 1 or statutory list. You will find buildings—or sometimes, alas! not find them even there—but you may find buildings of first-class quality on the supplementary list. Appearance on this list entails, of course, slightly different procedures, but in fact, as the noble Lord said, it means only a stay of execution which enables the local planning authority and the Minister to decide whether these buildings are to be preserved.
There are, I suggest, two factors which inevitably influence planning authorities when considering the imposition of a building preservation order. I apologise to Her Majesty's Government, since I have spoken on this matter before, and they did last year introduce a Bill which dealt with the so-called Third Schedule; that was the Third Schedule to the Act of 1947, under which any developer was entitled to rebuild his house as often as he might wish, or as seemed to him necessary or desirable, on condition that he did not add thereto more than 10 per cent. of its cubic capacity. This had the most disabling results, though the position has been somewhat improved by the Act of 1963, in which it is said that the increase must be only one of total floor area. This is a help but it is by no means a total victory. In areas where value of land and building are high, the compensation which falls to be paid remains so great that it is only with the greatest hesitation that a planning authority can face up to it.
Another factor which seems to me likely to influence the Minister is the case of the building which comes within the purview of what is called the Part VI claim. Under Part VI of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, Sections 58 to 68, any owner of land had a right to register a claim, against a notional sum of £300 million which was administered, and is administered, by the Central Land Board, for loss of development
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rights, though such claims had to be made by the appointed day and need not be—and in many cases were not—made at all. But where owners are prevented from developing their property they have a claim, which they should agree with the Central Land Board, who calculate the value of the land as for development on the appointed day.
This has resulted in some cases in which the Minister has upheld the building preservation order, and I should point out that in these cases the building preservation order is extremely important to the developer, because it is about the only, and certainly the easiest, form of evidence of the fact that he is losing development value, without which of course he can make no claim. The procedure then becomes one under which the intending developer or applicant for permission to demolish and develop provokes the local authority to put a building preservation order on his land, and that is evidence of loss of development value and he can then claim. The Minister has on various occasions supported such building preservation orders, but in others he has refused to do so, and it has seemed quite possible that he has been influenced in this matter by the fact that in his view the claims made were excessively large. None the less, the buildings were lost.
There is a curious anomaly in the Act of 1962. Section 33(1) requires an applicant for permission to demolish to give two months' notice to the planning authority, but in fact this requirement is not limited to any particular person. It is not even, apparently, covered by Section 16 of the Act, which lays down as a requirement production of a certificate of ownership or consent of the owner. Apparently anybody can apply, on giving two months' notice, for permission to demolish any listed building. There is no limit to the time during which that application runs. If the two months elapse and the planning authority does not resist the application, it becomes operative. Surely this has led to the peculiar position in which I, or any of your Lordships, can apply for permission to demolish all the listed buildings in London; and after two months, if the local authority has not put building preservation orders upon all of them, they will to all intents and purposes be unlisted buildings. I draw

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the Government's attention to this rather peculiar matter, because although the suggestion is perhaps a little exaggerated, it is, I think, legally what would happen.
I do not wish to keep your Lordships longer. I feel that something has to be done to preserve our towns and buildings all over the country. As other noble Lords have said, they are part of our heritage. It may be that it is a heritage for which we shall have to pay. I do not believe that such payment should be excessive. It seems to me that most of these extravagant values of lands and buildings are what one might term a social augmentation of price and of value, and if reasonable compensation were paid I do not see that owners would have any justification for feeling that they had been badly done by. The problem is a difficult one, but it is one which I am convinced will repay dividends—and I am not talking about tourist traffic. It will repay dividends by preserving for us and for our children the amenities, the beauty and the interest of our country and of theirs.
6.42 p.m.
LORD AIREDALE: My Lords, I should like for a few moments to support the plea of my noble friend Lord Methuen on behalf of the interiors of listed buildings, and to raise the question whether local authorities are as interested in interiors as they are in exteriors. I think they certainly should be if they read the reports of the Historic Buildings Council, whose latest report is full of details about the restoration of interiors. But one experience of mine would lead me, if I were a Scotsman, to say, "I ha'e ma doots".
I have the good fortune to occupy a listed building. It is, I think, in its small way one of the stately homes of England. It is a stone built house of 1720 or thereabouts. One day I received from my local authority a statutory notice under Section 16 of the Housing Act, 1961, which deals with the admirable subject of safe means of escape from fire. This excellent objective, however, was in the opinion of the local authority to be achieved by a means which, from any artistic standpoint, was quite deplorable. I was required to erect a three-sided structure of wire-glass to enclose the foot of the staircase,
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which would have quite spoiled the hallway of the house with its two period fireplaces. Indeed, this hideous structure would have cut into and seriously marred what I think is the most admired feature of the interior of the house—an ornate, coloured stucco ceiling. Fortunately, I was able to put forward an alternative suggestion, which I am glad to say the local authority at once accepted, and they withdrew their really quite monstrous requirement.
The reason why I mention this is that, if my experience is a typical one, I am seriously concerned about it because not everybody is prepared to do battle with his local authority in the way that I showed that I was prepared to do. The statutory notice was served upon me without any prior consultation at all. It did not even have a covering letter accompanying it. It arrived by itself in a registered envelope—a cold document, starting, in capital letters "TAKE NOTICE …". One of the advantages of being a lawyer is that documents of this kind perhaps strike less terror into one than they do into some other people. It arrived on the day that I was setting out for my summer holiday. I do not say that there is anything sinister in this; it just so happened. But it gave me only six weeks in which to carry out the required work which, had it ever needed to be carried out, would have been difficult for me to arrange in that period.
I do not believe that the local authority considered the artistic aspect of what they proposed at all until I raised it with them, notwithstanding that this is a listed building under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. I simply do not think that owners ought to be treated in this way. As I have said, some may be, for one reason or another, timid about doing battle with a local authority. Others, I suppose, may be old and weary and will do what is required of them in order to be left in peace as soon as they possibly can be. Again, others may be unimaginative in thinking up alternative schemes less disfiguring than the scheme of their local authority. Yet another class of owner, I suppose one must confess, may be unappreciative of the artistic surroundings in which he lives and will allow ill-considered disfigurement to take place.

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I should like to think that in every other case except the one I have mentioned the local authorities most carefully consider the artistic aspect of the building; that they make friendly approaches to the owner who is their ratepayer; that they consult him, and do not resort to the statutory notice procedure except as a last resort in the case of an owner whom they consider to be obstinate and unco-operative in the extreme. I hope that the Minister in replying to this debate can give an assurance that in 99 cases out of 100 local authorities do act in this latter manner; and if by waving his magic wand, or in some other way, he can ensure that those 99 cases become 100 out of 100, in that respect alone this debate will have been worth while.
6.50 p.m.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, it must be a long time since an Unstarred Question evoked such enormous interest among so many noble Lords, and I know that were it not for another event taking place now in another part of this building there would be present a great many noble Lords who were here at the beginning of this discussion. I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Molson for introducing this Question and for the meticulous way in which he dealt with it. I will do my best to answer very nearly all the questions which fell rather rapidly, one after the other, from his lips. During the course of my speech I shall succeed at least in answering all his questions, even though not all my answers may prove to be thoroughly satisfactory; and I will do my best to pick up points made by other noble Lords.
Although the procedure is well known to noble Lords who have a special interest in this matter, I think it may be just as well if I were to run through and describe very briefly the relevant provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, at any rate for the benefit of those noble Lords who are not quite so familiar with them. Section 32 requires the Minister of Housing and Local Government to compile lists of buildings of special architectural or historic interest for the guidance of local planning authorities. Owners and occupiers have to be notified when their properties are listed and the appropriate
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entry has to be made in the Register of Local Land Charges. Provision for the compilation of such lists was, of course, first made in the Town and Country Planning Act of 1944.
My noble friend Lord Molson asked whether these lists were published. They are not printed and available to the public in that sense, but these lists are of course registered as land charges. Any member of the public can inspect the lists at council offices, and indeed will be sent one on request if interested in this matter.
Section 33 requires any person who proposes to demolish, alter or extend a listed building in any manner which would seriously affect its character to give at least two months' notice to the local planning authority. The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, asked who decided what was meant by "seriously affecting the character of a building". Of course, it is the owner or the person who wishes to undertake works in the first place, but he is under the obligation to give the two months' notice. If he should chance his arm and not give notice, he could thereby commit an offence for which he can be fined £100. He can also be made to restore the building to its original condition, assuming it is not such a major operation as to be impossible. There is not a great deal of risk that the owner might go ahead without giving the statutory notice of two months. Copies of the notice must be sent by the local planning authority to the Minister and, where appropriate, to the district council concerned—that is to say, where there is one. In a county borough it is a different matter.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: My Lords, to interrupt the noble Lord for one moment, may I ask him who is the ultimate authority if the owner says he has altered the building but has not altered its character? Who decides who is right, the local authority or the owner?
LORD HASTINGS: The local authority, because it may become a question of planning permission and appeal. These arrangements which I have just outlined ensure that the preservation of each listed building will be considered when any threat to it arises.

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Before going further, my Lords, I should like to pay tribute to the invaluable help successive Ministers have received from the Advisory Committee on Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest. This Committee, whose Chairman is now Sir William Holford, is composed of eminent architects, antiquaries and historians. It has been meeting at frequent intervals since 1945 to give authoritative guidance on the selection of buildings for listing and upon the problems of preservation.
The basis of listing laid down by the Advisory Committee in 1945 is that all pre-Georgian buildings which survive in something like their original form are included. By far the larger number of Georgian buildings are also included, and the lists embrace even the ordinary small houses of that period where they form significant groups. The choice is more selective, however, when we come to the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Here the aim is to select buildings of definite quality and character, paying special attention to the main works of the principal architects. However, even here the standards listed were in fact revised in 1960 to take account of the increased appreciation of Victorian architecture to which the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon referred. As a result, all those areas rich in Victorian buildings of good quality have been, and are being, re-surveyed in order to repair the omission of buildings of this period from the original lists.
It should not be thought, my Lords, that the approach to listing is a purely academic one, resting on nothing more than strictly individual merit building by building. On the contrary, the visual qualities of buildings are recognised as of great importance. Full account is taken not only of the intrinsic merits of individual buildings, but also of any value they may derive from their setting—where, for example, a particular building is important as part of a larger composition.
This point has been laboured by several speakers, especially my noble friend Lord Conesford. It is a point in which I have taken a great personal interest recently and into which I have carried out some investigations. I was very interested to find out, and would remind your Lordships, that the
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Minister's view of the legal validity of this group value in assessing the merits of a building was recently upheld by the Court of Appeal in a case concerning a preservation order for two buildings in St. James's Square. It is now quite clear that, whatever may have happened in the past, the Ministry is giving this question of group value very great attention indeed.
In connection with this aspect of drawing up lists, it may interest your Lordships to know that some ancient towns—for example, Winchester, Canterbury and Chichester—have already been resurveyed to give greater weight to buildings which have group value but only moderate intrinsic merit. This usually involves upgrading from the supplementary to the statutory list—in other words, from Grade III to Grade II. In addition, the Advisory Committee on Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest are considering the problem of the preservation of the character of historic areas which were specially mentioned by my noble friend Lord Molson. They are making pilot studies of several ancient towns to test out the idea of defining areas within which special standards should be applied. That, again, is a considerable advance.
These lists are made by surveying literally every highway and byway in the country. This has proved an immense task and it has taken a long time, but the work is now nearing completion. Out of the 1,474 local authority areas in England and Wales, 1,403 have been surveyed; the others are generally remote with few buildings of importance in them. Provisional lists have been issued to local authorities for 1,293 areas, and statutory lists have been completed in 1,090, including all the county boroughs, nearly all the boroughs, and most of the urban districts. There is, unfortunately, a delay (about which we have heard this evening) between provisional and statutory listing, because of the very large amount of clerical work involved in serving notices, in correspondence, and in compiling and publishing the final lists. Nevertheless, there are now about 85,000 buildings on the statutory lists and 93,000 on supplementary Grade III lists. The latter, however, have no legal effect. The

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Grade I and Grade II lists are statutory lists. Of course, it should be realised that the provisional lists, which are the first stage in compiling statutory lists, are themselves of very great value since they put the necessary information immediately into the hands of the authorities responsible for the control of development before they receive the statutory lists.
As a result of these processes, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government receives copies of all notices of intention to demolish or alter statutorily listed buildings. Local planning authorities usually consult the Ministry, also, about applications for planning permission for development which would directly affect a grade I or grade II building, even when it is only provisionally listed. Hence the value of the provisional list to which I have just referred. I hope that this has set the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Molson, somewhat at rest. The more important cases are referred by the Ministry to the Advisory Committee, and the National Preservation Societies are also notified of proposed demolitions so that they can make representations to the local planning authority and offer their help when appropriate. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in particular, often provides valuable technical advice.
The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, opposite asked whether these voluntary societies could be given greater recognition. As I said, the national societies are informed. It is virtually impossible to write to all of the local societies, but many of them have arrangements direct with local planning authorities to be kept in touch with this question. They can also, of course, inspect the register of planning applications if they wish to do so.
At this point I think I might turn to the question of interiors, which was dwelt on very properly at considerable length by the two Liberal noble Lords opposite. I am very pleased to be able to tell them that the interiors play a very important part when listing buildings, and some buildings are in fact listed for their interiors. Certainly when it was a question of listing the building in which the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, lives, the
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interior was taken into consideration He is therefore quite correct to say that local authorities should pay particular attention to interiors. I might remind noble Lords, who may have read this in the papers, that quite recently a preservation order was confirmed on Scarisbrook Hall in Lancashire which has a most remarkable interior. Having sold the building, the developer wished to remove some panelling and pictures encased in the panelling, together with some statues, but was prevented from doing any of that on the basis that this is an essential part of the house and should be preserved as such.
Therefore local authorities should certainly take into account the value of the interior and, if any alteration is involved, they should certainly be very careful as to what is done so as not to affect the character of the building. I am not quite sure whether the noble Lord was himself carrying out some form of conversion or alteration. In that case, of course, the local planning authority have a right to go into the question in respect of what works are going to be carried out under the Act. But, of course, I am sure I must be right in saying that no local authority can come to an owner who is not proposing to do anything to his statutorily listed house, and say, "I do not like your staircase. Put a bit of glass round it in case it catches fire". That would only arise, I think, in the case of any works being proposed or being undertaken.
At the same time the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, brought up the question of Tower House. I happen to know that area very well myself, and it is an interesting matter. The Minister decided not to confirm the preservation order, it is true, but he did at the same time see that some of the buildings in the area of Melbury Road, including Tower House, were added to the statutory list, so that advance notice of demolition or alteration would have to be given. I understand that no such notice has up to this moment been given. Of course, if Tower House is vacant and neglected, which in fact I happen to know it is, a preservation order would not by itself help, unless the local planning authority were prepared to acquire it. I quite realise it may be argued that a building preservation order will assist or encourage

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somebody to maintain it—that is a moot point—but the local planning authority have powers, of course, to do something about it if they feel they would care to afford the expenditure involved.
Another matter with which I might conveniently deal at this moment is the noble Earl's other point about Crown buildings. They come outside the Act but, of course, the practice is to consult with the Ministry and with the local authorities interested if any alteration or demolition is proposed. In point of fact, this is a matter for my right honourable friend, the Minister for Public Buildings and Works, and not my Ministry. But I will certainly refer the noble Earl's remarks to him, particularly the suggestions of the noble Earl in respect of giving the public an opportunity to see a model or proposals of the reconstruction of Crown buildings. I am sure he will give the matter his careful attention.
The other important statutory provision of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, is to be found in Section 30. This enables local authorities, including both county councils and district councils, to make orders for the preservation of buildings of special architectural or historic interest. These preservation orders are not effective unless confirmed by the Minister, and he must consider any objections from interested parties before deciding whether or not to confirm them. The effect of an order, when confirmed, is to prohibit the demolition or alteration of the building without the consent of the authority. The Minister may indeed make a preservation order himself after giving notice of his proposal and considering any objections. But this is in the nature of a reserve power and, in answer to my noble friend's question, it is used on average twice a year—sparingly, in other words.
I have no doubt that it will interest your Lordships to know that 1,148 buildings are now covered by preservation orders, and that orders covering about another 100 are at present being considered by the Minister. However, I should like to emphasise that these figures give no real indication of the value of the powers of protection which I have been outlining. Apart from actual building preservation orders, I think there can be little doubt that the larger part of preserving our architectural and historic
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heritage is achieved by the educational and deterrent effect of listing, as well as by the refusal of planning permission. This question of planning permission and refusals is, so far as we can see, working quite well. We do not know, of course, of all refusals but we understand they are usually effective. It is only if the owner or proposing developer refuses to accept this decision of the local planing authority and makes an appeal that the matter would come to the Minister. In such cases the local planning authority may well have in the meanwhile applied for a building preservation order, and joint inquiries are quite often held into a planning appeal and an objection to a preservation order at one and the same time. I think this system really works pretty well.
It was, I think, in connection with the planning permissions that the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, was very much alarmed at the possibility of other people being able to apply for permission to demolish a building which they did not even own. Of course, this possibility is not confined to building preservation orders or to the preservation of historic and architectural buildings. It is part of the general planning procedure. Any developer can make such an application—and I believe often does—seeking to get permission for development before trying to buy the property. But, of course, the applicant cannot force the owner to sell if he does not want to do so. I think that is the real point. But the point the noble Earl raised is, in fact, appreciated, and I think it is one which can be borne in mind if and when any further legislation is being considered. I agree that it does seem rather a peculiar possibility.
My Lords, the sort of action that local authorities can take, to which I have been referring, is sometimes reinforced by the offer of grants by the Minister of Public Building and Works under the Historic Buildings Act, 1953, which falls rather outside the scope of the Question before us, or by grants or loans by the local authorities themselves under the Local Authorities (Historic Buildings) Act, 1962. The circular of December of that year sent out by my right honourable friend followed up the passing of that Act, and I commend it to your Lordships' attention. I think that in that Act, and

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certainly in that circular, the question of gardens is referred to, and local authorities can make loans and grants for the maintenance of gardens attached to buildings for which they are willing to make such loans or grants.
LORD METHUEN: Even for gardens not attached to buildings?
LORD HASTINGS: That is a point on which I am not entirely clear. I understand that it is a matter which comes within the concern of the Minister of Public Building and Works, and that he has agreed to examine that particular problem.
Apart from the encouragement and good advice that that circular gives to local authorities, it goes at least some way towards filling the gap which we all know exists as a result of inability to enforce the proper maintenance of buildings which have been placed on a statutory list. I would say to those who believe that powers should be taken to compel the proper maintenance and repair of such buildings that here we should be very careful, because we should be treading on dangerous ground. Quite apart from the practical difficulties, a compulsory obligation to maintain at standards laid down by Statute might well deter people from accepting, or from continuing to accept, as the case may be, responsibility for the buildings we want to see preserved, and thus defeat its purpose. As it is, where a statutorily listed building is not being maintained in good repair, local authorities can acquire it for preservation by agreement; and this does happen in a good many cases. They also have compulsory powers of acquisition where a preservation order is in force, but this is a more difficult thing, I think, and these powers have, in fact, been used only twice. Purchase by way of agreement is obviously the more satisfactory, and usually the easier, way of the two.
I would remind the noble Lord that again there is always this question of penalties for demolition, although not for lack of maintenance. When it comes to the possibility of somebody deliberately allowing a building to be demolished, in the hope of being able to redevelop more profitably, he can, of course,
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theoretically, be asked to reinstate the building; and, of course, he can also be refused planning permission for any redevelopment. One realises this particular difficulty, and that this gap in the legislation exists, but I do not think it is used very frequently in the unfortunate manner which noble Lords fear.
LORD MOLSON: My Lords, would my noble friend say that he can be compelled to restore it if he does nothing but allow it to drop down? I thought he could be compelled to restore it only if he had taken positive action.
LORD HASTINGS: I think that is in fact correct: if he has demolished it, he can be compelled to restore it. But I think that in this case the real sanction would be the refusal of planning permission for redevelopment. However, these cases are very rare indeed, fortunately; and, although one does recognise there is a weakness in the present procedure, it is very difficult to put it right without interfering unwarrantably with private rights and getting into all kinds of practical difficulties.
I am asked whether all these provisions are adequate for the purpose for which they were designed, and whether they are being implemented effectively. The answer, on the whole, is, "Yes". The Government are satisfied that the present arrangements ensure that the merits of buildings of real value are brought to the attention of the local planning authority, and that they are fully considered in consultation with the Ministry when threats to them arise. In view of criticisms which have been voiced in the past, and which continue to be voiced from time to time, I think it is worth while reminding ourselves that, although the purpose of existing legislation is to preserve buildings of special architectural or historic interest, it is not the purpose of this legislation to ensure absolutely that all such buildings are always to be preserved regardless of the circumstances.
However much we may value buildings of historic or architectural merit, or however much we may want to see them retained, we must surely recognise that preservation is not always possible. Preservation may, on occasions, conflict with other important objectives, and it may not even be in the public interest.

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Good buildings are sometimes lost, it is true, but in fact the number of statutorily listed buildings which have been demolished amounts to a figure which is not very great. One cannot be exact about it, but it is somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000, probably, out of a total of 85,000 statutorily listed buildings. I suggest seriously to your Lordships that that is not a sufficient reason for deducing that the machinery of preservation has failed.
This was the view taken, I think by my noble friend Lord Conesford at the beginning of his speech. He thought that the Acts and the procedure were working well in regard to buildings of the highest grade, but he was not so sure in regard to those in the second grade. But the end of his speech—in fact, the last half of it—was really a vigorous criticism of, if not an attack upon, the Government based upon the single case of Ely Place in Holborn. I do not wish to enter into arguments or discussions on an individual case. Of course, we can always find individual cases and base a whole argument or series of arguments upon them. I do not deny that in the past mistakes have been made. I do not deny that cases before us recently, and perhaps cases before us in the near future, will arouse controversy and will lead to differences of opinion. I think that is inevitable. They contain extremely difficult problems and a great deal of care is taken about the decisions in matters of this importance. But certainly I hope I have dispelled any ideas the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, may have had in respect of the neglect of group value, because that certainly is now no longer the case.
I do not think I can reply in detail to the noble Lord, Lord Faringdon, who said that he did not quite understand the Minister's policy. This is, and must necessarily be, a rather subjective matter. These questions are often balanced very evenly, and so many pros and cons have to be taken into account. I do not think it can really he maintained that because a local planning authority wishes to put a building preservation order on a particular building, every time it does so it must automatically be supported. I am sure that in the majority of cases local authorities are supported, but there are occasions when
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it does not seem to my right honourable friend right to do so.
There is no doubt that the growing momentum of urban renewal, which we were debating only last week, has brought very special problems in its train—problems of building redevelopment, problems of roads and transport, problems of improvement, conservation and preservation: all these are interconnected. In particular, the problem of town centres and the preservation of the character and quality of buildings within them, which have been stressed during the course of this debate, have also been stressed by the Planning Bulletins No. 1 and No. 4, issued jointly—and this is important—by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Transport.
The general question of development near buildings of special architectural or historical interest—a very important matter—which was brought up by the noble Lord, Lord Methuen, was also the subject of a circular sent out by my right honourable friend on August 7, 1963—in fact the noble Lord referred to it. This circular emphasises the great importance attached to any new development near buildings of special interest, and explained how the new development should be fitted in, with attention being paid to the bulk, the size, shape and materials used—
LORD METHUEN: My Lords, may I ask whether the law makes that quite clear: that where buildings are of architectural interest nothing should be put near them to spoil their appearance and value?
LORD HASTINGS: It is not the law. It is not in the Act. But the point is that, when planning permission is being given, the local authorities always have power to control the sort of development and make conditions as to the sort of buildings which shall be erected. The importance of this question has been emphasised by the Minister's sending out this circular to remind the local authorities and give them advice as to their approach in this particular matter.
We have to face the fact—and I think I can say that we did face up to it last week—that there must be changes in our cities and in our towns, and even sometimes in our villages, if we are to

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meet the challenge of to-day and if we are to plan wisely for the future. Nevertheless, the Government are determined to protect the treasures of the past from unnecessary destruction. I hope that what I have said this evening has reassured many noble Lords, and that we can claim that, with the passage of time, procedure has been improved and tidied up with general benefit. We believe that the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Acts and, in particular, the way in which they are being put into operation do enable me to say truthfully that we are well equipped to give this protection.
LORD FARINGDON: My Lords, I wonder whether, before the noble Lord sits down, he could say a word about the operation of the Third Schedule.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I am not sure; but I thought I had answered all the points. I am not quite clear.
LORD FARINGDON: Ten per cent. extra.
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I think the noble Lord himself answered this
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point. We have altered that Third Schedule. I am sorry my Lords, I did not take up that point. I made a note; but it escaped me. This question is really related to an owner's power to serve a purchase notice on a local authority to obtain a form of compensation; and such notice can be served on a local planning authority only if it can be proved that the buildings in their present form or by conversion cannot be put to beneficial use. And of course "beneficial use" does not mean that they have to be as profitable or as good as the buildings would be if they were redeveloped. It is a much lower standard. If buildings can be used in any way beneficially—and the classic example is Stratford Place, off Oxford Street—compensation will be refused. If the buildings can still be put to a beneficial use, the question of compensation does not arise. I hope that that answer will at least clear up some of the points which have been put.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past seven o'clock.