Lords Sitting of 20 December 1965

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

MILFORD DOCK AND HAVEN
2.35 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: 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 what plans they have for the future of Milford Dock.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD LINDGREN): My Lords, these docks are owned by the Milford Docks Company. The Government are aware of the difficulties facing the company, and are watching the position closely.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer, which does not take us much further. But may I ask him whether he is aware that Milford Haven is one of the finest natural ports in the entire country? And, since it is a natural port for the import of iron ore would he look carefully into the possibility of making use of this port for the import of iron ore in bulk?
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, it is agreed that Milford Haven— the docks apart—has excellent deep water; but, as the noble Lord will be aware, the steelworks are at Port Talbot and Newport. The Government issued a White Paper comparatively recently in regard to this question and I do not think there is any chance of their moving from the view they expressed in the White Paper.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the White Paper envisages ore carriers of up to 65,000 tons. and is he aware that these are already completely out of date; that iron ore is being carried in bulk carriers of up to
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100,000 tons, and that Japan is building one of 200,000 tons? This being the case, would he ask his right honourable friend to have another look at the conclusions in the White Paper?
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, it is agreed that the initial capital expenditure of a terminal at Milford Haven might be less, but normal running costs would be higher than where it is proposed to site the jetties. It would mean a very long rail haul from Milford Haven to the steelworks at Port Talbot or Newport. But my right honourable friend, in conjunction with the Secretary of State for Wales, has this matter in hand.
LORD REA: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that we are in some danger of confusion between Milford Dock, mentioned in the Question, and Milford Haven, which is a much bigger area; and the iron ore terminal would be in the Haven, not necessarily in the Dock, which is perhaps a little obsolete. Many of us are hoping that the Haven will be used for the receipt of iron ore?
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, in my answer to the first supplementary I tried to draw a distinction between the Haven and the Docks, but I took it that the noble Lord was referring to one of the propositions put up by the new Chairman of the Docks Company to the Secretary of State for Wales and to the Board of Trade.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, do Her Majesty's Government appreciate that British Railways' modernisation plans include the running of liner-trains, which would lower the cost of freighting ore from Milford Haven to the steelworks, and do Her Majesty's Government realise that, although very big bulk carriers may come into Milford Haven, they will in many cases need to be serviced by smaller vessels for which the docks are an essential ancillary?
LORD LINDGREN: My Lords, all aspects of this question have been gone into. It is not a question of liner-trains but of company trains, or "merry-go-round" trains almost on a continuous belt. But I will call the attention of the Secretary of State for Wales and my right honourable friend to what has been said in this House to-day.

AID TO TANZANIA
2.40 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government (a) with regard to the outstanding loans and advances of £7,327 million to Tanzania, of which £5,238,000 is reported as interest free, what arrangements exist to convert the latter into fixed-interest obligations, and (b) if services of all outstanding indebtedness were calculated at conventional interest rate, say 5 per cent., what relationship the resulting total would bear to the current income budget of Tanzania.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (LORD WALSTON): My Lords, no arrangements exist by which interest-free loans may be converted into interest-bearing loans. An interest charge of 5 per cent. on the total of interest-free loans issued to Tanzania would cost a little under 1 per cent. of Tanzania's recurrent expenditure in the financial year 1965–66.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, with regard to the first part of the Answer, would the noble Lord not agree that it would seem that lenders must be circumspect in their behaviour towards those who borrow money from them? It would be appropriate that something should be done fairly soon to achieve a rapid conversion into interest-bearing loans. Also, would he be able to say, in regard to the point about which I have already given him notice, that since that Question was put down the situation of the borrower had changed? Could he give any indication to the lenders as to the position now of an independent Republic which had broken off relations with the United Kingdom with regard to other expenditure it might incur affecting loans from the United Kingdom?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, with regard to the first part of the noble Lord's question, of course Her Majesty's Government, as all lenders are, or so I hope, are circumspect with regard to the conditions of the borrower. With regard to the second part of the noble Lord's
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question, I would first of all thank him for his courtesy in warning me in advance that he was going to raise this particular point. I would in the first place remind him that the object of our loans is to help developing countries and not specifically to influence their political attitudes or actions. But I would further say that this whole matter of loans to all countries in Africa at the present time is subject to very serious thought, and it is probable that my right honourable friend the Minister of Overseas Development will be making a statement, or at least coming to a conclusion, in the very near future.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, are we not getting into a completely Gilbertian situation when we go on giving loans and aid to a country which has broken off diplomatic relations with us? Has not the time come to be a little more realistic and to take a leaf out of the Americans' book, so that when a country kicks you in the teeth you withdraw aid?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, as I have already said, this matter is under review and no decision has been reached. But I would once more reiterate what I have already said, that the object of our loans is in order to help in the economic development of the countries to which we are lending money, and it is not a backstairs means of influencing their policies.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, arising out of that reply, can the Minister say whether or not all this loan money has yet been drawn?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, it has not all been drawn yet.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for his reply, has he not observed that he did not answer the question, which was: what is the position of the lender to a borrower who has broken off relations with this country and therefore must be in a different condition? Perhaps I should put it in this way. The status of the borrower has changed since I put down the Question on the Order Paper: can he make some comment on that?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I am sorry that I did not answer the question sufficiently specifically for the noble Lord. For the first part of my answer, I can

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only repeat what I have already said—namely, that the whole matter is under review at the present time. But, at the risk of wearying your Lordships, I will repeat the second part of my answer, which is that the object of these loans is primarily to help in the economic development of the countries to which we lend the money, and the economic circumstances of those countries have not changed in any way whatsoever.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord two questions. In the first place, he says that the money is for the benefit of the people, and not of the Government. But to whom is the money being lent? Is it not being lent to the Government, for them to spend as they think best? That seems to me to be the position. The second point is this. He said that the matter was under review. Will the Government make a Statement on this situation before the House rises? This is not a difficult question. It is a question whether we do lend the money, or partly lend it, or do not lend it. It is a perfectly simple question about which to come to a decision, and I think that before rising Parliament has a right to ask the Government to provide a reply.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, as the noble Marquess says, it is a perfectly simple question. I cannot promise that a decision will be reached before the House rises. But if a decision is come to—and I believe that it will be—then undoubtedly the House will be informed. With regard to the first part of the noble Marquess's question, the money is being lent to the Government as they represent the country in question. But it is not for them to spend as they like. It is lent for specific objects which have been settled by discussion and approval between the Ministry of Overseas Development and the Government of Tanzania, and to the best of my knowledge there has been no change whatsoever in those objects or in the method by which they are to be achieved.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, would the Minister take note that there is a considerable body of opinion in this House—and, I believe, outside—who would greatly regret the taxpayers
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of this country continuing to find funds for countries that have broken off diplomatic relations with this country?
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, will the noble Lord. Lord Walston, realise that there is a great deal of interest on this side of the House. We are adjourning for, I think, over a month, and will he please represent to his right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary that we should like a Statement before the House rises, so that your Lordships can see what decisions the Government have come to?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I will certainly do that. I will also take note, as the noble Lord has asked me to do, if not of the "considerable body of opinion" in the country—because that is still unproved—at least of the considerable interest taken in the country, and of the considerable body of opinion on certain Benches opposite, with regard to this question.
THE MARQUESS OF ABERDEEN AND TEMAIR: My Lords, may I ask whether the rather astonishing figure of £7,000 million, referred to in the Question, is correct?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I think it should be £7·327 million—with a point and not a comma. May I at the same time call your Lordships' attention to an error for which I am responsible in my reply in a Written Answer to a Written Question of the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, on December 6, which has been corrected in the OFFICIAL REPORT? The error occurred in Schedule B of the Written Answer [col. 99]. It read:
"Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zambia)".
It should, of course, read:
"Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar)."
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I would thank the noble Lord for that reply. I was puzzled by the Answer and thought there must be something wrong. If I may revert to the present Question, without any political angle at all, I would ask, since this country is the lender and the borrowers having broken off diplomatic relations with us, is the noble Lord in a position to give an assurance that there will be no more advances in this direction until the situation has been cleared up?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, there will be no more advances until the decision has been taken as to whether or not there shall be more advances.

RECOGNITION OF DE FACTO GOVERNMENTS
2.50 p.m.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many countries there are outside the Commonwealth in which—

(a) the Government exists de facto and not de jure; and

(b) such Government is recognised by Her Majesty' Government.]

LORD WALSTON: My Lords, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, there are no such countries.
LORD COLYTON: My Lords, would the noble Lord say what is the situation in regard to the Dominican Republic?
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, the Dominican Republic, so far as I am aware, has a Government which is both de jure and de facto.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, am Ito understand the noble Lord to say that there are no countries in the category specified in the Question with which the United Kingdom has diplomatic relations? There must he many countries which do not have de jure Governments but de facto Governments—countries like Iraq, which suddenly kill the whole of their Royal Family, and whose new Government the United Kingdom recognise before the blood is dry.

STATEMENTS
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, the House may wish to know that at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making a Statement on the Prime Minister's visit to America; and that my noble friend Lord Bowles will he making a Statement on the Report of the Committee on the Assessment of Disablement.

COMMONWEALTH SECRETARIAT BILL [H.L.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (LORD BESWICK): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to make provision with respect to the Commonwealth Secretariat, and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time
Moved. That the Bill he now read 1ª.—(Lord Beswick.)
On Question, Bill read 1ª, and to be printed.

PROCEDURE OF THE HOUSE
2.52 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the First Report from the Committee.
The Committee's Report was as follows:
1. ARRANGEMENT OF BUSINESS
The Committee considered Standing Orders 34 and 35 relating to the arrangement of Business and recommend no change in them. They recognise that in cases of doubt or dispute the ultimate choice as to the order in which Business shall be taken must lie with the House and recommend that in such cases a Business of the House Motion be put down to enable the House to make its decision.
2. STANDING ORDER 24
The Committee have considered Standing Order 24—
"Every Lord is to speak standing and uncovered, except by permission of the House,"
and recommend that women Peers who wish to wear a hat when speaking shall be excused from seeking the permission of the House to do so.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now considered.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be agreed to, and I think that the House may like to have a few words of explanation and clarification about the two items contained in the Report. The first item is

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concerned with the arrangements of Business. Your Lordships will remember that Standing Order 34, which is referred to in this paragraph, provides that the House shall proceed with and debate the Orders of the Day in the order in which they stand on the Order Paper; while Standing Order 35 deals with the Order in which future Business is entered on the Order Paper. Standing Order 35 sets out various categories of business and the order in which they shall be set down. Within these categories the general principle is that of "first come, first served."
I have to report to your Lordships that at their meeting last week the Procedure Committee were informed of certain difficulties which had arisen in regard to the order of the two Motions on the Order Paper for Wednesday, January 26; namely, the Motion standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and that in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk. Some difference of opinion was expressed in the Committee as to the best solution of this difficulty. The second sentence of this paragraph in the Report starting with the words "They recognise" represents the majority view of the Committee. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, is to move a Manuscript Amendment to delete this sentence.
As to the second item, which deals with ladies' hats, I hope that our recommendation—which I trust will give satisfaction to the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry—will be acceptable to the House. We do not think that an Amendment to the Standing Order which would create a formal distinction between men and women Peers, when none exists at present, would be desirable. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Report be agreed to. —(The Earl of Listowel.)
LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN rose to move, as an Amendment to the Motion "That the Report be agreed to", after "agreed to" to insert ", subject to the deletion of the second sentence in paragraph 1 (Arrangement of Business)". The noble Lord said: My Lords, the first paragraph of the Report (and as many of your Lordships will not have the Report in your hands, perhaps I had better read it) says:
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"They recognise that in cases of doubt or 34 and 35 relating to the arrangement of Business and recommend no change in them."
The Report continues:
"They recognise that in cases of doubt or dispute the ultimate choice as to the Order in which Business shall be taken must lie with the House and recommend that in such cases a Business of the House Motion be put down to enable the House to make its decision."
It is in consequence of that second sentence that your Lordships have on the Order Paper before you a special Motion, in the name of the Lord Privy Seal, on the Business of the House: that Standing Order 35 be dispensed with on the first Wednesday after the Recess in order to set aside the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, in favour of another Motion.
This procedure, so far as I am aware, is without any precedent in the House at all. It is perfectly true that such a Motion is put down at the end of every Session to enable the Government to finish off its legislative programme. But to invoke a procedure like that against a private Member, who is perfectly within his rights, is an unprecedented thing in this House, and I think it would be wrong if this House were to accept it. Nobody who knows me will think that I am making any attack on the noble Earl, the Lord Chairman. I was in a minority in that Committee (about which I will say something in a moment), and I hope that the noble Earl will allow me to say that I was lost in admiration at the skill with which he managed a very difficult Committee; and the finding which is before your Lordships was the finding of a considerable majority of that Committee.
It has long been the custom in your Lordships' House that a Peer can put down a Motion for debate in your Lordships' House. It used to be the case that on Mondays and on Wednesdays the Motions took precedence over Bills. That enabled your Lordships to bring matters before the House as a full House with full attendance and to get them considered on certain days of the week. Subsequently it was represented to your Lordships by the Procedure Committee, on the motion of the Whips, that this was far too much to give to Motions, and the Monday Business was changed, so that on Mondays Bills now take precedence over

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Motions and only the Wednesdays are left.
The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, had put down a Motion for the first Wednesday after the Recess, and as his Motion was the first of which the officials of the House received Notice, it took precedence of the other Motions. I should like your Lordships to allow me to go into the general question of Motions in a few moments. The point in the Committee was that the Whips had found the noble Lord very difficult to deal with and had lost patience, and had decided—
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, I am not sure how far it is in order to give what purports to be an intimate account of all that was said in this Committee. I do not accept it as an accurate account at all, but in order that we may be able to clear our minds as to what we are discussing I ought to make it plain that I shall not be moving my Motion to-day, because Lord Russell of Liverpool has indicated that he will withdraw his Motion for the 26th on an understanding which he has reached with me. Therefore I do not think we need become too much involved in the subject of that particular Motion, although I agree that the noble Lord is raising a general issue of considerable interest.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I would answer in this way. I am moving an Amendment to the Report of the Procedure Committee. The fact that the other Motion is down on the Order Paper has a connection with this; it is meant to lead up to it. I am perfectly entitled to say what went on in the Procedure Committee because every noble Lord in this House is entitled to attend the Committee. There is nothing "hole in the corner" about the Procedure Committee, and if I say what happens there it is open to anybody to say that I am wrong or to correct or amplify in any way what I say.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I venture to think, with much deference to those who have led the House in past years with much greater experience and distinction than I have, that the Procedure Committee is not held in public.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, would the noble Earl allow me to interrupt? Would the noble Earl mind speaking a little louder? These hearing aids do not work.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, the Procedure Committee is not held in public, and I do not think that the fact that any noble Lord can attend demonstrates the proposition of the noble Lord that one can repeat in public everything that is said in that Committee.
LORD SALTOUN: Very well, my Lords. I leave that point. As I pointed out, the power of your Lordships to have Motions debated has been considerably curtailed of recent years in deference to the Whips. The Whips have moved your Lordships and they have stated what is not a fact: that before putting down any Motion the Whips shall be consulted. That has never been the case as long as I have been in the House. We have the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, who has been here since 1928, and we have the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, who has been here since 1922, and if I am wrong they will no doubt contradict me.
Her Majesty's Government are toying, as I understand it, with the idea of appointing an Ombudsman, and it is perfectly true—and the Government must be as well aware of it as I am—that in any country which is so powerfully administered as our country is there must from time to time arise wrongs to individuals and wrongs to small groups of people who can get no redress under the system and who ought to be treated in some other way. As long as I can remember, your Lordships' House has always acted as a kind of Ombudsman, and if noble Lords who were interested have been able to do so they have put their Motions down on a Wednesday and have debated them. These debates do not generally take very long. The last one in which I was engaged took just an hour and five minutes. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, will remember it very well. It is always memorable to me, because I think it was the last time that my dear and very deeply lamented friend Lord Mathers took part in a debate in your Lordships' House.
The first debate which I ever attended in your Lordships' House—of course, I was not a Member of the House—was

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about 1909 or 1910, and it was on some such question. The whole time I have been in the House, it has always been possible for somebody who has been wronged, and who could interest a Peer, to bring his case before your Lordships, and when that happened one of three things happened: either the case was remedied, or it might be alleviated or nothing happened. But I have found by experience that when a man has been deeply wronged and suffers under a deep sense of wrong, it is some gratification to him to have his case stated and heard, even if he gets nothing.
As a rule these cases proceed by a Motion for Papers which is subsequently withdrawn. Your Lordships might have thought that in such a case nothing happened, but that is not quite true. Your Lordships may not know, but something very often does happen. I can give an example. Some of your Lordships will remember how indignant most of us were about the long delay in the payment of the Post-War Credits after the war. I think that many people will remember that, and the case was raised again and again in your Lordships' House. The Government's answer was never very satisfactory and that could not be avoided, because the Government did not dare give the true answer. The true answer was that the Treasury, in levying the taxes that had lead to the creation of Post-War Credits, had thought that the people had stood so much that they would not stand any more. But when they found that the people accepted even that gladly for the prosecution of the war, they felt sorry they had not made it an out-and-out tax, and they determined that people should get back their money as slowly and with as much difficulty as possible. That was the reason why no Government dared to give the actual facts.
In common with other Members of your Lordships' House, I produced hard cases which had been brought to my notice. I had no indication from the Government that they had been attended to, but I received letters of gratitude from the people whose cases I brought up, which indicated to me that, even though the Motion had been withdrawn and the whole debate seemed to be inoperative, yet one had done something which had caused hard cases to be looked into and
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remedied. Therefore, my Lords, anything which impaired that power of your Lordships to bring cases of this kind, if you are sufficiently interested, before this House would be a very great injury to the ordinary people of this country.
I shall leave that and will come to the particular case of the Committee which is before us. I shall not say what happened in the Committee, but I can tell your Lordships of a great many things which did not happen in the Committee and which will keep you in the picture. The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, is extremely anxious about a case which he is interested in bringing before your Lordships, and which he thinks has never been properly considered, so he managed to put his name down for a Motion for debate on the first Wednesday after the Recess. This is not so easy to do as it used to be because, once more in deference to the Whips, we have made a rule that one can only put down a Motion one month before it comes forward to be debated. So that limits one as there is a definite starting post. The noble Lord had to be up very early in the morning, but he managed to get in and to get that Motion down for debate.
Having done that, he was within his right, and if the Whips had approached him I have no doubt that he would have accommodated them and arranged to take another day, but that did not happen. I rather gather that the Whips took the line that the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, ought to approach them; but I really do not see the argument for that. As a matter of fact, I should never take that line myself, even if I was entitled to do so. If one wants to get something settled, the answer is for the parties to come together, and it does not matter who approaches whom. But I always dislike opposing the Whips because, if they will allow me to say so, I like them all so much that it is difficult to oppose them on occasions. But, as a matter of fact, I have never found Whips easy to deal with. If you have Business down for a Wednesday and they want it moved they always offer you a Thursday after other Business or something like that, and it is therefore difficult to get anything really useful out of them.
The most important point is that, unless you have a right, which your Lordships have enjoyed from time

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immemorial, to have Business taken in the order in which it is put down you will, never get anything out of the Whips. Most of us will generally come to an accommodation. I know that we have had many arguments in the past, but I have always been perfectly conscious that, if one had not an indefeasible right, one would not get anything at all. I know that in recent years a great deal more interest has been taken in the debates in your Lordships' House, and there are a great many people who have strong political feelings who want to put down Motions and have them discussed on a Wednesday. There are a great many things going on which interest people deeply; and, therefore, it has become the custom for the Whips to make a sort of friendly arrangement among themselves about the Business coming up on Wednesdays.
Nobody has any objection to that; but when it is taken so far that it is proposed that all the Business of your Lordships must be done through the Whips, and that the Back Benchers must no longer have any right, except with the consent of the Whips, to put down Motions for debate, then you open the door to a very great deal of maladministration. Because, my Lords, there are a great many things that Back-Bench Peers very often want to bring up and have discussed which the Government would very willingly keep concealed. That happens in the case of every Government. On the occasion I last brought up such a case, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, was the one who answered for the Government. Those matters ought to be brought up; and, if your Lordships do not insist on preserving this right, then I am very sorry to say that I think this House will lose one of its most important functions, and one in which the people at large take great interest. I have said that this particular proposal—hammering down the noble Lord who has got a position of advantage and wishes to use it—is quite unprecedented; and so it is. I hope your Lordships will support me in this, and that we shall not have a proposition of this kind put before us again.
Before sitting down and making my Motion, I should like to point out just one thing. If it is to be put, the Motion before the House—that the Business of the first Wednesday after the Recess should be altered so as to defer the Motion
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of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool—affects the noble Lord himself, and if it were to be debated I think it would be perfectly within his right to lay before your Lordships all the reasons which move him to wish to be first on the Order Paper. In that case, your Lordships would have the privilege of hearing his case both this afternoon and then again on the first Wednesday after the Recess. So I am not at all sure about the efficacy of the proposal shortly to be made to your Lordships.
My Lords, if the succeeding Motion is not going to be moved, the only way in which your Lordships can support me and show your disapproval of this is by cutting out the second sentence of the Report of the Procedure Committee. The second sentence of the Report of the Procedure Committee, if it had come from any body less august, would be likely to be stigmatised as cheek, because it merely reminds your Lordships of a power which is inherent in you, which always must be inherent in you and which cannot be taken away from you. Therefore, for the Procedure Committee to remind your Lordships of that power, almost as if the Committee were conferring it upon you, is really a little unnecessary. By supporting me, your Lordships will not alter the recommendation of the Procedure Committee; you will not alter its meaning in any way at all; but you will indicate that this is not the way in which private Back Bench Peers ought to be treated. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
After ("agreed to") insert (",subject to the deletion of the second sentence in paragraph 1 (Arrangement of Business)").—(Lord Saltoun.)
3.15 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, before making any observations on the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, perhaps I should say again that it will not be necessary for me to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. That Motion would have placed the Duke of Norfolk's Motion for January 26 above the Motion standing in the name of Lord Russell of Liverpool; hut, as I explained just now in an intervention, the situation has changed as a result of a talk that I have had with Lord Russell of Liverpool. He has been good enough to say

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that he will postpone his Motion sine die, on the understanding that Mr. Mayhew, the Secretary for the Navy, will see the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and his friends about the time that the debate would have taken place. Mr. Mayhew tells me that he will be happy to see Lord Russell of Liverpool and his friends, and that, in fact, he has always been ready to see Lord Russell of Liverpool—although I gather that there has been some slight misunderstanding on that point. There will, therefore, be no difficulty, from the point of view of the House, about taking the Duke of Norfolk's Motion as first Business on January 26.
In what follows, I wish, so far as possible, to avoid referring further to Lord Russell of Liverpool's Motion, or to the circumstances concerned with it. That places me in one difficulty: that there is some slight suggestion left by Lord Saltoun's speech that the Whips on both sides of the House have behaved unreasonably. I entirely repudiate that suggestion. However, I do not intend, unless I am forced so to do, to go into that matter further.
The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun has raised a somewhat wider issue, and one that is of general significance: the issue whether, so to speak, a private Member who gets his blow in first—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, says, gets up early in the morning—and, ahead of everybody, puts a Motion down for a given Wednesday, can insist on having that Motion taken first, irrespective of the wishes of the House.
LORD SALTOUN: I beg the noble Earl's pardon, but he is quite wrong. I did not say, "irrespective of the wishes of the House": I said for the Leaders on both sides of the House to put down a Motion directed against him. If the House were to wish it spontaneously, so to speak, I should not have the smallest objection. It is calling on the House and exercising your Whip to command a majority against a Back-Bench Peer that arouses my anger—I beg your Lordships' pardon: not my anger, but my indignation.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: I do not think the noble Lord quite follows me. If this Motion of mine were to be put to the House, the House would have the means of deciding whether it wanted to have the Duke of Norfolk's Motion
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first or the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. It would rest with the House. No one is taking anything away from the House. The Motion would be brought before the House in the same way as it was proposed to bring this one. I should just remind the House that Standing Order 38 prohibits the placing on the Order Paper of a notice of Business more than one month ahead, and that, in calculating that period, no account is to be taken of any time during which the House is in Recess.
The House will appreciate that our Standing Orders give great freedom to all Members of the House, and I should be very reluctant to see this position changed in any way. I suppose that if any one individual, apart from the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chairman of Committees, is supposed to look to the interests of the House as a whole, that individual is the Leader of the House at the time. I have a duty to the House as a whole. That does not even mean the great majority of the House: it means every Member of the House. So I certainly should be very slow to interfere with the rights of individuals.
Nevertheless, such freedom obviously requires a great deal of organisation if the House is to organise its business effectively. We cannot have complete anarchy here. For example, it is right and proper that the official Opposition should have full opportunities of raising great questions. The Liberal Party, also, are entitled to their opportunities; and so, of course, are the supporters of the Government of the day. And certainly the noble Lords who sit on the Cross-Benches, such as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, with their great wealth of knowledge and experience, must likewise have their opportunities. But this cannot all be left to a kind of smash-and-grab philosophy: there must be some organisation; and I think that most people would agree that the existing organisation works very well. On this question of putting down Motions, experience has shown that to have debates of real quality it is not enough just to put down a Motion, so that busy Peers who may have a contribution to make are informed in advance. These plans have to be laid—certainly in many cases—more than one month ahead.

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I do not propose to explain (there is no secret about it; every Member of your Lordships House has a rough idea of how the procedure works) exactly how all this is achieved. But I am confident that the House is satisfied that what has been done over a period of years has been in the interests of the House; and I repeat that I am not aware of any case in which a Peer who wanted to put a Motion before the House has ever been defrauded of that opportunity. It may well be that he cannot have a particular debate at a particular time on a particular day; but that is hardly, I suggest, one of the essential human freedoms. He is entitled to have his subject debated in the House of Lords, and, as I say, I cannot think of anybody who has failed to do so. In the past, when I was not one of the leaders, I found many opportunities of bringing subjects before the House; and I have never had any difficulty with the Whips.
I should have said—and I must pay this tribute, at least, to the usual channels—that irrespective of who happens to be the Government, the Whips labour hard without exaggerated remuneration; are always sensitive to the feelings of the House; and are very conscious that in the end it must be the will of the House that prevails. I do not believe that the Report of the Procedure Committee in any way reduces the rights of Members. If it did, I should not stand to support it; and I am sure that that would be true of other Members also. The Report reaffirms that the House controls its own Business. I have unshaken confidence in the present arrangements, and I hope that the House will share that confidence with the Procedure Committee.
3.22 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I had not seen either the Motion or the Amendment before I came into the House; but I should like to suggest some reasons why we should support the noble Earl the Leader of the House and why I think that it is not essential for my noble friend Lord Saltoun, who is raising this matter, to pursue it for the purposes he has in mind. There are two Motions on the Order Paper: the Motion for the consideration of the First Report of the Committee and the further Motion which we now hear is not, in fact, to be moved. The purpose of the argument of my noble
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friend Lord Saltoun was to negative the merits of the Motion that is not going to be moved. I can see that the matters he put forward might have carried great weight with many people, had that Motion come forward; but I cannot see that it is necessary to object to the Report of the Procedure Committee.
I should have been, I think, at least as eager to object to that Report if it had claimed some privileges for Her Majesty's Government or had mentioned the Whips. But I read the Report from beginning to end, and I found no mention of Her Majesty's Government and no mention of the Whips. It says simply that, in the event of cases of doubt or dispute arising, the House shall have control over the matter; and it lays down how the House is to be given Notice that the subject is going to be raised. That seems to me to be eminently sensible.
It seems to me that the only objection we could have to the Report of the Procedure Committee would arise if, on reading Standing Orders 34 and 35, we thought it was inconceivable that any question should ever arise on them; or that there should ever be any dispute. Most lawyers, I think, will agree with me that it is very difficult to take two pages or so of any Standing Orders and say that it is impossible that any question will ever arise about them. It seems to me that a question may arise about them, and this Report of the Procedure Committee says simply that in such event the House shall have complete control. I have given, with reasonable brevity I hope, the reasons why I think we can all be quite happy with this Report of the Procedure Committee and can support the noble Earl the Leader of the House in what he has said.
3.25 p.m.
LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, there are two reasons why I hope your Lordships will allow me to intervene in this debate, apart from the fact that my name has been mentioned a number of times during the last few minutes. Your Lordships may wonder, because of the statement which the noble Earl the Leader of the House has made why the arrangement we have now come to could not have been reached earlier. I hope to explain why that did not happen. Secondly, the impression may have

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been given, from what the noble Earl the Leader of the House and the Lord Chairman of Committees said at the begginning, that difficulties have arisen over my Motion; and that perhaps I am the nigger in the woodpile. There is almost another reason, a third reason, which has cropped up since then—because I rather gather that the noble Earl the Leader of the House was even suggesting that I was an anarchist. That is something that I do not think any noble Lord would believe.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I would withdraw that suggestion. It was not meant to imply that the noble Lord was an anarchist.
LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, I was not saying that seriously. I thought that the noble Earl would have the sense of humour to see that; obviously he had not.
With regard to the question of difficulty, I hope your Lordships will allow me to say briefly how this came about. As you know, there was a Motion on the Swabey case a long time ago moved by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. After a long space of time I put down a Motion on July 21. It was put down under the Standing Orders, as first Motion. That was altered, without my knowledge, to the second Motion. Then I was informed that it was the second Motion; and when I asked why, I was told: "We did not think that you would mind". But, in fact, I did mind. In my view, it was because of the very late hour that Motion was heard that it was defeated.
After that, against the advice of a great number of friends and of Members of your Lordships' House—and I am sure the noble Marquess will not mind my saying that he thought it wrong—I decided to put the Motion down for a second time.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: A third time.
LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL: I put it down for December 8. On that occasion I was approached by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd (who I see has just come back into the Chamber), who asked me whether I would alter it to another day. So I altered it to December 9. I
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made no fuss about that, no objection. Unfortunately, when the debate was due to be heard—the Motion was due to be raised on the 9th—I happened to be taken ill with bronchitis. That was not my fault: it was an act of God. At all events, I was not able to be here.
I then decided that the Motion ought to be put down for another day. I approached the Table, and was told it could go down as the first Motion on the first Wednesday after the Recess. I put it down for then, as, according to Standing Orders, I was entitled to do. I did not know of any other Motion. Incidentally, when I suddenly saw the Motion on Business which we hear is not now going to be moved by the Leader of the House, I got in touch with the noble Duke the Duke of Norfolk, whose Motion on the Territorial Army was also down for the same day. He knew nothing about this whatsoever.
I appreciate as well as any noble Lord the importance of the Motion on the Territorial Army. I was a member of the Territorial Army at the beginning of the First World War, before some of your Lordships were born, and I served in it during that war. I think it is a very important thing. In my view the irresponsible policy of the Government about it is very reprehensible; and I should have supported the noble Duke's Motion. He did not mind; but, of course, if he had asked me, or if one of the Whips had approached me, I would have been amenable; but on this other occasion no one has approached me to alter that Motion. I should like your Lordships to know this. What you may think of it, I do not know. I know what I think.
3.30 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, may I, as an ex-Leader of the House, support the noble Earl the Leader of the House and revert for a moment to the terms of the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun? I am sorry that in this case I have to oppose the noble Lord because there are few Members of your Lordships' House who know more about its procedure than he does. I am certainly not adverse to a little pre-Christmas "blood sport" of "Whip hunting". Whips are necessary, but usually very tiresome. I should

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certainly be unwilling to agree to anything which appears to interfere with the rights of every Member of this House, as I am sure that your Lordships would be, and certainly I should be unwilling to lay down any more rules for your Lordships' House than are absolutely necessary. I think that one of the great advantages of this House is that there are so few Rules and that we can, at short notice, discuss matters of great importance, which it is not possible to do in another place where there are very much stricter Rules of Procedure and Order.
Unless some sort of arrangement such as that recommended by the Procedure Committee is agreed, we in your Lordships' House may often find ourselves in very great difficulty. If this became the usual practice—I am not suggesting that the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, would do it, or that he meant to do it on this occasion—there might well be an undignified scramble at the exact moment when it was permissible to put down a Motion for a month ahead. Noble Lords might try to pre-empt that day. Two situations might arise. First, there might be a very large number of Motions put down which were not of the greatest possible interest to the greatest number of people in your Lordships' House. Secondly, Motions which would be of great interest and possibly of greater importance to discuss would not be discussed because there would be several Motions in front of them on the Order Paper. There must be some form of discipline, as indeed there always has been. I do not think we can proceed upon the basis of "first come, first served ".
I do not think that any Member of your Lordships' House has ever found that if he wished to raise a matter the Whips of one Party or another, or the House as a whole, has not given him the opportunity to do so. I have never heard of any occasion when any noble Lord found that he could not raise a matter upon which he felt strongly. There can be no suggestion that there would be no time in this House for those who wished to raise matters of hardship such as the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, has often raised. I should have thought that what the Procedure Committee suggested was very reasonable and it would be much better, as the Procedure Committee
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suggests, if we left the House as a whole to decide.
LORD REA: My Lords, may I, shortly, support the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, in his support of the Leader of the House? I would also support and confirm what he says about the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, whose great experience and wisdom we so very much admire. But the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, gave me the impression—I may be wrong—that he thought that in some way the Government, or the Government Whips, were directing your Lordships on how business should be taken. Surely the noble Lord is mistaken in that. All the Government Whips are doing is putting before your Lordships' House a question for your Lordships to decide. I am sure that even the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, does not think that we are so craven that we accept everything which is said by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd—much as we like him—because he is a Government Whip.
3.36 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, perhaps I may say one word, as a former Leader of the House. I entirely agree with the decision of the Procedure Committee that the matter should be left finally to the House. Clearly that is the right procedure. It is in accordance with all our traditions. I would, however, say this with respect to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. I think that the noble Lord has been unlucky. I was not associated with him on this occasion, but I have been on earlier occasions, and it always seemed to me that the noble Lord came in at the end of the list on about the last clay before a Recess, or something of that kind. I remember one occasion when the noble Lord had to postpone his Motion altogether because there were so few people who would have been left in the House that the subject was not likely to receive proper consideration.
Therefore one's feeling, in a House where the rights of individual Peers are so jealously guarded, is that on every occasion of this kind, if there is an unhappy difference of opinion, the Whips should do their utmost to persuade the Peer in question to agree to what they believe to be the general will of the

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House. I am sure that in the great majority of cases he would be quite ready to accept that. In a case where the disagreement continued, I do not think it ought to be resolved by a decision of the Whips, or the Leader of the House. I am sure that it has not been on this occasion; it should be referred back to the House as a whole. That I believe is the only satisfactory method for a House with our traditions.
I would say only one thing more. I understand that, happily, in this case an agreement has been reached which is satisfactory both to the Leader of the House and to the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. If, however, the present move which is being made for an interview with the First Lord of the Admiralty fails to produce results, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, finds it necessary to raise the matter again, as I say I am not concerned on this occasion but, speaking as a Member of the House, I hope he will be given a fair chance of having a good hearing.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I should like to say one thing. Although I do not wish to enter into any argument with the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, I cannot accept entirely his statement about the proceedings which he may have had with the usual channels. The point I think I should stress is that the "usual channels" is not the Government Chief Whip. The usual channels includes the Chief Whip of the Opposition and the Chief Whip of the Liberal Party. None of them makes any decision of this kind without consultation with the others. I suggest—and I think that it has been recognised this afternoon—that this rather loose method of conversation, and of taking into account the opinion of Members on the Cross-Benches, gives us an opportunity to understand what is in the interests of the House.
LORD RUSSELL OF LIVERPOOL: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, says that he does not agree with the version I have given. Will he please say what it is that I have said with which he does not agree? I have stated only what in my opinion are facts.
3.37 p.m.
LORD STRANG: My Lords, as a member of the Committee on Procedure, I rise to support the Motion. It is of course
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right that the House should remain the master of its proceedings. It is right, therefore, that on proper occasions the operation of Standing Orders should be either suspended or dispensed with. That is often done in order to enable, for example, more than one stage of a Bill to be taken on one day. It is also right, I think, that this should be done, on occasions, in the interests of the smooth and fruitful conduct of the Business of this House. It is proper that the rights of private Members should be jealously protected, and this the House will always be willing and anxious to do. But there are occasions when, in the general interest of the conduct of Business, those rights should be overridden; but only with the formal consent of the House, if the House so decides. That is what the second sentence of paragraph 1 of the Report is designed to confirm.
As the noble Earl the Leader of the House has said, this is particularly so in the matter of the organisation of our Wednesday debates. Those debates are one of the characteristic and most valuable features of the proceedings in your Lordships' House. They are occasions when the three political Parties and their Members, and the Members on the Cross-Benches, can raise questions of great national moment, and can secure that these may be comprehensively debated in the light of the vast knowledge and experience which your Lordships can deploy. But for this to be possible, as has been said, such debates sometimes need to be organised well in advance, in the secure knowledge that the date arranged for them will be fully available.
I think that the Leader of the House is right in saying that in the past the most advantageous arrangement of the Business of the House has been secured, through the usual channels, with due recognition of the need to satisfy the legitimate desires of individual Peers to bring matters before your Lordships for debate. For these reasons, I wish to support the Motion before the House. I speak personally only. We on these Cross-Benches are not a political Party; we are independent individuals; and therefore I speak for myself alone.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I have listened to everything that has been said

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and I should like to make a few observations. First of all, this Motion for this purpose is without precedent in the annals of your Lordships' House. Even if we went back several centuries, I do not think that we should find such a Motion invoked against an individual Member of your Lordships' House. If nobody had taken the trouble to put your Lordships on guard about this, it would have been a great misfortune.
In the second place, I should like to say that it has not always been the case that a Peer, who has put his Motion down timeously and is in right, will always get fair treatment. If he is a weak character, the place of his Motion might be moved to an occasion which is of no possible value to him. In the old days in Scotland, where the people were very free in their love affairs and ministers exerted a very strict standard of virtue, a minister would get hold of a girl who was in trouble to ask her who was the father of her baby. She would look around her acquaintances for the weakest man she could find, because he would be more likely to succumb to the pressure exercised by the minister. Some of your Lordships are rather in that case. They can be forced into a position where they would give up their proper places.
Going back in my own experience, I remember making a promise to a group of trade union and Socialist workers in Germany that I would lay before your Lordships' House what I had actually seen in Germany. I got a Wednesday for my Motion. But your Lordships have no idea of the amount of trouble I had—it was shifted from one Wednesday to another. Luckily, I insisted on and got a Wednesday—November 6, 1946. I would point out to your Lordships that if the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, had not been in the right he would not have got where he has got now. If he had not been on really sound ground and properly entitled to his position, I do not believe that he would have got where he has got this afternoon. I would add that this is an important matter for your Lordships' House, because when there is a case of this kind to be brought before the House it should be brought before a full House. That is what gives it its value—and that is what makes the position of the noble Lord's Motion on the Order Paper of material importance
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to the unfortunate subject of Her Majesty who is suffering a wrong outside this House.
That is all that I have to say in reply to what has been said. I do not think that it is quite accurate to state that one can always make arrangements. Very often a noble Lord cannot make arrangements. But I have made my point. I have put your Lordships on their guard, and I have also pointed out what I think is the case—that such a Motion is liable to defeat itself because, if the noble Lord was present when the Motion was moved, the whole of his case is the reason why your Lordships should not assent to the Motion—so that he has the opportunity of debating it, even if your Lordships are going to put his actual Motion back on the Order Paper to a later day. Having said that, I do not think that the sentiments I wish to delete from the Report of the Procedure Committee is material one way or the other. Therefore, with your Lordships' consent, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

RHODESIA: OIL SHIPMENTS EMBARGO
3.45 p.m.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like now to repeat a Statement which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is making in another place. These are the words of the Prime Minister:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a Statement about the latest developments in relation to Rhodesia and Zambia, and in particular the imposition of an embargo on oil shipments to Rhodesia.
"As I have repeatedly stated in the House, Her Majesty's Government were not willing to take action unilaterally on oil supplies; our position was that an oil embargo must be multilateral and likely to be effective. In addition I referred to our very special concern for the safeguarding of oil supplies to Zambia.
"Discussions on both points were in fact being actively pursued, and

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agreement with the United States Government was well advanced before I left for Washington last week. In my first talk with the President on Thursday afternoon we were able to set the seal on these arrangements, and as the House knows a mission headed by my honourable friend the Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations was discussing the organisation of emergency oil supply arrangements with the Government of Zambia.
"When we were clear on both points, the embargo and the airlift, that is by Friday afternoon, it became possible to make the Orders in Council, prohibiting British subjects from supplying oil to Rhodesia and prohibiting the import of oil by Rhodesia. The United States Government welcomes and supports our decision; fully recognises the authority of Her Majesty's Government in this matter and is advising all United States citizens and enterprises to comply with the terms of the Order in Council. We have also taken diplomatic action to seek the co-operation of the other main oil exporting countries.
"I should add that I have heard to-day that the Governments of France and of Italy are co-operating fully in the arrangements to stop the flow of oil.
"Simultaneously, the Minister of State's mission has reached agreement on detailed arrangements to provide Zambia with alternative supplies of oil and on equitable arrangements for the financing of the agreed contingency measures. These consist primarily of an airlift of oil supplies to Zambia—and we have been assured of all appropriate support from the United States to make it effective—with the result that, when the illegal régime in Rhodesia took the expected step of refusing to maintain oil supplies to Zambia, the first British aircraft carrying oil supplies to Zambia was able to fly in yesterday, Sunday, to Lusaka. The airlift will build up rapidly in the next few weeks, but its success will depend on our receiving full co-operation both from Zambia's neighbouring African states and from other countries who are in a position to help with the
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transport of essential supplies to Zambia. It was for this reason that I was particularly glad to hear from the Prime Minister of Canada during my visit to Ottawa yesterday that the Canadian Government will be considering very urgently how far they can supply aircraft to reinforce the British and American effort.
"Sir, I repeat these measures are directed to one purpose only, the return of Rhodesia to constitutional rule, and are essential to that end. They will mean great inconvenience and hardship, but they are essential if we are to get the quick solution which is needed to avoid much greater dislocation and hardship, and if we are to avoid, too, the immeasurable dangers of outside intervention, whatever form they might take—dangers which I was able to sense and assess as a result of continuing exchanges with Commonwealth and other African countries, and as a result of the almost irresistible pressures which are building up for still graver and more far-reaching measures in the United Nations."
That concludes the Statement by the Prime Minister.
3.50 p.m.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Earl the Leader of the House for repeating that very grave Statement. May I ask him three questions? The Prime Minister has constantly said that the test of oil sanctions is their effectiveness. Can he give us an estimate of how effective these oil sanctions will be and of how quickly he thinks they will work? Secondly, are the Government satisfied that oil supplies to Zambia can be maintained and guaranteed? Thirdly, the Prime Minister is reported on the tape as having said that if certain other countries do not cooperate in the oil embargo further measures will have to be taken. May I ask the noble Earl exactly what that phrase means, and what it implies? Does this mean that the Prime Minister is contemplating a blockade of Beira or South Africa?
LORD REA: My Lords, before the noble Earl answers those questions, I should like to put this question to him. The Prime Minister says that these measures are directed, as we all know, to one

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purpose only; namely, the return of Rhodesia to constitutional rule. Could the noble Earl say, or could he ask his right honourable friend to make clear, again what exactly are the terms? Are they the original five points, or any further points, or any fewer points? In any case, should they not be repeated often, so that they reach the ears of loyal Rhodesians?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for receiving this grave Statement in that way. Perhaps I may deal first with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rea. I do not think that to-day the Prime Minister will be adding anything further to what he said on the subject of a basis for return to constitutional rule. He spoke at considerable length last Friday week in another place, and I do not think he will be adding anything further to-day on that aspect. I agree with the noble Lord that this point of view needs to be continually re-emphasised, and no doubt it will be developed as time goes on.
May I now deal with the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington? He asked me whether I feel that these measures will be effective. I am myself sure that they will be ultimately effective, but I should not like to put an estimate on the time it will take. I notice that the Daily Mail to-day—and the Daily Mail cannot be accused of being particularly favourable to the Government—seems satisfied that this is the kind of measure that will be effective.
As regards the supply of oil to Zambia, the noble Lord asked me whether I am satisfied that it will be possible to supply Zambia. I am certainly hopeful that it will be possible to supply Zambia adequately; but how great the cost will be is something that one would not like to estimate at this time.
Finally, the noble Lord asked me a question relative to something which I gather has just appeared on the tape about possible future steps. I cannot indicate any future steps to-day. I should not like to give the impression that the Government reach a certain point, and do not look beyond, but I cannot begin to-day to indicate future measures.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, perhaps I might ask one further question.
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I do not think the last answer given by the noble Earl is very satisfactory. Presumably, the noble Earl is in the confidence of the Prime Minister, and he is in the Cabinet. Surely he must know what the Prime Minister means by this sort of statement; and, presumably, the Prime Minister would not have said it unless he wanted it to be fairly clearly known what he meant. All I am asking is what it means.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I hope that I enjoy a reasonable measure of the Prime Minister's confidence. The noble Lord will realise that I have not had much opportunity of speaking to the Prime Minister, though I have seen him this morning and I know something of what is in his mind. But if he does not wish to say any more about any contingency planning going on, then it would hardly be for me to go further than he wishes me to go.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, the right honourable gentleman the Prime Minister has repeatedly said that he is opposed to the use of force. The use of force may involve the use of a blockade. Cannot the noble Earl say that a blockade is still excluded? I would ask him if he would re-emphasise that statement at the present time, in view of what has appeared on the tape. May I also ask one further question? Is the noble Earl aware that on November 23 the Prime Minister said, in dealing with the oil embargo, that he would
"need a lot of satisfying on the technical and economic consequences of this embargo, if this is applicable and effective."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. Commons, Vol. 721 (No. 673), col. 253. 23 /11 /65]—
and then he was interrupted. The Statement we have just heard (and we are grateful to the noble Earl for reading it) does not deal at all with the technical and economic consequences of the embargo. Presumably, the Prime Minister is satisfied about them. May we have some time soon a further statement, or indeed a White Paper, giving the Government's estimate of the economic consequences, so that we also might perhaps be satisfied, as he appears to have been?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I will certainly take note of anything suggested by the noble and learned Viscount. However, I think he is testing

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me rather high if he expects me to comment impromptu on something which has just appeared on the tape. One cannot come to this House equipped to deal with something which has just appeared on the tape; and, quite frankly, I think it would be astonishing if the Prime Minister wished me, or if the House wished me, to add to this Statement something about future steps. But I will repeat, clearly and definitely, that the Government have no intention of using force in any way. I have already given that pledge several times in this House, and will give it again.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: My Lords, would the noble Earl the Leader of the House answer one question, dealing with something not on the tape, but with the Prime Minister's visit to Washington? The noble Earl emphasised the co-operation of the United States in this, and as they are the largest oil supplier, that must be of enormous importance. But is it or is it not a fact (this is a point raised by my noble friend Lord Coleraine in an earlier discussion) that without special legislation the President of the United States has no power to order any United States individual or oil company not to trade in oil?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I think that that may well be so. I looked into the point when it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Coleraine, and although his version of history, as it happens, did not entirely harmonise with the information I was given, I think that is broadly the position. But the United States are clearly bringing strong influence to bear on the oil companies.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I do not want to embarrass the noble Earl about tape reports of what the Prime Minister has said, because I realise that the Prime Minister has only just returned from Canada and the noble Earl has not had much opportunity of having a conversation with him. But it is really unsatisfactory if the Prime Minister says something in Washington (I am not sure where it was said) which is then reported on the tape, and it goes much further than what he is prepared to say to the House. It leaves the House in a difficult situation. I hope the noble Earl realises this.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am afraid I did not quite follow the noble Lord's account of what was said on the tape. As I understood it, the Prime Minister said that if these measures were not sufficient, then other measures would come under consideration.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, what the Prime Minister said (I am open to correction) was that if certain other countries do not co-operate in the oil embargo, further methods will have to be taken. I asked the noble Earl: what other measures; and what does the Prime Minister mean? The noble Earl says that he has not had much opportunity of speaking to the Prime Minister, and I appreciate that. But all I am saying to him is that it is an unsatisfactory situation when the Prime Minister goes much further in the United States, or Canada, or wherever it was, than he is prepared to go in the House.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I gather that the Prime Minister did not make these remarks in Canada or America. I gather that he has just made them.
LORD CARRINGTON: That makes it that much worse, if the Prime Minister is prepared to state something outside this House and is not prepared to tell us inside.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I think the noble Lord, who is fairness itself, is making a great deal of something which hardly seems to be in front of us. I gather that the noble Lord has seen something on the tape which I suppose relates to something the Prime Minister said a few minutes ago.
LORD CARRINGTON: No.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: Then I wonder why it is on the tape now. Surely this is getting rather confused. The Prime Minister has made certain observations, which were fully reported in the papers, about what would occur if there was what he called a leakage and seepage. That is not something which has just appeared on the tape. It is in his statement. He has made it plain what he would have to do in the event of leakage and seepage. Frankly, there is nothing more that I can add this afternoon.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, I want to get away from this Statement. I want to get one thing clear, because I think it is important that it should be made clear, and that is the question whether or not a blockade is excluded. I would ask the noble Earl—perhaps he cannot do it to-day—to say whether or not it is contemplated that, in certain circumstances, a blockade will be imposed, because in considering these oil sanctions it is very material to know what is in mind, if anything, with regard to that. If that has been considered, and the possibility of it is excluded, then it is important that that should be known, too.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot proceed on a series of guaranteed exclusions. I understand that the Prime Minister himself, when this question was raised—and, if I may say so, I do not think we are getting into a very satisfactory relationship with another place if we have to comment on reported statements that have been made elsewhere while I am actually on my feet; I cannot think that that is the best way of doing business, and that is what we are dealing with now—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: May I finish?
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: It was made in Washington, not in another place.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: May I finish? I think we are getting into rather an unsatisfactory condition at the moment, whether or not through my fault. At any rate, I can only inform the noble Viscount that I believe the Prime Minister has described that class of question—the one the noble Viscount has put—as hypothetical, and I cannot improve on that language this afternoon.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that many of us will agree that the immensely important questions raised by oil sanctions cannot conceivably be debated by question and answer this afternoon? I think the noble Earl referred in his original Statement to an Order in Council that has already been made. If that is an Order under
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the recent Act, will he confirm that that Order will require an Affirmative Resolution of both Houses; and can he say when it will come before either House for consideration?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, it will in fact be brought before both Houses for Affirmative confirmation, but the question of when it will be brought is under consideration in both Houses through the usual channels.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, the Minister, on another point in his Statement, spoke about full American co-operation. Can he say that that does not include the use of American aircraft or American air crews for the airlift?—because that would be bringing in a third party.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I cannot give any guarantees as to the form that American co-operation will ultimately take. I cannot exclude anything of that kind in the future.
LORD GRIMSTON OF WESTBURY: My Lords, the noble Earl has repeated a pledge which he gave to this House the other day that force would not be used in any offensive way and which is at variance with what the Prime Minister said in another place. If I may say so, this seems to me to be more double talk. Could he explain what he means by using force inoffensively?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I am criticised by quite a number of noble Lords because I allow these discussions to go on rather longer than we should without suggesting that we draw to a close. I cannot think that that particular discussion arises this afternoon.

DEPUTY CHAIRMEN OF COMMITTEES
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Grenfell and the Baroness Wootton of Abinger be added to the panel of Lords appointed to act as Deputy Chairmen of Committees for this Session.—(The Earl of Longford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

MEAT INDUSTRY (SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH LEVY) (REVOCATION) ORDER 1966
4.4 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): My Lords, I beg to move that the Meat Industry (Scientific Research Levy) (Revocation) Order 1966, be approved. I must begin by making it clear that this Order does not represent a change of policy on the collection of funds for meat research; the idea of a contribution from the industry for research remains basic. All that is intended is to discontinue what has proved an unsuitable method of collecting that contribution. The Order which it is proposed to repeal came into force in April, 1963. It linked the collection of the levy to the Fatstock Guarantee Scheme; a small payment was added to the buyer's bill, and double the amount was collected from the seller out of the guarantee payment.
In the conditions of 1963 this method of collection worked fairly well, because there was then a provisional rate of guarantee announced in advance and very seldom altered. This advance announcement allowed the collection of the levy to be suspended in weeks when the provisional rate was nil. A change was, however, made in the guarantee arrangements in the Annual Review of 1964. Now the guarantee payment is calculated retrospectively by reference to the average of the actual market prices in the week in question. The system also includes provision for an end-of-year payment if the guarantee for the year had not been met.
It was thought that this might have provided a means of collecting the producer's share of the levy due for weeks in which there had been no guarantee payment, but in fact, because of a very large increase in market prices, no end-of-year payment was due at the end of the fatstock year, 1964–65. As collections from buyers had had to continue, since it was not possible to tell at the beginning of a week whether there was to be a guarantee payment or not, this meant that money collected from buyers remained in the hands of sellers and did not reach the Agricultural Research Council for use on research.
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After further experience of this unsatisfactory system in the course of the current year, we are convinced that the Order cannot be made to work efficiently and equitably, and that the proper course is to repeal the Order and to turn to a different method of collecting the levy. We have made provision in the Agriculture Bill which is under consideration in another place, so that charges may be imposed or payments made by the Meat and Livestock Commission in respect of meat research by the Agricultural Research Council. This will, of course, mean that for a short time no money will be collected from the industry for meat research, but the total sum collected will not be altered, and we shall end up with a much better method of collection.
It would clearly be right to take some appropriate action about the money for the levy which was wrongly collected from buyers last year and this year in weeks in which it turned out that, no guarantee was payable. The sum involved looks like being a little under £25,000. Such a sum clearly ought to be devoted to meat research, and we propose that, as a final settlement of this matter, a sum equivalent to the final sum wrongly collected from buyers should be paid out of public funds to the Agricultural Research Council to be devoted to meat research. In this way, the project for which the money was collected will receive the benefit and the total obligation of the industry will be reduced by the amount it has contributed. I ought perhaps to add that a meeting was held with the main interests concerned, at which it was agreed that the action we are proposing to take was a reasonable way of dealing with the situation. Written proposals to repeal the Order were also circulated, and no adverse comments have been received.
I think I should mention two other points. First, the provisions of the Agriculture Bill will apply only to Great Britain. Different action will be required in Northern Ireland, and I understand that the Minister of Agriculture in Northern Ireland will announce what he proposes as soon as possible. Secondly, the present Order applies, as far as Great Britain is concerned, only to cattle and sheep. The Pig Industry Development Authority have made a voluntary undertaking to contribute to the Agricultural

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Research Council an annual sum for meat research equivalent to that which would have been produced had pigs been subject to the levy. My right honourable friends the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for Scotland propose to release the Pig Industry Development Authority from this undertaking if and when the draft Order now before the House is made. The new arrangements in the Agriculture Bill will, of course, cover pigs as well as cattle and sheep.
I think I may confidently commend this repealing Order to your Lordships. Because the guarantee system has been changed, the system of collecting the levy, which when it was originally worked out seemed simple and practical, is no longer so and can no longer be operated without great difficulties and inequities. A new scheme of collection is clearly required and, as I have said, new legislation is before Parliament which will permit a more satisfactory scheme to be prepared, based on a thorough study of all the problems involved.
Moved, That the Draft Meat Industry (Scientific Research Levy) (Revocation) Order 1966, laid before the House on December 1, be approved.—(Lord Champion.)
EARL FERRERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Champion for having explained this Order in such detail because it is, of course, a complicated one. I think the main conclusion to be drawn from this is that the principle of collecting money for meat research has not been altered; it is merely the method by which it is to be collected which has been altered, and that is really what this Order deals with. It is not very frequently that one witnesses the spectacle of the Minister coming down to the House and saying, "The scheme that my Department has worked out has been proved to work out incorrectly and has not been satisfactory, and therefore we present a new one which we hope will be more successful." I do not say that in any carping way, because I think it is a gratifying experience to be told that Her Majesty's Government, of whichever Party it is composed, can occasionally make mistakes in the drafting of Orders and Bills and are prepared to come down with a fresh one when it is
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discovered that the existing scheme does not work. I sincerely hope the new scheme will work successfully.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, as one who has been engaged in the meat industry for many years I wonder if I might lend my modest support to the Order. I feel there is a real principle involved here. As the noble Lord has just pointed out, I think the new system will be a great improvement on the other, but the principle I have in mind is that when something is done for the benefit of the community as a whole then it should be the community which bears the cost. This has applied in the past in so far as various sections of the trade have had to pay their levy towards research. In the ultimate that research is not just for their benefit; it is for the benefit of the community as a whole.
If I might go farther, I would point out that in the Bill which dealt with meat inspection the payment of levies for inspection fell upon the trade itself. Inspection is in the interests of the community, to ensure that they do not get diseased meat, and I have always believed that the right principle was that the community and not the trade should bear the cost. I feel that this Order is to some extent in line with that; and if instead of its being in the form of levy which is now imposed it is going to be a payment through the new Commission, which is envisaged in the present Bill going through another place, then that indeed will be a great improvement on the present position. Therefore, while it may be only half way to the principle that I have in mind, I feel that in the end it will at least look much more reasonable and much more fair than the system which was, I think, brought in by the Conservative Government—in which case it is probably the fact that a Labour Government are putting right what a Conservative Government did wrongly.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, my noble friend discussed the principle involved, and it is true that there will be alterations in the Agriculture Bill from the method of collection which was decided in 1963, but I rather think he will again have to put his point when the Agriculture Bill comes before this House if he wants to maintain the

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principle that the public and not the industry must pay. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said he was glad that a Minister had come to the House and admitted that a scheme which had been prepared by a Department had not worked out very well. Of course the simple fact is that the scheme was prepared by the 1963 Government, which certainly was not ours. It is a scheme which would have worked admirably if the Ministry in 1964, which was the noble Earl's Ministry, had not put into effect a new system of guarantee payments without considering the side effects. It was one of the side effects of that scheme that the scheme of 1963 was rendered unworkable by a decision taken following the Annual Price Review of 1964. I do not make a great point of this, but it is just one of those things which can happen when great changes are made. Alterations have to be made subsequently to put right what, in this case, was purely a side effect. I hope that your Lordships will now agree to this Order.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ASSESSMENT OF DISABLEMENT
4.17 p.m.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance in another place. Miss Margaret Herbison said:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the report of the Committee on the Assessment of Disablement. The Report is being published to-day as a Command Paper and copies will be available presently in the Vote Office.
"Following an all-Party Motion my predecessor appointed in October, 1964, an independent Committee under the chairmanship of Lord McCorquodale of Newton. The Committee were asked to consider whether the Schedules of certain specified injuries under the war pensions and industrial injuries schemes required alteration, and whether there was a case for any special provision in respect of amputation as such, either generally or in relation to advancing age.
"On behalf of the Government I wish to thank Lord McCorquodale and his colleagues very warmly for their detailed and expert examination, which has resulted in a most valuable Report.
"I am glad to be able to tell the House that the Committee firmly endorse the general structure of compensation under both schemes. They have recommended only two changes in the Schedules. First, that very severe amputations which involve taking away not only an arm or a leg but part of the shoulder or buttock as well, should be specifically included at the 100 per cent. level, at which such amputations already receive unscheduled assessments. Secondly, that the present mid-thigh assessment point for a leg amputation should be replaced by one at the knee, with a consequent increase from 60 to 70 per cent. in the scheduled assessment for amputation above the knee up to mid-thigh. The Committee felt that the Schedules should reflect the importance now attached to the knee joint in the fitting and functioning of an artificial limb by rounding up the assessment of those who have lost their knee and not by reducing the assessment of those who have kept it; but they emphasised that their recommendation does not imply any disturbance in the general relativities of compensation.
"I have decided to accept both these recommendations. The best estimate I can make is that getting on for 4,000 war pensioners and perhaps 500 industrial disablement pensioners will receive higher assessments.
"On the second part of their terms of reference the Committee found no evidence to show that amputation in itself constituted a greater relative burden or handicap than other forms of disablement assessed at the same levels for the purpose of the basic disablement pension, and no grounds for any special provision for amputation either generally or in relation to advancing age. They have, however, recommended that a new allowance should be introduced for those pensioners whose disablement, whether due to amputation or other disabilities is of such exceptional severity that they are receiving constant attendance allowance at a rate above

913
the normal maximum or would be receiving it but for the fact that they are in hospital. I am happy also to accept this recommendation. The new allowance will be at the rate of £3 a week. While, again, I cannot tell the House precisely how many pensioners are likely to be affected, since many of those who may be eligible are in hospital and will have to be medically examined, I estimate that up to a thousand war pensioners may benefit from the new allowance and a similar number of industrial injury pensioners.
"My Department will take steps to identify and review all the cases who may be affected by these improvements; no application will be necessary. As the House will appreciate, this process will take some time but I hope it will be possible for most of the new awards which depend upon amendment of the Royal Warrant to be made by the end of March. As regards the industrial injuries scheme, legislation will be necessary. I hope to be able to include the necessary provision in legislation which will be coming before the House this Session.
"The estimated cost of these improvements is of the order of £½ million in a full year."
LORD DRUMALBYN: My Lords, may I first thank the noble Lord for that Statement? Secondly, may I—and I am sure I speak on behalf of all your Lordships—join in the thanks and appreciations expressed by the noble Lord to my noble friend Lord McCorquodale of Newton and his colleagues for the very detailed work that has been done in this inquiry? I am sure we shall all welcome the two improvements that are made in the Schedules, and the new allowances. But I think that, before we make any further comments, we should like to study the Report, for this is a very detailed and meticulous area of pensions and compensation, and also one which arouses very deep feelings, not only among those who are disabled, but among, for example, the war pensions committees up and down the country. So I feel that we owe it to them to make a full study of the Report before we comment.
LORD McCORQUODALE OF NEWTON: My Lords, I am very much
914
obliged to your Lordships, and to those in another place, to whom I have just been listening, for the very kind remarks about the work of my distinguished colleagues and myself in this matter. I would say that we are still more pleased by the Government's ready acceptance of our proposals, which I hope will at least do something further to ease the lot of these most deserving pensioners.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, I am grateful to the two noble Lords for what they have said.

PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL
House in Committee (according to Order.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment: Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of December 13), Bill read 3ª, and passed.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION AND BENEFIT (AMENDMENT) BILL
4.23 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 Bowles.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AILWYN in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Supplementation of workmen's compensation]:
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall be agreed to?
LORD DRUMALBYN: I should like to say a word on this clause because, although the noble Lord, Lord Bowles, was extremely good in answering a great many questions I put to him on Second Reading, there was one, in which I was particularly interested, which he deferred answering. That is on the question of the principles on which the reassessment of what are called the new partials—that is those who are partially disabled and who at the present time are receiving less than the maximum—will be made.

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The noble Lord has been kind enough to write me a letter on this subject (and I would express my appreciation of that) in which he says that it is the intention that the compensation will be based on a comparison over a period of the standards of remuneration in the pre-accident and post-accident jobs. And he goes on to say that it is proposed to read into the scheme a provision for taking account of loss of prospects of advancement. I am sure that this was absolutely right and proper. The difficulty the Committee are in here is that the way in which this particular provision is to be carried out is to be laid down subsequently in regulations. But, as we all know, when the regulations come along, we can either accept the lot or throw them out: we cannot amend them. Therefore, I felt it was important that the House should have this information before it passed this stage of the Bill. I understand, as the noble Lord said on the Second Reading, that it is proposed that the administration of this particular supplementation should be brought into line with the administration of the special hardship allowance, which of course is not at present open to those on workmen's compensation; nor will it be, without further legislation in future. The system, I understand, is to be similar to that.
There is one point that I would make, arising out of the noble Lord's letter to me. He says in the letter that one of the difficulties in the past has been that there has been too great flexibility about workmen's compensation payments; they have been liable to fluctuate too much, and therefore the Government have decided that rates will be fixed and that they shall remain unchanged. The actual letter says:
"The allowance once awarded will remain unchanged other than to meet exceptional circumstances."
My point is simply that, in my own experience, wherever there arises any question of defining "exceptional circumstances", "exceptional change in circumstances", or "unforeseen change in circumstances", the tendency is that they have to be frightfully exceptional and frightfully unforeseen before anything is done at all.
916
All I would suggest to the Government is that, in drawing up these regulations, they should not jump out of the frying pan into the fire; they should not go from supplementation which was too flexible to something which cannot be changed at all except in the most remote and unheard of circumstances. I hope that they will retain some flexibility in this scheme, even although I entirely approve of the general plan that they are introducing of getting much more regularity, much more certainty, about these allowances, and indeed keeping them at a fairly steady rate which can be raised automatically at the time when changes are made in industrial injuries benefits.
LORD BOWLES: My Lords, may I just thank the noble Lord for what he has said? I think the answer to this question is this. He having been a Minister of Pensions and National Insurance himself will quite well know that the Ministry really takes great notice of what is said in either House of Parliament. I think that might be of some comfort to him. At least so far as I have got any possible chance of influencing anybody, I will do what I possibly can. But as I understood the position when I was studying it last week, I rather got the impression that the Board has wide powers, which is one of the joys of this scheme, and it takes away harsh interpretation of the Workmen's Compensation Acts by the courts. I hope that that will satisfy the noble Lord.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed:
Bill reported without amendment; Report received.
Then, Standing Order No. 41 having been suspended (pursuant to the Resolution of December 13), Bill read 3ª, and passed.

RURAL WATER SUPPLIES AND SEWERAGE BILL
Read 3ª (according to Order), and passed.

HOUSING (SLUM CLEARANCE COMPENSATION) BILL
4.34 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the Consideration of the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendments.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendments be now considered. It may be for the convenience of the House if I move this Motion formally, so that the main discussion may be taken on the next Motion which I propose to move, That the House doth not insist on the Amendments to which the Commons have disagreed. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Commons Reason for disagreeing to the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(Lord Mitchison.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
[The references are to Bill (11) as first printed for the House of Lords. The Commons Reason is printed in italics]
LORDS AMENDMENTS
Clause 1, page 1, leave out lines 10 to 16 and insert (" to any such order made before 13th December 1970,")
line 21, leave out subsection (2).
The Commons disagreed to these Amendments for the following Reason:
Because they involve a charge on public funds and affect rates levied by local authorities, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason trusting the above Reason may he deemed sufficient.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I beg to move that the House doth not insist on the Amendments to which the Commons have disagreed. Your Lordships will remember that this Bill was to continue some special relief which had been given to a class of owner-occupiers who bought houses which were thereafter condemned, and who bought them during the period between the end of the war and the resumption of the slum clearance campaign in 1955. The relief originally offered, which was by way of an increase in the compensation allowed on the compulsory purchase or demolition
918
or closing of their houses, was that they should get market value instead of the normal compensation, site value.
The original Act of 1956, subsequently included in a consolidating measure in 1957, provided for that relief to be given to those whose houses were dealt with in this way up to the end of a period of ten years after the resumption of the slum clearance campaign. The period of ten years has in fact now expired by a day or two, and the question that arose on this Bill, and subsequently on this Amendment, was how far it should be continued. The proposal in the Bill itself was that it should be continued, except in the case of those who had occupied their houses for fifteen years or more. The proposal in the Amendment was that it should be continued without that Amendment.
The matter was argued at some length and most carefully, and the case for continuing it indefinitely, that is to say the case for the Amendment, was nut with a lucidity and a fairness which certainly give me no cause for anything but admiration, the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and the noble Lord, Lord St. Helens, who supported him. I put, as best I could, the case for disagreeing with the Amendment. It was carried on a Division, and the Bill was therefore returned to another place, who have now produced as their Reason for disagreeing with it what amounts to a claim for privilege. In the matter of money, the proposal in the Bill as it is would cost, so far as one can estimate (and these figures are quite rough), about £3 million; the cost with the Amendment would be about £8 million. The main impact of both these sums would be on the rates. There would be a corresponding, but smaller, burden caused by the operation of the rate-deficiency grant.
That, I think, is all one can say about the matter. I think that there is no deep question of principle. There is, of course, the question of what one feels is fair. If nothing had been done, this special compensation would have lapsed entirely, as it has lapsed. The question is whether, and to what extent, it should be continued. I repeat, the matter was fairly put. I hope that I put it fairly; I am sure that the two noble Lords who spoke on the other side did. Now the Amendments have been returned to us on a question of cost—the question of the money

919
involved. In these cases, as your Lordships know, no other Reasons are given. I therefore beg to move, that this House doth not insist on the Amendments to which the Commons have disagreed. I ought perhaps to add that the second Amendment is purely consequential.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the Amendments to which the Commons have disagreed. (Lord Mitchison.)
4.40 p.m.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends Lord Newton and Lord St. Helens may I say how much I know they would appreciate the kind words which the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, used in regard to their exposition of the case from these Benches, and to express on their behalf apologies for their inability to be here to-day.
The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, put the matter this afternoon with his customary blandness and lucidity, but I cannot agree with him that it is a matter as simple as deciding where to draw the line. The fact remains that a considerable injustice is going to be done to those unfortunate owner-occupiers—and I was glad to know that he used the phrase "owner-occupiers" and not "landlords", because in the main it is owner-occupiers which whom we are dealing to-day. We are concerned with people who bought sub-standard houses in the poorer areas of the cities of England during the period from 1939, at the beginning of the war (not at the end of the war, as the noble Lord suggested), to 1955, confident that they could make a go of it by carrying out improvements, often of an expensive nature, and turning what was poor property into cosy homes. And now they find that, in order that local authorities may proceed with their slum clearance programmes, they are to be turned out of these properties and are to be paid only the site value, whereas others who bought similar properties at a more recent date will be paid market value. These people are to be the victims of what is in other respects a beneficient social service—slum clearance.
The measure of the injustice is the amount of money involved, which can be only an estimate—namely, about £8 million. If it is a saving to the Exchequer of
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£8 million, or a saving of that sum to the Exchequer and the local authorities combined, that is the precise measure of the injustice to these unfortunate individuals. They are having to subsidise the slum clearance programme out of their very slender resources to the extent of something like £8 million. Who are these people? They are sensible, decent, worthy citizens who tried to make a home for themselves in difficult circumstances: during the war, when a great deal of property was bombed and destroyed, and in the immediate post-war decade, when houses were in even shorter supply than they are to-day and when no start had been made in an organised slum clearance programme.
Without the Amendments the Bill will hurt particularly those older people at the 1939 end of the situation, who have been in their houses longer. Many of them are old-age pensioners, who have been unable to amass the necessary resources to buy alternative accommodation at current prices, and who are now to be turned out of their nice homes, receiving nothing more than site value. And this in order to save the local authorities and the Exchequer a certain amount of money!
I am sorry the noble Lord has not seen fit to deal more with the human side of what is involved. I am sure the noble Lord, in his conscientious way, will have studied the debates in another place on the Bill, and it is interesting to see the specific examples which were mentioned. I know that I am prohibited by convention from quoting the speeches of honourable Members in another place, but it is worth reading the individual cases which were cited and of the real hardship which will be caused. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that not one single supporter of the Government in another place rose to speak in support of his own Government's position in this matter. Indeed, on this particular matter they did not do so at all while the Bill was going through its various stages in another place. It is also interesting to see that, in the debate on the Amendment, the Liberals in another place spoke strongly in favour of our Amendment, as indeed did noble Lords who spoke from the Liberal Benches in your Lordships' House.

921
The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, referred to the form of the Commons Reason for disagreeing with our Amendments, but I think I should make plain that this is only a matter of form. When Lords Amendments necessitate an assertion of the Commons privilege, the disagreement is made on the grounds of privilege alone. Therefore, it should not be thought to be a case of another place turning aside our Amendments solely on the grounds of finance. It is the standard form, and one has only to look at the debate in another place to see how deep and sincere were the feelings which were aroused there by the sincerity and the justification of our Amendment. I am deeply sorry to learn from the noble Lord to-day that Her Majesty's Government are unmoved in face of the pleas both by your Lordships and by Members of another place, and that they are not prepared to accept the Amendment as sent back to another place, or some suitable modification of it. They claim to be a humanitarian Government, a Government which stands for the rights of ordinary decent individuals, but when it comes to doing anything for those small owner-occupiers in the heart of our great cities—old-age pensioners, the infirm, decent ordinary folk—they themselves are as stony-hearted as they claim others to be who do not have the same political minds as they.
It now remains for noble Lords to consider whether they should accept the proposition of Lord Mitchison. As I have attempted to explain, the Commons Reason is cast in a common form. It does not preclude us from debating the issue as widely as we wish, but we should not fall into the error of thinking that the Reason as given is the only reason we should fall back on and debate. We must also remember the many difficulties of the present Government at this moment. It is questionable whether we should be helping the cause of these unfortunate people, or indeed helping the Government of the country in their great difficulties, if we were to make this matter the subject of a major clash between the two Houses. It is therefore with deep regret and sorrow that I have advised my noble friends not to divide the House on this occasion but to accept, with extreme reluctance, the flimsy reasons put
922
forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, who I know from his own humanitarian instincts must have deeply regretted the stand which he, as a member of Her Majesty's Government, has had to take on this matter.
LORD MITCHISON: Not in the least, my Lords—I am rather glad to take the stand. I am rescuing a number of owner-occupiers from the fate they would have met had the original intentions of the Tory Party been carried out. This was exceptional relief given to people for a limited period. If nothing whatever had been done to rescue them from the malevolence of the Conservative Party, they would not now be getting that exceptional relief. What this Government are doing is to rescue them.
The only question raised in this Amendment is how many of them, and the extent to which they should be rescued at the expense of the ratepayers and the taxpayers. The Government, for the reasons which I expressed on Second Reading of this Bill and in the discussion of this Amendment, have arrived at what they think is a fair figure. It is true that it is much kinder to them than the original Conservative Bill was; it is true that it is much kinder to them than at the time were the Government of which the noble Lord who has just spoken was such a distinguished member. But we have to rescue them from that Government. I am glad that the noble Lord so fully recognises the need for doing it. He is rescuing these people from the malevolence of his own Party. He is rescuing them from the evil intentions of those distinguished "old warriors", if I may so describe them, Mr. Duncan Sandys and Mr. Enoch Powell, who both at the time gave reasons for limiting the special compensation which was being given to these cases.
May I take the opportunity of saying that, of course, I meant the beginning of the war, although I inadvertently said the end I apologise for what was a slip of the tongue, but no more. But the substance of the matter—I am sorry to have to repeat this again, and the reason why we had to do this; I thought that noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, himself, had understood it—is simply the original Tory Act. Looking back now, I think it was a very harsh and unfair piece of legislation,

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but the last Government passed it and it is from that Act that we are rescuing these people now. It really amuses me to hear the noble Lord get up and shed crocodile tears, if he does not mind my using the phrase—it is not meant offensively against him personally; I can assure him of that—over the terrible lot that fell upon these people, which is the result of what his own Government did, the Government of which he was a member.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ABANDONED CARS AND DUMPED RUBBISH
4.51 p.m.
LORD HAWKE LORD HAWKE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made towards securing that the English countryside is cleared and kept clear of abandoned motor cars and other dumped rubbish. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this represents my annual assault on the problem of the clearing-up of the countryside. On January 23, 1964, I raised the question first and outlined the problem as I saw it in considerable detail. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, who was the junior Minister at the time, replied for the Government. He admitted that the problem existed. He thought, indeed, that it might become greater, because of the increased prosperity of the country and the increased ownership of property of various kinds. He said that an inter-departmental working party had been set up to consider the matter in May, 1963, but he considered that motor vehicles were a separate problem from the other problem of bulky litter, and that the local authorities were already tackling the question of motor vehicles. He said that the general question of bulky litter outside the ordinary refuse collection would be considered when the working party reported.
On May 13 of that year, I put down a Starred Question, to find out whether the working party had reported, and the answer was, "Not yet". So on November 26, 1964, I raised the matter again in an Unstarred Question, to find out whether the working party had reported, and I was supported among others by my noble friend Lord
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Mancroft, who detailed some dark deeds done down Montagu Square way. I elicited the fact that the working party had not yet completed its investigations, though in the previous July a draft circular had been sent round to the local authorities and such people as scrap dealers. They commented, and on October 22, 1964, a further draft went round, which it was hoped might be a finalised draft.
Apparently, the final circular went out dated February 11, 1965, and the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, was kind enough to send me a copy of it. It was a very excellent circular indeed, as it must be, because it contained almost a précis of our debate of the previous January on the subject, but it dealt only with old motor cars. I would commend to your Lordships' attention the time factor. This was a working party which was appointed in May, 1963, and they sent out a circular on one-half of their job in February, 1965. This seems to me to be a typical example of government by committee which pertains in Britain to-day, and the reason why things are so difficult to get moving is because of the appalling delays of this type of system. I do not know whether there has been another circular regarding the other bulky waste, but the committee's terms of reference, as I understand it, were certainly to deal with other bulky waste as well as motor cars.
There are two points in the circular on motor cars which I think are very apposite, and I should like to refer to them. First of all, in paragraph 10, the working party say:
"To be effective, action should be taken by all refuse disposal authorities."
I should also like to read out the whole of sub-paragraph (3) of paragraph 11:
"Section 74 of the Public Health Act 1936 empowers local authorities to make a charge, if they think fit, for accepting a motor car for disposal; but private owners will be most likely to make use of the disposal arrangements if the service to them is free. Old cars are usually abandoned by people who are no longer able or willing to incur any further expense on them and even a nominal charge may prove to be a deterrent."
I agree wholeheartedly with that, because it is a paraphrase of my speech on the subject.
I had confirmation of this even yesterday, when talking to a young relative of

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mine who happened to have a "runner" which had ceased to be a runner and who was considering how to dispose of it. Not for him, if possible, the resort to the scrap dealer who charged, but some quiet corner round his locality, which, needless to say, I told him he must not do. That is a typical example of the impecunious youth who has not got the £2, £3, £4 or £5 for disposing of an "old crock".
In the light of what I read out from that circular, I think the charge of £2 per car for disposal by the Westminster City Council, which I read about in the Press, is a mistake. It will drive owners to go outside the boundaries and dump their cars elsewhere, because, as the circular so rightly says, the system must be universal and free. Obviously, to be able to afford the very expensive crushing machines which your Lordships will remember seeing in the film Goldfinger, more than one local authority will have to share the expenses.
This debate is about all bulky waste —anything, in fact, which is not acceptable in the routine refuse collection. The circular, which was accepted by all local authorities, shows what they are trying to do about motor cars, or what Whitehall thinks they ought to be doing about motor cars, but we are in the dark as to what they are actually doing. At the same time, it throws no light at all on what is happening to the other stuff, and I look forward to having a Government reply on this point.
A private individual can get an impression of only a very small part of England, but in my immediate locality I think the position is a trifle better than it was a year ago. On visiting the favourite dumping grounds around Crawley New Town, mattresses seem rather scarce and furniture is not so ubiquitous as it was. But there seems to be a residue of small stuff, such as drums, large tins, discarded old silencers and portions of motor cars; while, of course, the hot-water cylinder that sprung a leak always finds its way into a hedgerow in the country. Other noble Lords may be able to provide evidence from their own experiences.
I have just been handed a cutting from the Yorkshire Post dated December 13, 1965, in which it says:
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"The county surveyor of Westmorland, in his annual report, reported that during the recent holiday season ten tons of wastepaper, tins and bottles were collected for every mile in one cleaning operation on the A.6 north of Kendal".
I am not thinking primarily of wastepaper, tins and bottles, because I regard those as the smaller waste; nevertheless when it comes to disfiguring the countryside they are certainly just as important as other waste.
In my locality, the rural authority will eventually have a clean-up, I suppose, as they do periodically, but labour is scarce and finance is a problem—and this brings me to another point. In all our discussions I have always stressed the view that the disposal of bulky waste was largely a financial problem. Given the money, the local authority could provide a service good enough to make it not worth while to dump. If there is not a good enough service in the towns, the burden will fall on the rural authority to clear up the hedgerows, which is unfair and is inefficient, because it means double handling—first to dump and then to "undump". One hears that central Government relief for the rates is impending. When this financial settlement is made, will Her Majesty's Government look into the question of providing some relief to the rural authorities to enable them to finance a proper system for clearing their areas of waste, most of which is suspected to emanate from the towns? I think this is fair. The town dweller likes to drive out into the clean countryside; and, as I say, one suspects that much of the mess is created by those from the towns. A uniform burden on the taxpayer to keep the countryside clean would seem more equitable than one on the comparatively smaller number of rural ratepayers.
In conclusion, may I say that I am glad that the problem of the worn-out motor vehicle is at last sinking in here and there, but I remain to be convinced that it is treated universally seriously. However, I do not see great comfort in the efforts so far made to deal with the other forms of bulky waste, and I hope the noble Lord who is to reply will be able to give me more reassurance on that point.
5.4 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I have always supported my noble friend on the

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previous occasions when he has raised this matter, and I am duty bound, of course, to support him again to-day. I complain very slightly, if I may, about the wording of his Question, because he talks about "the English countryside ". My Lords, it is the English town-side as well. I must declare an interest, even though my noble friend may already have declared it for me. I wish he had not mentioned Montagu Square and the dark doings I referred to in our last debate, because the immediate result of raising that matter in your Lordships' House last time was that the very next morning there appeared outside my house a disused baker's van which took me eight days and cost a considerable amount in bribery to get removed.
This problem is common both to countryside and town. If the noble Lord doubts my word, he has only to go and look in Whitehall, where a small Vespa motor cycle was, at least last night, deposited at the end of Whitehall and Parliament Square, and, for all I know, is still there to-day. Perhaps he will go down to Cromwell Road, which is my favourite hunting ground for dumped rubbish but which has been rapidly improved since the railings were put there. Alas! Two days ago it was going back to its old form, and this with a specimen I have never seen in the eight years I have been keeping watch there—an old trombone.
May I briefly commend three points to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison? I apologise for doing it again: I have done it about twenty times. Have we discovered what foreign countries do about this problem, or are they as regardless of it as we are? Have we investigated the possibility of dumping these disused cars and ironmongery out at sea, or is the cost of doing that prohibitive? Whichever course we adopt, I hope the noble Lord will agree with my noble friend Lord Hawke that this matter will have to be considered on a national basis. It must be a national service, which is understood on a national basis, and it must be a charge on the country as a whole; otherwise it will be universally evaded.
My Lords, I was glad to see that our debate last year was reported in that circular, particularly as my own speech
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was repeated in much better English than I myself command. Perhaps I may be excused from taking part in this debate next year, because I have a nasty feeling that the noble Lord will put exactly the same Question on the Paper and I expect will receive exactly the same answer.
5.6 p.m.
LORD CAWLEY: My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lord Hawke. I think I can say that in the Woking area things may not be quite as good as in the Crawley New Town area, because recently I received a full-scale timber-framed mattress, in good condition, with springs, over the hedge into my garden. I would not have objected—I might have been able to use it—but it was deposited on top of a rather rare rhododendron which I had just planted, doing considerable damage to it. That is about the only experience I have had of this, except for bicycle frames and bottles, which of course arrive in my garden by the score. On one occasion I received 24 milk bottles, bearing a Camberley dairyman's name, arranged neatly in a row. I cannot complain: but I must support my noble friend and say that a lot of trouble has been taken about cars, but little has been taken about other objects which may be thrown over the hedges.
I should like to say something about depositing rubbish at sea. I know it is done quite a lot. I know it is done off Plymouth, because when I went on a marine biological course at Plymouth we used to dredge there and there was a most interesting set of animals which lived amongst the rubbish. We used to fetch up old teapots covered with sea anemonies and wormlike creatures which were of great interest. That was certainly an economic and simple way of getting rid of your rubbish.
5.8 p.m.
LORD REDESDALE: My Lords, I wonder whether your Lordships will forgive me for joining this debate at a late stage, but one suggestion has been made which I feel has a lot of merit, and I should be grateful for your Lordships' consideration of it. It is that on every new purchase of a car there should be an additional licence fee of two guineas which would be paid into a fund which would be held and could be claimed against by local authorities when they

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had an old, disused car to pick up and dispose of. In that way it would be paid for. As new cars came on the market the fund would grow and the old cars would then start to disappear. With planned obsolescence, the useful life of a car is rapidly decreasing, and instead of having wonderful old Morris Cowleys around there will soon be only five-year-old cars completely disused and appearing on the streets in this way. The problem is going to grow rather than get better, and, as the new cars came along, the fund would grow and could take care of these cars when they in turn became wrecks.
5.10 p.m.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, may I begin in all sincerity by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, for raising this subject again. I think it is his fourth effort; but I am very glad indeed that he goes on hammering at it. It is necessary. This is really a matter for the local authorities. There must, of course, be powers to deal with the position in some form or another—they may be powers of prosecution; they may be other powers. That is naturally the business of Central Government. But when it comes to dealing with the question of people dumping bulky rubbish or motor cars, I think that clearly that cannot be done by some sort of campaign from Whitehall. It is a task the local authorities must carry out; and the circular to which the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, referred was sent out to local authorities to help and encourage them and to stress the importance of this question. I am sorry to disappoint him in thinking it was the debate here which was the cause of the circular, because in looking at the time of the debate I find that the circular was already in its final draft and had gone out at that time. Whether it was the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, who prompted the circular or whether it was the circular which inspired the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, is a question we need not trouble about. They were both on the right path.
It is, of course, not true to say that nothing has been done about this question: or that it has been left at the circular stage. What in fact has happened has been that, as regards the motor cars—and I have not forgotten the other dumped rubbish—there has been an
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informal committee with representatives of the Ministry and representatives of local authorities. You cannot treat individually with all the local authorities in these cases; you must deal with the associations, and the associations then have to deal with their members. They have all been represented and the London boroughs, who have a peculiar problem, have been represented by Haringey, which speaks on behalf of the others. This informal committee has led to a very considerable number of authorities —about 50 in the county council range, when I last heard of them—taking action and moving in the matter. The sort of thing they do is to come to arrangements with the trade—arrangements which vary from case to case and which I think ought to be left to the local authorities and to the local trade representatives—about the disposal of these disused motor cars.
The right advice, if I may respectfully say so, to be given by the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, to his impecunious young relative is: "Ask the council". That is the right thing to do. Of course, if you can manage it through the trade on a private basis there is nothing to prevent you from doing so; but if difficulties of pocket or circumstances prevent this, then the right course is to go to the council.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, the noble Lord said that 50 councils have done something about this. Am I right in saying that there are rather more than 50 councils in England?
LORD MITCHISON: Yes, but I said these were on the county council level—although I think I dropped my voice at that point and perhaps the noble Lord did not hear me. But that is the position.
My Lords, I will now turn from the county councils to the other authorities concerned. The county boroughs have been asked to take action about this, and take a view somewhat like that expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, to-day, which I myself would expect to be true. They say that the trouble is that the people go out and dump outside the borough. One particular town clerk expressed this point very clearly. There is no point in instancing the case; but it clearly must be so. I am not for a

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moment denying the existence of similar difficulties inside the towns, too. But for the boroughs in particular, and especially the boroughs not of the wholly unmanageable size of modern London, there is no doubt it is a problem—not only of what happens there but of their own borough residents going out into the country and dumping motor cars there.
I turn from that to the London problem. I am afraid I did not spot the object at the bottom of Whitehall and did not get as far as the Cromwell Road to-day. However, there is no doubt that a great deal of cars are being left in one place or another. I think the number is possibly exaggerated, but as nobody can produce exact figures it is difficult to say. But there is no doubt the problem exists. The London boroughs are being pretty good about it. They are taking steps to make similar arrangements to those which I have described about getting rid of the scrap. It would take an insufferable amount of time if I went over this position borough by borough and county by county and tried to say what arrangements have been made in each case, and I am not sure it would be a good thing to do so because in many cases the authorities are merely experimenting.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, may I ask this question? The circular recommended that the service should be free. Do the majority in fact provide this service free or do they, as in Westminster, charge for it?
LORD MITCHISON: I should have to obtain the information to answer that. That would involve the question of how many councils have exactly what arrangements started already. I can try to find out that information. I hope the noble Lord will excuse me from having a special, detailed inquiry. I will inquire about it and give him general information. I agree with what the noble Lord said and I shall come to the question of central funds in a minute. I agree with him that the service ought to be free because the people who are going to throw the cars away are the kind of people mentioned in the paragraph of the circular he quoted: people rather badly off, last owners and probably the poorest owners, and perhaps the least careful owners, of the cars in question. There is
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every case for doing this free and if it is done on a wide enough scale it is thought that the scrap dealers, the breakers-up, can make something out of it and there may be no need to charge. It depends on the scale on which it is done.
On that point, before I leave London, there is one very encouraging feature in that the Greater London Council is taking an interest in this problem. They have not taken any definite steps so far—they have hardly been in a position to do so—but are co-ordinating the efforts made in the first instance by the boroughs. In London, as in the country, this is a question best tackled in the first place by the smaller local authorities; that is to say the district councils in the counties and borough councils in the towns, at any rate so far as collection goes. It may be possible to co-ordinate a little more—and by co-ordinating I mean working together literally—the arrangements for disposal. It can be done and some local authorities are beginning to try out (it has been a little slow, I agree) the possibility of getting larger plant which can deal with a considerable number of cars at a time.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, asked me about the position in other countries. This is a very acute problem in America. They have more cars; but they have one advantage (if it is an advantage) in this respect—namely, they have a great deal more room. But they are trying to get their disused cars broken up, and are using very large plants indeed. I gather that when one says "large" one means over 100 cars a day.
Of course, you cannot deal with them on Goldfinger lines, where. I understand, the car, passengers and everything else were all squashed up into one enormous, glorious lump. I did not see the film, but that is not the practical way to do it. There are parts of a car which are far more valuable when the car is broken up than when it is squashed up. For example, you have to keep other metals away from steel; and there is not much that you can do with decayed coachwork. But I am not trying to teach the scrap dealers their trade; I think they know it pretty well. There is an opening for the disposal of cars, breaking them up into a suitable form, so that the steel and

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other bits can be disposed of, on a scale rather larger than it is now being exploited and carried out.
When I first inquired into this subject I shared with the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, the feeling, "Have they done anything about it since the circular was issued?" The information which I have been given, the substance of which I have been trying to convey to the House, convinced me that progress has been about as fast as one can encourage local authorities to move in a matter of this kind. It is a difficult business for them. It varies in different cases and it is a not very attractive problem. There is no enormous immediate advantage to be gained. But it is a public service which requires to be performed.
I wish to turn for a moment to answer a question from the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, about other countries. I asked about this on my own initiative, and I was told that another country which is finding this matter troublesome and doing a good deal about it is Western Germany. I do not know what is happening in other European countries. They are, I think, going on more or less the same lines as we are. But, of course, our system of local government and that of other European countries, and of America, is so different that it is rather difficult to make a comparison on those lines.
Turning to the question of money, I would point out that the present arrangement is that all expenditure, if there was expenditure on this matter, would be borne in the first place by the rates, and if there was a profit it would go in the first place to the relief of the rates. But there is a rate-deficiency grant, and the intention and effect of that grant is that where councils have to bear what I might call an undue burden, a burden beyond their proper share, they should get relief from public funds. Councils which are troubled in that way do get that relief. Not every county gets rate-deficiency grant. It is reckoned on a comparison between what they can levy from the ratepayers and the duties which the council has to perform. This is a duty which would rank for a rate-deficiency grant. I suggest to your Lordships that this is the right way to do it.
In a way, this illustrates rather well the advantages of the rate-deficiency
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grant, Had we no rate-deficiency grant, we could be left with an almost insoluble problem about who would pay what. Take a case where someone took a car from borough "A" deposited it in the rural district of "B", and the rural district of "B", with the assistance of two more rural districts and the co-ordination of the county concerned, finally broke it up and sold it to the scrap dealer. How the burden, or advantage—for it might be an advantage—would fall, would be a very difficult matter to decide. Because that kind of question arises, not only in connection with disused motor cars, but with many other things; we have a rate-deficiency grant. If any alteration is to be made in the relation between local and central Government finance, I feel sure of one thing: there will be, there must be, an arrangement of the same sort in respect of cases now dealt with by the rate-deficiency grant. That is to say, a burden which, in some cases, is heavier than in others, or, conversely, resources which may be greater in one case than another, must be taken into account. I suggest that that is where the rate-deficiency grant, or perhaps a later and better adaptation of the relation between local and central finance, would be useful and the right way to deal with the matter.
My Lords, I have been talking about motor cars and taken them as an instance. It is an instance where this circular has been sent out and one can define, more or less accurately, what has been done. But there is the general question of bulk—
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves the question of motor cars, I wish to ask him a question. I have listened to everything he said with great interest. I have always realised that this is a problem which will increase. Can the noble Lord tell me whether the suggested figure of £2, which was put out by certain authorities, for collection and disposal, was based on any knowledge of the cost, or was it a sort of shot? Would £2 bring in a surplus, or would there still be a deficiency? Does the noble Lord know the answer to that question?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot answer that question. The fixing of the £2 is, of course, a matter for the local authority. What I think the

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noble Viscount has in mind is that somewhere there must be some figures which would give an idea whether there was a balance between cost and expenditure in a run of cases. All I can say is that I am told that in fact some councils make a charge and others make no charge. Whatever charge is made now, I think that one should bear in mind the possibility that the methods of disposal may be improved by increasing the size of the plant used for the purpose, and as a consequence charges which may now be right may not necessarily be right in a short time. I doubt—I say this speaking off the cuff—whether local authorities would seek to make an undue profit in a transaction of this sort. It may be that they ought not to charge at all, and do charge. But I should have thought that extortionate charges would be unlikely.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, may I make one point? If there are these varying charges, with some councils charging and some not, people who live in the areas where a charge is made will dump, and it will cost the "dumpee" a great deal more than £2 to collect the dumped vehicle—more than can be got for it. Therefore surely it would be better for it all to be free.
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I am not here to argue any general principle, but I suggest that one has to be rather careful about going too far in imposing rules on local authorities in a matter of this sort. That is the same kind of point which used to arise in respect of library charges, and I think that in the case of library charges there was a much better case for uniformity. What was done in the circular, as the noble Lord clearly pointed out, was that local authorities were pressed not to make any charges at all and were told that they could make it pay. To order them to do it without making any charge would be, I think, contrary to the way in which we usually deal with local authorities, and it would, I believe, cause a disproportionate amount of resentment. I should deprecate that way of doing it. At the same time, I would join with the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, in pressing on local authorities the desirability of providing this service free, if possible, and seeing, as indeed my
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right honourable friend Mr. George Brown would see, whether in the circumstances it was possible to improve methods and so to decrease or obliterate the charges, instead of making up for inadequate methods by unnecessary charges. I am not suggesting that the methods are inadequate. I merely say that they may be, and that most methods are capable of some improvement.
LORD AMULREE: My Lords, in the part of London where I live it seems to be particularly common for people to deposit their cars. If I find one at a nearby front door, with no number-plates and the licence has expired, and I presume that it has been abandoned, who is the right authority for me to get in touch with: the police or the local authority? Would it be permissible for me to telephone them on the first day I see the car, or must I leave it for a certain amount of time so that it proves to be abandoned?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I think that the right people to ring up are the borough council. There are police powers, but the responsibility is the borough council's. I suggest that it is a good thing that the noble Lord should take every possible opportunity of reminding them of these powers, but remembering, as I hope we all shall, that this is a problem which really arises out of the way we live in a crowded island, and one should not be too hard on people who are trying to cope with this problem, perhaps for the first time.
I am sorry to take so much time. In regard to other refuse, particularly bulky refuse, there is provision for dealing with litter. But litter seems to increase constantly in size and may vary from the cigarette end to the dead elephant. There is a Litter Act. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, and other noble Lords will not be too angry with me if I assure them that there is another body concerned with this matter—this time not a committee, but a Working Party. Like all Working Parties, they really have been working, and they have the advantage of consisting of people who are experienced in the problem they are dealing with. This Working Party hope to report in the spring of next year.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, can we sort this one out? Is this the Working

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Party who were appointed in May, 1963, with, I understand, dual responsibility, or is it the purely motor car Working Party?
LORD MITCHISON: My Lords, I do not think that it is the motor car Working Party, but one specially concerned with dealing with litter. I do not know its date of birth, but I think that it is a younger child than 1963. May I leave it at that at the moment? As I said, they are hoping to report in the spring of next year.
I agree with what has been said about litter being a real problem. I do not think that it is so large as the motor car problem, but it may be. That is one of the matters which the Working Party will no doubt let us know about. From time to time, criticisms have been made of the Litter Act. There may be questions as to whether there ought to be some further legislation, but I am inclined to think, as regards both refuse and cars, that the necessary powers are there. It is a case of organising and encouraging the use of them. If I have not said much about refuse in general, it is because a good deal of the same considerations—the functions of local authorities, and so on—apply here as in the case of motor cars.
I really am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, and to other speakers for raising this question, and for raising it repeatedly, because I am sure that it is a matter where local authorities need encouragement and a reminder that something must be done about it. I am sure that if this problem is neglected it will get worse. In fact, I do not think that it is getting worse; and that is one of the factors which make me think that the efforts that have been made are to some extent being successful. I feel that this question requires constant attention, and is just the sort of thing where Members of your Lordships' House may be able to do something practical to help, either by ringing up local authorities and saying, "There is a 'dead' car at my door" or something of that sort, or, where noble Lords serve on local authori-
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ties, by reminding them that, though this matter does not sound very important, it really is something that has to be dealt with. I hope that I have answered all the questions. If not, I will answer by letter any that I am asked.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA (PETROLEUM) ORDER 1965
Order made under the Southern Rhodesia Act 1965 by Her Majesty in Council: Laid before the House (pursuant to Act) under Standing Order No. 62 on Saturday last for Affirmative Resolution; and referred to the Special Orders Committee forthwith.
Fourth Report from the Special Orders Committee made; to be printed, and ordered to lie on the Table.